Best specs for rendering video for DVD in Vegas 7?

[Bizzen]

Sorry for all the questions lately.

I was hoping someone would be able to point me in the direction of some good info, or give me a few pointers.

I ripped a DVD to my hard disk with DVD Decrypter, then renamed one of the VOB's to MPG. I then imported this file into Vegas 7 where I trimmed it and added a couple of transitions. I now simply want to export it in exactly the same quality as it was imported. I have tried a few of the different presets for MPEG-2 (I think I'm on the right track with that - correct me if I'm wrong) but the largest file size I can seem to get is 70MB, which seems to be around half the quality per minute of the original file.

Any advice greatfully received!

[guns1inger]

Where to start ?

First, Vegas is not the best tool for editing mpeg. There is no way to do it without the need to completely re-encode. This means you cannot output without affecting quality to some degree. Womble Mpeg Wizard or VideoRedo would be a btter choice. You could also look at the freeware cuttermaran. All of these will make the edits without re-encoding the video.

That said, if you are going to use Vegas, then you need to read the manual/help files that come with it. To render video you click on File -> Render As. Set the type as mpegII, then click custom. Here you can change the settings for the video encoding. Bitrate is what you need to be changing, however you need to know what the original bitrate was (at least, what the average was). G-Spot or bitrate viewer can tell you this. Change you settings in the mpeg encoder accordingly and try again.