I am somewhat new to digital video editing and I have made several home movies and rendered them as AVI, Mpg1 and Mpg2. Sometime in the not too distant future I want to get a DVD burner and transfer all of my videos to DVD. What type of file should I be rendering to now and saving until I get the burner? I know Mpg2 is for DVDs, but is that the optimal file type or is there something better. I am using Vegas Video.

Thanks

MPEG-2 is it, Dan, for eventual DVD authoring. Where you might want to spend some time is in the audio end of the equation. Better authoring software works with the AC-3 codec, which provides Dolby Digital sound with file sizes far smaller than PCM audio, allowing more video per disk. Newcomers often export video and audio to MPEG-2 and let the authoring software deal with it. More experienced users import audio separately into the authoring process and at the professional end AC-3 is standard (whether in 5.1 or not). File size matters not only for video length and quality but also to leave room for additional languages, camera angles and behind the scenes-type material. Most home users probably don't do much of that but it's part of the potential.

Keep in mind that although it is MPEG-2 it needs to be DVD
compliant MPEG-2!!! This means it must use main level encoding
at full resolution with a certain amount of IBP frames and no
more than 9.8 mbps INCLUDING audio.

If you need to know the exact specs (ie, if your MPEG-2 encoder
has no DVD profile) I can dig those up for you.

You can either render them as DV for now and make a second pass to encode to MPEG2 for DVD later, or just take the MPEG2 route now. Vegas Video 3 has built in templates for DVD that work quite well.

From the "Render As" menu choice, pick "MainConcept MPEG-2" for the "Save as Type" box, and pick the "DVD NTSC" template.

Thanks for the replys.

Brian and Rob,

It sounds like the MPEG2 in the DVD NTSC would be the DVD compliant MPEG2 on Vegas Video, right? A video saved in that format could still be played from a CD-ROM on a PC with a DVD player too I assume.


David,

That sounds like something I would be interested in, although currently a little over my head. I am definitely going to look into it.

Dan,

You are right in saying that this is the template you need. However
it will probably NOT play through a CD because it probably
will not be able to keep up with the datarate of the MPEG2.
This depends on the speed of your reader and the the bitrate
you encoded your movie at, ofcourse.

I would be a bit careful of using DV as an interim format, if you are aiming to produce a DVD finally.

If you are in NTSC land (I guess you are), then DV is 4:1:1. But DVD is 4:2:0. So you will have to convert your 4:1:1 to 4:2:0 and will effectively end up with the worst of all worlds - 4:1:0 - _really_ low chroma resolution.

For NTSC, you really need to render to a non DV format (QT for example) in the interim.

Julian

Julian,

If he wants to go from DV -> DVD wouldn't an interim render to another format result in additional quality loss (no offense, I'm not arguing, I'm asking because I don't know)?

Hans van Turnhout
(I have tried to change the user name to me real name but so far every effort doing this has failed)

Vulcan800

Why not sign with your favoured name so we can use it to address you?
I read Julian's post on a system I couldn't post from earlier today but my question is the same. If he's editing on a Mac, I guess (because I don't know) that DV resolution video is wrapped in QT but is otherwise full spec DV. If that's not the case I share your confusion about going to a format that introduces compression beyond the 5:1 of DV before going to DVD. I hope I'm about to learn something new.

QuickTime is just a container format (like AVI and ASF) it can contain
any compression method available for that format. So yes, you
can leave DV in QuickTime or convert it to Sorenson in QuickTime
for exampe...

Sorry for delay in replying,

Rob Lohman has nailed it - I meant that you should use a less compressed or even uncompressed interim format, and QT using Sorensen 100% is readily available.

Cheers,

Julian