Thanks Richard/Ron,

I just ran yet another test in vdub with the resize set to 720x405 (16:9 ratio) using Lagarith compressor - and it renders beautifully. DVDA then prepared and burned it in proper aspect ratio. WTF?

I'm going to try another larger file now.

If the culprit is the resizing operation in Main Concept would a simple solution be to render your edited HDV footage as uncompressed SD avi in Vegas (ie resize). Then render this avi file to mpeg2 using mainconcept in Vegas. Or am I missing a vital point.

You would still have a resizing problem. The Lanczos3 resizer is important. It does a much better job.

Thanks Richard/Ron,

I just ran yet another test in vdub with the resize set to 720x405 (16:9 ratio) using Lagarith compressor - and it renders beautifully. DVDA then prepared and burned it in proper aspect ratio. WTF?

I'm going to try another larger file now.

Well, I'm not exactly sure why, but that 720x405 setting works beautifully in DVDA

Well, I'm not exactly sure why, but that 720x405 setting works beautifully in DVDA

Welcome to my workflow.

Lagarith + Lanczos = Beautiful downscales.

The 720x405 works fine for SD. It's a bit tricky for those with 16:9 TVs. 720x480 with the widescreen flag on should work fine for making SD discs and it's what I tend to do these days.

Perrone and others,

Thanks for all the help! That's the kind of DVD quality I was expecting from an HD-SD conversion.

Hi,

When rendering the HQ AVI file from Vegas using the Lagarith codec, for importing into Virtualdub, do you set the aspect ratio as 1440:1080 with PAR at 1.333333 (ie same as source) or use custom setting 1920:1080 with PAR square pixels. Apologies if this is a basic question. I don't have Vegas in front of me.

I avoid non-square pixels like the plague. They complicate matters more than necessary. Once you get to square pixels everything becomes perfectly simple.

Hi,

When rendering the HQ AVI file from Vegas using the Lagarith codec, for importing into Virtualdub, do you set the aspect ratio as 1440:1080 with PAR at 1.333333 (ie same as source) or use custom setting 1920:1080 with PAR square pixels. Apologies if this is a basic question. I don't have Vegas in front of me.

I export out at 1440x1080, i.e. no change, so that VD can handle all the resizing. VD squashes the on-screen preview because it doesn't recognise the non-square pixels, but don't let this bother you, because you will get the correct geometry back after resizing to 720x480 and making a 16:9 DVD.

I certainly would not want to upsize to 1920x1080 just to resize back to SD resolution again.

Richard

Very true Richard, very true.

Perrone,

Are you shooting 1080/30p with your EX1 and creating interlaced SD DVDs from that or are you shooting 1080/60i?

Thanks,

John

Perrone,

Are you shooting 1080/30p with your EX1 and creating interlaced SD DVDs from that or are you shooting 1080/60i?

Thanks,

John

I don't generally have to create DVDs from stuff I shoot. Occasionally, but not often. The last DVD project I shot, I did create 60i DVDs from 1080p/30 though. Generally, my delivery is for the web, and I shoot 24p. I shot 720/60p for a project last month but that was not DVD delivery.

Hi Guys

Just for interest I'm shooting in AVCHD 1920x1080i and due to a lack of CPU power I am currently transcoding to a variety of formats to see what works best. I have tried a variety of codecs to AVI and also the little package called Upshift which transcodes to a 50mbs M2t file.
In Vegas, rendering all the different footages to a standard PAL Widescreen Mpeg2 I must admit that it was hard to tell the difference but the M2t transcoded file had a definate edge!!
I don't use DVA as an authoring program but rather use DVDLab and the end result is pretty good and more importantly the workflow is almost as quick as SD!!!

