DVD Architect drives me nuts!

[Ken Jarstad]

&^&^&%^%^%)^

I have a nearly two hour, Standard-definition video in DVDA Studio 5.0 and, after tweaking the menu till I'm finally satisfied, the "Fit to disk" button refuses to work!

Now, I suppose I should have rendered out a suitably compressed mpeg from Sony VMS 10 but the "Make DVD" button gives no hint that the file will not fit on a single-layer disk. Elements 2 had the very same feature - clicking a button to make the app compress the file to fit the disk - but VMS doesn't want to do that! Why is the button even there??

So, I try putting a double-layer disk in the drive. VMS likes it but barfs at the layer break question. I tell it to do a layer break automatically but it insists that I insert a chapter marker between 00:59:06.888 and 01:15.143 What??

[Steve Grisetti]

Wow! Sorry for your challenges, Ken -- but I'm not sure why it's not working. It works just fine for me.

Have you ensured that your Target Size (in File/Properties) is properly set to your disc size?

[Ken Jarstad]

Hey Steve, thanks for weighing-in here on Christmas Day!

There are still some (probably lots) of things in DVDA Studio that have not been mastered. And, I am still trying to apply my existing knowledge of Premiere Elements to solve the problems I run into. In PrEl 2 I could tell the authoring module to fit my project into a 4.7 GB DVD and it would happily comply.

It is not obvious that the "Fit to disk" button in VMS only works when the original video/audio is a DV-AVI. I thought it ought to work just like PrEl2! The workflow in VMS is to click the "Make DVD" button when the project is ready. Honestly, I have never had to figure out the compression by hand! I really think it shouldn't be necessary. Enough, already!

Thanks, once again. I hope you and your family had a very merry Christmas!

[Steve Grisetti]

No. Fit to Disk should not in any way be dependent on your source video, Ken.

The only thing that it DOES care about is the Target Size, as set in the project's Properties panel.

Have you ensured that the Target Size is set correctly?

[Ken Jarstad]

Yes Steve. I specifically set the target media size to 4.7 GB DVD.

If you select the normal "Make DVD" button VMS will make an AC3 audio file, an mpg video file and invoke DVDA Studio for authoring. It will not offer to compress the files to fit onto the target media. That means if the project is longer than about 70 minutes it will not fit on a 4.7 Gb SL DVD (DVD5). And, the "Fit to disk" button in DVDA will not work. You have to use the Render As function and select a method of compressing the file(s) to fit - which requires using a bit calculator. This is not straight-forward in the Vegas interface. You are on your own!

The alternative, also not presented in a straight-forward manner, is to Render As a DV-AVI and import that file - on your own - into DVDA Studio and then the "Fit to disk" button will work - with no options for compression, double-pass and so on. I searched the SCS forum and found this.

As a desperation measure I tried burning to a double-layer DVD but had trouble with the layer break. I couldn't seem to get around it - but really wanted to use single-layer media anyway. I rendered a DV-AVI out of VMS and just swapped it into the timeline of DVDA Studio 5.0 and was able to use all the hard work I had already done making the menus.

DVD Architect Studio 5.0 has many fine capabilities that I certainly appreciated when making my grand daughter's wedding video last summer. However, knocking out a quick set of DVDs for my church is still too much trouble! Your book helps a lot but I think what I need is a straight-forward way to knock out a DVD with a simple menu - you know, just like we were able to do with Elements version 2! The Project Overview Panel either needs to have a "Simple Mode" organization or we need a simple procedure. Nine times out of ten I just want to import a video from VMS with the chapter markers already created, import it into DVDAS and have a default top menu with "Play All" and "Scenes" - then a scenes page with up to a half-dozen scene buttons - that it! With DVDAS the longest part of the process is figuring out, all over again, how to do this simple operation. I think it deserves a special chapter or sidebar in your updated book. How about that?

[Steve Grisetti]

Points well taken, Ken.