Do In/Out points in DVDA not really limit amount of rendered video?

[Jeff Edwards]

I should have added the full blurb from the documentation: “Setting in and out points. You can set in and out points if you don’t want to burn the entire video file to DVD. When preparing your DVD, the software will trim the video to include only the portion between these points.”

This clearly suggests that the in and out points control how much video is rendered, and not that the entire video file is rendered with the in/out points being navigation marks only.

[Mike Kujbida]

If I understand your question correctly, you’re asking DVD Architect Studio to use only a portion of what you brought into it.
Just like with DVD Architect Pro, it will do that but, since the entire file is in the project, it still has to make room for it.

You don’t say if you’re using Vegas Pro or Vegas Movie Studio.
There’s a render option in Vegas Pro that says “Render loop region only”.
If you have it, make sure it’s selected and you’ll get that section only when you render.
Bring this (smaller) rendered portion into DVD Architect Studio and it should behave like you want.

[Jeff Edwards]

Thanks. Sounds like the DVD Architect documentation is wrong then. The in and out points on the DVDA timeline do not, in fact, effect how much of the source video file that is burned.

[Mike Kujbida]

The documentation is somewhat correct.
In/Out points are used to control what’s displayed which, in a lot of peoples’ minds, is what gets burned and that’s not always the case.
For example, if you rendered a hockey game you had shot and wanted to give the viewer the option to see individual periods, using in/out points would give you this flexibility.
If you wanted to see the 2nd period only, you’d be better off rendering only that section from Vegas.
Otherwise, the entire game would be on the DVD, whether you used all of it or not.
I hope this makes sense.

[Jeff Edwards]

Ugh, thanks. To me, “burned” unambiguously means rendered, meaning only that portion goes onto the DVD. As you note, that’s what Vegas does with the equivalent of in/out points (the loop region), if you select that option in the render dialog box. What the documentation should have said is that the entire source file gets burned, and that the in/out points only affect navigation through that source file in the final DVD.

Guess I’ve lost a days work and will have to start from scratch. That is, unless there’s some workaround to take the new, shorter video file I re-render from the source file in Vegas (using the same in/out points as in DVDA), import it into my existing DVDA project, and en masse (keeping their relative positions) move or copy the chapter markers associated with the larger source file to the re-rendered clip.

[David Shirey]

The quote from the help file seemed pretty unambiguous and I’m surprised it doesn’t do what it claims, but I’ve never tested it as my workflow is exactly what Mike was describing. Are there very many chapter stops? If you render out a new file and replace it on the dvd layout, would it be much trouble to just drag the chapter markers over to their new positions to preserve the menu, or would it be less effort to add the new chapter markers in vegas then redo the menu in dvd architect.

I always try to do as much work as possible in Vegas since everything transfers into dvda so easily, whereas doing things in dvda can sometimes be a hassle.

[Jeff Edwards]

There are a ton of markers, and walking through the 6-hour MPEG file to place them took forever. Guess I’ll have to re-render in Vegas, although if DVDA had worked like the documentation said, it would have been better for me. I’d much rather have a single MPEG file that I can incorporate different parts of into different DVDs using in/out points and chapter markers — just like Vegas lets you make a bunch of projects using the same video source file. Making custom renders to provide different source files for each DVD quickly eats up disk space.