rendering full HD to mpeg2 or avchd?
 

I realize rendering questions are asked all the time, but:

I need to create a file (not a bluray) with my 5 min long film shot in 1920x1080, and edited in Movie Studio, stereo sound. I want great video quality, but I want to make sure it plays well on most decent laptops (e.g. dual core ~2.8GHz).
AVCHD plays fine on my PC, but it might not be ok for above???

Should I use mpeg2 instead, and what settings? anything else?
Thanks.

What operating systems? Bear in mind that AVC playback wasn't a part of Windows until Windows 7, less than two years ago. Anything older than that, while it may have the horsepower, won't necessarily have the codec ready to go. If you're planning on passing your video file around to friends, MPEG-2 is certainly the most compatible way to go. To provide quality closest to your original video you'll need a somewhat higher bitrate with MPEG-2 than with AVC. Some experimentation is probably worthwhile. Viewing your video on the "small screen" also minimizes the appearance of compression artifacts, so unless you need the same render to withstand viewing on a 50" plasma, you might get away with less.

Not sure what to expect of Macs.

Best,
Aaron

thanks, mpeg2 it is.
I don't know much about the laptop/pc to be used - it's for a festival. I hate to keep asking questions the organizer, especially that he doesn't appear very clear regarding technical issues.
So knowing this, or not knowing much :), what mpeg2 settings experienced people would recommend, bps in particular?

I see. Well, "festival" might make things trickier. :) I'd definitely be pressing the for the details! I haven't submitted anything for a festival before, but I've read quite a few sets of submission guidelines. Many accept (or expect!) the form of your original submission to be standard-def DVD, or else some similarly-accessible format. If chosen for exhibition, professional master formats such as Digital Betacam, HDCam, etc., are later requested. So definitely find out if at all possible! If the submission guidelines are vague or ambiguous, maybe seek out a former participant and see what they got away with. :)

Ignoring the festival issue for a moment: 40Mbit/s is tops for MPEG-2 on Blu-ray, and IMO it looks pretty darn good. In the interest of compatible file-based distribution of some of my work, together with an interest in putting it on Blu-ray, I've done a number of 40Mbit/s MPEG-2 renders based on 24Mbit/s AVCHD from the NX5 and have been pleased with the results (even played on large screens).

Best,
Aaron

hmmmmm, I may be off track, but. if it was me, I'd go Quicktime h.264.
reason being, everything I have ever had to give to anybody "in the industry", has had to be for Mac's.
And to be honest, anyone who looked at you and said,
"Quicktime, whats that?"
would have to be from another planet, and would prob get fired by the event organizer on the spot.

Not off track; I wouldn't have suggested MPEG-2 files had I known the intended audience. Some festivals do accept QT files (SIFF, my hometown festival, is one). Definitely get this straightened out prior to submission, though! There really should be nothing left to chance as format goes. If the organizers aren't clear on this, something is wrong.

Best,
Aaron

about mpeg2: Movie Studio encodes audio (Bluray template) to a separate file. How can I have it both audio and video in the same file? It is possible with SD mpeg2, so I would think should be doable in FullHD too.

About the submission guidelines:
Film format for the main competition (check one or more):
Film File (.mov, .mpeg2, other)___ DVCam___ HDV___ HDCam___ Digital Betacam___ DVD___ Other_
(and dvd for the selection process).

Haven't used Vegas much, but look for a "multiplexing" option. You want the audio and video to be multiplexed into an MPEG-2 Transport Stream (possibly just called "TS" multiplexing--that's what Premiere calls it, anyway).

Good news about the submission formats; they seem pretty flexible.

Best,
Aaron

so far no luck with finding "multiplexing" or something similar...
I really would love to have mpeg2 !

I'm working in parallel on *.mov. It might be good to submit more than one file and let them choose.
Preliminary testing is good, although I don't see "h.264"
I'm using video format "video", which doesn't sound very descriptive, but the quality seems to be good in 1920x1080.

Odd. I've gotta believe there's a way to get a multiplexed HD MPEG-2 out of Vegas Movie Studio, but if not, you could always use one of several free multiplexer apps out there. tsMuxeR is popular:
SmartLabs - SmartLabs tsMuxeR

Best,
Aaron

big thanks!
- tsMuxeR seems to be working very well: I combined m2v with mpa into *.ts" file (TS muxing), and this file (video+audio) plays fine on my PC with Windows 7.
Actually, I've never seen "ts" extension before. Is it a file that is playable on most computers? Or I should try another output option?

