I don't know. Are you downsizing the HD render to use on DVD? I haven't tried rendering in HD and then making a DVD. I think that's why DVDA-2 is rendering again because it wants a straight DVD NTSC mpg render. Just speculation and inuendo on my part. If you are ultimately going to view this on a tv by other means then you need a whole bunch of other stuff---D-VHS VCR, Mini-HDV VCR, Cineform HD codec, and/or MY-HD Tuner card for HDV viewing. HDV DVD players are not on the market so to speak. So you have to use what is available.


JJK

Hi, Mark. Did you try a "search" of the forum for an answer to your question? It is sticks in my mind that this has been discusses before.

Jay

DVDA-2 looks for mpg2 files that are NSTC. I have not found a flag to permit HD rendering to DVD by DVDA-2, yet. Sony people probably have a solution, just wanting for a standard to reach DVD player market place. there are other solutions from Sonic if you need a quick production solution.

Thanks to all.

The DVDA2 observations seem about right.

As for searches.. yes. I tried them every-which-way... but perhaps my lack of knowledge of terminolgy in this area is what is holding me back from finding the thread you recalled.

Here's what I was trying to discover.

There is software out there, like memories2TV, that allows for some easy movie-like slide shows. But, I suspected, the quality and control is not what it could be if a similar project was attempted using Vegas5.

So, I was trying to see if producing the same thing in a variety of output resolutions and then to put them all on a DVD and then play the DVD and compare the quality of the images.

So, I might have a DVD that had options for..

1: video produced by memories2tv
2: video produced for standard NTSC full screen (which is what memories2tv does
3: video of widescreen
(and then every other combination of resolutions that I can think of and show from a DVD)

The idea being that if I start with hi-rez stills, what is the best output format to put it onto a DVD and is it supported by both Vegas and DVDA2?

The memories2tv thing is fast and painless. and if I cannot produce a much better quality using Vegas.. why should I take the time to do so? At a minimum, I want to make a widescreen version which should have a better resolution. Perhaps the whole HD thing is a cannard.

dvds can only be made in these formats, i don't know why you keep bringing up HD:

NTSC (NTSC Film)



Video:
Up to 9.8 Mbps* (9800 kbps*) MPEG2 video
Up to 1.856 Mbps (1856 kbps) MPEG1 video
720 x 480 pixels MPEG2 (Called Full-D1)
704 x 480 pixels MPEG2
352 x 480 pixels MPEG2 (Called Half-D1, same as the CVD Standard)
352 x 240 pixels MPEG2
352 x 240 pixels MPEG1 (Same as the VCD Standard)
29,97 fps*
23,976 fps with 3:2 pulldown = 29,97 playback fps (NTSC Film, this is only supported by MPEG2 video)
16:9 Anamorphic (only supported by 720x480)


Audio:
48000 Hz
32 - 1536 kbps
Up to 8 audio tracks containing DD (Dolby Digital/AC3), DTS, PCM(uncompressed audio), MPEG-1 Layer2. One audio track must have DD or PCM Audio.

Extras:
Motion menus, still pictures, up to 32 selectable subtitles, seamless branching for multiple storylines, 9 camera angles.

Total:
Total bitrate including video, audio and subs can be max 10.08 Mbps (10080 kbps)


DVD players can ussually also support picture dvd 's and some also support mpeg formats such as divx and in some cases wmvand xvid ...

also -- some support mp3's , vcd. svcd, xvcd, xsvcd, mpeg raw and image files ..

see here for more info http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html

I kept bringing it up because I did not know anything about it.

Luckily, the site you provided provided the complete answer on this page..

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#2.9

..so, thanks a lot.

