I use option 3. I render to MPEG2 and AC3 in Vegas and then just author in DVDA. I do this primarily because an AVI file is a lot larger than an MPEG2 file so I save a lot of disk space and time by not making an intermediate AVI file of my whole project. There is a slight chance that rendering generated media to an AVI file will add DV compression and sometimes titles show compression artifacts. (and just with certain fonts) Then you re-compress them to MPEG and open the potential to add even more artifacts. So I feel I might get a cleaner product by just compressing once to MPEG2 since this is my final format for DVD but I have to real proof that this is true.

~jr

I also generally use option #3 although option #1 is a perfectly valid option. I personally would not choose options #2 or #4.

#5 is OK if, for some reason, you don't like the MPEG2 output from the Main Concept encoder.

I use option #3 as well. I get consistent compatibility by burning with DVDA.

John

Farss....why are you changing the Dialog Normalization to -21dB? What kinds of problems are you running into?

craftech,
the audio ends up at very low level otherwise. I normally apply mild compression (2:1) on most of the VV audio so the ac3 encoder doesn't need that much headroom.

I saw a suggestion to do this and it's working fine for me. The setting here should ideally be the dial normal value of the soundtrack but I know of nothing that can determine that. Soundforge will give you a RMS value of the audio which is close but still not 100%. As much as I'd like to have SoundforgeI just don't have the budget just yet.

Certainly if your soundtrack has more dynamic range then you'd want to stick with -27dB or maybe even less.

SonyFo provide little to no guidance on how to setup the ac3 encoder which does seem a tad remiss to me, it's certainly a complex thing to deal with and I've waded through an article on how it works and how to use it, if they didn't have the time to write this up in the manual they should at least have referred you to the Dolby documents.

My short has a lot of noise and though it looks great in DV it gets artifacts in rendering in Vegas to mpeg.
So I curious about TMPGEnc. Never heard of it before. Could you give me any information?

http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_download.html
For TMPGEnc download (free 30day MPEG-2 trial, permamnently free MPEG-1)

http://dvd-hq.info/Compression.html
For TMPGEnc settings advice.

Oh & on the topic itself
I use No 5
Canopus Procoder to ReelDVD or Pinnacle Impression Pro for authoring then burn with RecordNow Max

"they should at least have referred you to the Dolby documents."

farss,
I agree, but at least SonicTSW has done so at this forum.
See the thread

My feeling is that they were in a hurry to get DVDA out along with Vegas 4. I expect big improvements in the next release. How do I back that up? I don't - I just believe it.
Tor

TorS,
for sure and I had read that but then someone comes along and asks.
I'd be the last person to knock DVDA, I've got my investment in it back many times over and on my advice a pro dub house bought it as well. I had some misgivings about recommending it given its limitations but they are totally wrapped with it, like me not a single drink coaster and they found it foolproof to work with. The vast majority of work is just where you've made a video for someone and they want a copy on DVD, DVDA is more than adeqaute for that.

I have total sympathy for what was then SoFo, I'm also a software developer with a much smaller client base than they have and I also have the RTFM problem. But there's nothing worse than telling them to do that and then having to eat humble pie when it's not in the FM! It wouldn't take much effort to add a few extra pages to the manual and release it as a new version manual, whatever it cost they'd recover in tech support calls.

I picked up a 15 day trial version of Sonic's DVD Producer after watching the demo at IBC. It looks excellent, well it did until this morning when I checked out the price. But I'm doing about 10 to 15 DVDs per week and the encode time is crushing. Say 90 mins to capture, 15 mins to pull out any real crap, add a title, and then 4 hours to encode. I could probably now justify the cost of DVD Producer and the mpeg 2 card just to speed up my workflow.

It's all just copying home movies for clients and the other attraction is being able to author Open DVDs. If they come back and want minor changes made I don't have to recapture, just load the project straight back off their DVD and make the changes.

Going back to the first couple of posts, I am a little confused about the mpeg-2 and ac-3 rendering process - do you render the project twice, once for video and once for audio? (I bet this is on SPOT's training dvd, and I just haven't got that far yet...) I have been rendering the project timeline as a DV avi file, then bringing that into DVDA and building the disc - which compresses yet again. I too would like to bypass the interim step...but the comments on AC-3 threw me a little. Can you elaborate on the exact settings and number of render passes?

thanks!
David

If you want to go from the VV timeline to DVDA then you need to render twice, once to produce the mpeg2 file and then again to produce the ac3 file.

For the mpg2 file select Render As mpg2 and template Video Only for DVDA. You'll have to manually determine the bitrate to ensure it will fit onto the DVD although with ac3 you should be OK with the defaults out to about 70 minutes.

For audio Render As ac3 stereo. The only thing I change is the Dialogue Nomalization value to -21dB. If your sountrack does have a fairly high dynamic range I suggest not changing it from the default -27dB.

As far as I'm aware though their is no quality difference between doing it directly from VV or rendering to an AVI and letting DVDA do the work, its just a slower process.