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Hi Michael,
As Martin said, in order for your DVD's to play on all set top DVD players you will have to "author" the disc using a program that will make it readable. the most basic disc will just play when put into the player. Discs with menus subtitles, etc. can also be created using the authoring software. The files on the disc will have an extension of .vob, .ifo, or .bup. They will be in a directory named VIDEO_TS. There may also be a directory named AUDIO_TS with nothing in it. These are the standards for DVD's.
The video encoding itself will be MPEG2 but will have some specific parameters required to ensure that they will play on DVD's. If your authoring software can take correctly encoded MPEG2 files and just make the vob's without rerendering then you can have your editing software render to dvd compliant MPEG2 files. If your authoring software will rerender no matter what I would render to an AVI. If you have it render to an MPEG2 then on top of that your authoring software rerenders it, you will loose a lot of quality.
The best way to make multiple copies is to create an image of the finalized disc, then burn the image to the each blank DVD. ImageBurn is a free program that is excellent for this. I shoot and produce local plays, dance recitals, festivals, and sell the DVD's. I average about 50 copies per event so it is not enough to make outsourcing of the DVD duplication practical so I have to do it all in house.
I have found fewer compatibility issues using DVD+R discs but that does also depend on the maker of the burner you use. I also use DVD+R DL discs for longer DVD's. This is where it is important to use an image to burn the discs so your sure the break point is consistent and occurs where you don't notice it. All my discs I sell are inkjet printed so for the DL discs that leaves only two options and I've found that only Verbatim discs give acceptable results. For the DVD+R's I use Memorex and Verbatim discs (again all inkjet printable).
I don't use Sony Movie Studio but from what you said it sounds like it passes the rendered file off to DVDA which prepares the DVD. I use Sony Vegas and DVDA (separate program) so maybe Movie Studio just bundles the two functions. From what you wrote it sounds like it should work. If you choose the "DVD Architect NTSC DVD Video Stream" options it probably won't have sound so you'll have to render that separately and pass it onto the authoring software. This is a good idea anyway. I usually render the Video stream to a DVD compliant MPEG2 file and then render the sound as an AC3 fiile. This saves a lot of space and allows me to have a higher bitrate fo the video.
Good luck,
Garrett
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