Best workflow from a Vegas prepared project to a DVD?

[Srivas]

Hi all!

That's my question. Might sound silly but my point is to find out is there a better way of doing things resulting in a better quality output then the general suggested standard templates in NLEs etc. As time goes on, many programs, codecs and workflows get better and I haven't authored a dvd for 2 years or so. So I was curious to know what you, professionals, out there are using to get what you want. I have my project prepared in Vegas, ready to render, what next? Go for the mainconcept template or is it possible to do frameserving and use some other codecs out there before entering dvd authoring? And a little off the track question, is Frameserving better than rendering with lossless codecs like Lagarith?

And another point is that I will hardcode subtitles into my video, but I could edit with the markers and put the subtitles in DVD Architect or something. But DVDA is providing very limited subtitling capabilities, no shadow for example, so if I would like to go for markers, what authoring software has some more advanced subtitling features or is there a separate software required for doing that?

Thanks for any input.

[_Al_]

What is the original source that you work with inside Vegas?

Nothing changed since 2009 I guess, resize of interlaced HD video you still can do outside of Vegas to keep flicker considerably down ( VirtualDub resize or Avisynth resize). You might help it also applying some horizontal blur in Vegas.

Frameserver works only with 8bit projects. The other thing, with lots of tracks , effects, if you render 2pass, perhaps render lossless first is faster, if you don't mind larger files on HDD.

I would not hardcode subtitles into video but to just set them on as default instead during authoring or inside PGCEdit after authoring (if authoring tool cannot do this).

To creates some advanced graphics for your subtitles, you would need something that creates subpictures , those 4 color images saved as sup format for example, not srt, perhaps subtitle creator, but never really investigate that one. Question is if DVD Architect loads sup ...

[Srivas]

Hi Al!
My source is DV AVi files. I could try Frameserving, since I use Neat Video 2.6, it makes rendering quite slow. But then what encoding program and encoder to use to make it compatible for dvd authoring?

Looks like I will go for hard-coding subtitles for several reasons. First then I can have nice effects on them, nice shadow and outline, plus the speech is not so easily recognizable so the subtitles are actually needful anyway. And even if I have some other languages supported, then better to add a translated audio track, otherwise I should make an english subtitle file for translating and that's too much of an endeavor (maybe not I have to add english subtitles anyway). And DVDA will not import anything but txt files as subtitles (and a sub script from dvd architect).

There's another problem, but I better make a separate thread for that.