Rendering problem in Veg 8
 

With a 90 min classical/Jazz PAL music video I rendered it in Main Concept Mpeg 2 with two pass encoding for highest quality as I could not find how to render with PCM sound which I thought would be better for higher quality audio on DVD. - This is before I go to DVDA 5. I read that it was better to render in a more friendly format to save re-encoding in DVDA. Sound quality is most important here and rendering time etc is not, as I have gone to a lot of trouble to attain good sound in the recording and editing.

Final output is several DVD's made via DVDA-5, - (haven't used it yet ), and this is not a pro job but I want it to sound like one !

I now find - (after leaving it overnight), that there is NO sound when I tried to play in my default windows media player which normally works OK.

How do I render it in Veg 8 as PCM or can I only do this in DVDA after rendering it as an AVI in Vegas ? - What am I doing wrong after it seems I have lost the plot !

Ron C

it sounds to me like you didn't check the box in the mpg render menu to include audio sothat solves the reason there is none.
As for the audio format you really want to render to AC3.That's the format DVDA prefers plus it's a smaller file and DVDA will simply take the audio and rerender it to AC3 anyway so you might as well start with that in Vegas. Believe me it will sound just fine.
There are a few parameters though when rendering to AC3. You need to go into the render menu and set a couple of things. Right now I'm not at my edit machine and off the top of my head I can't tell you exactly what the setting are because I have it allas a preset but give me a bit of time and I'll be happy to post it. Perhaps though you can use the search function in the Vegas forum, I'm pretty sure it's been posted before.
Don

Hi Ron. I believe most of the Mpeg-2 for DVDA templates in Vegas do not include the audio stream - just the video. You separately encode the audio from the video. That said, if you click customize after you select you template, a drop down box will appear that allows including the audio, however, DVDA may not like that and may want to re-encode. Give the audio file the same name - just the different extension, and DVDA will recoginize and bring the audio in (if it is saved to the same directory as the video).

When you use DVDA to build your DVD, you should be able to see audio on the timeline and hear it when your play the timeline or use the "preview DVD" option. Do you see audio on the time line and or can you hear it? The only other thing I can think of is, looking at the header for the timeline, is the little speaker icon at the left of the track turned on?
My apologize if you already knew these things. I can't really tell how new you are to Vegas/DVDA. I am by no means an expert, so if this doesn't cover it hopefully someone with more ideas will respond shortly. Good Luck - PK

Thanks Don & Paul for your very prompt replies.

Still not having much luck finding all these menus in Vegas, ( or are you referring to DVDA). I go into "Render - as" and now I see in the previous settings for PAL that I used, it says in another box, "Video Only", so there is ONE mistake. The audio quality in this project is excellent from a closely miked "$200K grand" played by an international artist. So hence my concern for high quality sound.

So now I have gone to Dolby Digital AC3 Pro with a stereo DVD template and under "custom " I can set the bit rate (256) but this defaults to an un-titled template ? So I guess I should use the stereo DVD template which only allows 192 Kbps. Also, I have markers in the timeline which I would like to become the Chapter points in the DVD. What do I need to do here ?

I have never used DVD A. - That is still in store for me when I sort this out !

Any settings etc I need to know would be appreciated.

Ron C.

Ron, you don't need to go above 192k. Here's the other info Don was talking about.

Ron, I see your project is 90 minutes long. If you use too high of a bit rate (video) and have menu's, etc, you will exceed a single sided disc's capacity. I get maybe 65 minutes on a single sided disc using VBR 2 pass video encoding of 8,500,000 - 6,000,000 - 4,000,000Mbps. My audio is usually 192Khz AC-3 5.1 sound. I have not had any problem using DVD-9 dual layer discs. Good Luck -PK

You want to render the audio and video in separate processes, NOT at the same time.

If you want to render to PCM, you render audio in wav format and choose the default template. The file will be huge, however. The wav file is technically superior to AC3, because AC3 is much more compressed. You know this already and this is why you originally wanted PCM, but the difference in quality is not noticeable, IMO.

In DVDA go to project properties and set the properties to match the format of the auido you are using. If you are using a wav file, set audio properties to PCM, if using AC3 set it accordingly. Go to file, Project Properties and find audio format and change as needed.

Here's the encoding numbers I get with the bitrate calculator I use (note: link is to a zipped file).

With AC-3 audio:
CBR: 6,168,000
VBR: 7,712,000 / 6,168,000 / 3,696,000

With PCM audio:
CBR: 4,824,000
VBR: 8,264,000 / 4,824,000 / 2,896,000

As you can see, the values are substantially less using PCM audio which translates into a poorer quality picture.
What I would do is to test render one song using PCM and AC-3 and then look and listen to decide which one is more acceptable to your eyes and ears.

Encoding to PCM audio is very popular with concert DVDs. Yes the video quality suffers if you don't give it the bandwidth, but if you want the true quality of PCM, then certainly do it.

As for not being able to tell the difference, that depends on what you're listening to it on. On a quality system at home, most people could tell the difference, and for someone to whom audio was important and they had the equipment at home that reflected that, they would *easily* know the difference.

Thanks Guys for all your help.
I have rendered out a small test section to AC3 as per Edward's modified settings in Vegas. But now it won't play because neither Quick Time nor Windows media recognise this codec. I tried downloading a converter but this was not successful either.

What do you people use to play these files as I just want to test this part without actually burning a DVD just yet.

RonC.

For testing play in the preview window of DVDA or render a high-quality wmv file to preview. You won't see a perfect representation of how it looks until you burn it, though and play on TV.

If I'm authored but not quite ready to burn, I'll use the DVD playback software that came with my PC, PowerDVD or whatever. Most of them have the capability to play from hard disk.

As for an actual AC3 player, perhaps the Videolan player (open source freeware, I think). It seems to do a good job of finding codecs on your system & using them, but I've never tried it for AC3.

Mostly, people get their AC3 settings together, make a custom preset, and don't listen again until they're ready to preview in DVDA. Which, by the way, is pretty darn quick even if you haven't authored the full DVD yet - just drag the video file to the root menu, if the audio file is named the same and in the same directory it will come along, then hit preview.

Thanks Jeff. Having never used DVDA I tried to import the file into DVDA but I could only get sound- no pix. The audio shows on the timeline & plays OK - ( very slight degredation I think but will check later ), but the pix shows black icons. What did I do wrong ?

Ron C.

You said you tried to import the file into DVDA. You should have two files. You should be rendering to Mpeg 2, with no audio, for the video file. THEN you should be rendering a second time to .wav OR .AC3. Then open up DVDA. Then you can drag and drop the MPEG file into the main DVDA window, and it will accept it. When you import the MPEG file, DVDA should automatically associate the AC3 file (or .wav) as long as the AC3 or wav file has the same name.

Then you click preview to play.

The reason you should render the audio and video separately is because when you render them together DVDA will recompress things a second time degrading the audio.