Two good affordable solutions: 1) TMPGenc masterworks $90 2) Virtual Dub (FREE!) is good too but for me clunky to use compared to TMPG

In both cases convert MTS files in Vegas to uncompressed AVI or Cineform (FREE!) before importing to above mentioned programs. You can do it within Vegas but the quality blows.

Looks like @BriancLuce and I basically thought the same thing. :)

@bostonmike You must downgrade your finished product because like DOCchallenge when talking about HD says 'Too many flavors to handle'

It may seem that supporting 1080p at 24fps is not a big deal, but I like 720p30, and i know editors who prefer 1080i60 1280x1080, and yet another editor only does 1440x1080.. and of course there is the issue of mixing and matching codecs for video.. and then for audio.

Thanks PDlumina, that sheds a little more light on their reasoning behind converting to SD.

I agree that a playable video DVD is the best option. Progressive scan DVD can look quite good, even played on an HDTV, when taken from an HD source. Just make sure that the frames are encoded progressively. That will ensure the best possible playback on progressive scan DVD players and PCs. High quality downscaling and high bit rates will help. 1080/24p and 1080/30p are both fine options for shooting in. 30p has that filmic stuttery look, but with a bit less stutter.

Always-ALWAYS-use DVD-R (minus R).. for video DVDS unless your doing a dual layer...which sadly are often hard to find in -R.I dont think this the reason your are having slow mo issues though. Plus R DVDs are are good for data use. I know some half wit is going to argue with me but trust me I have been authoring DVDs for 7 years. Disc brand DOES matter look on other forums and ask. TDk have never been good discs (for me). I prefer verbatim.

Oh and keep in mind the best way to test a DVD is on a DVD Player (mPeg2 decoder) Computer playback was an afterthought for this format and often times menus and such will behave strange in Windows media player.

@bostonmike My best guess is that your standalone DVD player (where you should be testing the results as pointed out by No_SuRReNDeR) simply can not keep up with the amount of data the stream has. 169347 kilobits per second come to about 165 megabits/s and that's 'a little' off from the specifications (9216kbps or so for the video stream).

Look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-2#DVD-Video

Those specifications allow DVD players manufacturers to have the same compatibility with content on DVD's encoded using those parameters.

If you stay a bit below 9Mbps on the video stream, use a two-pass encoding, process your footage with a quality software (TMPGenc, Mainconcept, etc), and use AC3 for the audio, then you should have a really good quality DVD playable on most standalone DVD players.

YES YES ..to pdlumina you listen!

"If you stay a bit below 9Mbps on the video stream, use a two-pass encoding, process your footage with a quality software (TMPGenc, Mainconcept, etc), and use AC3 for the audio, then you should have a really good quality DVD playable on most standalone DVD players."

-Just keep in mind none of these are perfect and you will not get "Hollywood" quality results using a push button method on down conversion. You will just have to accept good enough or convince the clients that a Blu-ray and web ready QT are the best options.

@thepapalias I am no expert and so is my eye ;=) . That solution came to me as an accident just to keep it up with dead line while do a wedding free for my friend. I used to have to work twice, one work flow for Blue Ray, other for DVD. Then here I went , DVD fab have a convert thing could convert the whole blue Ray to Dvd. I gave it to my friend both format. He told me it looks good.

My 2 cents was just with the eye of a Joe guy. I definitely will try the Film maker view of this way in future. ( master in TMPgenc or Virtualdub )

You're right PDLumina, my DVD player won't even play the video, or even show it at all. I played it on my computer and it played it back in slow motion. It looks like I'm WAY over in size with 169347kbps...not sure what I did wrong there, but I'll have to go back to the drawing board. I guess I need to reduce the quality somehow, how I don't know.

No_Surrender, I will check out those Verbatim DVD-R when I do my finished product and do a slower transfer speed..funny though, it never even gave me the option of running it at a slower speed, it just did it for me.

Tinbeo, thanks as well, I'll check out that DVD fab and see what it offers.

