Quicktime Rewrap and Vegas
 

I found an interesting problem (and solution) when re-wrapping MOV files in Quicktime Pro for use in Vegas Pro 8. Here are the details...

1) Open the original MOV file in Quicktime Pro. (Make sure you have the latest version.)

2) Go to menu item: File|Export (Ctrl-E)

3) Set the "Export" to "Movie to MPEG-4"

4) Click "Options"

5) Set the "File Format" to "MP4"

6) Select "Video" in the next pulldown

7) Set "Video Format" to "Pass through". (All other options should now be locked.)

8) Save the file to the desired folder and filename. The program will spend a fair amount of time analyzing the file with 0% progress, and then it wraps and saves very quickly.

Next open Vegas.

1) Drop the rewrapped MP4 video on a timeline. (Optionally, you can drop the original MOV file on another timeline for comparison purposes.)

2) Right-click the MP4 video in the timeline, and select "properties." Select the "General" tab. Look at the "Streams - Video" data.

*** The result is "30.000 fps progressive, 1920x1088x32, AVC" ***

Yes. You read that right. It's now 1088p, rather than 1080p!!!

3) Click "OK" to remove the properties dialog box.

4) Click the "Event Pan/Crop" icon at the right hand side of your video event.

5) Under the "Position" category, set "Height" to "1080.0" and "Y-Center" to "540.0"

Vegas expects 16-235 video, so there's one more step:

6) Add a color corrector effect, either to your event, or to your track, depending on the needs of your project.

7) Select the "Computer RGB to Studio RGB" preset

The result is no more black or white crush, and no scaling or repositioning. If you put the original file on the timeline immediately above your MP4, you can mute/enable the track and see no shifts, an no unexpected black or white cropping.

Note that the "Computer RGB to Studio RGB" thing works well in both 8-bit and 32-bit 2.222 Gamma projects. In the case of an 8-bit project, the video scopes will show the video ranging from 16-235. In the case of a 32-bit 2.222 project, the scopes show the video ranging from 0-255. This is fine. I rendered both projects to a Widescreen DVD, and the end result was the correct 16-235 in both cases.

This kind of sounds like one of the most viable/cheap solutions to the crush problem so far, yes?

I'm also curious if you can you batch process a bunch of clips in QT Pro without having to convert them one at a time?

QT Pro remembers the previous export settings, so it's as easy as opening a bunch of clips, and pressing Ctrl-E for each of them and saving under the default filename. It won't overwrite, because of the MP4 vs. MOV extension. The files are then handled in parallel, making use of multiple cores, if you have them.

Frankly, the resizing is probably the most mouse intensive process. You can create a preset to help with that. It ends up being three clicks per track.

Regarding Computer -> Studio RGB, you can put the effect on a single track, and lay the clips head to tail.

At VASST, you can find scripts for auto-creating regions and performing batch renders to proxies.

Batch
 

You can batch on a Mac if you have the Apple "Compressor" software.

there's a cheaper (free), more automated way to re-wrap the files - use MediaCoder instead of Quicktime. MediaCoder is like a swiss army knife of multimedia, and it's based upon dozens of freeware video and audio tools, so getting it set up initially can be a little bit tricky. But you can do many things with it - demuxing, transcoding, muxing, etc...

For those who are struggling to get MediaCoder working, I created a video file yesterday that hopefully helps. It basically shows the necessary mediacoder config as well as the process of using this method. I uploaded it to youtube but in order to see it clearly you need to be able to see it in 720p and so far YouTube hasn't triggered the "Watch in HD" link yet. I've just uploaded it to silverlight.live.com and it worked immediately.

MediaCoder walk-through

EDIT: Of course, almost as soon as I uploaded this clip to silverlight, the HD option showed up in youtube
Youtube

This is brilliant, you are a god. Thank you.

A free workflow for those of us with Vegas already, at least for those who are OK with using the built-in cineform.

5D2.MOV > MediaCoder > 5D2.MP4 > VEGAS > Script Events to Regions > Batch Render regions to AVI Cineform > Real Time Edit with proper color space!

yessir, this is pretty much the same conclusion I arrived at in this thread http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/992269-post45.html

Thanks for the video tutorial, I got it working last night.

I put two clips in the timeline, one original and one rewrapped by mediacoder. By clicking the studio RGB effect on and off on both I could not really tell a difference between the two. The original clip look like it was affected exactly the same as the rewrapped clip to my eyes.
Both looked like it knocked down the contrast alot and brightened it.

I am using Vegas 7 though.

right cilck each clip on the timeline and look at the properties. The original .mov file should show that it's being decoded with quicktime, while the .mp4 version should show that the mainconcept avc codec is being used. Depending upon your clips, the difference can be pretty subtle between the two decoders, but when you have a clip with considerable black crush and/or highlight blowouts, it's very easy to see that the rewrapped file is working properly (assuming it's not being decoded by the qtplugin).

Hmm is there a quick way of resizing all clips from 1088 to 1080? Can a Vegas script accomplish this for all selected clips on the timeline?

Thanks for thos workaround.. I haven't tried it myself yet but I like the feedback so far!

Okay I just tried it.. it works great in resolving the crushed blacks.. but the video still plays back very poorly on the timeline... What to do about that?

sorry, but there's not much that can be done there unless you transcode the video. Vegas' playback performance of h.264 on the timeline is quite weak. You can either transcode to proxy files, do all of your editing, and then swap them back for the sources, or if you're okay with knocking the footage down to 720p, you can transcode them to cineform hdv and do all your editing and rendering from the cineform transcodes.

As for the 1920x1088 issue, see steps 4 and 5 in the second portion of Jon Fairhurst's post at the head of this thread.

Any thoughts on getting MediaCoder to work with a video only file (no audio)? I was able to de-enable audio, and turn off demux/mux, but the problem seems to be getting that "-brand" hook back into the resulting MP4 file. I'm not that familiar with all this so bear with me, but I'm getting close to a final workflow for 5D2 > Vegas thanks to your (and others work), but I don't even have the camera yet, lol.

Bill, this is a great approach. When you get the camera, you'll be productive right out of the box. When I got my camera, we spent hours and hours reading things, testing things, and yapping about things. Having the workflow, exposure control, adapter, and Nikon primes at hand would have let us focus on making video, rather than technical details.

Trust me, I know, heh...

What'd I really like to see is for someone to upload a sample of what my final workflow will look like. See, I only do web video really, so my target is streaming, and I personally think Vimeo is overrated on that front because they try to stream too big a file, plus the stuttering introduced by their 24 fps just sucks IMHO (and yes I know I can download the original, but like I said, STREAMING). So, I've been using Blip.tv with a lot of success in the past year, and I feel it is WAY underrated. See, what many people don't realize is that they let you upload LARGE files, and if you upload a properly configured FLV to blip, they will NOT transcode it again, which is HUGE in my opinion. In fact, I'm not sure there's any other free video host that can say that. So, I plan on taking the 5D2 clips down to 720p Cineform, doing the edit, and then frameserving out of vegas to a Flash encoder at half 720p (640x360) for upload to Blip. You'll get stutter free framerates and stellar quality while STREAMING, not to mention a very nice looking embedded player. I've been doing this with other projects for a while now, but I've yet to see a decent 5D2 video on Blip done this way (uploaded in a manner that does not require an extra transcode). So, there it is folks, someone try that and point us to it, because between the above workflow and this last step, I think I've found my end-to-end... Now to purchase the cam!