Why is the AVI so LARGE?
 

I am working on a documentary in Vegas 7.0; when I render the finished project to an uncompressed NTSC .AVI it comes out to be 8.43GB. That seems really big to me being that the video is only 40mins in length. I then take it to DVD Architect which probably compresses the hell out of it.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks.

First of all, you did NOT render to "uncompressed" as it would have been MUCH larger. Instead you rendered to DV - the standard of MiniDV cameras. DV-AVI runs just over 12 Gig / hour so 8.4 Gig for 40 minutes sounds about right.

Do you think it would be better to render as "Default Template (uncompressed)"?

Would that make it look better when I make a DVD with DVD Architect? I am trying to find the best possible way to render and burn a DVD for festival submissions.

I usually render as an .AVI / NTSC DV and make the menu and burn the DVD in DVD Architect.

* btw I said "DVD" 5 times in this post. =)

For best quality, render to MPEG-2 and AC-3 from Vegas.
Use a CBR of 8,000,000 or a VBR of 8,000,000 /, 8,000,000 / 4,800,000.
If you have a lot of photos in the project, render at Best as it'll help to maintain image quality.
Give both files the same name (i.e. myvideo.mpg & myvideo.ac3) and render them to the same folder.
That way, when you load the video file into DVD Architect, the audio will follow automatically.

Thanks for that info Mike, I will try that right now.

The Template should be: "DVD Architect NTSC video stream"?

That's correct.
After selecting that, click the "Custom" button next to the template box and then click the "Video" tab.
This is where you change the bitrate.
After changing the numbers, you can save it as a template if you want to .
Enter a new name in the Template box at the top of this tab and click the "Save Template" button (looks like a floppy disc).

WOW, I burned both the .avi and the .mpeg with the ac3 audio file in DVD Architect for a comparison and the .mpeg version looks so much better.

I am very impressed.

Thanks so much Mike, you're awesome.

You're welcome Oliver.
Glad to hear that it worked out for you.
The main reason it looks better is because there's one less layer of compression by going to MPEG-2 directly from the timeline - and this is always a good thing.

actually, the post had "DVD" 6 times, not 5... :)

LOL, thanks for clearing that up Allen.