Chris

Following Perrone's basic workflow, I tried a bit of footage and am quite impressed with the results.
I rendered the same clean (no effects etc) 1440*1080i clip from Vegas using:
a) Main Concept DVD Architect PAL Widescreen Video Stream template
b) Cineform Neo Scene Codec at 1440*1080 (.avi)

Imported the Cineform file into Virtual Dub. Applied the resize filter (720*576 PAL) using the Lanczos3 filter mode - rendered back out of Virtual Dub using the same Cineform codec.

Imported both the Main Concept and Cineform/Virtual Dub files into a Vegas Pal Widescreen project and took these two frame grabs. I'm very impressed with the overall sharper image - and there is more detail.

Sweet!

Dennis:

There is quite a bit of gridding in the virtual dub image. Im not sure if that would be usable for me. The good thing is that there is not much moire effect.

I'm learning here so be kind. I shoot a 5D MK2 with RODE mic which produces .MOV - then convert the MOV to Cineform 720 AVIs.....which feom reading the thread is lossy :-(

Any how i edit with Sony Vegas Studio 9 PE....to MP4

I'd like to produce a great looking DVD that can be played in a regular DVD player since most folks don't have BluRay players yet.....could someone point me to the thread that tells me the best way to do that...

The DVD Architect (from Vegas9 export) produced a totally crappy donversion that wasn't watchable....Do i need to be rendering to MP2?

Please be kind and point me to the correct thread.....

TIA
Harry

Help us understand what you're doing?

You start with a native .MOV file.

You convert that to Cineform (why?)

You convert that to MP4 (why?)

You put the .MP4 files into DVDA and convert to .MPG for DVDs.


At what step in this workflow do you go from HD to SD? Why are you converting your file so many times?

Dennis:

There is quite a bit of gridding in the virtual dub image. Im not sure if that would be usable for me. The good thing is that there is not much moire effect.

I should point out that the images that I provided were a small section of the SD screen grab blown up - I picked the bit with the girl's hair that was backlit by the sun to show the finest detail part of the grab - so don't judge the images as an actual whole SD frame.

<<Help us understand what you're doing?>>
<<You start with a native .MOV file
<<You convert that to Cineform (why?).>>
Because the avi produced makes editing on a PC running Vegas smoother

<<You convert that to MP4 (why?)>>
I had been producing WMVs and uploading to Vimeo, YouTube and SmugMug and these all prefer to convert from MP4s

<<At what step in this workflow do you go from HD to SD?>>
Still trying to figure that out - I did the ol Vegas export to DVD Architect and it burned to DVD which i tried to place into a player for my HDTV and though i realized it would not be HD it looked terrible.

Why are you converting your file so many times?
Convert ftom MOV to AVI for editing (Cineform allows smooth playback in editor)
Render edited AVI to MP4 final file (720 not 1080)

I went to MP4 cause one person said they could not get SmugMug uploaded video to play period (that turned out to be a bug on SmugMugs part)

I would like to be able to produce a DVD that looked good for playback on most DVD players just as an alternative means of distribution. Write now I must just load the MP4s onto a DVD data disk and simply ask user to copy to their hard drive and play in VLC.

So the MP4 was to get the most quality in the smallest size for web and compter viewing.

Now if i want to produce the best quality to burn to a DVD for playback in a standard entertainment system i don't mind extra work i just need the knowledge to do so. The thread here is super though over my head at times....Thanks!!

Harry

Ok, I see where you're at.

Workflow should look like this:

1. Convert to Cineform
2. Finish editing
3. Produce MP4 for uploads
4. Bring Cineform file into Virtualdub and resize with Lanczos scaler.
5. Export Lagarith or HuffYUV compressed AVI
6. Bring avi from step 5 into DVDA and make your disk.

Alternately, you could bring the avi back into Vegas (or tmpenc) and cut your mpeg2 for DVD there along with separate audio. Either method will work.

Thanks this is great info.

So the mp4 is just as good as the MP2 for DVD creation? Is the MP2 always keep the audio seperate then.

DVDA is DVD Architect i assume....I need to ramp up on using it too - usually just have one video clip to burn so don't need all the chapters etc......

