Vegas/DVD Architect & jerky DVD's

dwl wrote on 3/22/2004, 1:04 PM
I'm using Vegas 4e to edit film from a JVC digital camcorder, then creating a DVD with DVD Architect. The big problem is that the finished DVD looks a bit jerky especially when panning. I've tried almost everything I can think of, including rendering to avi with Vegas then using DVD Architect, rendering to mpeg2 with Vegas then using DVD Architect, changing the field order from lower to upper, changing the rendering quality to excellent, rendering as PAL/NTSC/uncompressed avi, etc etc.

I'm using WinXP with a 1.8GHz processor, 512MB RAM, 120GB HDD.

Where am I going wrong?!

Thanks a lot.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 3/22/2004, 1:42 PM
Chances are the bitrate is too high in the MPEG render. What is the bitrate you are using? If there is a lot of fast motion and you have a low bitrate, it also can make things jerky.
johnmeyer wrote on 3/22/2004, 3:10 PM
First, render a portion of the project (a part that has the "jerky" pans) to a DV AVI file, and then send this to a tape and play it on the same monitor that you used to view the DVD. Does it still look jerky? If yes, then you may have a field problem. Also, is this standard PAL or NTSC video, or is it progressive or some other variation?

Spot is probably correct. If you have another DVD player (another brand), you might try the disk in that and see if it has the same problem. Some players apparently get fairly high error rates when reading DVD recordable disks. The disks still play, but the player has to spend a lot of time trying to correct the errors. When the bitrate gets really high (and if you encoded using VBR, it will be at its highest during pans), the player may not be able to keep up. The solution is to lower the bitrate OR use a better (or at least different) media that may be more readable by your DVD player OR find a different DVD player (if that is an option).

Many people, far more knowledgeable than me, recommend not encoding at an average bitrate above 7 mbs in order to avoid the problems that Spot mentions.
Maverick wrote on 3/22/2004, 4:06 PM
I have covered my problems with this in another thread and have still yet to solve it. Same files, same media, same OS, PC, etc. Two entirely different results - one with jerkiness and one without. Unfortunately, the jerky one is the one I require the other was just testing.

So far all attempts at resolving inc. those outlined above have failed. I reported my next step is to re-install W2K and then just the Vegas and DVDA stuff with all necessary drivers, etc.

I have yet to do this but will report my fin
Athlon 1800XP
768MB RAM
20 system 60+80 for video GB HDD
W2K
SP4 and all latest software/drivers.
dwl wrote on 3/23/2004, 12:48 AM
Thanks for the suggestions. I've been using a bitrate of between 8000-9600 so I'll try 7000. The dvd is jerky when using 2 different dvd players.

My footage is captured in PAL avi and then rendered to PAL avi once the editing is done. I just noticed that when I use dvd architect to create the dvd the settings say that the same settings will be used, but when I scroll through the options only NTSC is mentioned, i.e. a different frame rate. Could this be adding to the problem?
dwl wrote on 3/28/2004, 10:32 PM
Problem solved!

It turned out that DVD Architect was rendering my PAL avi file as ntsc - there doesn't seem to be a way to change this to PAL. The difference in frame rates seems to have caused the jerkiness. I'm now using TMPGenc DVD author to render the avi, with perfect results.
RBartlett wrote on 3/28/2004, 10:50 PM
DVD Architect does have an affinity to NTSC mode, but then I might expect that. You can most definitely change it. Glad you know what is happening.

As you can probably fathom, to not be able to change this would rather restrict the marketability of Vegas4+DVDA in the "other type of video" countries.
dwl wrote on 3/29/2004, 1:00 AM
The only choices I can see when re-rendering are between "according to source file format" or a drop-down menu which lists only ntsc options. If you use the former you get ntfs. If anyone can tell me how to change this I would be very interested.
PeterWright wrote on 3/29/2004, 1:37 AM
This format needs setting for each project - in other words the project has to be either PAL or NTSC.

I was recently able to create an NTSC version of a PAL project by Save as, changing Project Properties, closing down, then putting identically named NTSC clips in the same folder that previously contained the PAL clips.

In your case it may be as simple as just changing the Project properties.