Am I missing something?

I bought QuickTime Pro last year because I was under the impression it would allow me access to the H.264 codec for rendering .mov files in Vegas 6 & 7.

I see H261 and H263 as options, but H264 eludes me. Am I wrong in assuming it should be there?

I would love to encode some of my Movies in QT-h264 format if possible. Mike Ferreira's .mov files looks so good that I would really love to learn how to have QT-h264 as an option too.

Yah, I have the same problem. Let us know if you find anything on it.

Read the following forum thread about some of this over at the Sony Forum.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=523323&Replies=27

Like yourself, that codec just doesn't seem to be available to us in Vegas 6/7, so that's why I'll still use QuickTime Pro to render to that format. But yes, I sure wish we did have access to it in Vegas.

Can somebody explain to me that once I have my timeline built in Vegas, how do I use an "external" program to render my final project? I would think in order to do this I would have to render (compress) my vegas project just so I can re-render the project again. That doesnt' seem like a very good workflow.

Jon

Can somebody explain to me that once I have my timeline built in Vegas, how do I use an "external" program to render my final project? I would think in order to do this I would have to render (compress) my vegas project just so I can re-render the project again. That doesnt' seem like a very good workflow.

Jon

Export your sequence in an uncompressed format, then use that with the external encoding program.

-gb-

When I try to export via Quicktime Pro, on either my Mac or PC, I get a little "tick" on the video. I tried different keyframe exporting numbers, but nothing helped. This is what I mean (second 23 onwards):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esd1-R8_Mnc&v3
Anyone?

Greg,

Do you have a suggestion as to what "type" of uncompressed format I use? I edit solely in 1080i HDV.

Jon,

Someone may have to correct me if i'm not exactly correct in saying this. But i thought that you'd render out as the same format your time line is. In your case HDV. That way its only re-encoding the transitions and the like, and only 'copying' the untouched parts. This is how i did things with DV. But i'm not sure given MPEG2's nature if it acts the same. But think it would. THen you just grab that file and use your external encoder (i actually do this method myself as Vegas seems to never give proper results of quality and be a tedious process thats not all that intuitive).

What external encoder do you use for best results?

I'm lost.

I bought QT Pro 7...

does it just offer player support for Windows or can I actually render .mov files with it in Windows XP?

How do I access the QT Pro for capturing/rendering videos? The only thing I see is QT Player.

***EDIT***

Nevermind, I figured it out. Uncompress .mov render from vegas, Open QT render then export as h.264 .mov.

Time consuming, but at least I finally figured it out.

You can also use JPEG 2000 @ 50%, it yielded really good results for me.

I have found that exporting from the quicktime player itself offers the best conversion, far better than from within Vegas. See Image url below for screenshots.


http://nationaleventphotography.com/avitomov.jpg

I have found that exporting from the quicktime player itself offers the best conversion, far better than from within Vegas. See Image url below for screenshots.


http://nationaleventphotography.com/avitomov.jpg

This doens't make any sense to me at all. If I edit my video in Vegas, how do I bypass and export from Quicktime rather than from within Vegas? I have to render my creation in the NLE as something so the quicktime application can open it right? Can Quicktime Pro actually open up Vegas Project files?

From Vegas render it out as DV or DV widescreen whatever format you want
I have always selected from the template type shown in attached url

Then after the render is complete simply open the rendered avi from quicktime player and proceed as shown in the post outlining conversion above...
http://nationaleventphotography.com/avitomov2.jpg

I have noticed that from within Vegas there is only the option when rendering to Quicktime that the choice is Quicktime 6 not the newer Quicktime 7

One other benefit is that when rendering from Vegas and choosing any of the DV export options the render is virtualy real time so the render process is very fast, the speed of course can be slowed down when applying any filters etc, and from my observations there is no loss of quality when exporting to the DV format. From what I can see the quality is the same as exporting as avi uncompressed without the huge file size and to top things off if your video is interlaced you can de interlace from within quicktime. ;)

Wow, thanks Martin for posting that. It is helpfull. The only problem of course is that I'm working with 1080i HDV files, not DV, but I may be able to export from one of the other templates and accomplish the same thing.

Jon

I believe Quicktime has got you covered on that too...

http://nationaleventphotography.com/avi2hd.jpg

the H264 format is render under the AAC codec option in V7. The rendered format is mp4, not mov. As for the sizes in there, u can make a custom one but make sure the bit rate is boosted. I had a missing colour when the bitrate was too low. good luck!

H.264 and AVC are the same thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

The container format for AVC/H.264 is MP4.

Quicktime MOV files encoded in H.264 are really MP4 files. The player is smart enough to deal with it.

Vegas 7 (and even Vegas 6) includes the AVC codec for rendering. In Vegas 7, you have the choice of a Mainconcept or a Sony encoder.

Annoyingly, all the templates are for low resolution formats (Video iPod, PSP, etc) but you can easily make your own HD templates.