Thanks for your ideas...

I "replaced" the media in that menu/item with the .avi version and DVDA is now rendering that to mpeg2 for me right now.....

I was hoping to not have to spend another hour or so to get the whole project right so I can get on with the disc burning..... oh well.

I've had a couple of bad burns today and noticed that there was the 'b' update so installed that prior to this latest effort. Hope I can get a clean result and get on with the duplicating...

Will post latest results....when done here

Looks like I finally got my project working.

Guess there was something weird with that one video file and once DVDA got to do the avi--->mpeg2 render on that file it was happy..

Final project seems to be in order now and making good discs.

Change that last response!

Burned 4 discs no problems

Next 3 burn attempts of exact same project I get to the "Burning" window and no progress at all. Program seems to be hanging up....

Cancelled burn, Removed disc (did this 3x so far) put in another disc and try again, program hangs again.

Closed and rebooted and same problem, can't burn...

How can I tell if I got a bad batch of discs or is it DVDA?

teaktart

It ain't the discs...... !

Copied a good disc with Nero and can spit out good copies without any problems....

Anyone else getting erractic burns with DVDA 4b?

"Anyone else getting erractic burns with DVDA 4b?"

There have been a couple of threads on it I think, but don't recall seeing a solution...

FWIW myself & a few others prepare to hdd, test, then use Nero or Imgburn. Know that doesn't address your problem(s) [sorry], but until things are ironed out (4c?)...

"FWIW myself & a few others prepare to hdd, test, then use Nero or Imgburn"

MPM:
Is that what I ended up doing, sort of?
Use DVDA to layout the project, bring in Pre-Rendered media (using V7) and then "prepare" and/or "Prepare and Burn" in DVDA

Then:

Use a good DVDA burned disc,
Open Nero and burn "image" of this project/disc
Then use Nero to burn multiple copies from the Hard drive "image" ?

Thanks,
Teaktart

I just click Make, then Prepare the DVD to a folder on hard drive.

For me this is handy when I'm not sure something will work as expected, or when doing a project where I'm afraid I might skip something on one of the menu pages... In those cases I'll render the layout to hdd -- maybe several times -- before the project's finished to see how it looks in Power DVD, Nero etc... DVDA 4 is great about it -- only rendering any changes I've made -- and if something doesn't work visually or mechanically I'd rather sort it out early rather than late.

Another advantage for *me* anyway, is I sometimes fool with the layout DVDA renders. If you have video with embedded CC for example, need to turn on the display for software players, &/or for me [for some strange reason] it's easier to check the prohibited ops using Ifoedit. And if you're good at that sort of thing [i'm not ;?{ ] can use PgcEdit to further tweak the way the DVD works.

And I guess finally I like to keep the original layout lying around for a few days on the hdd... While you can modify the firmware for several drives to copy at full speed ahead, I haven't gotten around to it yet, so having copy locked at 2x when I need another burn or 3 is *Really* a drag.

To teakart - is this project by any chance PAL? Reason I ask is that I have done several NTSC projects rendering from Vegas via the default "DVDA" template however I just did a PAL project - what a nightmare. I can't say if it is Vegas or DVDA but the results are:

PAL project. Render out from Vegas viathe default PAL project setting for DVDA but change the fields to "none". This take about 4 hours. So I load up DVDA and pop the rendered video in. It says the file is not DVD compliant and has to be re-rendered.

hmmm...ok. So I go back to Vegas and render out again, this time not changing the fileds setting. 4 hours later - same thing. Still not a vaild file.

So one more time I go into Vegas and triple check all PAL setting - triple check output render...and do it again. Another 4 hours and same result.

For the hell of it I load up TMPEnc Xpress and render out via their default PAL DVD setting. This take about 2 hours and guess what? File is compliant!! But I don't like the quality so I try it with the MainConcept stand alone encoder. I select that default PAL DVD setting, go in and change the fields to progressvie, aspect ratio 16:9 and two pass encoding. The render time is about 70 minutes, quality is great and it loads into DVDA with no issues.

