DVD Rendering - There's gotta be a better way

[tonyperry]

Has anyone figured out a more direct way of getting video files from the recorded format to final DVD without the agonizing hours long rendering? I shoot in AVCHD - copy files to PC - bring up in Vegas - Edit - then render to mpg2 DVD architect format. A one hour pieces takes three hours - with no effects. THEN - I gotta render the audio to AC3. THEN - DVD Architect has to "combine" those files into a DVD format. You already know the process. Surely in this day and age - there has to be a quicker way to get video files processed to video files for viewing. I know - I know you can burn Blu-Ray from the time line - but Im doing standard DVD. Shouldn't they program Vegas to be able to render direcly to DVD format from the timeline? Or maybe there is a way. If anyone has a quicker solution I would greatly appreiate. I am getting gray from waiting on rendering.

[CycleWriter]

Shouldn't they program Vegas to be able to render direcly to DVD format from the timeline?

It can. You can render directly to DVD from within Vegas if you have no need for any menus.

[oddmanil]

Has anyone figured out a more direct way of getting video files from the recorded format to final DVD without the agonizing hours long rendering? I shoot in AVCHD - copy files to PC - bring up in Vegas - Edit - then render to mpg2 DVD architect format. A one hour pieces takes three hours - with no effects. THEN - I gotta render the audio to AC3. THEN - DVD Architect has to "combine" those files into a DVD format. You already know the process. Surely in this day and age - there has to be a quicker way to get video files processed to video files for viewing. I know - I know you can burn Blu-Ray from the time line - but Im doing standard DVD. Shouldn't they program Vegas to be able to render direcly to DVD format from the timeline? Or maybe there is a way. If anyone has a quicker solution I would greatly appreiate. I am getting gray from waiting on rendering.

You can set project property to "8-bits".
You can use 7.2 Mbps or higher 1-pass rendering.

[LOGOS PATHOS ETHOS]

I play nintendo or read books while it renders lol

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

>There's gotta be a better way

Not really. Encoding from/to HD does take that long.

[LOGOS PATHOS ETHOS]

people ALWAYS complained ab rendering, even back then when I was working with vhs and had to digitalize all that

people wanna have their cake and eat it too... working on hi-def is tough but totally worth the pain for the images that come out of our little gizmos :-)

[yabyum]

Get a quad core processor. Rendering utilizes all 4 cores, and it's significantly faster. The best (that isn't ridiculously expensive) is the i7 920 intel chip.

[tonyperry]

It can. You can render directly to DVD from within Vegas if you have no need for any menus.

Cyclewriter - I know you're gonna tell me Im in the wrong forum, too dumb to know what im doin, aint got my hat on straight or something like that - but you have really peaked my curiosity. You say you can render directly to DVD from the timeline in Vegas if no menus are needed. I've done a pretty good search on here and simply cannot find a discussion on that. Please tell me how to do that or point me to the topic. I never need menus for my DVD's - I usually just need a direct transfer from the camera file - to a DVD (deposititions - public meetings etc)
If there is a way to render directly to a standard DVD that would save me a ton of time. Thank you inadvance - you may have just saved me thousands of hours in the future.

[CycleWriter]

Tony, I would never insult a member that way.:hv20-smilie68:

This is the method to burn HD to either Blu-Ray or standard DVD (approximately 20 minutes max) straight from the timeline in Vegas Pro. You do need a Blu-Ray player to play these discs, though.

From the Tools menu, choose Burn Disc and choose Blu-ray Disc from the submenu to render your project and burn it to a Blu-ray Disc. The rendered project can be played in a Blu-ray player or on any computer with a Blu-ray drive.

Vegas Pro 8.0 burns Blu-ray BDMV format to BD-R, BD-RE, and DVD recordable media.

Not all Blu-ray players can read DVD media. The PlayStation® 3 treats DVD media with Blu-ray content as a data disc. In order to play your media, you'll need to navigate to the BDMV folder on the disc and select the stream you want to play.

Tips:

A 25 GB single-layer BD recordable disc can store approximately 3 hours, 42 minutes of AVC video (15 Mbps) or 2 hours, 15 minutes of MPEG-2 video (25 Mbps).

A 50 GB dual-layer BD recordable disc can store approximately 7 hours, 25 minutes of AVC video (15 Mbps) or 4 hours, 31 minutes of MPEG-2 video (25 Mbps).

A 4.7 GB single-layer DVD recordable disc can store approximately 1 hour, 17 minutes of AVC or MPEG-2 video (8 Mbps).

An 8.5 GB dual-layer DVD recordable disc can store approximately 2 hours, 20 minutes of AVC or MPEG-2 video (8 Mbps).

You can store large amounts of standard-definition MPEG-2 video on a BD disc.

You can create your own rendering templates if you need to adjust the bit rates.


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From the Tools menu, choose Burn Disc and choose Blu-ray Disc from the submenu. The Burn Blu-ray Disc dialog is displayed.

Select a radio button to choose what you want to do:

Render image and burn: renders your current project as a Blu-ray compliant file and burns it to disc.