Thanks - i'll try this this afternoon.

Harry

Excellent thread - useful advise.

Would any of the discussion so far relate to converting 1080i to 720p - for example to convert footage shot on a Canon XHA1 1080 25f over to 720p ?

Couple of clarifications please...

1. Convert to Cineform
2. Finish editing
3. Produce MP4 for uploads (good til here)
4. Bring Cineform file into Virtualdub and resize with Lanczos scaler. (the Cineform file is pre edited avi. Don't i need work with my completed edited version but it's in MP4 - Can i bring the MP4 into Virtualdub?)
5. Export Lagarith or HuffYUV compressed AVI
6. Bring avi from step 5 into DVDA and make your disk.

So the mp4 is just as good as the MP2 for DVD creation? Is the MP2 always keep the audio seperate then.


No. MP4 is NOT a valid type for creating DVDs. ONLY Mpeg2 is. So if you bring an Mpeg4 file into your DVD authoring program, it will convert it on the spot to Mpeg2, thus causing further loss of quality.


DVDA is DVD Architect i assume....I need to ramp up on using it too - usually just have one video clip to burn so don't need all the chapters etc......


Yes DVDA is DVD Architect. If you open that application, choose New > Single Movie. It will let you select a video and audio file. It will not create a menu or separate chapters. It just makes a simple DVD that auto-plays when inserted into a DVD player.

Couple of clarifications please...

4. Bring Cineform file into Virtualdub and resize with Lanczos scaler. (the Cineform file is pre edited avi. Don't i need work with my completed edited version but it's in MP4 - Can i bring the MP4 into Virtualdub?)


Virtualdub ONLY understand .avi files (and a couple specialized files with some hacks) so you will need to create an .avi master to bring into virtualdub. This should be done with a lossless .avi codec like Lagarith, HuffYUV, or uncompressed. Cineform is also a legal type to bring into Virtualdub, but it is not lossless.

Perrone don't shoot me! I'm close to being dangerous with this new knowledge. Couple more questions then i promise i'll figure out the rest.

So what i have so far is this:
1. Convert 1080 .MOV into 720 .AVI (take the lossy hit)
2. Edit video, add titles, cross fades, credits, whatever - finish content of movie.
3. Render in Vegas Studio to ? (.AVI again?)
4. Bring finished rendered .AVI into Virtualdub and resize (what size?) with Lanczos scaler.
5. Within Virtualdub, export a Lagarith or HuffYUV compressed AVI
6. Bring that into DVDA and select single movie and it will automatically convert it to a MP2 for DVD burn.

What am i missing?

Thank you for your patience
Harry

So what i have so far is this:
1. Convert 1080 .MOV into 720 .AVI (take the lossy hit)


Does not have to be lossy, but if you want Cineform on the timeline, then yes it's slightly lossy. There are ways around this, but it's beyond the scope of this thread, and has been discussed at length on this forum. Basically it's the offline/online editing workflow and is lossless while still giving speed on the timeline.


2. Edit video, add titles, cross fades, credits, whatever - finish content of movie.


Correct


3. Render in Vegas Studio to ? (.AVI again?)


Render to mpeg4 for your upload to smugmug, then render in HuffYUV or Lagarith lossless to import into VirtualDub.


4. Bring finished rendered .AVI into Virtualdub and resize (what size?) with Lanczos scaler.


NTSC size is 720x480.


5. Within Virtualdub, export a Lagarith or HuffYUV compressed AVI


Correct


6. Bring that into DVDA and select single movie and it will automatically convert it to a MP2 for DVD burn.


Correct.

I don't generally have to create DVDs from stuff I shoot. Occasionally, but not often. The last DVD project I shot, I did create 60i DVDs from 1080p/30 though. Generally, my delivery is for the web, and I shoot 24p. I shot 720/60p for a project last month but that was not DVD delivery.

