I have been playing around with rendering in Vegas 9 and I have come to the result so far that I cannot get a decent mpg2 render. The original 1080i footage after being rendered to mpg2 with the MainConcept template and imported into DVD architect looks like video shot with a cell phone. Plus lots of jagged lines, blurry, etc.

To author 1080i to dvd what are others doing? Perhaps I should look at another program for rendering to mpg2?
I have looked through countless threads and still I am stumped. I am hoping that maybe I just missed checking off a box in some deep menu.

This is getting so frustrating that I am almost ready to go back to shooting SD as my audience will be watching the finished product on SD dvd anyways. My wife thinks I am just hiding in the basement playing.

Vegas has one of the absolute best MPEG codecs going so changing to something else to render in isn't the answer. I have to ask are the project properties set to match the footage properties.
IOW are the project properties set to 1080i or are they set to something else? Also what template are you using to render? If it's the default template that could very be the problem. What bitrate are you using? VBR or CBR? One pass or 2? Have you had this same problem in prior renders or did it appear on on this particular project?
A bit more information from you would help us all figure out what the problem might be.

Until Vegas 10, Vegas didn't scale 1080 directly to 480 very well. An intermediate step going through 720 solved the problem. You may try rendering to 720/60p and then to 480 using the DVD Architect template.

Remember to set the render quality to BEST because you're rescaling.

I convert all my HD footage with Cineform HDLink and the resulting DVDs are stunning.

Hi

I have been playing around with rendering in Vegas 9 and I have come to the result so far that I cannot get a decent mpg2 render. The original 1080i footage after being rendered to mpg2 with the MainConcept template and imported into DVD architect looks like video shot with a cell phone. Plus lots of jagged lines, blurry, etc.

To author 1080i to dvd what are others doing? Perhaps I should look at another program for rendering to mpg2?
I have looked through countless threads and still I am stumped. I am hoping that maybe I just missed checking off a box in some deep menu.

This is getting so frustrating that I am almost ready to go back to shooting SD as my audience will be watching the finished product on SD dvd anyways. My wife thinks I am just hiding in the basement playing.

It isn't easy going from 1080i to SD resolutions and some editors often use very crude resizing methods. Also make sure you view it back on a TV screen rather than a computer before making a judgement as viewing interlaced SD close up on a computer screen is not how interlaced SD is designed to be shown.

Most of the issues come about due to interlacing as 1080i has to be de-interlaced, then resized, then interlaced again, but the result is only a crude approximate representation of how that interlaced footage would have been acquired natively by an SD camera. Also with HD to SD you end up with too much detail in the SD picture which then is difficult to encode to MPEG2 and sharp edges make interlacing artefacts all the more visible.

Tips as already mentioned, try an intermediate 720p step, this extra step acts like a low pass filter, removing some detail and making the final SD footage interlace together better. Make sure when you encode to DVD you set the MPEG2 quality slider to maximum and up the average bit-rate to at least 8000. You could also try adding a very small amount of a Gaussian blur to the HD footage.

Regards

Phil

This post describes your problem and possible solution. Start with Ron Evans post Fastest and Best way to downscale HD to SD - Page 4 - Grass Valley Desktop Solutions Forums (http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16947&page=4)

Thanks for all the great information guys, I am going to try out your tips this weekend.

This is what I was doing before.

Footage shot at 1080i 16mps Sony Avchd

Project properties in Vegas
HD1080 -60i (1920*1080 29.970fps)
Field Order- Upper field first
Full Resolution rendering quality--BEST
Deinterlace Method--Blend fields or sometimes Interpolate (tried em' both)
Adjust source media to better match render-- Checked

Render as properties
Main Concept Mpg2
Template--DVD Architect NTSC video stream
Aspect ratio-- 16:9
Variable bit rate checked and Two pass checked.

If anybody notices anything glaringly wrong please tell me. I am already going to make some adjustments with the helpful info I have received here.
I really liked my sd Canon GL2 but I just want to duplicate some of the awesome benefits of HD to DVD.

Thanks again,

I convert all my HD footage with Cineform HDLink and the resulting DVDs are stunning.

Jeff,

Not sure I understand. Is there a Cineform HDLink codec that can be added to Vegas when you are ready to render? Or do you edit with avi's and not avchd?

What is your output bitrate to mpeg2? Ideally, video and audio for DVD should not exceed a total of 8.5mbs. Some will advise a little lower than this to maintain DVD player compatibility. If under an hour in video length I would use constant bitrate at around 8mbs and AC3 audio at 320kbs.

Erik, I use HDlink, it is a program that will resize and deinterlace footage prior to your editing. You then edit the converted footage and render as regular SD 16:9 video, and it looks so good my clients think it's Bluray, and I'm not exaggerating.

HDLink has been discontinued, and I can't tell you what the replacement program is, but there is something new, less expensive.

