Vegas Movie Studio rendering + burning

Danes wrote on 5/29/2009, 7:31 PM
Hi,
I have purchased a copy of VMS 9 to prepare and burn my baby son's DVDs. I don't understand why it takes an hour to render a movie from VMS and then another hour and more to burn a 60 minute DVD in the DVD architect. Can someone please tell me if I'm doing something wrong.This is what i do:
Capture video from my mini DV cam
Put all the captured clips into the VMS project
Render <<takes at least 30 minutes for 60 min of video>> (I think it renders to an .mpa file or something and then renders th audio which is a bit quicker)
Send to DVD architect which then takes another hour + to burn a DVD.
The booklet manuals are next to useless as it's only surface scratching stuff and I couldn't find my answers in either those or "how to" tutorials.
So basicaly my problem is the amount of time it takes for rendering and burning.
I would greatly appreciate any help anyone can offer as my wife is on my bacvk to burn these DVDs and it just takes ages to do it the way it's been going.
Thank you

P.S. I forgot to also say that I can only fit about 1 hour and ten minutes on a DVD before I run out of 4.7 gig space. How do I reduce the size?

Thanks very much

Comments

wjsd wrote on 5/29/2009, 11:21 PM
There are several factors that will affect your rendering time, the biggest being how much horsepower you have in your computer. The others being output resolution and how complex the video is (complex transitions, video effects, etc.) To determine if an hour is reasonable, we'd have to know what you're working with.

My system renders regular DV at DVD resolution at 2x or 3x speed. 4x if I have no video effects and only minimal transitions. So an hour video might take 15-30 minutes to render. I have a pretty fast system.

For burning time, the biggest factor is the speed of your DVD burner and media. I burn at 16x so an hour video might take 4 minutes, plus several minutes for prepping and closing the disc. 10 minutes max. If you're burning at 2x on a slow system, then 60 minutes sounds about right. What speed are you burning at?

Other than ensuring you have plenty of RAM and disc space, there's not too much else you can do to speed things up -- other than get a faster computer.

Reduce the bitrate in DVDA to get more room. Use the Optimize button.
Danes wrote on 5/30/2009, 4:06 AM
Hi wjsd,
thank you very much for your response. My computer is a :
intel core 2 quad processor (q6600)
975 chipset badaxxe mobo
2 gig ram
7200 rpm HD
pioneer d112 (or something like that) burner
I think this is more than sufficient, as I don't even do any editing for now, just capture the clips from DV cam and straight to the architect for burning.
I realy don't understand why the architect renders as well, before burning... Because VMS renders and then, I thoguht, the architect is just supposed to burn the damn thing.
As I said, no fx, no transitions juts straight out of the DV cam and it takes around 25 minutes for VMS to render 60 min of video and then the Architect takes an hour+ to burn at 16X burning speed..
Thanks very much, any other pointers would be great.
Cheers
Chienworks wrote on 5/30/2009, 5:14 AM
If you're feeding DV .avi files into DVD Architect then it has to encode them as MPEG2 before it can bun them to a DVD. That's a time consuming process.
wjsd wrote on 5/30/2009, 6:43 PM
Your rendering and burning times do seem to be a bit slow for the hardware you describe. Although to be sure you'll have to hear from someone else with a similar setup. I have a new 64-bit system with a Core i7 920 and 6GB so you can't really compare.

The only suggestion I have is to verify you're using the maximum number of rendering threads from Preferences/Video tab in Vegas.

Your DVD burning time does seem really slow, especially considering you're doing it a 16x. I don't know what can be done to speed that up.
MSmart wrote on 5/30/2009, 9:13 PM
Capture video from my mini DV cam

If your video is DV AVI, use the NTSC DV (Widescreen if video is 16:9) to create a new AVI file to use with DVD Architect. Rendering will go fairly quickly, unless you've added effects.


P.S. I forgot to also say that I can only fit about 1 hour and ten minutes on a DVD before I run out of 4.7 gig space. How do I reduce the size?

DVD Architect has a Fit to Disc option. Doing so should allow you to get 2-hours (or more) on a DVD. Keep in mind, though, if you have lots of quick movements in your video, quality will suffer as the bit rate goes down. Which is what happens when you use the fit to disc option.


Ivan Lietaert wrote on 5/30/2009, 9:27 PM
To avoid two renders (VMS and DVDA), because this is what I believe cause the long burn process, in VMS render to the mpeg2 format with the Mainconcept codec. Choose the NTSC standard template. Keep the length of your movie well under 1 hour. Next, in DVDA choose a simple standard dvd template (without music in the background, without 'moving' menus). DVDA won't rerender the mpeg2 file if the size is right.
I own a similar system like yours and on mine it takes 12 mines to burn a dvd like this.
KHolle wrote on 5/31/2009, 12:25 PM
Ivan or anyone else - what if my project is right at 1 hour and a bit beyond. What would you do then? Is that a huge problem?? Can't really shorten it.
Chienworks wrote on 5/31/2009, 1:14 PM
The limit of what Vegas will fit in a 4.7GB MPEG2 file is a bit over 80 minutes. You're still well under that limit.
Chienworks wrote on 5/31/2009, 1:18 PM
"Can't really shorten it."

This is a fallacy. Generally the only people who think a project can't be shortened are those supervising the content. I'm sure anyone else who took a look at it would easily be able to show you 50% of the material that could be removed without lessening the presentation's impact.
Danes wrote on 6/1/2009, 7:23 AM
guys ,
thank you so much for all the responses.
I'll try all the above when I egt the next chance and will post back to say how it went..I really DO appreciate everyone's input..
THANK YOU!!