I'm so used to just filming in HD 1080p 24fps, editing in Vegas, running it through Streamclip to make a Quicktime file (as required by the stock video company), and uploading my HD stock video clips without any hitches that I never realized how complex it was to downgrade to SD and put it on a DVD. I thought the hardest part of this film contest was going to be writing the script, setting up the shots and actually filming it, I guess I was wrong. Would I be better off just submitting this thing on a flash drive? I realize I'd still have to iron out the Mbps issue.

Here is a link to a sample video I did, taken from one of my stock clips. This is 720x405 and 169347kbps...so I'm wondering, how would I bring that down to below 9Mbps? Thanks!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/57441218/finished%20test.avi

As balazer pointed out, you need to make sure to create an anamorphic video in order to have a proper AR upon playback. Do not encode your footage to 4x3 and add black bars to compensate for a 16x9 AR

This may be more than you wanted to know about making DVD's and the information is out of order, but the ideal way is for you to encode your source file to separate audio and video streams (AC3 or MP2 for audio and M2V for video) and then mux them (put them together into a VOB) with a DVD authoring program.

I downloaded the AVI you posted and noted a few things: The AR is off and you used back bars to make up for this, so you will be losing resolution on encoding/playback.

Lets see, if you are used to recording 1080 footage at 24fps and editing the same way, then your resulting file should be a 1080P AVI running at 23.97 (24fps)... however, you mentioned that you edit in Vegas and that makes things a bit easier.

From the timeline you have the option to render an elementary MPEG-2 file (M2V) at 720x480 and correctly flag it as anamorphic (so on playback everything will look correct). This means every pixel will fill the frame and look streched (unless your player understand the 16x9 flag and displays the proper Aspect Ratio).

Also from the timeline you can render an MP2 audio file (384kbps is sufficient) or better yet, an AC3 file (192kbps is enough in most cases). Just make sure you use exactly the same IN and OUT points/range when you export the video and the audio, else you'll run into sync issues.

There's no need to convert your footage to 29,97 for NTSC playback, the DVD player will perform pulldown on the fly.

The encoder on Vegas is Mainconcept. Go on the settings and make sure to select something like 6Mbps average, 9Mbps maximum and something like 1.5Mbps minimum if the option exists. Also enable 2 pass encoding.

So then you will be left with an .m2v file and an .mp2 or .ac3 audio file. You can then bring those into your favorite DVD authoring program and create a simple menu-less DVD.

Also, add some 2 seconds of black before your program on Vegas timeline and the same at the tail. It helps the encoder not to cut-off footage at the start/end and gives you some room after you press play to see the DVD.

I'll add more if I remember. My favorite DVD authoring programs are (order of preference) DVD-Lab Pro (can't beat the features and flexibility here), DVD Architect (you could have it if you got Vegas as a package), and DVD Studio Pro (OSX only).

BTW, the test file works OK for me. I used VLC 2.x under Win7. Runs at 23.97fps. WMP has no issues either. You may have a bottleneck with your hard drive transfer rate. After all, the test file is 202 Megabytes and is only 10 seconds long (your hard drive must read a sustained data rate of over 20 megabytes per second)

PDLumina, thank you so much for taking the time to do that walk through with all that info. I think you've finally helped me do it right, but not sure because I think I need different discs to transfer the info onto. I saw this free program called DVD Flick that I'm going to try out to burn the info onto the discs. Yeah I put those black bars in because it was showing some lines on the left and right of the screen when I resized it. I didn't resize it properly.

What I finally did was set the timeline settings for NTSC DV 24p (720x480 23,976 fps) and then render as DVD Architect 24p NTSC Video Stream. I don't have DVD Architect, but I think it still sets it up as a usable file, as an MPEG file. There is a noticable loss in quality, but at this point I just want to be able to get it on a disc and then I can tweak it a bit. I guess until I download DVD Flick and get a more appropriate DVD disc I won't know for sure. I really appreciate the time you and everyone else took to help me out. Any more advice I'd appreciate it, thanks!

I hope you mean you shot in 30p, because there is no good way to convert from 24p to 30p.