Why does Architect want to recompress my video

Rob Brown wrote on 8/19/2003, 2:11 PM

Hi,

I have an MPEG-2 file 720 x 480 29.97fps encoded using Vegas with the NTSC DVD template using VBR with default minimum and maximums bit rates. The size of my file is 4.19GB.

So far so good, I've opened my video file in Architect to set chapter points and create my menus.

When I choose prepare DVD I am told that I have used 7.8GB on my disk and that Architect will re-encode my entire video stream.

I am new to Sonic Foundry software and DVD in general but have a lot of experience with video editing using MPEG-1 and DivX with various other tools.

Maybe I'm missing something but from what I've read my video is DVD compliant and small enough to fit on a 4.7GB disk so why does Architect insist on re-encoding it?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Rob Brown.

Comments

jeffcrow wrote on 8/20/2003, 11:24 AM

What version of DVDA are you using? The latest is 1.0c. I read a post some time ago that said this problem was resolved in this version, but then other posters said they still were having the problem. It has something to do with DVDA trying to include the source video twice. If you are using 1.0c, try examining your project closer to see if you can find any reason it would point at the video twice. If the project is not too complicated, try restarting DVDA and imediately select new to open a new project, and then rebuild the project from scratch and see if the problem continues, it could be that the project file has become corrupted.

Rob Brown wrote on 8/21/2003, 4:02 PM

Have tried all of these suggestions to no avail.

Have noticed though that when I open my MPEG-2 file with Architect it detects resolution as 720x480x32.

What is the 32 and could this be the reason for my problem and if so what can I do in Vegas to fix it.

I am also cropping my video in Vegas to remove black bars but since I'm outputting at the correct resolution surely this shouldn't be a problem.

Somebody please help me out as this is doubling my encoding time and I'm losing quality in my video.

Best regards,

Rob Brown.

johnmeyer wrote on 8/21/2003, 4:35 PM

Several notes:

1. Go to the File menu and select "Optimize DVD." This will show the size of all the video and audio files, including those that DVD-A creates for menus. If the total of these exceeds the size of your DVD, then DVD-A will re-compress.

2. Go to Options, Preferences. Click on the "Burning" tab. Make sure the "Space Available on Media" is set to 4.7GB, not 3.95 GB.

3. You should probably start using the "DVD Architect NTSC video stream" template (which renders with no audio) and then render your audio separately using the AC3 template. This is covered in detail in many other posts.

Now, as to your specific problem, the fact that it is telling you that you've used 7.8 Gbytes means that you have ended up putting a duplicate copy somewhere in your compilation. I had this happen once, and I couldn't find where I put it, and had to start over. Go to each and every page and see if one of the menu items is really a duplicate of your main file, and delete it. If you have inserted a submenu, sometimes that seems to cause the problem.

If you start over, you may be able to open a second instance of DVD-A and cut and paste much of your work from one to the other.

johnmeyer wrote on 8/21/2003, 11:32 PM

Further on my previous post. Since writing that post a few hours ago, I created a new DVD-A project, and I had this bug happen again. I'm using 1.0c. The bug is that, under certain circumstances, adding a scene selection menu causes the main movie file to be included twice, thus doubling the sice of the DVD. This of course puts it way over the limit for most projects. The solution is to delete the scene selection menu, which deletes all the pages below it, and also the reference to the duplicated entry. I then re-insert the scene selection menu.

Moral of the story: Until SoFo fixes this bug, always check the Optimize DVD menu immediately after adding a scene selection menu to make sure that the main movie file isn't included twice. Doing this right away will save having to duplicate 15-30 minutes of hard work.

Rob Brown wrote on 8/22/2003, 1:48 AM

Thanks for taking the time to answer my post John.

I've checked and double checked the Optimize screen twice and my video isn't included twice, in fact Architect does the exact same thing with a Single Movie project created from scratch, it's telling my it wants to re-encode my entire movie at 8000kbps and it will be 7.7GB in size.

I've now dropped the bit rate and am going to allow architect to re-encode but am sure I will lose quality by allowing Architect to CBR re-encode my Vegas VBR video stream.

I'll try your suggestion about rendering video and audio seperately with my next project though.

Thanks again,

Rob Brown.