Burning DVD from Timeline in 10+

[Ron P.]

Well I should have read John's reply, but I went ahead and ran 2 tests.

Test 1:

Project was of DV-AVI video clips (5). Total project duration was 5 minutes. The project included Titles ( 1 start, 3-lower Thirds, 1-Ending), Video soundtrack, and Smartsound audio track.

With the project in the timeline, I went to the burn module, and initiated a burn to disc (+RW). It took 23 mins to convert, 5 minutes to burn. Tested in my Sony stand-alone player and worked great. If you hadn't guessed no crash.

Test 2:

Project again was DV-AVI clips which were captured over the last 1-1/2 yrs, plus one that was an anologue(captured with pass-through, so doesn't really count as analogue) of an old betaMax shot 18 yrs ago. This time the project had 2 overlay videos (DV-AVI), numerous titles/lower thirds, video soundtrack and Smartsound. Total project duration : 28 minutes.

Again went to the burn module with the project in the timeline, initiated a burn to disc. Conversion time: 54 mins, Burn time: 5 mins, for total time of 59 minutes. Again VS10+ (TBYB) didn't hesitate, stutter, or crash. Burned the disk no problems.

I only have 1 day left, I hope that doesn't expire in the next hour. I guess I have to step up the ante here, and put together something seriously complex, to see if I can at least get a cough out of it....

Ron P.

[sjj1805]

Ron
while youre in the experimenting mood how about grabbing hold of an old MPEG file and cutting it up and joining it back together with several transitions to see what happens to the sound.

I'd do it myself but I'm stuck in this chair at work at the moment!

[Ron P.]

Ok, I'll see what happens Steve..

Ron P.

[GeorgeW]

I ran it through a few tests. Used a 16+minute dv .avi project which was an edit from a bunch of highschool football games for a season highlights video. It burned properly from the timeline for the final DVD.

I also tested how a 16:9 project transferred over to the authoring module to make sure the aspect ratio was still in order.

Regards,
George

[Rich2Putt]

I'm lost.....

If I understand this, the rendering takes place during the burning process in these tests rather then first rendering then going to the burn process?

[sjj1805]

Yes that it what is being said. I still urge caution at this time.
"Just because you walk on a tightrope doesn't mean you are going to fall off"

I think that the same may have been true of VS9. The caution I am conveying is that perhaps 95% of the time you would get away with it and this discovery may not be something new in version 10 but something that has always been there.

The same can be said of reported out of synch audio/video issues. Many users report that editing an MPEG file results in out of synch whilst a minority of users then retort 'But it doesn't happen to me.'

For this reason if a users reports they are having problems then it is a safer course of action for members of this forum to advise that user to follow the procedure that has been adopted by this forum as best practice.

[Rich2Putt]

Steve, thanks for clearing that up. I've been using VS over 2yrs & kept with the procedures & its been very successful.

I know this is something I will need to test on a short video file, but does the video render during the burning process if not rendered before?

I always though a video needs to be rendered in order to burn to a DVD/CD or whatever.

[Mike-Mat]

Input from the new guy: I've only used VS10 and the first couple of tests I did went right from th edited timeline to DVD burn. I never had a problem. It wasn't until I found this forum that I realized you could create the Mgp file and burn it later. I never had a problem.

So what is the quality difference?

Does it alter the quality if I burn right from the timeline ?

Mike

[sjj1805]

The moment I saw the original post in this thread I knew it was going to start causing confusion amongst many of our members.

I do not think this discovery is something new and that it is something that has always been there but in the past has on occaisions created problems for some users some of the time.

A workflow was found that worked for most users most of the time and was adopted by the forum as "The Recommended Procedure"

Whether you choose to render an MPEG file from the editing stage before progressing to the Authoring Stage or not will not alter the fact that at some point your edited file needs to be rendered.

Looking at it from a logical point of view there should be little or no difference in the rendering time, the same software is doing the same job.

Think of it this way....
You eat your dinner then you eat your pudding. The end result is the same it finds it way into your stomach. Now is it better to eat those meals as seperate courses or should we mix it all together on a plate and gulp it down in one?

John, sorry to say but I think that this issue has caused more confusion than it was worth.

[jchunter]

I now have enough evidence to show that VS10+ is smart rendering the project clips to a video file (temp file), while the Burn status message says "Converting Video of Title".

