Re: What's the best output format for archiving my projects?

You can unify your timeline into one .dva/.dps file. All you do is export your movie as a .dva/.dps and check the unify option. Velocity will render whatever needs to be rendered in the timeline (if anything), then make one long file of the entire timeline. You specify the data rate in your preferences general settings. You'll want to check it prior to rendering because it has a bug that causes it to change to uncompressed. So just set it at what you want your final file to be, and export away.

It should be real-time or near real-time too. So if your timeline plays back in real-time, exporting to this usually is also real-time (unless you render it uncompressed). But since you're talking about 5MB/sec, it'll go really fast. It uses the hardware on the Velocity board so that's why it's faster than outputting to MPG2 or other software based formats.

It doesn't affect your current timeline either (other than possibly rendering a few transitions and layered segments), and it will put the resulting .dva/.dps file into your gallery. It will render those files to the drives you've specified in your project mananagement settings when you set your project up (usually the :P drive and your audio drive).

Hope that helps.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com