DVD Architech authoring

[RedruM7]

I found this to be the best DVD authoring program yet, because all the others dident ofer the flexibility and freedom this program does, but I'm yet to successfully burn a working DVD.
I'm burning some 8 Initial D anime episodes, with extras, chapters, and 3 animated menus, everything works nice and dandy in the preview mode, but when I go to prepare it, I get a monstorous 10-20+ hour estimated time left, the first time I let it go and it ended up going for 24+ hours, and freezing at 100% I forced a close and tried burning it anyway dident work. I dont think I could wait that long for it to make a 4 dollar coster again. Anyone else get huge time estimates when preparing DVDs with DVD architech? thanks.

[joecav]

With DVD Architect, you have to "prepare" your files before authoring. You have to have a muxed video (with no sound) and an AC-3 file or it re-encodes everything again. As to why it crashes at 100%, I don't know.
I've done 2 and a half hour videos with motion menus and background sound and it only took about 25-35 minutes to prepare everything. Haven't burned a coaster yet.

Check the tools section and read the comments for DVDA to see what I mean about having compliant files before you begin. That should help you alot with your DVD preparation times.

[RedruM7]

Thanks for the reply, so do you mean I need to prepare the files before I can prepare the DVD in DVDA, meaning I should use vegas video to reincode all my videos (which are Divx I beleive with .avi extention) I was thinking the time it takes to prepare the files with vegas, would be the same time with DVDA but it would do everything in one process. I have neoDVDplus which can encode and burn the same videos using simpler menus in 2 hours or so, which made me think encoding wouldent be such a big factor. I'll research around a bit more, thanks for the info.

[joecav]

OK now I understand...If you encode those AVI files first (I use MainConcept MPEG), demux them, mux the video with no sound and convert the sound file to AC-3 you should see a dramatic decrease in the time it takes DVDA to make your DVD files. I don't know how effecient the encoder is on DVDA. (I'm assuming it's good since it's from the same people who made Vegas)

I know it seems like an extra step, but for me, I like DVDA's flexibility and the final product so it's worth it.