Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Following Ron's procedure will allow DVDA to retain the chapter markers. The only thing you have to be careful of when using TMPGenc to create the DVD mpg2 is that the chapter markers have to be on an I-Frame. When rendering in Vegas you can force I-Frames as all markers. With TMPGenc it may not create an I-Frame at the chapter points. If that happens DVDA will show the marker in yellow. That means it is not a legal chapter marker that DVDA recognizes and you will have to manually adjust the chapter point.

-Garrett

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Hey Brad,
Too litle too late for this project, but for future reference, I recommend immediately trying color curves to tweak such brightening/darkening circumstances in post. It allows seperate, simultaneous treatment of both the highlights and darks, preserving the one while you mess with the other, or allows you to mess with both at the same time.
I also prefer just a touch of sharpness usually. Even though I leave the slider at zero, I still find it mysteriously makes it better.
FWIW, I've also found that a video that I've shot too dark has way more discoverable information using color curves, compared to one that I've shot that was too bright with blown out highlights. The blown out highlights have zero recoverable info. Consequently, when post-editing is the intention, I prefer to err on the dark side when shooting a difficult scene.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Sam... Thanks for the advice - looks pretty good! It may not be too late because the "bright" clips that I am using are only from my secondary camera angle which I am only using sparingly to cover mistakes with the main cam. I only have about 10 short cuts to this secondary cam on my timelines right now so it shouldn't take too much get them corrected if I can figure out exactly what you did.


Back to the rendering out of Vegas to an intermediate format to use in TMPGenc - I tried a Bluray preset under Mainconcept MPEG 2 and the file format was not recognized by TMPGenc (I think it was an AVC file extension). I am also trying to render as a Sony AVCHD (mt2s) format to use in TMPGenc, but the render for a 1 hour project took just over 8 hours (is this even a good format to use?). I'm really struggling here with what format to render out of Vegas for use in TMPGenc.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Check out the veg file I included in my post. Open up the effects applied to the clip on the timeline to see exactly what I did. Hopefully it's accessible there. Use the same clip you posted online as the source.
I'm assuming this will work for you ;-)

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Brad,

I would recommend not rendering to an mpeg2 or avc file to be taken into another program or even Vegas which will then again compress the files. mpg and avc are highly compressed codecs. That is why they can create a nice compact file. However, they were never meant to be used in the manner you are using them for. You want to preserve the most information and hence quality that you until you are ready to render your final delivery format. In your case that is your DVD which will be an mpg2 file. For all steps in between you should be using a good intermediate codec. There are several available depending on your NLE and if you want to pay for them or not. working with Vegas are a number of them but the two most common are Cineform if you want to pay for it and Lagarith for a good free alternative. Both will create avi files that are readable in both Vegas and TMPGenc.

Part of the reason your renders are taking so long could be because of a few reasons. If you have a lot of graphics or text it will slow down considerably. Any sharpening or cleaning up of noise through the use of plugins like Netvidoe will really slow down things. And, taking an compressed video and rendering to another compressed video such as and AVC to AVC or MPG will slow the render down as it is having to interpret the compression then reprocess the video to compress it again. Both mpg2 and avc are interframe compression codecs meaning each frame is dependent on one or more adjacent frames. So, to render each frame your computer has to look at adjacent frames and decide what is important to render new or just tell the player to repeat from the previous frame.

8 hours to do a one hour video if heavily color graded and graphics is a little long but not unheard of. I rendered a two hour running time video that had a lot of color correction and had Neatvideo cleaning up some noise with moderate sharpening, that render took almost 30 hours. It also had a some high motion graphics so that's an extreme case.

-Garrett

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

I am not at my editing PC right now, but I believe Vegas Pro 10 already gives me the option to render using Cineform. I also need to try the Lagarith as suggested.