So, at least with PAL, Vegas does not seem to be the way to go because it take a massive amount of time to render and turns out something that DVDA can not use.

Hi Filmy:
Sorry to hear of your DVDA saga....

My DVDA4b seemed to freeze/hang up and looking at the discs they appeared unburned, yet when I tried to use them as blanks again they were rejected as though they were already burned, weird.....

My project was NTSC format, what I hoped was to not have to keep re-rendering that one file, but I think if what MPM says:
" DVDA 4 is great about it -- only rendering any changes I've made "
is correct then that's good to know that changes made "should" render out fairly fast if its not a big change....

Ironically, I just came back from Fiji and NewZealand where I was able to play my NTSC dvds on everyones' dvd player without a hitch. That was a nice surprise...I didn't expect it to work but they looked good and even better than on my set top player here thanks to the better image resolution of the PAL standard.

Unforetunately, the past couple of sessions I've been having crashes with my V7d as well.....
I've just spent the day de-fragging my drives, "housecleaning" spam/spyware, etc. hoping that will clear up what seems to be a possible "memory" problem....or at least that is what one of the crash reports seemed to indicate. My V7d also seemed to crawl to a halt last night....not good.

@ Filmy

Were you converting NTSC to PAL in Vegas? If so that would account for the longer render times in Vegas, & potentially the poor results using TMPGEnc. Neither program I think has any problems with either std., as folks use them around the world.

FWIW in my experience either Vegas or PPro can be quite a bit slower with resize or rendering (interpolating) new frames than *linear* editors like VirtualDub. The encoder portions however are "about" the same speed-wise AFAIK compared to TMPGEnc or the MC stand-a-lone. But that said I don't know why Vegas gave you problems.

"My project was NTSC format, what I hoped was to not have to keep re-rendering that one file, but I think if what MPM says: " DVDA 4 is great about it -- only rendering any changes I've made " is correct then that's good to know that changes made "should" render out fairly fast if its not a big change...."

I'm sorry but I may have given the wrong impression... If you're importing mpg2 & AC3 files, DVDA will only render any changes in your DVD layout itself. If you change a menu or the sub tracks or things like that DVDA will just change that part. If DVDA renders the video to mpg2, and the mpg2 doesn't change, it shouldn't re-render it. If though you change an avi file, I think DVDA will re-encode that avi, because neither Vegas nor DVDA have smart rendering of mpg2 like say one of the Womble products.

V7 crashing: if you have ANY non-Sony external plugins, remove them. This is the most likely cause of crashing.

"V7 crashing: if you have ANY non-Sony external plugins, remove them. This is the most likely cause of crashing. "

I only have UltS-3 and Excaliber.... no other plug-ins or add-ons.

I did go and de-frag all my drives and that seems to have made a big difference in CPU useage and all other functions....

So far much better performance....
But admittedly its hard to type with my fingers crossed!

Eileen

>>>Were you converting NTSC to PAL in Vegas?<<<

No it was PAL > PAL. Progressive >Progressive. Widescreen > Widecreen.

But even if it it were doing a conversion the point really is that when loaded into DVDA the file was flagged as not being the correct format and had to be re-rendered. I have not had this issue with NTSC.

Just as an aside - I just did a project in Premiere Pro 2 and exported to DVD via the Adobe/MainConcept encoder. It was NTSC and I used the default setting, only midifng the frame rate (23.976) and aspect ratio (16:9). Loaded into DVDA without any issues.

@filmy

Hmmm... really just guessing. If you get the chance you might still want to try re-sizing [PAL p -> W/S] outside of Vegas &/or PPro or via frameserving to/from Vegas/PPro... IMHO the faster, arguably cleaner renders make up for taking an extra step. But that's just FWIW... :?P

I have had issues with both the Adobe & Sony MC encoders installed & interfering with each other, but don't see that as effecting you encoding in Vegas. While it doesn't help of course, I haven't read of any problems rendering PAL before this, & in a quick test rendering NTSC D1 to PAL W/S, DVDA 4 imported it without wanting to re-render or anything. Here's hoping you don't have any further problems. :-)