Working with the Destination Tab

You use the Destination tab to fine-tune your IPB settings, select the format the audio tracks use, and adjust your render folders. These settings are altered when you choose a reference set, so you can skip this tab, but if you need to tweak the bit rate setting to squeeze the project onto one DVD, this is the place to visit (Figure 12.29).

Figure 12.29. The Destination tab.

Tip

• When creating a file with, for example, the Program Stream preset, you can choose the file's final destination using the Destination Folder browse button.

Fine-tuning IPB settings

You can preset these using reference sets or adjust them to your own individual requirements. You need to experiment to find the right settings for your DVD, but generally speaking, a setting lower than 3 Mbps for the Maximum and Average bit rates doesn't produce good quality results.

To adjust the bit rate

1.	Click once on the IPB Settings button to bring up the IPB Setting box (Figure 12.30). Figure 12.30. The IPB settings displaying a CBR reference set but with the bit rate reduced to 6Mbps.
2.	Drag any of these bars to increase or decrease the bit rate. You can also directly enter the numbers into the value boxes. (You also alter the GOP size here, but it's best not to alter it unless you really know what you are doing.)

Tip

• If you are using a dual-layer DVD, you can adjust the potential size of the media by clicking the drop-down menu and selecting 7.95 GB (Figure 12.31).

  Figure 12.31. The media size options.

  

  
  

Selecting sound format

If you are using 5.1 sound, this selection area is where you instruct the burn engine to create the surround sound tracks the DVD player recognizes. Here are your other options:

• PCM uncompressed: This is the default sound selection the majority of DVD players recognize.

• MP2 (MPEG-1 Layer 2): This is a space-saving audio codec you can use if your DVD is approaching maximum capacity. However, this may not be 100-percent compatible with all DVD players.

• Dolby Digital Stereo: This setting formats your audio into Dolby stereo to give it an added boost.

• Dolby Digital 5.1: This setting is the one you need if you have created a surround sound Timeline. Using this setting will encode those audio tracks so they are recognized by a surround sound decoder with each sound channel being sent to the correct speaker.

Adjusting your render files

To render a DVD, you need an eye-watering amount of hard drive space. The default location is the Render folder Liquid Edition uses to render Realtime and non-Realtime effects. However, if you're running short of space, you can change this by clicking the Temporary folder Browse button (see Figure 12.29) and steering the Windows browser to a new location.

Make sure this new location is an NTFS partition; otherwise you'll be bitten by the 4 GB limitation of the FAT32 file system.