I've done quite a bit of still transfer work like you're talking about. The other guy's right about the DVD resolution, of course, BUT...
Still I've started working in widescreen HD inside Vegas as it does seem to look beter when "dowconverted".
When you open a new project (or change the project properties(under the "File" menu), you tell Vegas what kind of resolution you want and what you want the aspect ratio to be. Vegas uses these settings for it's internal processing and rendering. The reason that people were confused by your questions about resolution is that, at this time, there are fairly limited options for getting your images "into" and "out-of" Vegas in anything except "standard definition video" or less.
For your purposes getting higher than "standard definition" (by this, I mean 720x480 pixels at 29.97 frames per second) INTO Vegas is no problem as you are importing stills - even a cheap 3Mpixel digital still camera has a resolution about 3 times that of even 1080i HD video (which is not supported by the current DVD-video standard) so you are absolutely justified in preserving the best image possible at output. For practical purposes, unless you have access to fairly expensive image recording equipment usually found in the indutrial display environment, a DVD video disc is the highest quality, easiest-to-play-for-most-people, most-compatible-with-consumer equipment format available to us mere mortals.
SO ANYWAY, I would suggest that you work inside Vegas in HD or HD 16:9(these provide a resolution 1920x1080 pixels in TV's squarish-looking 4:3 ratio frame or film's rectangular 16:9 ratio frame as this will preserve as much image qualty as possible, at least inside Vegas for transitions and effects; and, considering that its all going to end up on TV, for at least the next couple of years you probably don't need to work at any resolution higher than that.
You can then render the project as an HD Mpeg file to preseve your HiRes work until a reasonable HD media format comes along and then render a "Downconverted" version to play on televisions everywhere via DVD.

All that said, your rendering times will be higher in HD, and if you will always end up at standard television anyway the extra time may not be worth it.

The Vegas 5 "new features PDF" makes mention of "transport-stream MPEG output". This feature would theoretically allow you to dump a Vegas-produced HD project to JVC's $3000 JY-HD10 camera at 1280x720 but I havn't upgraded, don't have that camera and have never tried this but it might be an option if you REALLY need the extra resolution.

As far as which software looks the best, Vegas looks great, certainly compared to any low cost consumer software; and it will work in 24p, which will make you're productions look more like film.
The biggest factor of all when going to DVD though is the video encoding process and I doubt that anything inexpensive is going to look better than Vegas' MPG output if the bit rate is set high enough; which (unfortunately, sorry this is so long) brings me to another point The Mpeg encoder in Vegas has a lot of options to set and you will need to do a little reading (the ballon help from Vegas itself is a good place to start) to set these correctly for best looking output, but if you're finished product is short, up the bit rate in the "maximum: and "average" bit-rate boxes.
Vegas defaults to 6000000 and 2000000 respectively for these; quality can be improved at the expense of final file size by changing these to higher values like 8000000 and 5000000 respectively. don't got much above 8Mbits though or you're likely to have trouble playing the discs created.

Hope this helps...

If you're only talking about how good stills will lokk on a DVD then uping the bitrate wouldn't help I think. That'll only help with motion.
What you need is more resolution but the DVD spec is frozen at 720x 576 and even that is more than most TVs actually use.

Yer probably right, fundamentally speaking, but, actually uping the bit rate helps(obviously, when it's too low, the encoder picks-up a large enough blob of pixels that we see it as pixelization), especially since were talking about pans a scans on stills ala Ken Burns; but tweaking the I's.P's,andB's and interlace/deinterlace/progressive settings certainly have more effect on motion perception. Also, for stills, setting the encoder for 10 bits instead of 9 helps

Has anybody ever tried to use the max limit of max 9.8 instead and avg 8 instead? I'm probably going to do a test anyway, but any of you had that experience before, care to share here?

> Vegas defaults to 6000000 and 2000000 respectively for these; quality can be improved
> at the expense of final file size by changing these to higher values like 8000000 and 5000000
> respectively. don't got much above 8Mbits though or you're likely to have trouble playing
> the discs created.

Remember - the max INCLUDES AUDIO

meaning it won't fit in the DVD later on if I use max bitrate? my clip is about 46 min long. roughly how big is it gonna be?

I have found that pushing the bitrate over 8 megs raises hell with an awfull lot of DVD set top players so I keep the lid on at 8 megs.

JJK