I am still deep into the editing proces right now, but I am trying to use a 1 hour portion of my project to try different rendering settings for downconversion to DVD. I already have a DVD format directly out of vegas, but I also want to try TMPGEnc to compare the difference in quality. I'm trying to experiment simultaneously as I am editing so when the editing is done, I'm ready to go at it.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Dear Brad,

As an alternative to a two disk DVD set, you could consider a blu-ray + DVD package. Squeeze the entire 4 to 5 hour program onto a single 4.7GB DVD using 352x480 resolution with 4:3 aspect ratio; also master the program in wide-screen high-defintion onto a 25GB blu-ray disk using H264 encoding. The DVD will look fine on an old CRT television and the blu-ray will look better than even the best DVD on an HD LCD television.

-Eric

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Much thanks to Sam for the Color Curve suggestion for cleaning up the "bright" clips!!! Last night I was able to dramatically improve all the cuts on my timelines! I had only used limited cuts because of the brightness, but now I feel more comfortable cutting with the adjustments so I'm probably going to go back and add some more.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Great news, Brad...
I wish I could accept more of the credit, but it's a technique I learned right here on DVInfo, in a much earlier post :-)
Pass it on when it's your turn!
Sometimes a nudge of contrast makes it pop too, but your footage was so close to great, it didn't seem to need it.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

With only 352 pixels across that DVD is going to look awful on any decent CRT. It is more likely that the
client will watch the DVD on a hi-def LCD panel and when the LCD goes to upsample that 352x480 to
1080P it is going to looking like cell phone video that has had bad interlacing artifacts added.

It is entirely possible that no one will ever look at the Blueray due to lack of BD player or due to bad
experience with the defectively encoded DVD version.

It seems reasonable to make two regular 720x480 DVDs. At two hours per disk one might consider
using Cinemacraft basic as that will probably be noticeably better at 2 hours than the mainconcept
on full quality. I do 10+ hour event videos on a regular basis and these are always four disc sets with
about 2.2 hours per disc but I'd rather be doing 2 hrs even. Cinemacraft is very nice.

At any rate, if you can't give them a functional DVD product then give them no DVD product
and force them to watch the Blueray. If they see a bad DVD they might not take the time
to locate a blueray player and go to the effort to watch the decent HD version.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Why not dual layer, 8.5GB DVD's?

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

The resolution of 352x480 is about the same as analog NTSC broadcast. While a 720x480 encode cropped pan-scan to 528x480 may be sharper, it is a matter of opinion how significant this improvement is when viewing the program on a CRT television.

The retailers here are selling blu-ray players for less than $100 and have devoted half their DVD shelf space to blu-ray discs. Given the amount of marketing which states why blu-ray is better than DVD, I think most viewers who are concerned about the picture quality will soon have a blu-ray player. Since blu-ray burners cost $100 and writable 25GB discs are less than $1.50 each, I would encourage blu-ray + DVD packaging for any project where the quality of the source video is good enough.

The problem with dual layer DVD+R's is that people put them in very old DVD players and then complain that the discs are defective.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing - CREDITS
 

I'm workin' away on this project and am now wanting to add credits at the very end of the video. I've done some research on the credit roll generated media and it seems like that's probably not the best approach for what I want to do. The attached Word doc shows all the information I want to use but it's not necessarily formatted to how I want it to look. You can see that there is a lot of info there. I basically want to list each performance title and then the names of the performers.

Any suggestions on the best approach to doing this? I have some ideas using multiple "generated texts" but I'm not sure if that's the best approach so I am looking for some input here.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

You could use the standard text generator and scroll it using the positioning tab.

You could create an image with all the text information (a TALL image) and then scroll that.

There's definitely multiple options available to you.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

To expand on Edward's suggestion, here's a copy of a post I did recently on the Sony Vegas forum about the same thing.

