Cristal Clear WMV videos with Vegas ... how?
 

Any sugestion how to get cristal clear 1280x720 WMV videos?

I need files around 4,5MB per 10 seconds ...

Any sugestion on effects and render propriets?

Thanks,

Have you downloaded Windows Media Encoder and tried? It is a free software.

Im using Vegas ...

Render your file to an avi, then use Windows Media Encoder to pump out the wmv for you.

Stephen, I had read somewhere (unfortunately couldn't find the reference) that Sony Vegas uses the same rendering engine for WMV as used by Windows Media Encoder. If that's the case, I have doubts that a render out to AVI from Vegas then a second render through WME would have any benefit, and could possibly make it slightly worse. Thoughts?

I have had very good results rendering from the default WMV 720p template. Have you or Henrique had different experiences?

The renderer in Vegas does take a hell of a long time to render WMV.

4.5 megabytes per 10 seconds works out to a combined audio and video bitrate of 3.6 megabits/second. That's high enough to produce fairly decent looking .WMV files. There is nothing particularly special about Windows Media Encoder, it is just a front-end for the same Windows Media codecs that Vegas is using. If your clips have a lot of noise, detail or lots of motion, then 3.6megabits/sec might not produce the "crystal clear" video which you seek. On the other hand, if the video is free of noise and isn't a racing video or skateboard video, then it might work out well.

The final filesize of the video is determined entirely by the bitrate. There are two methods of encoding, CBR (constant bit rate) and VBR (variable bit rate), VBR will give you the best looking results. Try using 2-pass VBR with an average of 3.4 megabits and a peak value of 6.8 for the video and 128k for the audio.

John

All good advice above. I've used the Windows Media Encoder (WME) extensively, as well as Vegas output.

Pull out WME when you need a control that Vegas doesn't expose - such as wide screen flags, pixel aspect ratio, etc. WME has them all. Otherwise, as pointed out above, quality is the same.

Use John's figures to create a custom template and see how it looks to you.

Working on a tripod with good exposure is pretty important to getting maximum performance out of a streaming codec like WMV.

Thanks for the adcive John Cline, I dont see 2-pass option with variable bite rate ... But I found one VBR where I can set the peak. Also, there is a field called peak buffer size (sec), default 20, what do you recomend ?

In my experience I find the default "Preview in Player" under Tools to deliver stunning, crystal clear clarity video (Cineform) which also by default pop up in my Windows Media Viewer as a temp file. All I do, if I want to hold on to it for presentations, is to save it on my HD. If you haven't tried this it's worth the experiment; I cannot get anything in Vegas this gorgeous in any other way.

My movies seems blurry, fuzzy ... I dont know if its my cam, but I think a FX-1 on a very good lightining could be doing something more crips, sharp, clear and with nice colours ...

Here is a sample of my movies now with John Cline settings + unsharpen mask and sharpen:
http://blog.nichecastle.com/sample.wmv

Without any effect:
http://blog.nichecastle.com/sample2.wmv

Handheld camera work is not the best beginning for web distribution.

The WMV will dedicate bits to whatever is moving in the shot. With a handheld camera, every pixel is changing in every frame.

With a tripod shot, only the subject is moving - she'll get more bits, therefore better definition.

I'd also suggest color correcting specifically for WMV, you should be able to get what you want.

Why this is all happening is simple - to get from the 25Mbps that your camera recorded to the 3.82Mbps of your samples you're throwing away 85% of the data. Welcome to web video!

Thanks, I will try use a tripod more often but will be hard to the kind of shot I do.

You said the WMV will dedicate bits to whatever is moving, will be the same with other formats? Any other format I could be using that will produce same size and better quality than WMV?

Will try play a bit with colour correction ...

What other editing softwares you guys recommend for internet? Im actually using Premier to export a High Biterate file than the web formats with Pro Coder 2. Quality is about what Im getting with Vegas but its too much time consuming usign 2 softwares to export.

Perhaps it would be easier to make 960x540 progressive .WMV files. I suspect that some of the blurry/fuzzy issue is due to 1080i to 720p conversion. A single field of 1080i is only 540 pixels high, you are having to upscale that to 720, creating information that wasn't there to begin with. If you use 960x540, you are not having to do this. You also have a bit smaller frame than 1280x720 and can get much higher quality from a fixed bitrate.

You get better vertical resolution in 720p. And using field interpolated 60p also helps because the human eye virtually increases the resolution.