Rendering and adding a Bulk Transistion

[Louis123]

I'm new to the forums and new to the VideoStudio product line and I have a few questions.

I have a bunch of Xvid video files (50 or more) that I want to combine into 4 or 5 separate video files to burn to a DVD. Is there a way to add the video files a few at a time, then edit and save for later to render all of them at once rather than edit and render 4 or 5 times in a row?

Next question. Is there a way to add one video filter or transition to all of the videos at once, rather than adding them one at a time?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

[Black Lab]

Edit your clips and then save the project. A vsp file will be produced. There will be no rendering involved at this point. When you get more clips just open the project, add the new clips and edit away.

Read the Recommended Procedure, er, Workflow, um, just read the announcement at the top of this forum for what most forum members agree is the way to produce your DVD.

As for the transition, go to File>Preferences>General Tab. Check the Use Default Transition Effect box and choose your transition from the drop-down box. This will not affect clips already on the time line.

[Ken Berry]

Also be aware that XVids, like DivX, is a highly compressed mpeg-4 format, which often causes a great difficulty to edit.

It could be better to first convert them to DVD-compatible mpeg-2 using a free program like SUPER. Then insert them into Video Studio for editing and authoring.

Editing mpeg-2 extensively may also cause difficulties, but you will only find out by trying, I am afraid.

[Louis123]

Thanks for your quick reply Jeff.

Sorry, I guess my question was not very claer. I want to take 20 or so clips at a time, edit them and render them into a DVD format file. I would like to do this 4 or 5 times but I don't want to do the first 20 and then wait for the render to finish before moving on. Since rendering takes a long time I would like to edit all of them and then render them at the end so I don't have to wait around.

Actually after writing the above I think I might be going about it the wrong way. The end result I am looking for is to have 4 or 5 different "chapters / videos" to select from on the DVD based on the 100 or so clips. So I figured that I needed to edit the 20 or so clips and then render them into separate files to be able to have the 4 or 5 "chapters / videos" on the DVD. Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks

[Ron P.]

Hi Louis,

Your latter approach would be a good method. You will need the MPEG2 files for the DVD. Rendering a video file after each is created would tie up your PC for less time at a single session. Now to make certain you understand the difference between Titles and Chapters:

Each video clip on the Main timeline in the DVD authoring module, is considered a Title. Each title can contain Chapters.

So you can have the 4 or 5 Titles, and Chapters in each of them, OR you can have 1 Title that is divided into the 4 or 5 Chapters.