There is a learning curve with converting footage, no matter which program you choose. It is a committment in time and money, but the results are well worth it. There are various free conversion workflows (Lancoz, etc.) but I gave up and bought Cineform. In the end, for a high-quality result with the least number of steps involved, Cineiform is the way to go.

Some people know how to get great results using Vegas, I don't know how they do it, tried that.

I am a full time videographer, and I do not have time to play with a dozen different workflows. I needed the best, I can't play around with this stuff as a hobbyists might do, so I jumped into Cineform with both feet, and I would not switch if you paid me.

Until Vegas 10, Vegas didn't scale 1080 directly to 480 very well. An intermediate step going through 720 solved the problem. You may try rendering to 720/60p and then to 480 using the DVD Architect template.

Remember to set the render quality to BEST because you're rescaling.

Thanks David,

But I cannot seem to find 720/60p render settings, could you recall where they would be located?

HD link produces an intermediate file, ie uncompresses AVCHD etc. The resulting files are way bigger than the originals, due to the decompression. It is genearally used to make editing highly compressed files, a lot easier on slower comuters. The resulting footage, after encoding to Mpeg2, will be no different than encoding the original files. I just makes the editing process a heck of a lot easier / faster.

Colin, HDLink resizes and deinterlaces footage much better than Vegas, it is the primary reason I use it, not for speed of editing, but that is a bonus. When I deinterlace and resize in Vegas it looks fairly crappy. Just tried it Friday again in Vegas 11, still no contest.

Interesting Jeff, must give it a try. I have only ever used HD Link to produce easier to use files, on slower machines

Eric, the discussion moved right on to deinterlace and resize methods, and there's a lot of valuable info above.

However, the number one cause of vhs-like quality in the Vegas to DVDA workflow is DVDA seeing something it doesn't like about a file, and recompressing it. One must be very aware of the conditions in which this might happen. If you're aware of all these issues, you can ignore the rest of this post...

If your project builds in DVDA are taking more than a few minutes, and/or if DVDA messages indicate that any elements will be recompressed, this is where you need to start.

First approach is to try a test where you render out of Vegas at project size in a relatively non-lossy format, then let DVDA do the compression. This isn't the best for quality, but can definitively establish if recompression was the issue all along.

For the steps in creating an MPEG2 render out of Vegas that DVDA will like, I highly recommend Edward Troxel's excellent newsletters. (http://jetdv.com) Don't worry that the Vegas-DVDA workflow was written for earlier versions, it hasn't changed much.

Seth,

I do have a feeling that compression/recompression has something to do with my issues. I just don't know enough yet to set the proper settings. The default templates look much worse than any renders I have done from mini-dv footage. But, am I right to assume that shooting HD footage and authoring to DVD should give me a better picture than shooting in SD and authoring to DVD? Otherwise, why do people even bother to shoot HD unless they are all authoring to Blu_ray'?

I have noticed that my static shots look decent, but as soon as their is a camera pan or moving object, it looks brutal. Could that be a hint to the problem? ie. compression, interlacing, etc?

I have attached a screen grab of what a pan looks like on a finished render. Lots of jagged lines, jittery picture.

Again, thanks everyone for your suggestions. Keep them coming!

When rendering to MPG2 Vegas Render As defaults to 8, 6, and 192,000. Set the low number to 2,000,000, leave the top number at 8,000,000 and work with the middle or Average number to fit the amount of time the video project fills on the timeline. those numbers will work for project length upto 70 minutes. If you don't set the rates correctly IE too high for the size of the project DVDA will recompress the video and since it's already be done once when it get recompressed it will look pretty bad.
Edwards newletter of June 2003 Vol 1 No. 7 has a bitrate chart on page 2. It's my bible for setting bitrates.
Give that a try and see how it works but you need to start with a clean project, IOW nothing that has been compressed. Start with the VEG file then render away and see how it comes out in DVDA.

Seth, excellent point, and good catch. Eric, what Seth points out is entirely correct. If you are rendering your files and they are non-DVDA compliant, DVDA will recompress them, often not to well.

Ok,

I will try the settings Don recommends and look up Edward Troxel's bit rate chart.

However, do I still choose the DVDA NTSC widescreen template, and then just choose Custom, and adjust settings for variable bit rate?

Thanks so much,

Eric

Eric, Short answer YES! Custom is your friend. I almost always use VBR (1 or 2 pass depending on content) set the Average number depending on the length of the project according to Edwards BR chart and I always use AC3 audio. It is compressed but allows for a higher BR for the video than PCM audio and frankly to my old ears there is no difference in quality in audio for the finished product.
See how it works out and let us know.

Hi

Seth,

I do have a feeling that compression/recompression has something to do with my issues. I just don't know enough yet to set the proper settings. The default templates look much worse than any renders I have done from mini-dv footage. But, am I right to assume that shooting HD footage and authoring to DVD should give me a better picture than shooting in SD and authoring to DVD? Otherwise, why do people even bother to shoot HD unless they are all authoring to Blu_ray'?

