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Vegas Movie Studio – Rendering for DVD
Hi,
I’ve recently finished an edit for a school musical and the entire play is 1 hour 51 minutes long. When I go to render it in Main Concept 2 (.mpg), it tells me that the estimated file size will be 4.86Gb which is a small bit too big for the standard DVD (and that doesn’t include rendering the audio separately before I bring them both into DVD Architect). I’m guessing that I can tweek the bit rate settings to bring them down a notch so both the video file and audio file are both the right size to fit on the standard DVD. The MainConcept 2 for DVD PAL Widescreen has the max as 9.5Mbps, an average as 6Mbps and a minimum of 192,000bps. If it’s possible to lower these values, are there any suggestions as to what bitrates I could lower these down too. I don’t want to use MainConcept1 DVD template because the picture quality there is just too poor.
Thanks,
Pat -
8 Replies
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You don’t want to try and lower the bit rate to get almost 2 hours onto a DVD. It will loose too much quality. I mean, you can try it. Google for “bitrate calculator” there are lots of them on the web and see what the bit rate needs to be but it will be very low (around 4,500,000 average). I would buy a double layer DVD media and burn your movie to that. 99% of all Hollywood DVD’s are dual layer. You really can’t get 2 hours on a single layer DVD with good quality (80 minutes is the max at 6Mbps).
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I’m no expert, but personally, I’d burn it to Blu Ray. You can set the bit rate higher and produce a much better quality. BD players are cheap now and so are they burners.
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Thanks for the reply John. I understand what you mean. The problem is that this job has already been quoted and paid for, and the DVD duplication company only quoted me for duplication of the single layer DVDs (4.7Gb) with a large quantity. I can go with the dual layer option but it’ll mean me having to go back to the customer explaining the scenario to them and telling them that it is gonna cost them more (which I don’t think they’ll like). I think I’ll have to bite the bullet and try dropping the bitrate down. At least I’ll know for the next time that it’s 80 minutes max for a single layer DVD.
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Patrick, I’ve shot school musicals as long as 2.5 hr., burned them to a single layer DVD and found the quality acceptable.
To my benefit, I was shooting with a good 3 chip camera and the stage was well lit.
Starting with good quality footage definitely makes my job much easier 🙂I ran your time through the bitrate calculator I use and here are the numbers I got.
Max: 8,688,000
Avg: 4,960,000
Min: 2,976,000This assumes an AC-3 rate of 192.
Render in BEST mode and do it as 2-pass render for maximum quality.I make a few changes to the default settings for that bitrate calculator and they are as follows.
Click the Settings button (lower left corner), set 1 kilobit=1000 bits, set Audio encoding type and Bitrate to 192 Kb/s – Dolby 1.0 (the AC-3 default in Vegas) and the Safety Margin to 5% (default is 1% and I like to have more margin than that).
Good luck!! -
Thanks for the reply Mike.
I spoke to the DVD duplication company and they suggested if the musical has an intermission they would do a two-disc deal for me (ie. double disc DVD with case). So seeing as the musical has an intermission, I ran with that idea and I’ve already confirmed the order with them.
However, I really do appreciate your feedback. If I wasn’t in such a rush to get these done, I would’ve went with your suggestion. Unfortuantely the school I did it for are finishing for the Easter holidays next week so I want to get the order to them before then.
Thanks again for your help,
Pat -
Pat, that’s great news. The duplication company is definitely a keeper!!
I understand about rush jobs. You’re going to meet your deadline and that’s all that matters. -
That is great customer service by the duplication company!
If you ended up not getting the great offer by them, I was going to suggest not dropping the quality and just eating the loss for double-layer DVDs and chalk it up to a learning experience. It wouldn’t be wise to lower the quality and have the customers not happy with the product, because you probably wouldn’t be invited back to record another project for them.
In the business world sometimes you have to throw away profit, or even lose money, to learn from mistakes. As long as clients are happy you’ll have their repeat business.
Dave
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[Dave Osbun] “In the business world sometimes you have to throw away profit, or even lose money, to learn from mistakes. As long as clients are happy you’ll have their repeat business.”
I agree. Nothing should take away from the quality of your work because that’s how others will judge you. You never know what jobs may come from the people who buy a copy of your DVD. Good to see the duplicator is helping you out.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
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