Say you want to do a credit roll that runs the equivalent of 10 pages of text.
Open a new (single) text event, enter all your text and don't worry about the text going off the bottom of the screen.
Change the text attributes as desired (character by character if you want which the credit roll won't allow).
Figure out how long you want the roll to be and set the length of the text event accordingly.
Switch to the placement tab.
Click in the text box and drag the text down until it just disappears off the bottom of the screen.
Reset the X value to '0' as odds are that it changed a bit.
Go to the end of the timeline and add another keyframe.
Put a - (minus) sign in front of the Y value.
Confirm that the text has just disappeared off the top of the screen.
Adjust if needed.
That should be it.
Exit and test.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Since you've got the Word document a good and quick way to do it is to use Ed and Mike method of scrolling tall image. This method sounds a little round about but it works to preserve the exact look I want for the credit scroll. It also allows me to use text formatting and layouts that I would not otherwise we able to:

1. Once you have your Word file with the text the way you want it to appear print a high quality pdf.
2. Open the pdf in Adobe Photoshop
3. Save as a Photoshop file.

You can use the Photoshop file on a Sony Vegas Timeline and it give the cleanest looking text other than using the text generator in Vegas. I can also get a good smooth scroll using this method and it allows me to use the very nice text FX's available in Word and Photoshop.

I'm sure there are a hundred ways to do this but that's a method that works for me and allows me to get as creative or simple as I want.

-Garrett

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

The next hurdle is authoring. I want to create my menus in Photoshop, import to DVD Architect, and use buttons with no text over my menu selections. I'm having a hard time figuring out what size to make the Photoshop file and where the "safe zones" might be. Any suggestions?

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

I'm still working in Photoshop CS3 but CS5 should be the same. Open Photoshop got to

File->New->

Under Preset select Film & Video, choose Size to be HDTV 1080p/29.97

The image will be 1920x1080 at 72 pixels/inch. The attached picture is the screen showing the settings.

The canvas will show 10% safe areas.

-Garrett

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Should I still be using the 1920x1080 setting even if my project is at 720x480 in DVD Architect?

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

I am trying to convert disc 1 of my project to DVD (MPEG) format using TMPGEnc with the settings shown in the following link... DVD-HQ : Configuring TMPGEnc for high-quality DVD-compliant MPEG-2. My source is a Cineform AVI file (YUV 4:2:2 High) which I rendered out of Vegas.

TMPGEnc acts like is encoding and takes about 5 hours to process the 120 Gb file (141 minutes of video) but when done, I get an M2V output file of only 175 Mb which won't play. I tried changing the field order on the Advanced tab from Bottom to Top and then I got 2.2 Gb file that still won't play. I'm expecting an output file that is about 4.1 Gb.

Any ideas what might be going on here?

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

TMPGenc is straight forward not sure what you are doing. Start new project>Source> Input file>Format> select DVD standardMPEG file preset( select NTSC, prioritize: quality, Aspect ratio: 16x9,rate control VBR, audio: Dolby Digital)> Select> adjust ", set bit rate,( you will see how the bit rate effects the disc fill on the bottom scale)( VBR is 2 pass and the time you stated is about correct for 2 hour file I normally set the 8000kb/s limit too, I normally press the arrows on the average bit rate box until the disc is at about 4G fill on the scale )>Press OK . On this page I set DC precision to 10bit and motion search to highest. Select ES seperate video and audio> encode.Select where the file is to go.> Start.

TMPGenc will set field order correctly for NTSC so do not touch. I normally choose separate video and audio files as most authoring programs prefer this form. 2 Hour program should have an average bit rate around 4000.

These instruction are for TMPGenc 4Xpress but they are much the same for T5 other than the motion search is now under the advanced settings or can be set as computer performance "slow".

Ron Evans

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

I think I've determined that TMPGenc doesn't read my Cineform files correctly because I am not seeing anything but black screen in the preview window. It doesn't give any errors and appears to be encoding, but it's not reading the file correctly. I can open and play the Cineform files with Windows Media Play, but VLC media player says No Suitable Decoder Module.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

When you open the file in TMPGenc does it recognize it correctly? If you press Cut-edit can you scroll through the video? If you can do this then TMPGenc is recognizing the file and will be able to decode it. YOu will not see anything in the preview window when it is encoding unless you have specified ShFT+Ctrl+P when you are on the final window and start encoding. Its the button on the right.

