Vegas5/DVDA2b - in/out points

plyall wrote on 7/7/2004, 6:31 PM
Folks -

I have been having a heck of a time doing another recent laserdisc to DVD conversion.

I took the Pink Floyd 2 LD set Pulse and captured it via firewire (LD player -> Sony DV cam -> Firewire -> Vegas. All went well.

I edited out the laserdisc flip points, created a duplicate of the primary audio track to which I applied some affects (mostly reverb and EQ) and set them up as the rear channel tracks. I setup the original audio so that it went to mostly the FL and FR channels, and rendered the whole project to MPEG2 and AC3.

I brought it into DVDA2 this morning. No problems. Obviously 3 sides of laserdisc won't fit on a DVD (unless I reduce the bitrate), so I was planning to use the DVDA in and out points to mark the sections to be burned to DVD.

Oddly enough, DVDA still tells me that the program material is 7.3GB long. Hmm. Okay - I did a 'prepare DVD' and the warning came up that the material was too large to fit on a DVD. Possibly another glitch. So I prepared the DVD (no burn) anyway, and guess what? The file was still too large - about 6.4G.

This tells me that DVDA2b is not respecting the in/out points. Or - am I missing something?

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 7/7/2004, 6:40 PM
If you are selecting the in/out points for MPEG, and not avi's, DVDA is going to want to recompress the files because you are modifying the I/O points.
plyall wrote on 7/7/2004, 6:48 PM
Yes - I am setting the in/out points for MPEG-2. This seemed to work just find for a Tom Petty piece I captured off of VOOM this morning.

Question is: how do I get the desired result (burn just a portion of that MPEG-2 to the DVD)?
Spot|DSE wrote on 7/7/2004, 6:51 PM
If you are attempting to cut the beginning/end from an MPEG file, DVDA2 is wanting to recompress the file. In other words, using Sony tools, you can't cut/edit/alter/change the m2v/mpeg stream without recompression. Then you lose quality. Render to the correct length and bitrate in Vegas, then you'll have no issue.
plyall wrote on 7/7/2004, 6:59 PM
Spot -

Sounds logical, but unless my brain is leaving me, I did a similar truncation to an MPEG-2 I captured using SnapStream BTV this morning. Admittedly the source file would have fit in its entirety on the DVD as is (appx 1hr), but the DVDA 'trimmer'/timeline let me cut off the garbage at the start and the end.

Odd?
Spot|DSE wrote on 7/7/2004, 7:01 PM
to my knowledge, anything you modify in Vegas or DVDA (if mpeg source) will be recompressed. Maybe I've missed something somewhere, but I don't think so.
johnmeyer wrote on 7/7/2004, 9:29 PM
I think Spot (as usual) is correct. None of the Sony products can cut an MPEG file without recompression. It is amazing how often people request this feature, and it is amazing how easy it would be to add, given than Sony/Mainconcept have all the MPEG code, but I'm not holding my breath any more.

In the meantime, if you already have an MPEG2 file, you can cut it using one of the Womble products (MPEG VCR or MPEG Wizard). I think MPEG Wizard may be able to to cut AC3 files as well, but don't quote me on that.
bStro wrote on 7/7/2004, 9:44 PM
With all due respect to both you and Spot, I don't think either of you is getting what he's asking. He's not trying to edit the MPEG in Vegas, he's trying to use DVDA In / Out points to "chop" his MPEG file into segments. (This section for disc 1, this section for disc 2...)

He's not asking "How do I get DVAD not to recompress my video?" He wants to know why the In / Out points that he set aren't dividing his file into pieces so he can burn separate DVDs from the same MPEG.

The short answer is, 'cause In / Out points don't do that.

The solution is what johnmeyer suggests, cut the file into pieces using something like MPEG Wizard. But, no, MPEG Wizard will not edit the AC3 files.

Rob
bStro wrote on 7/7/2004, 9:46 PM
It let you set up the DVD so that it ignores the "garbage" when you play the disc, but DVDA still included the garbage on the disc. Open the VOB directly in a software-based DVD player and see if the "garbage" is still part of it.

Rob
Spot|DSE wrote on 7/7/2004, 10:04 PM
Right. Which is what I'm saying as well. Plyall is taking a larger mpeg in DVDA, and trying to cut the beginning and/or end of the larger mpeg into a smaller chunk. Point is, in doing that, DVDA will recompress the footage. If it were rendered into the correct chunks in Vegas, then this would need to occur. In other words, he made an error in determining file size, bitrate, or both when rendering the MPEG from Vegas' timeline.
If I've missed something, or if that's not what plyall is asking for, then you're correct. I've missed the point. He's trying to edit the mpeg in DVDA, not Vegas. And that's a problem if he wants to avoid recompression in DVDA.
And I think Bstro is right as well, the 'garbage' does stay there, if I remember right, if the source is MPEG. AVI's are properly cut.