Did you by any chance test it on a CRT TV? I am going crazy trying to get SD DVD free from aliasing and twitter from 1080/30p EX1 footage.

If yes, how did you do it?

Thanks,

John

Did you by any chance test it on a CRT TV? I am going crazy trying to get SD DVD free from aliasing and twitter from 1080/30p EX1 footage.

If yes, how did you do it?

Thanks,

John

My editing machine previews out to a JVC Professional 14" calibrated monitor. I don't do anything special, and don't have twitter or aliasing issues.

My editing machine previews out to a JVC Professional 14" calibrated monitor. I don't do anything special, and don't have twitter or aliasing issues.

I use the JVC 15 inch professional CRT calibrated monitor, but I see the problems. When you say you don't do anything special, how are you interlacing the footage? Are you resizing using the method you described using Virtual Dub resize first and then interlacing using AE? Have you viewed it on a standard CRT television played from a regular DVD player?

John

I use the JVC 15 inch professional CRT calibrated monitor, but I see the problems. When you say you don't do anything special, how are you interlacing the footage? Are you resizing using the method you described using Virtual Dub resize first and then interlacing using AE? Have you viewed it on a standard CRT television played from a regular DVD player?

John

When I bring the material into DVD Architect, I get asked what kind of DVD I want to create. I choose NTSC 60i. I don't do anything beyond this. But maybe your source material is different than mine.

I generally write 30 minutes to a DVD RW to take home and check colors, sound, etc on a normal SDTV. I then check the DVD on our 72" plasmas at the office. If I like it, I burn the full project.

So my 5D Mk2 shoots 1080/30fps so should i produce an AVI in Vegas at that? (ie no resizing) I had been rendering in Vegas to 720.

I did find Lanczos scaler.
Where is the HuffYUV or Lagarith lossless in Vegas and in VirtualDub. I've spent hours looking for those suckas!!

Thanks

So my 5D Mk2 shoots 1080/30fps so should i produce an AVI in Vegas at that? (ie no resizing) I had been rendering in Vegas to 720.

I did find Lanczos scaler.
Where is the HuffYUV or Lagarith lossless in Vegas and in VirtualDub. I've spent hours looking for those suckas!!

Thanks

In Vegas choose Render As and pick a template. Then click on Custom/Video/Video Format. They are in the drop down list.

In Virtual Dub they are under the Video/Compression/Select Video Compression list

John

So my 5D Mk2 shoots 1080/30fps so should i produce an AVI in Vegas at that? (ie no resizing) I had been rendering in Vegas to 720.

I did find Lanczos scaler.
Where is the HuffYUV or Lagarith lossless in Vegas and in VirtualDub. I've spent hours looking for those suckas!!

Thanks

Hi Harry. Somewhere you have to resize the video down to DVD resolution (720x480). You can do it in Vegas or DVDA, or you can use VD to get better quality, which is what this thread started off talking about. There is no point rendering to an intermediate size like 720, so if you need 2 sizes of output, it is better to render 2 times.

The Huffyuv and Lagarith codec will not be on your system unless you downloaded and installed them. Definitely worth doing that, especially since they are free.

Richard

Thanks

They are in ther drop down for configure only for certain video formats - they are not in the video format dropdown. Maybe before i die i'll be able to get enough info to do this. Appreciate all the help....I'll keep trying.

Thanks Richard,

That helps....i'll google those items and install them ( i actually see them out from the configure) under the Encoder tab of the FFdShow video codec

Thanks
Harry

So i've come a long way in the last couple of days and i appreciate the patience shown here with me.