This morning I loaded a 30 minute Project in the timeline. The source originated from a Panasonic GS400 and was captured by VS9 direct to DVD-compliant mpeg2 files. When I hit the burn button I did get the "This will take a lot of time ..." message. This message is clearly no longer a reliable indicator of a potential problem. Burn property property presets matched the source clip properties exactly - without having to be set manually.

The first Burn phase "convert Video of title" took 46 minutes, much longer than my 10 minute project and just about the same time it takes for me to smart render a 30 minute video file. CPU was 70 - 80% busy and memory usage was 580MB. So I'm pretty sure this is where smart rendering takes place. This phase preceeds the familiar Audio/video Multiplexing phase in the Burn sequence.

I am please to report that the DVD plays perfectly and that the ISO res chart readings are as good as any other method that I have used.

Ron,
Thank you for trying the two DV sourced projects. The fact that they went to completion is very significant because these video clips had to be Transcoded (not just smart rendered) from DV to Mpeg2. Did you have to set the Burn properties manually?

Bottom Line: The evidence, to date, suggests that 10+ is now automatically following the Recommended Procedure, by correctly transcoding or smart-rendering the project to a (temporary) video file prior to burning.

[sjj1805]

As responsible members of this forum there is another issue though which we must not overlook.
Whilst the tests carried out by certain "Senior Members" of the forum tend to show that it is OK to skip the stage "Render a video before proceeding to the authoring stage" whilst working with Version 10. We must remember that we are dealing with a large community of users who have different versions of VideoStudio.

We still get the odd post from a user with version 6 never mind versions 7/8 & 9.

Even if only for the benefit of those users we must be careful before publishing any deviation from a procedure known to work well across multiple versions of VideoStudio.

[jchunter]

Indeed, any relaxation of workflow standards could only apply to 10+.

BTW, I am not yet convinced that BFT (Burn From Timeline) is bulletproof. The fact that I had to manually set Burn properties on my first try is an indication that a newbie would probably run into trouble even with 10+.

Actually, a real Quality Assurance program has rank amateurs and non-techies to beat up the product because techies are too quick to introduce their own "mid-course corrections" to keep a malfunctioning program "on course."

We need to get some newbies to try out BFT and see how well it behaves...

Any volunteers???

[rcurzon]

I still count myself pretty new to VS10. But it looks like there are more issues with timeline and VS10.

What I've seen, the Disc project takes it's characteristics from the timeline...

I was creating PAL DVD folders where I've only done NTSC before. But, it was impossible to set the Create Disk project to PAL, unless there was a PAL video in the timeline when the Create Disk is first pushed. The options are greyed out.

Once the Create Disc project is saved, then you can delete the timeline items.

[Ron P.]

Well before my TBYB version expired (today) I managed to do 2 more tests.

Test 3: requested by Steve, to take an MPEG file, cut it up, join-it, place transitions, etc.. check for OOS.

The MPEG was an MPEG2, NTSC standard, Dolby AC3, duration 6 mins. I done 4 random cuts, then placed 4 random transitions. Then rendered it to MPEG2 DVD. Render time: 2mins 30secs. Out of Sync: None. However I could tell that the quality had suffered. It seemed that the program had boosted the contrast.

Test 4:

Took numerous DV-AVI video clips to total 1 hr. I think I ended up with about 10 or so clips, and about 4 clips on an overlay track, also included pictures, utilizing at one time 5 of the 6 overlay tracks, titles, and 5 Smartsound clips.

Proceeded to the burn module, and initiated a burn to disc, used the Single Smartmenu included witth the TBYB. I decided to use the Smartscene menu because it should have placed a greater load then the others.

Results:
Took 2 hrs, 12mins to burn, and burned successfully. I now have the DVD playing on my TV...

John
No I didn't have to set the properties, however I did adjust them, from the VBR 7000 (where that came from is unknown to me) to CBR 6000. I also noticed when first starting that the Field order was set to Frame Based. I also changed this to LFF..


Ron P.

[jchunter]

Ron,
So, you did have to set/adjust/change the burn properties. so that they matched your source video clips. So did I, on the 10 minute project. However, with my 30 minute project, 10+ setup burn properties that exactly matched my source clips.

Sometimes, 10+ seems to inherit the properties of the source video (properly), as Rcurzon experienced, and at other times it seems to have lost its mind and sets properties that might have come out of a random number generator.

This is certain to cause problems for newbies.

If your trial version is still running, would you please repeat the project with the funny properties and see what happens. I will do the same thing with my10 minute project..