Ron Evans

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

TMPGenc allows me to to load my file as the video source just fine (no errors) but when I choose preview it shows just a black screen with no video. It shows the correct number of frames, length, etc, but just a black screen. Screen shots are attached. I'm stumped. I was really hoping to use TMPGenc for encoding before authoring the DVDs. For some reason TMPGenc is seeing the Cineform files properly. I can load other AVI files into TMPGenc with no problem and be able to preview them, but not these Cineform files.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

On your TMPGenc T5 preferences , click on AVI and it will list all the codecs. Is Cineform there? My T5 shows Cineform HD Codec v 5.1.4 ( CFHD) . Do you see the video in the Cut-Edit window?

Ron Evans

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

I have attached the full sequence in T5. Hope this isn't too big.

Ron

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Thanks Ron...

I downloaded a different version that what you are using. I have the following...

I will see if I can download a trial version of the Authoring Works and see if that works for me.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Try Masterworks 5 which is what I took the pictures from . It is very similar to version 4. Authorworks is the complete authoring program.

Ron Evans

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Masterworks 5 worked GREAT! Thanks Ron for the help.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Good . When you 've played with the defaults you may want to look at the help file a little and familiarize yourself with the filter section. Of particular interest is the re size filter which is always active. If you are downsizing square pixel input you should uncheck the " keep aspect ratio" box for 16x9 as this will avoid side bars when played on a PC. Something I didn't want to confuse you with on your first try as it all still works.

Ron Evans

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Ok... I'm not so pleased with my first attempt at resizing the video to DVD format. I am rendering out of Vegas using Cineform (YUV 4:2:2) and then using TMPGEnc for the resize. The picture quality is pretty poor and I'm thinking that maybe 2 hr and 20 min is too much to try to compress onto one DVD. Do you guys think it is the quantity causing the poor quality or could it be something else? I'm experimenting now with only putting 1 hr and 40 min onto a DVD to see how the quality compares. If it improves, this project is going to become a 3 disc set instead of just 2 discs.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

At 2 hours 20 mins the quality will be less. What are you comparing the quality against. To the original HD it will always be poor even if you only put 1 hour on a DVD at max SD DVD quality. How does it compare to a VHS tape or a cheap commercial DVD? What are you watching it on?

Ron Evans

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Not really comparing the quality to anything specific. Watching on a Vizio 32" plasma from a "cheap" DVD player doesn't look too bad from about 10 feet away, but up close the faces of the dancers are pretty fuzzy. I made another DVD with 1hr 40min on it, but haven't got a chance to review it yet to compare to the previous.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Unless you playback from a Bluray/upscaling player the resolution could be less than 1/4 of the original so up close will be fuzzy as you are depending on the TV for the scaling which will likely not change the resolution just scale to the pixel dimension. ie 720x480 of the SD to likely 1280x720 for you 32" plasma. A cheap commercial DVD might just look the same. Simplistically where you had 4 distinct pixels in your original as square box you now have 4 pixels all the same for the SD image displayed with simple scaling. It can of course look even worse. This is the problem of watching any SD image on a HD TV. Poor encoding makes the issue even more visible. The farther away you view the screen the better it looks as unless your playback system upscales your watching a SD image.

Upscaling players do make a big difference. On my 240hz Sony LCD playback from a Sony Bluray player the SD DVD's look good from 12'. Not as good as the Bluray but to most people are close enough. Playback to my 26" Viewsonic LCD doesn't look so good at all !!!

Ron Evans

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

The 1hr 40min DVD doesn't seem to have any better quality than the 2hr 20min DVD when watched on my plasma TV. I am going to try playing back with other DVD players and other TVs to see the differences.

