Rendering with vegas 5.0 for DVD Architect 2.0

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

Hello, from a DV newbie. I am learning enough to be dangerous but I
am a newbie nevertheless.

I have my home theater hooked up to my PC via a Canopus ADVC-100 (plus
a digital coaxial for sound output to the home theater) and I use
Vegas 5.0 for video capture/editing along with Sound Forge 7.0 for
non-trivial sound editing and DVD Architect 2.0 for burning onto DVDs
(CD Architect 5.0 for CDs).

To be honest I haven't burned a single DVD yet - only one SVCD (which
looked darn good when I played it).

Right now I capture from firewire to DV. I do elementary editing such
as trimming, transitions, etc, then when I am done I render to NTSC
DVD mpeg, with the idea that I can watch it on my computer, later burn
it on DVD if I want, or even play it with Vegas via firewire and the
ADVC-100 to my TV.

Now I discovered that DVD Architect (DVD-A) will recompress/transcode
the source before burning onto a DVD unless the source was rendered
with the DVD-A Vegas mpeg video-only template. I am not sure I
understand this - if I am going to separate video and audio in Vegas,
how am I going to sync them back in DVD-A? Can it do this like I do
with Vegas? and of course now I lost the convenience of playing video
and audio on the PC with just a double click 🙂

I am interested in learning to do this the 'right way' so I can store
finished clips in some kind of compressed format that can be viewed on
the pc and be reimported in Vegas or DVD-A for future projects.

Is it common practice to store clips that might be used in the future
in DV (avi)? Also, is it common to just use DV in DVD-A - for a
newbie like me it's simple and I imagine since there is (almost) no
compression there should be no quality problem as there is from
rendering mpeg back to mpeg (yikes!)

Is there a commonly accepted 'bible' book that explains the workflow
and processes without assuming expert knowledge of the video/audio
field.

regards,
Kiriakos

 

[starwars]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On 17 May 2004 09:39:41 -0700, kg.google@olympiakos.com (Kiriakos
Georgiou) wrote:

[snip]

>Now I discovered that DVD Architect (DVD-A) will recompress/transcode
>the source before burning onto a DVD unless the source was rendered
>with the DVD-A Vegas mpeg video-only template. I am not sure I
>understand this - if I am going to separate video and audio in Vegas,
>how am I going to sync them back in DVD-A?

If the seperate audio/video streams were rendered off of the Vegas v5.0
timeline the same way, they should be in perfect sync when those two
elementary streams are imported into your DVD authoring program.

[snip]

>I am interested in learning to do this the 'right way' so I can store
>finished clips in some kind of compressed format that can be viewed on
>the pc and be reimported in Vegas or DVD-A for future projects.

The right way is very subjective, but this is the right way for me:

I create ISO image files of DVD-Videos with my authoring program and use
DaemonTools along with Media Player Classic to mount/view them on my PC.

This way doesn't easily allow you to reimport the content into Vegas/DVDA
for future projects. If I want/think I may be using something in future
projects then I will store them as you allude to in the below question
(i.e., DV25) since I, like you, use a Canopus ADVC-100 or DV from a miniDV
camcorder for nearly all of my source footage.

Most people don't want to reimport finished clips that have been
compressed beyond the original source material because of quality loss
from multiple decode/renders.

>Is it common practice to store clips that might be used in the future
>in DV (avi)?

Yes.

>Also, is it common to just use DV in DVD-A - for a newbie like me it's
>simple and I imagine since there is (almost) no compression there
>should be no quality problem as there is from rendering mpeg back to
>mpeg (yikes!)

I'm not sure here. I thought DVDA v1.0 was garbage, so I never used it.
DVDA v2.0 looks like quite an improvement, but I haven't gotten around to
reading the manual and figuring it out.

I've always used Vegas for my editing, for my rendering of the audio to
Dolby Digital (AC-3) format, and sometimes for the rendering of the video
to DVD-Video compliant MPEG-2. Now that Vegas v5.0 has added two-pass VBR
MPEG-2 encoding, I'm hoping I'll have less need for Canopus' Procoder
since the convenience of rendering from the timeline with Vegas is nice
versus rendering to intermediate DV25 AVI files (Debugmode's Vegas
frameserver never worked well/was slow for me).

>Is there a commonly accepted 'bible' book that explains the workflow
>and processes without assuming expert knowledge of the video/audio
>field.

I've usually found the manuals for my DVD-authoring programs to explain
the workflow and process in a fairly straightforward manner.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On 17 May 2004 09:39:41 -0700, kg.google@olympiakos.com (Kiriakos
Georgiou) wrote:

>Now I discovered that DVD Architect (DVD-A) will recompress/transcode
>the source before burning onto a DVD unless the source was rendered
>with the DVD-A Vegas mpeg video-only template.

Actually, DVD-A 2.0 is supposed to handle a few formats, such as
elementary streams, which is kind of the standard for DVD building, in
addition to the special video-only program stream is used in 1.0.

>I am not sure I
>understand this - if I am going to separate video and audio in Vegas,
>how am I going to sync them back in DVD-A?

How are you going to de-sync them? If they're synced in Vegas, there's
no mechanism to lose that sync, unless you're editing one
independently of the other.

For historical reasons I suppose, it's standard practice to feed DVD
programs separate audio and video assets. Some of the very consumery
apps probably take an MPEG-2 program stream these days, but most
serious apps don't. Neither does DVD-A (not quite a serious app,
though I haven't bought 2.0 yet, though soon...).

>I am interested in learning to do this the 'right way' so I can store
>finished clips in some kind of compressed format that can be viewed on
>the pc and be reimported in Vegas or DVD-A for future projects.

I wouldn't do that.

>Is it common practice to store clips that might be used in the future
>in DV (avi)?

Yes, I would keep any and all editable bits in their original, dry
formats as much as possible. DV itself is compressed; any additional
compression is inherently come kind of compromise. There's no good
reason to compound that by re-rendering a re-rendered clip. MPEG-2
certainly takes up less space, and sure, you can edit it just dandy in
Vegas (though not without loss, while DV is far more intelligently
handled, so you only re-render that which changes, not practical for
frame-accurate MPEG-2 editing).

>Also, is it common to just use DV in DVD-A - for a
>newbie like me it's simple and I imagine since there is (almost) no
>compression there should be no quality problem as there is from
>rendering mpeg back to mpeg (yikes!)

Not sure what you mean there. DV will be rendered to MPEG-2 in DVD-A,
just as any other non-MPEG video asset would be. There's no real
problem with having DVD-A do the rendering, but I always do it in
Vegas. While they both use the same MainConcept MPEG-2 engine, you
have more control in Vegas, and also the luxery of things like
exporting markers in Vegas to form chapter points in DVD-A. If you're
editing full featured DVDs, that's a nice time saver.

>Is there a commonly accepted 'bible' book that explains the workflow
>and processes without assuming expert knowledge of the video/audio
>field.

Honestly, given the price of Vegas + DVD, I don't think anyone's
expecting novices to pick it up. That may be an incorrect assumption,
but that seems pretty typical of this level of software.

Dave Haynie | Chief Toady, Frog Pond Media Consulting
dhaynie@jersey.net| Take Back Freedom! Bush no more in 2004!
"Deathbed Vigil" now on DVD! See http://www.frogpondmedia.com