P.s. it could be my limited skills preventing me from encoding audio to HD mpeg2 in Movie Studio, or limitations of the non-professional version.

Yeah, feel free to just rename your .ts file to the somewhat more ambiguous ".mpg". Everything will be fine; that's all it is under the surface.

Best,
Aaron

If you delve into the CUSTOM options when you choose the BluRay export option, you'll find boxes to tick/untick in the video and audio preferences for including or excluding the audio in the final stream.
I use this option all the time to render out a combined audio/video stream. It's all in there in Moviestudio or Pro versions

thanks, but it's not working for me. I do check 'include audio stream' box. It works with SD mpeg2, but not with FullHD (*.m2v). When I select mpg extension, it overrides it to mtv. Weird.

But tsMuxeR works fine, so I'm a happy camper now.

I was just talking about renaming your .ts file to .mpg after tsMuxeR has created it for you. I have no idea what you'd do in Vegas.

EDIT: I hadn't noticed Robin's intervening reply, so please ignore me! :-)

.mpg is just a more-recognized extension than .ts.

Best,
Aaron

It is more than an extension. It is a different file format.

To be more precise, the MPEG-2 standard defines two types of streams: The program stream (PS) and the transport stream (TS).

The PS is for storing an MPEG video in a file, as used in computers, DVDs and such, where the entire file is available at all times. Because it is always available, it has a header which contains the information about the stream, such as the size of the image. Since it is always available, software, such as players and editors, can read it once and either remember it while they are interpreting the video (and audio, etc) data or can discard it knowing they can always go back to the header and read it there. The computer files with the .mpg extension are PS files.

The TS, as its name implies, is for audio-video data that is not within a file (though it can be saved in a file) but is being transported to the system from somewhere else. That is, it is used in live streaming (most notably by digital television). It has no defined beginning, since, for example, you can turn on your TV at any time, or you can switch to a different channel at any time. As such, it cannot have a header at the beginning. Instead, the TS splits the data into fixed-size packets, each packet starting with a special byte that informs the system it is the first byte of a packet. So, when you turn on your TV, it can start receiving anywhere within a packet. The first thing it does is look for that special byte, so it can know where each packet starts. Once or twice a second the TV station will transmit a special packet that contains the same information contained in the PS (.mpg file) header. Until your receiver gets that special packet, it cannot interpret the data inside all those packets that keep coming its way. And since anyone can tune in at any time, it is imperative for that special packet to be sent out often. You may have to wait for half a second or so but of course, to us humans that is a very short period of time, so we do not even notice the wait.

Why have two formats? The special packet the TS has to include regularly increases the size of the data. So, while TS is more flexible, it is a waste of disk (and disc) space, so file-based systems prefer PS.

That said, many MPEG decoders can handle both formats, so renaming a .ts file into a .mpg file may work. But there is no guarantee your decoder does understand the TS format. You would never burn a TS on a DVD because a DVD player is not guaranteed to understand it. Despite the fact a DVD has the video files in a VIDEO_TS directory, it expects PS, not TS.

Vegas understands both PS and TS, and also understands both the .mpg and the .ts extension.

thanks guys, I have a decent quality mpg now (m2v encoded at 1920x1080, variable bit rate: max=30Mbps, min=20, mean=25; ts renamed into mpg).

I looked also at mov, but the quality wasn't good enough; maybe there is a way to make it better, but for now mpg is fine.

Thanks for the correction, Adam, and the detailed explanation. I suppose I have gotten a bit too comfortable renaming .mts and .m2ts to .mpg, although it has unblocked me many, many times, and continues to do so. Several apps and video hosting services that I use (Facebook is one example) reject all "ts" extensions, but will happily accept, process, and dish them out once they've been renamed as .mpg. Need to send a raw AVCHD clip to Facebook? There you go. Other apps, such as Corel VideoStudio, call every HD MPEG-2 render a .mpg, even when rendering for Blu-ray, which isn't just a TS, but a special hacked-up TS. That's a bit confusing.

Anyway, I'll retract my suggestion of renaming the file to .mpg in the interest of technical correctness (and just keep doing it myself until I hit the wall ;-))

Best,
Aaron

That was not my intention. As I said, if the decoder can handle it, why not renaming it if the application does not know it can handle TS. Just as long you are not surprised at those time it does not work.

In Movie Studio, can you click on the "Custom" button? I know that is limited in Movie Studio for some formats. If you can go to the Custom settings, just click on the Audio tab and you can turn the audio on or off there.