Hey Steve

Thanks for the reply. The source is from VMS. So that's not the problem. The movie is around 90 mins long.

But your second point may well explain it completely because it's the same issue I've had with every DVD I've ever burned.

Generally my projects all have the same structure. I have one title with up to 16 Chapters and a scene selection menu. The scene selection menu has around 4 buttons on each page but with an animation set to hit the start of the relevant chapter.

So if I understand you correctly what I thought was a minor change to the butttons is not because I'm creating 16 90 minute movies as all the butttons play to the end of the movie!!!

Also, as I said, what you're using a source files.

Vegas is capable of exporting your finished movie in several formats. If you export a DVD-ready MPEG from Vegas to use as your source video in DVD Architect, you will see much faster rendering times all around.

This is particularly true if you keep your DVD's running time below 70 minutes, so that the program doesn't have to re-compress your video. 70 minutes is about all you can fit on a standard DVD at full bitrate/quality.

Sorry Steve I was not clear. The source is a VMS DVD-ready MPEG file.

Its about 90 mins long and takes up 95% of the DVD space- wise.

My original point was why the same file took over twice as long when i switched the buttons to animation which I think you've helped me to understand. So thank you so much for that.

The original render in VMS takes around three hours but my PC is about 7 years old.

Also, note that motion buttons don't have a stop point. They play the video you're using as a thumbnail all the way through -- so, if you're using a 30 minute movie as your button thumbnail, you'll be creating a 30-minute menu page!

Hm, that hasn't been my experience. When I change a button thumbnail's Style from "Still" to "Animated," that button loops according to the menu's length. And that length is 30 seconds by default. Unless I haven't changed the menu's End Action from to "Loop" from its default of "Hold." If it's still on Hold, then the button video simply plays for the length of the menu and then stops.

If your animated buttons are playing for some horrendous length, double check your Menu Length setting in the Menu Page Properties window.

That said, using animated buttons will require that DVDA at least encode or re-encode that video those buttons are based on. It's best to create your thumbnail videos outside of DVDA and make them the length you intend to have your menus. Or, at the very least, save them as AVI instead of MPEG2 so DVDA doesn't have to spend so long encoding them.

Rob

Hello Wovian:

My laptop is a 2008 Dell Inspiron 1420 with 4mb of RAM, 32-bit, Core Duo T8300 2.4 ghz, Vista, blah blah blah. So it's kinda old and wimpy compared to some of the beefier PCs out there.

My DVD menu buttons are animated to play 30 seconds of the video over and over while you are viewing the menu. My DVDs run 30-45 minutes, and as Steve Grisetti mentioned, the render takes about 10 minutes in DVD-A 4.5.

Here is my workflow:

I have Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro. My footage is HDV shot in Hi-Def.

From the main menu choose Project/Render As
File Name: XYX.mpg
Save as type: MainConcept MPEG-2
Template: DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen
Stretch Video to Fill Output Frame: Checked

Using this method, it takes about 10 minutes to render a 3 to 4-minute segment. My DVDs have 10 of these segments, so in total that's about 100 minutes of total render time. If your project is 90 minutes, that suggests about 200 minutes of total time. Note that you must render your audio separate in the XYX.AC3 format. That's fast -- takes about 15 seconds per render for my projects.

Then in DVD-A 4.5, I set the set the length of the menus by going to the Menu Page Properties tabl and choosing "Autocalculate" or "Specify" for the Menu Length option. It's been a while since I set-up my DVD project, but I think I picked the menu music, which was 30 seconds long, and I either choose the "Autocalucate" to force the animations to repeat after 30 seconds. Or maybe I choose "Specify" to force the duration. You can play around and see if this gives you what you need. So my render time here is about 10 minutes. This suggests your render time should be about 20 minutes?

So maybe give these settings a try (if you are not already using them) and see if your render times improve. I hope that help.

Kimberly