Render image only: renders your current project as a Blu-ray compliant file that you can burn at a later time.

Burn existing image file: burns an already-rendered file to Blu-ray Disc.

If you selected the Render image and burn or Render image only radio button, choose your rendering settings:

a. Choose a setting from the Video format drop-down list to indicate whether you want to burn AVC or MPEG-2 video.

b. Choose a setting from the Video template drop-down list to specify the parameters that should be used for rendering your video stream.

Video for Blu-ray Discs can use MPEG-2 or AVC encoding:

The Vegas Blu-ray MPEG-2 video templates have an average bit rate of 25 Mbps.

The Vegas Blu-ray AVC video templates have an average bit rate of 15 Mbps.

If you're burning to DVD media, Vegas provides 8 Mbps AVC and MPEG-2 video templates.

c. Choose a setting from the Audio format drop-down list to indicate whether you want to burn AC-3 or Wave64 (PCM) audio.

d. Choose a setting from the Audio template drop-down list to specify the parameters that should be used for rendering your audio stream.

AC-3 audio for Blu-ray Discs uses Dolby Digital 2.0- or 5.1-channel encoding at 192 Kbps or 448 Kbps respectively.

Wave64 (PCM) audio for Blu-ray Discs can use any of the following formats:

48 kHz, 16 or 24-bit, stereo or 5.1 surround (available only for 5.1 surround projects)

96 kHz, 16 or 24-bit, stereo or 5.1 surround (available only for 5.1 surround projects)

When burning a surround project to DVD with PCM audio, use 48 kHz, 16- or 24-bit audio only.

e. Select the Render loop region only check box if you want to use only a portion of your project. If the check box is cleared, the entire project will be rendered and saved to the disc.

f. Select the Use project output rotation setting check box if you're rendering a rotated project and want to use the Output rotation setting from the Project Properties dialog for your rendered file.

When the check box is cleared, the media is rotated according to its Media Properties setting, but the project itself is unrotated—you can use this setting to proof your project on an unrotated display.

g. Select the Insert chapter points at markers check box if you want to use markers from the timeline as chapter points in your rendered file.

h. Select the Stretch video to fill output frame check box if you want to reformat your video so it fills the output frame size listed in the Description box. When the check box is cleared, the current aspect ratio is maintained, and black borders are added to fill the extra frame area (letterbox). This option is useful when the desired output format does not match the frame aspect ratio of your project.

If you selected the Render image and burn or Render image only radio button, the File path box displays the folder and file that will be used to render your project.

If you selected the Burn existing image file radio button, type the path to the file you want to burn in the File path box (or click the Browse button to locate the file).

Select recording options for your Blu-ray drive:

a. Choose a drive from the Burn drive drop-down list to specify the drive you want to use.

b. From the Burn speed drop-down list, choose the speed at which you want to record. Max will record using the fastest speed possible with your drive; decrease the speed if you have difficulty recording.

c. Select the Eject when done check box if you want to eject the disc automatically when burning has completed.

Click OK to start rendering your image file and burning your disc.

[nickelocene]

Get a quad core processor. Rendering utilizes all 4 cores, and it's significantly faster. The best (that isn't ridiculously expensive) is the i7 920 intel chip.

I agree. The rendering time reduced to 1 hour 10 minutes with I7-920, compared with 5+ hours with AMD 3800+, for a 60 minutes long project, with effects and transitions.
For the DA, if you don't need menu, the rendering time is only 10 minutes including convert mp3 to ac3.
Of course, editing the footage require extra time. But if you just need to convert AVCHD into DVD without any effect, transition, then just drop all the pieces to timeline, that shouldn't take long.

If you need transitions between clips, try use ULead VideoStudio, it can auto add transitions between clips.

[2Bdecided]

Plug the camera into a DVD recorder - real time! ;)

(You can DV out from most NLEs > DV in on many DVD recorders - that's real time too, though you might have to "render" to DV first in the NLE, which kills any advantage!)

Cheers,
David.

[ejolson]

Plug the camera into a DVD recorder - real time! ;)

(You can DV out from most NLEs > DV in on many DVD recorders - that's real time too, though you might have to "render" to DV first in the NLE, which kills any advantage!)


Rather than transcoding AVCHD to DV from the NLE, you could also obtain a DV version of the AVCHD source by using the video passthrough feature of a miniDV camcorder. There will be some loss of quality, but not as much as editing the mpeg2 video ripped from a DVD produced by a DVD recorder.

For quick and high quality conversion to p30 DV, a recent version of ffmpeg and the command

ffmpeg -i source.m2ts -r 30000/1001 -acodec pcm_s16le -vcodec dvvideo -deinterlace -s 720x480 -pix_fmt yuv411p -f dv -y source-p30.dv

converts AVCHD to DV in faster than real time on an Athlon X2 5400.

However, you obtain DV versions of the AVCHD files, editing DV and rendering to DVD will be much faster than editing AVCHD and rendering to DVD.