I think I got used to seeing so much of the footage in HD during editing that I am a little disappointed when seeing it in the SD format. I just ordered a Blu-Ray burner and I am considering offering the customers a Blu-Ray version. As of right now I have about 60 orders for the 2-disc DVD set and don't expect to get any more because everything was advanced sales. I think that upon delivery I will include a note in the DVD packaging that a blu ray version could also be available for about $10 each. I've already covered most of my costs with the DVD sales so I just need to try to recover the costs of the BR discs and part of the burner. I'm not sure how many peole would even consider the BR option as I myself do not even have a BR player.

My question now becomes if I do decide to offer a blu ray version, how does my work flow change from what I doing for the DVD version? Will I still need 2 BR discs as I did with he DVD? The DVD disc1 is 2hr 20min and disc2 is 2hr 7min. How will the quality of the blu ray discs compare to my original AVCHD footage? Is this even a good idea or should I jsut deliver the DVDs as is?

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

It isn't so much the cost of Bluray discs which have come down in price its the time it takes to burn them. For SD 8 times is a reasonable copy speed but for Bluray its more like 2 times. So with a verify that is going to be almost an hour for each disc. I think you need to charge a bit more than $10 !!!!!! Bulk reproduction in our area is $20 with a minimum I think of 20 discs. Burn time will be proportional if you use a 50G disc but you have a more expensive coaster if it doesn't work!!!

For 2 hours and 40 mins then AVC encode will give you the same quality as your original 17Mbps AVCHD. However it may take your computer a day to encode from the Vegas timeline. !!!! MPEG2 VBR will be quicker with AVE bit rate at about 22000, MAX 28000 and you will not notice much difference from the original and will encode in about 2 times realtime, so about 5 hours. You will be able to replace the media in DVD Architect and change project settings to Bluray and all your authoring will stay the same.

Ron Evans

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

I just finished watching my 2hr 20min DVD on my 32" plasma with an upconverting DVD player and it looks SO MUCH BETTER than when played with the "cheap" DVD player I was using prior. I can't believe the difference - it actually looks REALLY GOOD! I also watched the last 5 years worth of DVDs from this same recital and my picture quality is better than all of them so I am feeling more confident going with what I have on the 2 disks.

As far as Blu Ray, can I use the intermediate Cineform AVI files in DVD Architect to create the Blu Ray disks or should I re-render out of Vegas as AVCHD or MPEG2? I already have these files rendered out of Vegas to do the resizing in TMPGEnc. Does DVD Architect do a good job of encoding for Blu Ray or should I work with TMPGEnc for the Blu Ray also?

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

I would render from Vegas with your original files to the DVD Architect Bluray preset for MPEG2. You could also use the Cineform files in TMPGenc to the Bluray preset as that too is DVD Architect compliant and that way you can see what data rate you should use to get the level you want from the scale. Once you know the data rate you can encode from either TMPGenc with the Cineform files or from Vegas to the Bluray preset.

Ron Evans

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

To fit 4.5 hours of video on a 25GB blu-ray disk the bitrate should be about 12mbps. At this bitrate it is better to use H264 rather than mpeg2 encoding. Since DVD Architect doesn't ingest all blu-ray complaint H264 video streams, I would recommend using the encoders provided with Vegas.

Re: Amateur Recital Video Editing
 

Thanks Eric for the advice. I wasn't sure if I should try to fit the whole show onto one Blu-ray or keep with two Blu-ray discs as I am doing with the DVD set.

I'll consider the Blu-ray more after I finish the DVD package. I just found mistakes in the titling on both DVDs so I am in the process of re-rendering both out of Vegas and then will need to re-encode too with TMPGEnc before I can get to my authoring in DVD Architect. Then I'll have about 70 of each disc to burn, label, and package.

I'm going to put a note in the DVD package offering a Blu-ray copy for an additional charge. Once the DVDs are delivered, I'll start working on a Blu-ray version. Even if no-one requests it, I still want to try one for my own experience. It seems like most of the work for Blu-ray will already be done from the DVD project, but will have to be re-encoded and possibly re-authored if it's all on one disc.