Frustrated with HD output quality
 

Hi,
I have a Sony HC3 which has been wonderful so far. Our first child was just born and we wanted to capture the moments. When I output directly from the HC3 to my plasma or front projection system via component the video image looks stunning and reminds be of the HD material we see on HD TV.

The problem is that once I capture the video in HD via vegas and save it as a new format, playback on the same displays is terrible. (I have PCs connected to each display device so I can use any codec whose rendered files can be played by a PC.

The steps I followed were:
1) capture into vegas movie studio 6 platinum via firewire and save as an mt2 file (with project properties set to 1080i-60)
2) add mt2 file to timeline
3) "Render As" to the final file format (I have tried WMV, MainConcept Mpeg 2, and AVI). I have tried rendering as 1080p, 1080i, and 720p.

The resulting video is very soft, colors have lost heir punch, HD details are lost, and it is almost like the wonderful job of image stabalization done by the HC3 has been reversed. Any motion in the video image makes the image almost unwatchable.

Any help would greatly be appreciated.

Are you playing the final output through your computer? Might be a grahpic card problem. Try print it back to HDV tape and view it then, thats what I normally do and am very pleased with the results. By the way congradulations!! Not only having a baby but caputring the moments on HD!!!!

I'll buy some new tapes and give it a try. Thank you, btw, for your well wishes.

I found one solution, but I don't like it.
I downloaded a copy of ulead 10 PLUS. I captured an HD video clip directly from the cam, and rendered it to 720p and 1080i WMV 9 files. I am extremely pleased with the result as I could not distnguish the wmv from the direct cam playback (even on a 110" screen!)

I am hoping that there is simply a step i am missing in the vegas workflow. Any help is appreciated.

All I can assume is you've got something set wrong in your render settings, or are using a wrong bitrate.
If you are rendering to a .m2t file using the HDV template, and your footage is noticably different from the original you definitely have something misplaced. If you are rendering to an HDCAM avi, same story. If you're looking to render to SD, then you should only need to set to "Best" on output, and nothing more.

what do you mean 110" screen?

I have a high definition front projection system. The screen is 110" (diagonal).

Hi Douglas,the captured .mt2 files are fine. Its the conversion files that are the problem (ie, rendering the captured .mt2 files to AVI or WMV)

Chris, how do you output the AVI or WMV to the projector? Is it using DVI or S-video or component cable?

RGB (VGA). Component video could also be used.

so, the problem may be just that.
Different connector is taking different kind of signal.

eg:
*composite is always SD signal, eg 720x576
*VGA may have resolution dependency eg: 640x480
*component is almost always SD signal (720x576), unless it is written "HD component".

And if you output an HD material via SD path, it is always down-rezed. So the quality is SD, not HD.

to ensure you are outputting HD res & HD signal, use HDMI or HD-SDI, or Component HD.

Hi, RGB is basically considered on the same level as component, sometimes a little better (so I usually choose VGA over component if I have a choice). There is no resolution dependancy for VGA.

(officially VGA means 640x480, but the same HW interface for VGA [ ie, RGB] is compatible with higher resolutions including HD resolutions)

hi Chris,

VGA signal resolution is dependent of VGA card & VGA circuitry in the projector.

some projector is able up to 'VGA' res (640x480)
some is able up to XGA (800x600)
others able up to SXGA or WXGA or WSXGA, 720P HD, 1080HD, etc...

it is also dependent of your VGA card wether it outputs 640x480 signal or 1920x1080 signal. Can you check your VGA card settings?

Component, can be RGB or YUV. Apart from that, they can also be HD or SD. Check to make sure if your component signal is indeed outputting HD component signal, not SD signal.

Component cable from HDV cameras is most likely HD component, yet you can set them also as SD component, for displaying in SD televisions. Eg. in Z1, if you enable downconversion in its menu, the component output is becomes SD component, not operating as HD component mode anymore.

computer resolution and projector are HD :) I'm a techie :). There is no down convert to SD. It is clearly a compression issue rather than a display scaling issue

Okay. Haven't said anything cause I don't know Vegas that well. I have Vegas movie Studio + DVD Platinum, which captures in native HDV .m2t format.

I also have Premiere Pro 2.0 which I use exclusively for my HDV native editing. I was having same problem rendering the file .m2t file out. It was clearly a compression problem. I located a quality slider in the video output encoder, and was able to up the output to a max of 5, which gave me essentially the same quality as the original. I'm guessing you have to find that in Vegas.... max it out where ever it is located.