At this point i've refined my process to this:

1. Pull .MOV (native 1920x1080p/30fps) into timeline
2. Edit video, add titles, cross fades, credits, whatever - finish content of movie.
3. Render in Vegas Studio to 1920x1080p/30fps with Lagarith pixel ar 1:1 (if i play resultant AVI in Windows Media Player it'd like learning how to drive a stick shift - figured that was my poor computer cound'nt process the full HD but the MP2 will be smooth)
4. Pull the full sized AVI into VirtualDub
5. In VirtualDub set the filter - add resize with Lanczos scaler to 720x405 (Match original AR)
6. In VirtualDub choose compression type for output to a Lagarith or HuffYUV AVI (Think i may have skipped this step in VD though i did this already in Vegas when i rendered....do i need to do it twice?)
7. Save .avi file
7. Bring that into DVDA and select single movie and it will automatically convert it to a MP2 for DVD burn.

I'm still crankin the VD ouput at this time........I'll take it all the way through DVDA and report back my progress.

Again thank you for all the great advice here!!

Harry, you're just about there brother!


6. In VirtualDub choose compression type for output to a Lagarith or HuffYUV AVI (Think i may have skipped this step in VD though i did this already in Vegas when i rendered....do i need to do it twice?)


You're not doing it twice. Every editing program needs to know how you want the output from *IT'S* work done. If you don't tell VDub different, it will write your output to uncompressed AVI. Which will create a file about 3-4 times larger than the original. The convert you did in Vegas has zero bearing here once you resize the footage. So yes, you need to tell VDub what you want to encode the footage as.



I'm still crankin the VD ouput at this time........I'll take it all the way through DVDA and report back my progress.


You're going to love it compared to what you had before. Now I will say this. I prefer to do my mpeg2 compression outside of DVDA. Either with Vegas, or with another good Mpeg2 tool. DVDA will do a nice job, and you'll see the difference. But if you want to step up later to a better mpeg2 tool you'll get another gain. Think of using a separate Mpeg2 encoder in this workflow, like using VirtualDub to rescale. There are just better tools out there to get the job done.

Harry, you're just about there brother!



You're not doing it twice. Every editing program needs to know how you want the output from *IT'S* work done. If you don't tell VDub different, it will write your output to uncompressed AVI. Which will create a file about 3-4 times larger than the original. The convert you did in Vegas has zero bearing here once you resize the footage. So yes, you need to tell VDub what you want to encode the footage as.

Turns out i did have it set to Lagarith compression. The resize with the Lancose3


You're going to love it compared to what you had before. Now I will say this. I prefer to do my mpeg2 compression outside of DVDA. Either with Vegas, or with another good Mpeg2 tool. DVDA will do a nice job, and you'll see the difference. But if you want to step up later to a better mpeg2 tool you'll get another gain. Think of using a separate Mpeg2 encoder in this workflow, like using VirtualDub to rescale. There are just better tools out there to get the job done.

So DVDA will do a nice job but actually taking the VD resized AVI back into Vegas and rerender to MP2 (which Vegas type do you use?)

Not quite sure what you were trying to say here, but it is my *belief* that taking the video back into Vegas for the mpeg2 render will yield higher quality results.

Perrone, Thank you for all of the helpful information that you have been sharing with us. When I posed the question when I started the thread, I had no idea how much useful information would come out in the discussion.

Perrone, Thank you for all of the helpful information that you have been sharing with us. When I posed the question when I started the thread, I had no idea how much useful information would come out in the discussion.

I beat my head against this stuff for weeks trying to find a better way to help out a friend. I must have tried a dozen codecs. To make matters tougher, he was on a Mac and I was on a PC.

I worked with the same guy on a different project and had to figure out HD PC <-> Mac workflow. That one took a while too!

I've gotten so much good info from this place, I am just glad to be able to give a little back from what I've learned on long, frustrating nights.

Perrone,

Just that you said DVDA did a nice job on the MPEG2 but i heard you to also say that Vegas did a better job outputting MPEG2.

So I have a resized to 720x480 AVI so bring that into Vegas again and

1. render using which type to output to MPEG2 in Vegas?
2. i guess apply the Lagarith again here too?

Then DVDA will not have to resize or inplicitly have to convert to MPEG2 right?

