In addition to jrazz's excellent questions, I have another: If your file is MPEG2, how big is it? Something to keep in mind about changing the In / Out points: If your file is MPEG2, DVDA cannot actually trim that file. The In / Out points only decide where the movie will begin and finish playing, but DVDA will put the entire file on the disc. If the section you marked is truly all you want to go on the disc, you should either a) give DVDA an AVI file (which it will trim down) or b) edit your MPEG2 file outside of DVDA and give it the shorter version.

And if you go with option B, I would not recommending using Vegas to do the editing. Vegas is geared toward editing AVI and similar formats. It takes a specialized application (thought not necessarily expensive) to edit MPEG files because they are structured differently than traditional formats. If you want to edit an MPEG file, some good programs are TMPGEnc MPEG Editor and MPEG Video Wizard or MPEG2VCR (the later two being from a company called Womble).

Another possibility is that your file is not DVD complient, and DVDA plans to re-encode the entire thing (including the bits you don't even want on the disc per the reasons I mention above).

Rob

Okay ... I'm getting a sense of what's happening.. I will go back to VMS and render the smaller version...
In answer to your questions.
1. I have an 80 G drive w/ 45 free
2. I am saying yes to the temp folders question... where else would they be? (not trying to be a smart - - -, I don't know)
3.DVDas says the file is 5.3 G
4. before and after in & out points is 40 minutes each. I decided to cut it in half after getting the "too big" message.
5. Yes, I made it an MPG-2 render
6. bit rate said 8.0... what should it be?
I posted my system specs ... I will have to find out the video card and sound card for a later post.

I think I'll try for a smaller render... I want to get through the entire process to see a DVD on the screen. I am concerneed about the quality of the raw footage the guy brought to me.
In the tutor DVD the instructor had several different "assets" as he called them. I wondered if they were 'pre-rendered' files (.Avi)
I could pre-render several "segments" of footage couldn't I? As long as they matched up and had 'fade to black' at the end of each segment, wouldn't that solve some of the size problems.?
Thanks again
John

Rob in reference to your suggestion on .avi versus .Mpg2... would an .avi file render more quickly? That would cut down on the lengthy render time... right? I suppose it would lengthen the "prepare time" in DVDAS though... (thinking out loud here)
John

In reference to rendering.
I have a second computer (networked). how do I move the project over to the second computer to do a render and continue to work on the first computer? I noticed that the project file (.avi) is just a small file and not the complete project.

...would an .avi file render more quickly? That would cut down on the lengthy render time... right?

You would be putting in an extra step. If your foogtag is DV (on a mini dv tape or if it is captured through firewire) then it is dv avi already. The footage will be turned into mpg-2 by DVDAS unless you do it yourself first. If you do it yourself first (in Vegas) you will have more control over the encode. You could do a variable encode of the mpg with two pass checked. Use the DVDA Video Stream template and click on options to get to this setting. Encode the sound seperate. This will cut down on the file size while having good quality.

As for the in and out points, cut out the footage before the in point and cut out the footage before the out point (you could actually do this and have plenty of space on left on the disc without messing with the encode).

What other place could it be?

I did not know if you had two hard drives. Sometimes if you are using a lot of space on the hard drive, it has to store the temp files somewhere while it is burning so the amount of room required is doubled. If you stored the temp files on another hard drive, it would free up that space (I was just trying to see if the issue was actually the footage size or the hard drive size).

I have a second computer (networked). how do I move the project over to the second computer to do a render and continue to work on the first computer? I noticed that the project file (.avi) is just a small file and not the complete project.

The project file is not the video file and is only a reference file that points Vegas to the footage and all the edits you have made. You would have to copy all of your footage over to the other machine along with the veg file and you would have to own another copy of Vegas to be legal so you could install it on that machine.
If you have 2 copies and a gigabit ethernet card (1,000mbps) you could possibly do this over the network but if you only have one hard drive in the computer with the footage on it, then you will likely encounter problems as both computers would be demanding a lot from your hard disc.
Probably by the time you got it set up and running, you could have already completed your render and the rest of your editing.

Hope this is helpful,

j razz

I did a DVD ! I know it will get better,. but for the first one, I'm pleased with how it came out. I thought for a minute there that I was not going to get this, but it happened. Thanks everyone... you are appreciated, believe me.
Thanks for the advice on the second computer. I had read somewhere about rendering on a second computer...
I am very much considering building a dedicated computer. I read in the book that came with VMS + DVD (HDV What You Need To Know) that you need certain components... which theyt briefly described. What do you recommend in certain components for a good computer?
Please keep in mind that you are talking to a "Po Boy"... but I do want to build a good one if at all possible. Some of the procedures I am doing with this program seem slow and somewhat delayed before beginning. I don't want any delays or slow downs.