Movie Studio Zen is the best place for learning how to use Sony Movie Studio Platinum 12, DVD Architect Studio 5.0 and the basics for Sony Vegas Pro. It is also the place to find real working solutions to common problems that new users like yourself will encounter as you move quickly up the Vegas learning curve. It is easy to feel a little overwhelmed when you first start to use Sony Vegas software. This is why I have created Movie Studio Zen - to help you easily and quickly master the basics and become confident with using the Tools & Effects that are available to you in these fantastic programs.

There are now over 100 free "easy to follow" video tutorials which will teach you the basics of how to edit and create projects like full 1080p HD Quality Videos for places like YouTube, Vimeo or Facebook. You can also learn how to create your own professional looking DVD's & BluRay Discs with fully functioning menus. I also have videos that can teach you how to Build your own Computer that is fully optimised for Vegas HD Video Editing and I can show you how to get your existing computer purring like a kitten.

Did you know that Sony Movie Studio Platinum is the little Brother of Sony Vegas Pro ? What that means is that 90% of my tutorials will also work in Sony Vegas Pro and DVD Architect Pro with absolutely no problems at all. So I invite you to stay and have a good look at what I can teach you right now.

Using DVD Architect Pro 6.0 I show how to compress and fit a long video onto a DVD, by calculating customized Bit Rates and pre-rendering the video with Sony Vegas Pro 12.

I will be using three programs during this tutorial. Sony Vegas Pro 12, DVD Architect Pro 6.0 and Mark's DVD Bit Rate Calculator. You can also use Sony Movie Studio Platinum 12 and DVD Architect Studio 5.0 instead of the Pro versions. My instructions will work exactly the same in Movie Studio and DVDA Studio.

This tutorial is in three parts and includes a Video Tutorial with full instructions at the bottom of this page. You will learn:

• How to Compress a long video by calculating precise customized Bit Rates
• How to do some simply Editing to improve the quality of your video and Render with special Bit Rate values
• How to Import your rendered videos into DVD Architect and make a DVD

Why would you want to compress/fit a video onto a DVD ?

Many people record programs off the TV or save videos from YouTube and would like to store them on a DVD. If you attempt to fit anything longer than 60 minutes of video onto a DVD, you will soon discover that this can be a frustrating and wasteful task when you work out how many discs you will need.

A standard 4.7GB Single Layer blank DVD like a DVD-R or DVD+R can only hold one hour of good quality MPEG2 Video. These discs can be purchased in bulk spindles for an extremely reasonable price and are the most common you will find.

Dual Layer 8.5GB recordable DVDs like DVD-DL can fit up to two hours of good quality video, however they are a lot more expensive to buy than their Single Layer smaller Brothers.

So the best solution is to learn how to compress your videos so that you can store up to double the amount of video on the same size disc. With the method I am about to show you, you will be able to fit 2 hours of video on a 4.7GB DVD and 4 hours of video on an 8.5GB DVD.