Finshing a project

[SharkTrager]

Hi there,

Can anyone help me? I've edited my VS9 project and have burnt it onto disk a few times. I now want to delete the footage from my computer but am not sure if I will be able to access the project again to burn in the future.

If it's ok to delete the raw footage, how does VS9 know what to use when I burn it in the future? I have found a Windows media file that contains the edited version but when I play it alone, it plays with a heavy interference sound.

Just want to make 100% sure I don't do anything dumb before I dump the raw footage.

Thank

Mark

[2Dogs]

Hi Mark,

it really depends on what you want to do in the future. If all you want is to be able to make more copies of the DVD, then you can either keep a spare copy of the DVD which you can then copy with various programs - or output your project to a DVD .iso file, and keep that either on your pc or on another DVD. You can then burn discs from the iso file either with the Ulead disc burning utility, Nero, or any similar program.

If, on the other hand, you think you might wish to alter or re-edit the project in any way, you need to keep copies of the video clips that are in your project timeline. You could burn these to CD or DVD, and remove the originals off your pc. When, in the future, you then try to open the Video studio project, it will obviously not be able to "see" all those project video clips, so you will need to reinstate them.

That's not as bad as it may sound, though, since you can arrange for all the clips to live in one subfolder. Then reinstating them is made easier by simply copying them back there from your CD's or DVD's or whatever backup solution you've used.

[SharkTrager]

Hi 2Dogs

Thanks so much for replying. That's great. I'll burn the footage onto a DVD like you suggested just in case.

I want to keep burning the disk which has DVD menus (I'm not sure where the menus are stored).

Also I take it that as long as I have saved a Video File I can just burn it without the footage. Should I also keep a Sound File too?

Many thanks

MArk

[2Dogs]

Hi 2Dogs

Thanks so much for replying. That's great. I'll burn the footage onto a DVD like you suggested just in case.

If there's room to spare on the DVD, you can also burn on the Video studio project file, too, together with any audio files you might be using. When you burn the DVD, you can enable "multi-session" burning, so that you can add files later - perhaps a text "readme" file that gives a description of the project, for example.

I want to keep burning the disk which has DVD menus (I'm not sure where the menus are stored).

The Video Studio project file has your arrangement of menus in it (e.g. "myfile.vsp")

Also I take it that as long as I have saved a Video File I can just burn it without the footage. Should I also keep a Sound File too?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that. If you have followed the recommended procedure and output the whole project to a single, large video file, you can certainly burn that to DVD without having to include the video clips and everything else you used on the timeline to produce the file. The MPEG-2 file will have all your audio on it, so you don't need to save a separate sound file. However, that goes back to my initial query about whether or not you might want to re-edit the project in the future. If you were working with AVI clips on the timeline, then the MPEG-2 output file would obviously take up less than a third of the file space compared with the AVI parent clips. But DVD media is cheap! I managed to buy another 150 DVD+R's on "Black Friday" for less than 15 cents apiece.

It's just ocurred to me however that you might be outputting the whole project to a giant AVI file. I would not recommend that personally, since it would take up almost as much filespace as your parent video clips. (although if you were also using lots of video overlay tracks, it might save a bit of space) What I have found, however, is that titles seem to look better if they are rendered straight to MPEG-2. If you saved your whole project, including titles, to an AVI file, and then later rendered that to MPEG-2, the titles wouldn't turn out so good. This latter point might be slightly controversial, but it's just what I have found from experimentation with my own setup.

[SharkTrager]

One last question.

I am finding it easier to transfer my whole project once it's finished to a large
complete file.

So, will it take up much less room if I create an MPEG2 file compared to an AVI file?

And can I burn them both to DVD afterwards.

Many thanks