Thanks
Harry

Found the MPEG-2 Main Concepts type but could not customize the video to change the output size to same VD produced which was 720x405 - so all i could do is bring the product of VD into DVDA and burning to DVD now.....

Found the MPEG-2 Main Concepts type but could not customize the video to change the output size to same VD produced which was 720x405 - so all i could do is bring the product of VD into DVDA and burning to DVD now.....

This is correct. DVDA or Mainconcept in Vegas will both create a 720x480 project. You want that, so don't worry.

This is correct. DVDA or Mainconcept in Vegas will both create a 720x480 project. You want that, so don't worry.

But niether enabled the the Custimize deal where i could specify the Lararith for the render.
I'm re-rendering out of vegas cause the strait through DVDA itself didn't look too hot.

So when I bring this .MPG file 720x480 into the DVDA application will it recognize that it doesn't need to re-render in DVDA and just create the folder and burn the DVD?

But niether enabled the the Custimize deal where i could specify the Lararith for the render.
I'm re-rendering out of vegas cause the strait through DVDA itself didn't look too hot.


It's not supposed to. You are now encoding a DVD format which is Mpeg2. The Lagarith codec was just the intermediate step to make sure you lost nothing along the way in getting to this final step.


So when I bring this .MPG file 720x480 into the DVDA application will it recognize that it doesn't need to re-render in DVDA and just create the folder and burn the DVD?

Correct. Once you output the Mpeg2 with the template in Vegas, DVDA will not recompress it. It's DVD ready, and it just organizes the DVD structure and write the file. VERY quick.

Thanks Perrone,

You da man! I now have enough to go through the whole workflow and tweek it here and there.

the video i was using looked a little better but wasn't the best exposed video to start with. Also this last DVD burn had no sound so something fell through the cracks. The virtualdub process took like 8 hours to complete!! for a 20 minute clip.......that's a long time.

I'll repeat the process on aother video soon and see it i can't make it better.

Thanks for eveyone's help!!

Thanks Perrone,

You da man! I now have enough to go through the whole workflow and tweek it here and there.

the video i was using looked a little better but wasn't the best exposed video to start with. Also this last DVD burn had no sound so something fell through the cracks. The virtualdub process took like 8 hours to complete!! for a 20 minute clip.......that's a long time.

I'll repeat the process on aother video soon and see it i can't make it better.

Thanks for eveyone's help!!

It's so hard talking someone through this workflow when they don't have a firm grip on some general things.

When you create DVDs, the video portion and the audio portion are compressed separately. So you compress the video in Vegas to Mpeg2. Then you compress the audio separately with the Dolby Digitial AC-3 Studio Template. Name this the same thing as you named the video file, and when you are in DVDA and drop the video file on the timeline, the audio will come with it automatically.

The Audio must be compressed separately, because audio in the DVD legal format isn't compressed with the same codec as the video. So you must separate them.

Virtualdub is generally quite fast for me, but it does use the GPU on my machines which helps I guess. Resize can be a pretty heavy function, but it's not the worst.

Thanks Perrone,

The virtualdub process took like 8 hours to complete!! for a 20 minute clip.......that's a long time.

I'll repeat the process on aother video soon and see it i can't make it better.



Harry, until you get your workflow figured out, it's good to use a 15 or even a 30 second clip. Everything speeds up, and you can tweak settings until you find the right one. Once you've got your workflow figured out on a 15-second clip, write it down (in vdub, you can set your 'resize' settings as default), then start working on bigger files.

BTW, it shouldn't take 8 hours to resize a 20-minute clip.

BTW, it shouldn't take 8 hours to resize a 20-minute clip.

Yep, he's doing something wrong, or has a VERY slow machine.

[QUOTE=Perrone Ford;1263561]It's so hard talking someone through this workflow when they don't have a firm grip on some general things.[QUOTE]

My apologies. I always had the DVD app split the two in the burner app. My bad. I'd figured it out after i posted that.....

I'll sign outta here and give you all some peace.

Thanks