Taperssection.com
Gear / Technical Help => Photo / Video Recording => Topic started by: boombox on December 23, 2013, 06:38:54 PM
-
I've been filming shows and synching up external audio in post for a few years now. My usual video camera is (one of?) the first Sony hard drive cameras, which films in .mpg format. As a result, I've always rendered in .avi format for DVDs, first in Vegas 5.0 and more recently in Vegas Studio Platinum 9.0.
Last year, I bought a Lumix FZ48 bridge camera, which I keep as my default as AVCHD FSH 1920 x 1080, and which saves in .MTS format. I've used this for additional camera angles when the other camera is tripod mounted, or even as the principal camera for some shows. My query is this: bearing in mind, I will usually bring in an external soundtrack, which format should I render the whole set in, in order to maintain picture quality for any DVD I author (in DVD Architect, usually)? The same question might also apply for rendering for upload to youtube.
I should also add that I use A PC, not Mac, that I can't curently afford to upgrade my camera or software and that I really haven't a clue what all the formats mean when saving to some of the, what I perceive to be, HD formats in Vegas. (Yes, I really need help! :D)
TIA
-
I'm pretty sure you have to encode the final file to mpeg2 if you want to create a DVD that will play on DVD players. For optimum quality, you need to set the average and maximum bit rates to the highest settings that will still create a file that's under 4.7 GB so it fits on a DVD (unless you want to burn to a dual layer disc, in which case you have almost twice as much room to work with). The default rates in Vegas are 9,500,000 bps maximum and 6,000,000 bps minimum, but these settings can be changed before encoding.
-
I usually work with a project as the same size as the original files, so my projects are in 1920x1080 at 59.97fps, then render to what ever I want, whether that is a DVD (16x9 MPEG2) or a h264 BluRay file.
-
For optimum quality, you need to set the average and maximum bit rates to the highest settings that will still create a file that's under 4.7 GB so it fits on a DVD
There are still DVD players out there that can't handle a combined bitrate over 10K. So if you are using LPCM audio (1536 bit), you want to be careful to keep the max video bitrate at 8.4K or below.
-
Thanks for the responses guys. I won't worry about rendering to one of the newer formats then. I am a little confused though: I thought avi was a better format than mpeg as it's uncompressed?
-
You say in your first post you have rendered to AVI for DVDs that is not possible as DVDs must be mpeg-2 so your dvd authoring program has then re-rendered your AVI to mpeg-2 for you.
-
AVI is roughly 13GBs per one hour of standard definition video. So above and beyond the matter of it not being DVD compliant - it's too big for DVD (you could only fit roughly 25 minutes on a disc).
-
sony Vegas has output options for DVD Architect compliant mpeg2 files, but make sure you go into the options and check the option to include audio. you can also adjust bitrates and add 2 pass encoding.
for youtube use one of the mp4 options
(http://i44.tinypic.com/2zpuw4g.jpg)
-
Thanks. Will try that way of doing it - will certainly save on space! :)