[Pikea Manley]

The guys at Sony need to eat as well. Try not using a bootleg or demo copy.

[Pikea Manley]

I tried it quickly, but didn’t take the time to truly check the settings. I will try again tonight and then, sadly, import via Sony’s crappy consumer program (PMB, I think) until I can upgrade to V10.

[Pikea Manley]

Okay…back on the project now. I just tried to duplicate Mike K’s numbers on the bitcalc and here is what I came up with:

m: 2976
Av: 4960
M: (never exceed 8M–their’s were more)

I bumped to a two hour per Mike’s suggestions. I tried using the original suggestions last night to finish this (endless….CEASELESS…God Help Me…) project and clocked in at 4.8G 🙁

I know I’m doing something wrong here, but I just can’t figure out what. I’m figuring 8 FIXED menus for the scene selection, 4 minutes for the credit and menu music, VBR, etc. I have no idea what VTS or DVD-Rom Data fields are for. I’m gonna give ‘er a whirl with Mike’s numbers.

[Pikea Manley]

Yikes. 4.6 gigs. I’ve been trying to duplicate your calcs with the calculator and I guess I’m missing something here. Can you perhaps through me an assist and help me get it down to about 4.4 so I can get the theme song in there? Thanks guys!

[Pikea Manley]

Thanks, guys. This whole digital media thing is killing me. I got totally different responses with my attempts at the calculator and just don’t understand the process. I’m reading through the documentation on the calc and trying to figure out what it all means, but using Mike’s calcs for a new rendering and just sort of hoping it works out.

Thanks for taking the time to help the newb. This is my third martial arts instructional project and my longest by 40%.

[Pikea Manley]

FINALLY got it figured out today. It’s one of those ‘how dumb iz ya?’ type of things.

Now I know that I read how to do this somewhere, I just can’t find where I did such.

Here’s how to set a thumbnail for the scene selection menu in a ‘quick n easy’ fashion: In the timeline, go to the chapter you are working on. Play the scene until you get to a frame you are happy with. Right click that chapter’s name in the project window and click “set thumbnail from view”. Instant gratification.

Thanks for all you do for us Vegas users, Mike!

[Pikea Manley]

Mike, I’m actually going to give you a screen credit on this one ’cause I forgot to on the first one. Unfortunately, your solution isn’t the answer in this case, though all of your other help has been so damn useful.

But for this one there is a way to actually screen-capture the image from the workspace or timeline and then paste it in to the Scene Selection Menu. I read the tip in one of the manuals and for the life of me I can’t %&#*-ing find it now.

[Pikea Manley]

I tried an MPEG-2 render without the tweeks you gave and the problem persisted. In DVD I was previewing off of the Good setting, however when I switched to Best several minutes back the artifacts and scan lines were there. I’m rending out of Vegas now with your numbers and will see how it works. Any settings in DVD Pro I should be aware of? As previously stated, the problem is tracers, artifacts, and major scan lines on the finished project. It’s driving me nuts.

Thanks for your help on this. My sensei pulled me aside after class tonight and asked how the project was coming.

[Pikea Manley]

Excellent reply. Thanks for the help. The video is only about fifty minutes. It is a training video (martial arts). I’m linking narratives underneath the individual chapters in the Scene Selection menu. The narratives are verbal instructions that we make students ‘sound off’ when they are learning new techniques “left leg steps in, left inward-block…”, etc. I’m getting a funky error message in the Burn Preperation dialogue box saying that n-chapters are too close together and need to be at least one second apart (they are in the scene selection menu).

Please do give me the settings. I very much appreciate it.