help: setting in out points

logiquem wrote on 1/14/2004, 11:01 AM
Hi all,

I need help on a stupid thing i really can't understand.

I want to make a short DVD burning test with Architect, so i use a compliant 120 min mpeg file. Then i set in out points in a single movie project just to make a test with a 10 minutes sequenc.

Altough everything seems fine, Architect still complie an entire 120 min, disk instead of 10 minutes just as specified. Why this? Is this feature supposed to work or what?

Comments

risenwithhim wrote on 1/14/2004, 12:08 PM
When you play the DVD in a set-top player, does it play only the 10 minute portion?

I've been thru this. It can be a big problem if you're trying to put small portions of various videos on a compilation DVD, and you find you have to choose a really low bitrate to make a few videos fit, because it's encoding and burning the entire files, as opposed to chopping the pre-in and post-out footage.

What I do is just render out the portions I want in Vegas as .avi's, and work from those files.
SonyEPM wrote on 1/15/2004, 6:36 AM
If you are using a compliant MPEG file, it will not be "cut down" by DVDA, UNLESS you force recompression, which is bad quality-wise.

So, you can either render out a file of the proper length from Vegas (which I'd advise doing) or, you could force recompression inside DVDA (you'll know that's happening if you go to DVDA>Optimize and don't see the green checkmark).
wobblyboy wrote on 1/17/2004, 11:12 AM
Just make a short MPEG 2 file in Vegas and use that for your test. You could also use and AVI file so that DVDA would have to re render.
johnmeyer wrote on 1/17/2004, 6:20 PM
DVDA is really stupid with MPEG2 files; it can't cut or join them without recompression. Amazing oversight, given the price. It is not a difficult programming feat.

For cutting MPEG without recompression, use TMPGEnc (freeware -- but not too good for cutting/joining) or Womble's MPEG VCR (works really well, although ridiculously over-priced for what it is, and absolutely no support).
wobblyboy wrote on 1/17/2004, 6:41 PM
I really can't understand why people want to edit in DVDA. You have Vegas to do that and it does a much better job. The purpose of a DVD Authoring program is to organize your menus so that people can get to your creative efforts. The only concern I have had with DVDA is the lack of end of play options and a assume that will be delt with in a furture release.
johnmeyer wrote on 1/18/2004, 2:41 PM
I really can't understand why people want to edit in DVDA.

Generally I agree that editing should be done in Vegas. However, if you've just completed a multi-hour MPEG render in Vegas, and you put the results in DVDA only to discover you want to cut out a few seconds; or you find that the video won't fit without recompression (because Vegas provides absolutely no help whatsoever in estimating what bitrate to use to get the highest quality, while still fiting onto one disk), for these and dozens of other scenarios it would sure be nice just to be able to move a slider and nip, clip, snip, be ready to burn in a few minutes instead of a few hours, and not suffer any quality degradation.

Sony, are you listening? Cutting and joining MPEG without recompression is IMHO a mandatory feature for DVDA 2.0. In addition to the reasons outlined here, the ability to combine multiple clips together would let a user import multiple, separate MPEG clips into DVDA, and then have DVDA combine them so that they would play as one titleset. Without this feature, even if Sony adds "end actions" in DVDA 2.0, the DVD that results from multiple MPEG videos will pause between each MPEG segment (as the DVD player searches for the next title set), something most of us don't want.
logiquem wrote on 1/20/2004, 7:28 AM
You are right on the point John,

Not being able to cut/join in Architect is truly unacceptable. This is indeed a somewhat BTW, i would really like to see the "render without recompress" option i have in Media Studio in Vegas (hey, this is about the only reason why i still use it...). This is really usefull for just rough and fast editing of compressed mpeg or other format without generation loss.
nolonemo wrote on 1/20/2004, 2:21 PM
Just have to jump in. I completely agree that DVDA should be able to cut MPEG video. But, I have to say that you should never have to cut a few seconds after a multi-hour render in Vegas. If you're smart enough to use an NLE, you're smart enough to use a bitrate caclulator (I use the one on dvdhelp.com -- but why on earth a bitrate caclulator isn't included in Vegas is beyond me) I've never had to rerender because of too large a file size, and anyway, I don' t think one should push the limits of the disc capacity anyway, because is seems that most player errors tend to occur toward the outer portions of the disk. Note that this last opinion is just my supposition, unsupported by any empirical testing....