Need Assistance With Sony Vegas 5 Rendering Options

[Mike Kujbida]

Scott, welcome to the forum and Vegas.

The first thing you need to know is that DVD Architect is notorious for reporting incorrect file sizes so, as long as you know that the combined size of the video and audio files are under the 4.3 GB. limit, ignore the warning.

Start off by choosing the right Template and that is DVD Architect NTSC Video Stream.
This will create a video stream for you.

According to the bitrate calculator I use, I get the following (rounded down by me) numbers:
7,800,000 / 6,200,000 / 3,700,000
Due to the length of your video, do this as a 2-pass render.
You can save this setting for future use by giving it a name in the Template box at the top of this tab and clicking the Save icon.

For audio, use the default Dolby Digital AC-3 template. As I recall, Vegas 5 didn’t have 2 options for this one so this is OK. BTW, it defaults to 192 Kbps.
224 should be an option if you want it.

Make sure you give both files the same name and render them to the same folder. That way, when you load the video file into DVD Architect, the audio will automatically follow.

Don’t change any other settings on any tabs and you should be OK.
Good luck and please feel free to ask any questions you might have.
You’ll find that we’re a very friendly group here 🙂

[Scott Hicks]

Mike, thank you for your response.

Here’s where I’m at now:

OK, so I’m going to have to re-render the file from Vegas as it’s just slightly over 4.3GB (4.319). How do I know what settings inside Vegas to use to get the file under the 4.3 limit. There’s no indicator in Vegas that I can find that gives me any reference on how big the final rendered file will be.

[Scott Hicks]

Never mind Mike, I understand what you meant. I’m re-rendering the file now and hopefully it will work now.
Thanks,
Scott

[John Rofrano]

[Scott Hicks] “How do I know what settings inside Vegas to use to get the file under the 4.3 limit. There’s no indicator in Vegas that I can find that gives me any reference on how big the final rendered file will be.”

You need to use a BitRate Calculator. Google for one, there are plenty on the web.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Scott Hicks]

OK, I’m still having trouble with this, obviously it’s because I do not know what I’m doing. Can you please take a look at these images and tell me what I’m doing wrong?

I did the rendering like you suggested and I’m still getting too high of a rendering and now it’s even higher. I started with a 20,829 MB AVI file and I’m ending up with a 4,436 MB MPG file. Before, it was 4,318 MB MPG file.

OK, so here is the Bitrate Calculator numbers I get.

OK, now on here I selected “Best”, or should I have selected “Good”?

Here I entered your rounded down numbers for the VBR and set the rendering to “Two-Pass” but didn’t touch anything else.

I didn’t mess with anything here.

I forgot to set the 128 for the audio but it didn’t look like it made much difference in size according to the calculator. Would 44.1 for the sample rate make any difference?

I didn’t change anything here.

[Mike Kujbida]

Scott, I’ll try to address your questions as best as I can.

OK, now on here I selected “Best”, or should I have selected “Good”?

Unless you have a lot of stills on your timeline, Good is OK.

I forgot to set the 128 for the audio but it didn’t look like it made much difference in size according to the calculator. Would 44.1 for the sample rate make any difference?

You’re not using the “DVD Architect NTSC Video Stream” template for your video and the “Dolby Digital AC-3 Pro” stream for your audio.
As I said before, I don’t think Vegas 5 calls the AC-3 template Pro but that’s the one to look for.
A DVD requires audio at 48 K and that’s why the AC-3 template is highly recommended.

What I do as the final step is “Prepare” the disc in DVD Architect and then use another app to do the actual burning of the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders.
I like IMGBurn but John Rofrano recommends BurnAware (both are free).
https://www.imgburn.com/
https://www.burnaware.com/
It may not be right but I’ve always ignored the 4.3 GB. limit (I go with the 4.7 GB. limit myself) as I consider this to be a data DVD burn as opposed to a movie burn.
I’ve done in excess of 1,000 DVDs this way and haven’t had any fail on me yet.

[Mike Kujbida]

I forgot to mention a great PDF tutorial courtesy of Edward Troxel that goes into more detail than this.
The link for it is at https://www.jetdv.com/vegas/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15

[Scott Hicks]

I did use the “DVD Architect NTSC Video Stream” selection but I just edited it to have my name on the end for convenience.

I do not have the “Dolby Digital AC-3 Pro” as an option so I’m guessing that this is a plug-in that I need, correct?

My other question was the check box for “2 Pass”. You don’t have it checked but you had said I needed to do that. However, when I checked that box it took 9 hours to render instead of 4 1/2 so I’m wondering if that was a problem too.

[Mike Kujbida]

[Scott Hicks] “I did use the “DVD Architect NTSC Video Stream” selection but I just edited it to have my name on the end for convenience.”

OK. Just making sure you used the right one.

[Scott Hicks] “I do not have the “Dolby Digital AC-3 Pro” as an option so I’m guessing that this is a plug-in that I need, correct?”

Because you’re using Vegas 5, I didn’t think you would but there should be something similar.
Look for AC-3 in the audio file format options.

[Scott Hicks] “My other question was the check box for “2 Pass”. You don’t have it checked but you had said I needed to do that. However, when I checked that box it took 9 hours to render instead of 4 1/2 so I’m wondering if that was a problem too.”

That’s normal. Here’s a great explanation that John Rofrano gave for it.

2-Pass is an option for VBR where the first pass collects information on how much detail each frame needs and then the second pass allocates the bits based on the information collected in the first pass. This solves the problem of not knowing what’s coming next because you now know what’s coming next and how many bits you will need to represent future frames and still not exceed the average bit-rate. 2-Pass takes twice as long to encoder because it processes the video twice but it squeezes every last drop of quality for a given average bit-rate.

[Scott Hicks]

OK, everything is working fine now and I’m able to make a completed DVD from DVD Architect but there’s one problem. It’s not preparing the Audio files. It creates a folder called “Audio_TS” but it doesn’t put anything in there. When I burn a DVD from the prepared folders it works fine in my DVD player but obviously no Audio. There is audio in the MPG file that I’m rendering the MPG file from Vegas and I can hear it fine and I can hear it when I play it in Windows Media Player. Also, it shows the audio track in DVD Architect.

My question is:

When I render from Vegas, am I supposed to be rendering to two different files, audio & video separately and then bring them into DVD Architect or should it work with one complete MPG file?

Note: This may be a dead question anyhow. I decided to purchase Vegas 10 Professional and should have it in a few days. I may just be wasting my time with such an old program. Thoughts?