Topic: ISO Sony Vegas Advice

[mattmiller]

I've tinkered with Vegas in the past, but have never had to create anything that really mattered.  But now I have to put together a marketing video for work, and I want to get some input before I start.  First, I'm using Vegas 8 Pro.  If there is any important reason why upgrading to 11 would be beneficial, I could probably get them to buy it for me.  But let's assume I'm working with 8 Pro for now.

The video will be just a sequence of videos and photos, overlaid with information in text format.  No complex video effects.  Plus an audio track that will be a co-worker narrating everything.  Before I get started, I want to be assured that the following will not be an issue:

1.  The final product will be on DVD-R, but I should have access to full HD video and high res photos to use in its creation, so my assumption is that the smart thing to do is to create it at 1920x1080 and then render the end product down to 720x480 for the DVD.  Correct?

2.  I've been playing around refreshing my memory on how to accomplish some of the effects I'll be using.  I took one of the high-res photos I'll be using and applied a pan and slight zoom effect.  If I render it in HD, it looks great (although 21 seconds = 4 GB!).  But when I render it to 720x480 (even at the highest quality), the movement is ridiculously choppy.  Unwatchable choppy.  Is this going to be a problem for me, or am I doing something wrong?  Does Vegas 11 offer any rendering advantages?

I need to get started on this, but want to be confident that there will be no obstacles to getting a nice-looking DVD in the end.

[shoestringconcerts]

1. Yes..I would recommend you render a 1080 master file of your final product

2.  in Vegas8 you should be able to output as mainconcept HDV 1080i or 720p and it would not be 4gigs for 21 seconds

If you upgraded to Vegas 10 or 11 you would be able to output in AVC but I cant think of any other reason to upgrade based on what you have mentioned here

Post a sample video of the choppiness issue.  I have never experienced any problems with 'choppiness' when doing a pan or zoom in a hires pic
my guess is it is playing back choppy because your computer cant handle the high bitrate file, try outputting as HDV   

[sabre]

my guess is it is playing back choppy because your computer cant handle the high bitrate file, try outputting as HDV

Yeah, 4 GB for 21 seconds = 190 megabytes per second! The reason why it's so choppy is because the hard drive can't keep up.

[mattmiller]

Here are my save-as options:



I think I output to both AVI and MOV at full quality and got nice looking video (but HUGE files).  It was when I tested the ability to render to a DVD-quality format that I couldn't get anything acceptable.  For this, I used the MainConcept MPEG 2 option and one of the DVD Architect templates (without changing any of the custom settings).  This resulted in a smaller file, but with horrible looking pans.  I was expecting it to look as good as the HD render, just at a smaller 720x480 size.

If I'm planning to use DVD Architect (Pro 5.0) to author the DVD, will I ultimately just want to let it do the rendering from the VEG file?

I don't think my system is a problem.  It's a Core i7 laptop with Win7 64-bit and 16 gigs of RAM.

[beatkilla]

No it is not possible to make a Standard definition file that will ever look as good as HD,your throwing away more than half of the information and your also going to have a field order issue to deal with most likely.What is your HD footage properties,what camera are you shooting with.Personally i wouldn't bother going to standard def. your going to be dissapointed with the results unless your customers have very poor eyesight youd better stick with Bluray.

[mattmiller]

No it is not possible to make a Standard definition file that will ever look as good as HD,your throwing away more than half of the information and your also going to have a field order issue to deal with most likely.What is your HD footage properties,what camera are you shooting with.Personally i wouldn't bother going to standard def. your going to be dissapointed with the results unless your customers have very poor eyesight youd better stick with Bluray.

I know it's not going to look as good as HD.  I just want to be confident that, for people who have standard def setups, it'll look as good as they're used to seeing DVDs look.  And for people with high-def, it'll look as good as they're used to seeing DVDs look on their HD systems (which is noticeably inferior to HD, and they'll understand that).  But we're mass-producing 10-20k of these and bulk-mailing them to all the residents of particular counties, so we don't want to send blu-rays and have 10% of recipients be able to play them.

[beatkilla]

You'll need to use Virtual Dub and get the free Lagarith lossless codec than if your really serious but you'll have huge files and a few more steps.You can search online for the Virtual Dub hd to sd recipes,but basically you need the resize using Lanczos 3 which Vegas does not have.Virtual Dub is free and so is Lagarith codec.

The DVDs that people are used to watching usually are Hollywood and not resized with Sony Vegas but with custom written algorithims.If i can find links for more info i'll post them back here.

Lagarith lossless video codec http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

Virtual Dub http://www.virtualdub.org

[sabre]

For this, I used the MainConcept MPEG 2 option and one of the DVD Architect templates (without changing any of the custom settings).  This resulted in a smaller file, but with horrible looking pans.

Click on the "Custom" button and change the bitrate to 8,500 kbps (CBR). There should also be a few "quality" related sliders. Slide them up to "high" quality.

What software are you using to play back your authored videos? Make sure you either play them on a physical standalone DVD player or if you're going to play them through the PC make sure a de-interlacing filter is enabled in your player (VLC, PowerDVD etc.)

[mattmiller]

I was finally able to get a decent looking MPEG-2 by playing with the custom settings.  I think changing it to 2-pass VBR encoding was a big factor.  So now I'm at least relieved that I can get something that looks decent, either directly with Vegas or using Virtual Dub.

That said, I started having trouble importing some HD footage today (.MTS files).  It would crash by simply trying to highlight a file in the browser (never even got a chance to try to drag it to the timeline).  I did some digging and initially found some posts online about this being a common problem.  So I told my bosses and they told me to order V11.  Then AFTER ordering V11 I discovered that there is an update for V8 that fixes a lot of those problems.  They didn't hesitate to tell me to upgrade, so I don't feel TOO bad.

Are there any good books on Vegas 11?  I searched pretty hard on Amazon and couldn't find anything at all.  Would love t pick up a reference if it exists, but I'm guessing it's doubtful that there'd be a reference manual out there that Amazon doesn't stock.

[beatkilla]

The best training for vegas is at www.vegastrainingandtools.com