Workflow

[Joseph Tessier]

[John Rofrano] “What you want to do to avoid multiple renders is to drop all of your projects into a master project as “nested” projects. You can then extract the chapter markers into your main project and render the whole thing as if it were one big file and each project will only be rendered once.”

OK, I’ll give it a go and report back here my results.

Thanks for your support!

J. Paul

System Specs: I7 3.4 Ghz Quad Core 16GB Ram Win 7 Home Prem x64 VP 10/11 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550

[Joseph Tessier]

Success!

My new blu-ray has 13 chapters, 61 minutes of content that fills up only 30% of the disk.

I used my nested projects and rendered out to Sony AVC=Blu-ray 1920×1080-60i, 16 Mbps video stream (*.avc). It took about 3 hours!
The audio was rendered out using Dolby Digital AC-3 (stereo).

Imported both files into DVDA, created a menu, and rendered out using correct project specs to *.iso – only took 3 minutes!

Burned the re-writeable disk in 28 minutes and it looks, sounds, plays flawlessly.

The only thing I wish I could speed up is the 3-hour render, but on the other hand I didn’t sit there and watch it! 🙂

Thanks for helping me learn this process, John!

J. Paul

System Specs: I7 3.4 Ghz Quad Core 16GB Ram Win 7 Home Prem x64 VP 10/11 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550

[John Rofrano]

You’re welcome Joseph. I’m glad you got it all working the way you wanted. 🙂

~jr

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

[Bob Linsdell]

“The only thing I wish I could do is speed up the 3-hour render, but on the other hand I didn’t sit there and watch it! :)”

With DVDA Pro it is possible to have multiple AVC files work as one big file, and allow navigation between (next and previous) the files as if they were one. I do all my Blu-ray discs this way. Doing it this way allows me to make minor edits to one clip and create a new disc without rendering a massive file, moving subtitles or selecting new frames for numerous chapter buttons because an earlier clip has changed in duration. Also, I can have a menu button to just play one of the AVC files and have it return to the menu when finished, or a button to view a subset of the full movie with the AVC files in any order I choose when building the project.

It’s a little more complex to setup, but I feel it’s worth the effort. If you’re interested in how this is done, see my post in the thread “Small Clips – One Big Movie” and the below image.

However, there is a limit to how many files I can have in the root folder of the DVDA project. See post “Sony DVD Architect Pro 5.2 Crash – too many media files?”

[Bob Linsdell]

Additional notes on using playlists as suggested in my earlier post:

• The first chapter button for an AVC file has to link to the AVC’s name in the Playlist.
• All other chapter buttons link directly to the chapters/markers of the AVC file.
• The ‘End Action’ of the AVC files have to link to the next AVC’s name in the Playlist, except for the last AVC file where it is left at the default value of ‘Most recent menu’.

[Bob Linsdell]

I’ve just realized that if when playing the disc, the user starts off playing at a chapter mid way through one of the AVC files, then the ‘Previous’ button will not take them back to an earlier AVC file. But, once the user hits a button that gets them into the Playlist, i.e. the first chpter of an AVC file (or one AVC plays to the end and another one starts), then everything works fine.

[Joseph Tessier]

Robert,

This is fascinating stuff! I will look into your other post and study your process.

I’m probably going to limit my BD to about 2 hours or so even though it appears that I could get 3 hours comfortably on one disk. Still, the way I’m currently set up to do it my render might take 6 hours and if I needed to change something… ouch! Your process seems to allow me do essentially do what I do in Vegas – work in smaller chunks so that if there is a need to refine, it only involves that chunk.

I would like to see either a revision of DVDA or 3rd party software that would allow a simple solution for “stitching” those avc files to play as one movie.

Thanks for your tips!

J. Paul

System Specs: I7 3.4 Ghz Quad Core 16GB Ram Win 7 Home Prem x64 VP 10/11 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550

[John Rofrano]

[Robert Lin] “I’ve just realized that if when playing the disc, the user starts off playing at a chapter mid way through one of the AVC files, then the ‘Previous’ button will not take them back to an earlier AVC file. “

This is a problem in general with linking files on a DVD. You can’t navigate backward over file boundaries (only forward).

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

[Joseph Tessier] “3rd party software that would allow a simple solution for “stitching” those avc files to play as one movie.”

There is. It’s call SmartLabs tsMuxeR and it’s free. tsMuxeR allows you to join multiple AVC files together without re-rendering. Just load your files with the Join button and it will make them into one file.

~jr

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

[Joseph Tessier]

[John Rofrano] “There is. It’s call SmartLabs tsMuxeR and it’s free. tsMuxeR allows you to join multiple AVC files together without re-rendering. Just load your files with the Join button and it will make them into one file.”

Yes! I played with some small avc segments and got them to work as a unit. Thanks AGAIN!

J. Paul

System Specs: I7 3.4 Ghz Quad Core 16GB Ram Win 7 Home Prem x64 VP 10/11 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550