How well does Vegas resize 1080?

[Jeff Harper]

I have 1080 24p footage I want to put on a DVD. Since it does not need deinterlaced, etc, how will Vegas 11 do resizing it? I'd like to avoid conversion if possible.

I may just try it and see, but my TV is not reliable, so I don't trust what I see. (Need a new one)

I have to burn 24 copies, so I don't want to screw it up.

[Jerry Amende]

It should work fine. Make sure you set your "Video Rendering Quality" to "Best".

...Jerry

[David Jimerson]

The AF100 DVD is comprised entirely of 1080 24p AVCHD footage rendered directly to 480 24p MPEG-2 for DVD from Vegas 10.

Older versions of Vegas had problems, but no longer.

[Craig Kovatch]

I found Vegas does a very poor job downconverting HD to SD. I ended up downloading a program that converts hd footage to an uncompressed SD avi file. I then used DVD Architect to convert that to mpeg for DVD burning. The end result is pretty good. Far better than vegas IMO. It's been a while since I've used the program and I forget the name. When I get home tonight I'll post the name of it.

[Jeff Harper]

Thanks Jerry, David. I have rendered many 720p weddings for DVDs and they have all turned out extremely nice, they look nearly as good as the Bluray version, at least the closeups do; but I've been under the impression for along time (old info, I guess) that 1080 didn't do so well.

Anyway, thanks for the encouragement guys.

Craig, maybe you're deinterlacing also? Could that be part of the problem? Or are you using an old version of Vegas?

[Jeff Harper]

You guys are right, the DVD looks outstanding. I'm using the same method I used for 720, I crop the footage on the timeline to fit 480 using Aspect Ratio script, so it reduces the work Vegas has to do, and it turned out perfect.

[Craig Kovatch]

Didn't make it home last night to get the name of the software. Sorry. (but it was a good night!)

I've been using Vegas Pro 10, but just upgraded to 11 a couple of weeks ago, so i haven't tried downconverting 1080 to 480. I found v10 had horrendous aliasing. Even version 9. Maybe Sony fixed this with version 11. I hope so. Rendering HD to SD like I was doing took up to 8 hours for a two hour project.

[Jeff Harper]

craig, try cropping the footage on the timeline to 16:9 aspect ratio, use Aspect Ratio script if needed to do it all at once, then set project properties to sd 16:9 There should be no aliasing of any kind.

I wonder if you are deinterlacing when you shouldn't, or vice versa, but only you know that.

For me this morning it took 15 minutes for 1080 24p (one hour ten minute) project to render to SD, and it came out perfect for me, even though I added a 60i wrapper to the 24p footage. Project also had heavy color correction.

If you need the aspect ratio script let me know and I'll email it to you.

[David Jimerson]

Originally Posted by Craig Kovatch

I found v10 had horrendous aliasing.

That's not what I've seen. V9 and previous, yes, but not V10.

[David Jimerson]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

even though I added a 60i wrapper to the 24p footage.

For DVD? No need. In fact, you really *shouldn't*.

[Craig Kovatch]

Thanks for the tip Jeff. I'll try it this weekend

[Jeff Harper]

David, please explain. I just burned 25 of them! I thought, perhaps mistakenly, that for DVD the wrapper would ensure compatiblity.

[Jerry Amende]

I love these posts that prompt me to do a little research - it gives an old dog the opportunity to learn some new tricks.

First, it appears that DVD Architect does not have any native 24p options. In other words, if you are going that route, you must use the 60i wrapper. Edit: This statement is not true - read several posts down

However, the with the Tools->Burn Disc->DVD option directly from Vegas 11, you can create a native 24p DVD.

So, I ran a test creating a DVD using both procedures (starting with 1920x1080 60p footage). In both cases I used the default render settings. Both DVDs played great and both had excellent images on my i7 laptop and Samsung BDP1600 BluRay Player w/ Samsung LCD TV.

However, when I took the DVDs to my very old Toshiba SD-1800 DVD player connected a Sony Trinitron CRT TV, the 24p/60i DVD played smoothly with a great image. However, the native 24p DVD played for a few seconds, momentarily paused, then continued - almost like it was trying to catch up with its buffering. This could be because the video bitrate of the 24p/60i DVD was 6,176 kbps whereas the native 24p bitrate was 7,955 but who knows? The image quality was visually identical.

The bottom line... if it were me I'd go with the 24p in 60i wrapper - the safest choice.

Interested in hearing other opinions.
...Jerry

[David Jimerson]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

David, please explain. I just burned 25 of them! I thought, perhaps mistakenly, that for DVD the wrapper would ensure compatiblity.

Use the DVD Architect 24p DVD Widescreen template. You're putting in (60i) interlacing where there doesn't need to be any and compromising quality on progressive displays.

Any player can play a 24p DVD. The player itself will output a 60i stream if necessary. You don't have to put it in yourself.

[Jerry Amende]

@David,

How would you do this in DVDA? I can't find the 24p option.

...Jerry