Vegas8 ==> DVDA5 weirdness.
 

Using the PAL Widescreen DVDA template, and resetting the bitrate to fit the 120 minute project, I've rendered a MPEG2 file that is 3.82GB on my hard disk.
When I load it in DVDA, even as a single movie with no menu, it has the red warning sign at the bottom of the screen saying "Disk space used 5.8 GB".

Any ideas as to what it reads it as a much larger filesize than what the rendered MPEG2 file actually is?

Tried using DVDA to optimise it, so it fits?

Ben

I considered that, but wanted to avoid it putting the footage through another bout of compression on top of compression.
I assumed that if it was rendered out of Vegas using the DVDA template, and came in under the 4.3GB size, that further 'optimising' wasn't needed?

Dennis, DVDA has a long history of incorrectly reporting file sizes.
I've had it happen to me as well even though I know that, like you, my files are well within limits.
When that happens, I ignore the warnings and proceed.
It then goes through the rest of the process without any more warnings.

Ahhh sweet! Thanks for that Mike!

Nope, still didn't work - it ejected the DVD and said that the media is too big etc.
This really sux as I don't want to render as a particular format for another authoring package to then have to re-render that again etc.
Grrrr.

What bitrate did you use for the video?
You said the video was 3.82 GB but what about the audio?
Did you render that as AC-3 or PCM (i.e. WAV)?
PCM audio will be MUCH larger than AC-3 (by a factor of 10) and may be the reason it's over the limit.

The bitrate calculator I use gives the following numbers (assuming AC-3 audio) for a 2 hr. encode:
CBR: 4,688,000
VBR: 2,808,000 / 4,688,000 / 8,000,000 (Min / Avg / Max)


If you used PCM audio instead, these numbers drop as follows:
CBR: 3,344,000
VBR: 2,504,000 / 3,344,000 / 6,688,000

That's a weird thing for the Main Concept codec used for the DVD Architect template in Vegas... I can't find where to choose PCM or ACE like in other codecs.

What I can't understand, is even it was PCM audio, the resulting filesize is still 3.82 GB... so why doesn't DVDA see it as an acceptable size for DVD media?
Another weird thing I found, is the same file used in a project with menus and scene detection reports less size used than a straight autoplay DVD by DVDA?

I haven't had problems before, but the longest DVD I've burnt would've been on the 40 minute mark. I want to get it sorted, as I don't want my workflow to have an extra rendering step added by doing some sort of intermediate, then importing that into DVDA for conversion.

Any help hugely appreciated.

Which specific template are you using?

For all my renders, I use either the DVD Architect NTSC video stream or the DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen video stream template for video.
You would obviously use the PAL template but that's the only difference.

If the video is under 70 min. long, I've got a custom template set up so that it encodes at a CBR of 8,000,000.
Anything longer and I use my bitrate calculator (NOTE: link is to a zipped file) to figure out a custom setting.
I also switch from CBR to VBR.

For audio, I always use Dolby Digital AC-3 Pro.
The default template is fine.
As long as you give both files the same surname (video.mpg & video.ac3) and render them to the same folder, DVDA will load the audio as soon as the video is loaded.

It's my bedtime here so I'll sign off now but will check back in the morning to see how you made out.

Yeah Mike, I use the DVD Architect PAL Widescreen template. I have a bitrate calculator that I used, and even gave it a conservative formula - but still DVDA seems to add 2 GB to the filesize... my windows OS sees it 3GB.
Do you render the MPEG2 video only out, then render with a seperate AC3 codec, then import them both into DVDA?

What were your bitrate settings?
What did you do for your audio?

That's correct.
I've always done it that way and it's always worked for me.

Well, I rendered it out with seperate AC3 audio and everything is fine even though the file sizes are the same. Hmmm, weird - it doesn't make sense to me, but it's good to get a resolution to the problem.
Thanks for the help Mike.

My pleasure Dennis.
I wish I knew what happened to make it work though.
Chalk another one up to the computer gremlins :-)