Render As Settings Question
 

I want to make sure I am rendering at the highest / best quality I can when rendering a project in Vegas to burn through DVD Architect.

I am using an XL1s.

My setting in Vegas are:
Save as type: .avi
Template: NTSC DV

Under custom:
Project tab:
Video rendering quality: Best

Video tab:
Frame rate: 29.970 (NTSC)
Field order: Lower field first
Video format: NTSC DV
Interleave every (CHECKED) (seconds) 0.250
Interleave every frame (UNCHECKED)

Audio tab:
Audio format: PCM Uncompressed
Sample rate:L 48,000
Bit depth: 16
Channels: Stereo

Are these settings going to give me the most uncompressed cleanest look when I render for DVD Architect?

Thanks!

Maybe, but you're making it a little hard on yourself, DVD architect will just re-render the uncompressed video as MPEG2. Render directly to MPEG2 to save a step. Finding the highest quality MP2 encoder is another question.

Thats totally uncompressed so its good to go. You can go straight from Vegas to DVD format ready for DVD Archetech and save the whole step of compressing it later.

Didn't know that...thanks for the tip!

I was wondering why DVD Architect took so long....

The MPEG2 rendering engine in Vegas gives you a lot more options than the one in DVD Architect.

Use the existing templates in Vegas for generating MPEG2 streams for DVD Architect, and you should be in good shape. If you want, go into the compression settings, and make the minimum/maximum bitrate settings the same at 8mbps.

Changing the video rendering quality to Best has almost no effect on SD footage. (This setting apparently chooses which interpolation algorithm to use when resizing footage. Going from DV to DVD MPEG2 doesn't require interpolation. However, this setting *does* have an effect when rendering a photomontage based on stills, or going from HD to SD.)

If you want to improve your renders to DVD, a few things will help:

Use the Black Restore filter in Vegas (but not too much) to level out the blacks in the footage. Often there will be several levels of black in shadow, imperceptible to the eye, but still using compression resources. Setting them all to black will free up bandwidth for other things.

I usually apply a Color Curves filter to almost everything, with a slight "S" curve adjustment to all channels. This makes shadows darker, highlights lighter, and devotes a greater range of colors to the midtones. The effect is like removing a layer of "haze" from the footage.

In the Project settings, set Deinterlace Method to Interpolate. For me, this usually delivers crisper looking results.

I have found that applying the minimal level of Gaussian Blur to footage before MPEG2 compression also leads to improvements.

Finally, applying the Broadcast Colors filters will reduce the color palette to what will work on most TVs, also freeing up bandwidth.

Of course, a lot of this depends on what your footage actually is. In any case, it makes sense to make the decisions yourself, and not let the DVD Architect MPEG2 compressor make them for you. (Though to be honest, the defaults are usually OK.)