I have noticed that my static shots look decent, but as soon as their is a camera pan or moving object, it looks brutal. Could that be a hint to the problem? ie. compression, interlacing, etc?

I have attached a screen grab of what a pan looks like on a finished render. Lots of jagged lines, jittery picture.

Again, thanks everyone for your suggestions. Keep them coming!

What software are you playing that back in? It looks like it isn't being deinterlaced hence you see combing, so there may not be a problem at all with the encoding, just with whatever is playing it back.

Have you tried playing it back on a DVD player to a TV to see what it looks like?

Going from 1080i to SD will not necessarily give you a better picture than starting out in SD would, this is because resizing 1080i to interlaced SD is only giving you an approximation of interlaced SD.

Regards

Phil

Jeff, my best guess is that HDLink has been changed to Neoscene from reading on their website. The cost is $129, does that sound about right?

No, sadly. Neoscene will not resize. HDLink and was a part of NeoHD; it had cost $499, I think the new one is a studio thingy name, and HD Link is a part of that.

As an example, I often take 1440xX1080i resize it to 720p, to match my three 720p cameras, and it matches wonderfully, no deinterlacing articfacts, nothing, it is always perfect. My DVDs look so good I'd put mine up against a Bluray, they look that good.

Currently, I shoot 1080i and I deinterlace and resize with HD Link, but as mentioned I resize to 720p and edit with that and it too makes wonderful DVDs. Cineform can be a complete pain until you get the workflow down, but once you do, you are golden.

Hi



What software are you playing that back in? It looks like it isn't being deinterlaced hence you see combing, so there may not be a problem at all with the encoding, just with whatever is playing it back.

Have you tried playing it back on a DVD player to a TV to see what it looks like?

Going from 1080i to SD will not necessarily give you a better picture than starting out in SD would, this is because resizing 1080i to interlaced SD is only giving you an approximation of interlaced SD.

Regards

Phil

Hi Phil,

I played back the finished product on a regular dvd player and a BluRay player. Video looked badly on both. Especially pans.

What could have I done in rendering to cause the combing?

Over the next few days I have some time to try some of the suggestions here.

Thanks,


Eric

Now I see the HDLink in the Neo package, $299

Eric, Short answer YES! Custom is your friend. I almost always use VBR (1 or 2 pass depending on content) set the Average number depending on the length of the project according to Edwards BR chart and I always use AC3 audio. It is compressed but allows for a higher BR for the video than PCM audio and frankly to my old ears there is no difference in quality in audio for the finished product.
See how it works out and let us know.
Don, could you please give some examples where you use 1 pass. vs. 2 pass? Thanks.

David,
Sure. For most everything I do be it a wedding or a seminar I use 1 pass. What I have found is that 1 pass does a really nice job for those types of things. Even for wedding receptions dancing, 1 pass is quite good and since it's so dark and I cut pretty much all of my moves from one end of the dance floor to the other and most of my pans sweeping the floor from one subject to another 1 pass seems to work quite well.
If I'm doing something with a lot of fast movement in particular sports, football or basketball in particular, I more likely than not use 2 pass since it's difficult to cut around pans which is where I have found the interlacing shows the most.
I would have to say the majority of my stuff get's done 1 pass but 2 pass has "saved" me on a few occassions.

Just a word of caution for those considering HDLink. I just watched a DVD I burned, terrible flickering. "How could this be?" I asked myself. Especially upset because I just burned 10 copies, instead of testing first.

Apparently something is off in my project properties. I'm re-rendering now to find the cause. Nice intermediate is no guarantee of perfection, as I have just been reminded!

In my defense, I make Bluray versions and DVD versions of all my videos now, and I sometimes forget maybe one little setting here or there when I am changing project properties, and bam, I get a bad DVD, and this is a classic case.

Yep, project properties were set to Blend Fields instead of none, can't believe I missed that.

I have to admit, I did overblow the comparison of my DVDs to Bluray. I just watched the Bluray version of the same video, it is much nicer. I think the primary reason my DVDs look nice is likely due to the large sensors in my camera, which really makes a lot of sense.

Thanks guys for all your advice.

I burned a few dvd's today and they do look much better than the day I started this thread. The bit-rate changes going to variable really helped. Also in the render as dialog box I choose lower field first. In the project dialog box I went with lower field first, and interpolate. I am still not quite sure what all of the settings mean but I am making some progress. I can't wait to start authoring to BluRay to take advantage of the AVCHD picture quality.

Again thanks,

Eric

bottom line, NLE's downrez poorly compared to other tools freely available. if you're going to use something like cineform intermediates, then you'd be best served by rendering out of Vegas to huffyuv .avi's and use vdub with a lanscoz3 resize filter back to huffyuv .avi into DVDA. Results will be spectacular assuming your input footage is up to snuff.