More Questions on Rendering..
 

Life was so simple back in the tape days...


Okay, I have this footage (m2t) recorded in 1080i 30p with my Sony Z5u.
The final destination will be on a DVD.

I open up vegas and I set the properties to
HDV 720-30p 29.97fps (there is no 1080 30p) option.

To render I pick
-MainConcept MPEG-2
-Template:DVD ARCHITECT NTSC WIDESCREEN
and then I render and everything is fine.


Here's my barrage of questions
My client has a HDTV with a regular DVD player. What would be the optimal settings to take advantage and show off my camera's performance...


1. What do I select from the Template in the Render As screen?
2. What's the diff between HDV 720 30p and the Blu-Ray options?
3. Is 1080i 30p missing?
4. I gather that if my client only has a DVD player with a HDTV, then the choices are limited to what I have selected above? Yeah?

Thanks in advance.

"My client has a HDTV with a regular DVD player. What would be the optimal settings to take advantage and show off my camera's performance..."

Final output is gonna be 720x480 widescreen unless the "regular DVD player" plays BD on DVD. Handled correctly it'll still look good.

SETUP
0) (optional) add the Sony Sharpen filter to your video output fx, leave it at 0.000
(it's a cheap fix solution to compensate when scaling from HDV to DVD-WS resolution... a better way is to use AviSynth Lanczos scaling but that's probably too much trouble for the scope of this task)

VIDEO
1) render video to MainConcept MPEG-2 template "DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen video stream"
a) go to Custom Settings > System tab and tick the "Save as separate elementary streams" box
(this means the audio is done in a separate render, not combined with the video)

AUDIO
2) render audio to Dolby Digital AC-3 with this tweaked setting:
a) select the "Stereo DVD" template
b) go Custom Settings > Audio Service tab, change Dialog normalization to -31dB
c) go Preprocessing tab, change Line mode profile to None, change RF mode profile to None
d) save this as a preset!

when done, you'll have an M2V (video) and AC3 (audio) file ready for transcoding in whatever DVD authoring app ur using.

For future reference, consider recording in SD if you know you're going to be delivering in SD. Much simpler. There are no advantages to recording in HD for SD delivery unless your client might want an HD version in the future.

Aspect ratio is maintained from start to finish and your job is much easier.

Unless your HD camera takes horrible SD footage. When I was shooting with a Canon XH A1 I would never use it to shoot SD (well I did once). The SD from the camera looked far worse than HD footage converted to SD. Shoot HD also gives you the capability to slightly zoom in on some areas and then pan in post and the picture won't degrade as much as doing this with SD footage.

-Garrett

Good point...I have shot with that cam and the SD footage was less than stellar. The Z5 on the other hand records excellent SD footage.