I believe I have been using the 8Mbps setting, and probably CBR. Oddly enough, other video sources (my Sony digital camcorder) have had no problems being captured and burned - smooth sailing there. And all of the DVD players in the house seemed to do well with those DVD-R's.

Are DVD's supposed to be rendered at 24 fps?

If the DVDs play back cool on your PC, but have prob. on the set top players, I would take a look at the flags and setting for fps in the original mpg2's, perhaps checking the ifo file settings as well (more info on the ifo stuff at dvdrhelp.com & doom9.org). I'd also check out possible interlace issues.

IF/When it applies using 23.976 video: In my experience (mileage may vary), most any NTSC DVD player will take 24 fps or 23.976 fps progressive footage and do it's thing to send your TV 29.97i video as nec.. The spec calls for 29.97 however, and is often handled by a flag in the mpg2 that tells the player to play back everything at that rate. Further flags are set if you choose 23.976 fps with pulldown in the mainconcept custom dialog -> the main fps is set to 29.97, the frame flag is set to progressive, and other flags are inserted to tell the player which frames to double so it aproximates fields and 29.97 frame rate. Normally the checkbox in the custom dialog is automatically selected for "Allow field-based motion compensation". If you don't have this marked, if you don't use the default settings that come with the 23.976 pulldown menu choice, playback can be less then optimal, actually looks better as 23.976 without any of the added bs on a tv.

Otherwise, using 24 fps footage encoded to 23.976 will cause some nec modification of the video & it's frame rate - something to watch out for, as it can look like interlace or telecine artifacts and effect smoothness. TV playback is also more sensitive to inaccuracies if you've done ivt. If you've done everything at 29.97i, make sure your field orders are correct all the way through. If you want to eliminate any possibility of the problem occuring in DVDA, should be able to do a test or three with mpg2 encoded to your prior settings, but use something simple like imagetool to create the dvd image. Perhaps less work/cost, if your player(s) support svcd (download test files from dvdrhelp.com if unsure), encode with same basic mpg2 settings but to svcd size and bitrate, and use a CDRW burning with Nero or similar... Should use the same mpg2 decoding circuitry and allow you to try various encoder settings for compatibility and smoothness. I've used this method, burning 4 or 5 cdrws with different settings at a time and try each.

Wow! That was quite a mouthful! Being relatively new to video (I'm an audio person), quite a bit of that slipped past me, and will require a re-read and some research. I greatly appreciate the input.

Actually - I was using an .AVI file as the source material. As discussed in another thread, I wondered why my machine seemed to hang (sometimes for minutes at a time) when editing MPEG-2 files in DVDA (or even Pinnacle Studio 8). Someone explained that MPEG didn't contain full frame information, and that the computer would have to backtrack to rebuild the frame from previous information. Sure enough, I found out that if I captured the laserdisc into an AVI format, editing was 10x easier and more responsive. So as a result, I have been capturing to AVI (from my ATI All In Wonder 9700 card), passing that to Vegas for some light trimming (cutting off the laserdisc start and stop scenes, and adding chapter markers), and then rendering to an MPEG that I send to DVDA.

The last time a burned a DVD I used the Render As command to send it out as Main Concept MPEG-2, default template (Audio 22Kbps, 44.1K, Layer 2 and Video 29.97 fps).

Should I be rendering to a different format?

According to the information and file properties in Vegas, my source AVI file has the following characteristics:

Video 720x480x24, 29.970 fps, 00:55:48:08, Alpha = None, Field Order = Lower First, Huffyuv v2.1.1 (a helping hand said this was a good codec to use); Audio: 48,000 Hz, 16 bit stereo, 00:55:46:19, uncomprressed.

I just also noted that the audio and the video have different lengths - is this normal?

plyall,
Set up your timeline for your final video and Render As Main Concept Mpeg-2. Choose the DVDA video stream only template to save as. If you named Markers on the timeline as future chapter points for your DVD leave the box checked "Save Project Markers in Media File". Pick a convenient folder to save it in.

Render the audio next. Choose Sonic Foundry AC3. That will give you AC3 Stereo which will render relatively fast. Save it in the same folder as the Mpeg-2 video.

When you open DVDA find the folder and it will associate the audio and video files together. Follow through on default settings and DVDA won't recompress the video.
Burn the DVD using DVDA (not another program). Test it on a DVD-RW so you don't end up with a coaster if something goes wrong.

John

"Actually - I was using an .AVI file as the source material. "

From an ATI AIW, try using other then the mmc software to capture avi's [for some of these to work you'll need to temporarily rename your mmc prog folder] OR, try captureing mpg2 all I frame at the highest cbr your machine will allow - then use dvd2avi & vfapi to bring the video into vegas -> no more hang or generating frames + higher qual output when importing mpg2.

Otherwise some more trivia: if capturing from your AIW, some have prob. with garbage at lower end of screen, or getting a true 720 wide recording (compare aspect visually with original source). One way to deal with it: capture at 720, crop the bottom off in post whilst resizing to 704 x 480 which is dvd legal. *Might* find that capturing mpg2 with mmc produces a more vivid picture then avi. Try and keep your audio at 48 rather then 44.1 -> as Craftech notes, better to go AC3. If your original capture has different video/audio lengths, timestretch audio in Vegas and then check sync. Consider a virtual drive (makes the Magix burning app worth the sale price alone) for checking your work.

Curious...are there any technical issues with using Vegas's DVD NTSC template and letting DVDA do what it wants...instead of authoring the audio/video seperate. Or is this simply a possible time-saving process when burning a DVD with DVDA?