[Bob Ridge]

Somehow I didn’t realize until just now that by owning V8 Pro, I got 60 days of phone tech support! How awesome is that??? And I got my answer, too. Whatever the estimated size of the rendered file will be, the temporary folder needs to have 4-5 times as much space as that. It’s a bug that they’re fixing. I had been trying to render a 17GB file to a drive with 45GBs of space – not enough. I went into Preferences and switched the temp folder from the default to a drive with over 100GBs of space. Presto!

[Bob Ridge]

OK, this time, instead of burning a BluRay disc of an entire project from the timeline, I tried burning one from a single WMV-HD file of that same project – render only, MPG, 1440×1080 60i, 25mbps, AAC, keep chapter markers. A 4-min. highlight video from a WMV-HD file worked yesterday, so I tried the full 80-min. video today. It rendered in about 3 hours, then went through the “preparing compilation” step in about one hour, then returned to 0% on the “preparing compilation” progress bar, and now (just like last night’s project) it’s been stuck there for the last two hours. For good measure, I tried the same with a 1-min WMVHD clip with the exact same settings and a few chapter markers, and I watched as it prepared the .iso file perfectly to completion. So the only difference between these two tests is the length of the clip. Can anyone speak to this?

[Bob Ridge]

The reason it’s not as easy as just “trying it” is that I only have Windows Media Player, which I don’t completely trust to preview these clips. Depending on the file format, I might get a stuttering effect or jaggies that I later find out aren’t really there. So I was hoping there was already a “been there done that” perspective out there. Nonetheless I’ll give it a shot.

Interesting point about the VC-1. Now I’m wondering if I can just burn the WMV files straight to Blu-Ray discs without the BluPrint render. The DVDit Pro HD software (which I haven’t bought yet) appears to “support” WMV along with a few other formats, but I don’t what that means exactly. I’m hoping it means that the existing WMV-HD file can just “sit” on a Blu-Ray disc as opposed to going through another conversion.

[Bob Ridge]

Thanks for your reply. I do have Cineform’s HDLink (latest build) as part of the NEO-HDV package. As mentioned before, when I use it to convert my .m2t’s, most of the the conversions won’t complete, and I’m working on that with Cineform tech support. Furthermore, for the few that DO complete, the Cineform AVI files don’t “pop up” in my old projects exactly where they used to. So the in/out points of the entire project would have to be realigned.

If I can make do with converting these several completed projects’ worth of WMV-HD files, I would prefer that route for now.

[Bob Ridge]

I’ve heard a lot of good things about Connect HD. However, I’ve already sprung for a new PC with Core 2 Duo and Vegas 7.0, which so far seems to move through m2t files on the timeline as smoothly as AVI files. So shouldn’t I already be able to render out decent-looking standard DVD video? I mean, surely, Connect HD users can’t be the ONLY ones getting good quality, right?

Here’s a little more detail about what I’ve tried. I put 10 seconds of an exterior building shot in m2t format on the timeline. (It has lots of bold, straight edges, and I tilt up and down several times to get the right movement.) I have Project Properties set to HDV 1080-60i. Then I click Render As, choose the MPEG2 DVD Arch NTSC Wide format, even going into Custom to select Best quality. Am I missing anything so far?

Then I open DVD Arch, start a New project, choose Single Video, keep the NTSC DVD default (also tried NTSC DVD Wide – same result), load the MPEG file and Make DVD. The resulting DVD shows very jagged lines throughout the movements, far worse than anything shot in DV. Going back to Vegas, I’ve reduced interlace flicker, changed field orders, rendered to WMV instead of MPEG, rendered in Good quality, done just about everything. Interestingly, only when I reduce flicker, or render to WMV, do those files play perfectly in Windows Media Player and preview just as well in DVD Arch. But once they’re burned to DVD, they’re just as jagged as the other variations.

I’ll give Connect HD a try since it’s a free trial anyway. But I’m hard pressed to believe that a nice video can’t be had without it. (I mean, this is Sony freaking Vegas!) Plus, isn’t the m2t file encoded in a Cineform codec anyway? Has no one here ever produced a smooth SD-DVD without Connect HD??? I just want to make sure I’m not screwing up a simple step above, at the very least. Thanks in advance for your thoughts while I try Connect HD…

PS – Really not liking Vista so far. But I had all the same results above with or without it.

[Bob Ridge]

Well, just for kicks, I’ve tried that since my original post. In fact, I tried a simple five-second .m2t clip, rendered it just about every way possible, using every tip I could find online. It would take forever to summarize all the things I tried, but the result was always the same, very blocky artifacts in the final DVD burn, especially noticeable on straight edges. Far worse than all the DV projects I’ve ever done.

I’m about to migrate everything to a new PC and start using Vegas 7.0, so I’ll wait until I give it a try there before I start wasting all of your time trying to help me troubleshoot. But in the mean time, could anyone recommend a definitive, step-by-step guide in these boards or elsewhere to getting an HDV project onto standard DVD in the best quality possible using Vegas 7.0 and Architect 4.0? Especially any custom settings required in the Render As step, but also in the timeline, Project Properties, Architect, and anywhere else it could be tweaked. I’ve searched to the point of going cross-eyed and found nothing definitive, just tidbits here and there that haven’t worked. Thanks in advance!