symp4devil wrote:What's the difference between the Two Pass Encode option in the Disc Template Manager and the Two Pass Conversion option in Project Settings?
They are the same.
If you follow the suggested workflow, however, there will be no encoding in the create disc step.
symp4devil wrote:Will either of these produce a better video made from DV(AVI) clips first rendered to MPEG-2 then burned onto a disc?
They might - but it depends on the project. If your project is less than one hour long, there's not much point in using variable bitrate video, in which case two-pass encoding is not an option.
If your project is long, however, and in particular if it incorporates a significant proportion of slideshow type material, there are potential benefits from using variable bitrate video. I think you might notice a picture quality difference using VBR for a project 90 minutes long burned to a single layer DVD, especially if there is slideshow material in it.
Going from single-pass to two-pass VBR will give a slight further benefit, though at the expense of approximately twice the encoding time. With two-pass encoding, the program figures out what bitrate to use in the first pass, allocating a higher bitrate for sections with lots of change, and a lower bitrate for more static scenes.
The best way to see what difference it makes is to do some test renders, say of one minute long video. You may be surprised at how much smaller the filesize is when using VBR for a slideshow type video.