Splitting Files Upon Render?

MarkTimms wrote on 9/22/2002, 8:30 PM
I am working on a project that I will eventually be creating a DVD from, however for the time being, I am trying to keep within the DV format so as to induce as little compression as possible while having to make several edits between different programs. The entire project is roughly 50 minutes. I have made all of the edits I would like in Vegas, however when I render to DV format, it outputs to several files; each 4 GB in size (except for the last one, which is the remainder). Because my DVD authoring program looks at individual files as "movies," and I cannot join two files together for seamless playback, this splitting of files is really annoying. I am more than happy to have a 10 GB+ DV file upon render, but I can't seem to find any setting anywhere that will allow me to do this. Am I just missing an option somewhere, or is this a quirk of the program?

Thanks greatly for any help in advance.

Comments

Sr_C wrote on 9/22/2002, 9:16 PM
You are running under 98se I am assuming, which uses the FAT32 file system which has a 4GB limit. The only way to avoid this is to upgrade to XP or 2000 and format your drives to NTFS which do not have a size limit. However, you said that your final output will be DVD? If this is the case then when you are done with your editing, put all the 4GB clips on the timeline in order and render to MPEG 2. I don't belive 50 mins should take you over 4GB for your final DVD burn. -Shon
MarkTimms wrote on 9/22/2002, 9:25 PM
I'm sure that's the problem then - thanks for the reminder. :) I'm actually running WindowsXP on NTFS, but due to space limitations on this drive, I was rendering to a different hard drive - and that drive was formatted long ago under FAT32. What a bummer. At least that explains the situation I'm having.

I was aware that I could just put my clips together on the timeline and render to MPEG2 - that was never a problem. The problem is that my DVD software takes whatever you give it - AVI, MPEG2, MPEG1, etc, and RE-encodes it upon completion of the project when it makes its own image file. I was trying to stay in the DV arena all the way through until the end to avoid compressing (and recompressing) to MPEG2 several times. If I put all of the clips together, then compress to MPEG2 in Vegas, and then have the DVD program recompress, I'm sure it'll look much worse than if I've been editing in DV the whole time and then feed it the AVI file to compress once.

Regardless, I'm sure your analysis of the situation was valid, so I thank you for your help and I'll see what I can do about it. :)
haywire wrote on 9/23/2002, 2:32 AM
Use the convert comand to convert the FAT32 drive to NTFS.

Click Start, Run, then type CMD. This opens the command prompt. At the command promt type convert n:/fs:ntfs where n is the drive letter. For example

convert d:/fs:ntfs

would convert drive D to NTFS. I have used this procedure successfully many times without losing any data.

Michael
actvman wrote on 9/23/2002, 5:22 AM
As long as the FAT32 drive is not a "boot" drive, I would second the notion of converting it to NTFS. If you need to access it from WIN9X, WINTERNALS makes a product that allows NTFS volume to be mounted under WIN9X

Chris
mako wrote on 9/23/2002, 12:24 PM
Hey, I run WinXP with NTFS drives, but I still get 4Gb files after rendering. It isn't an issue for me, but... why? Are you sure this is the real reason?

Art
SonyDennis wrote on 9/23/2002, 5:20 PM
mako:

With NTFS you should not get segmented files, just one BIG file.

///d@
nolonemo wrote on 9/23/2002, 6:04 PM
When you say "no seamless playback" I assume you've tried it and the DVD shows a jump or pause between the two "movies." Tell us your authoring software, someone may know a workaround.
mako wrote on 9/23/2002, 7:45 PM
Sorry, I think I was thinking about rendering to tape. ...never mind. :D