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DVD Rendering Quality Question
PLEASE let me plague your great minds and experience one more time.
I am rendering my projects in Vegas Pro 8 in the “Best” setting. When I burn a DVD, say using Windows Movie Maker as a quick source, I notice a substantial change in the quality.
Now I understand I’m not going to duplicate the HD I’m mastering in, which looks great when I show on LCD projectors or TVs using a copy on my laptop, but the DVD version is no where near the quality I see on DVDs that use products produced in the same format.
Is there a quality software I should be using to get the best quality out of my rendered product in HD – 720p? If I use the DVD Authoring that came with Vegas Pro 8, will I get a better quality DVD?
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks!
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4 Replies
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How long are your programs and what bitrate are you using for the encoding to MPEG-2?
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“If you use Architect, make sure you fill the disc to capacity, and then you willl be at the highest bitrate possible for your project.”
I beg to differ.
I can fill a disc with a 1 hr. program as well as a 2 hr. program.
The only difference is the bitrate used to encode.
High bitrate = high quality.
Low bitrate = low quality.How does the rendered mpeg look? If no good, try WMV9 at the highest output settings, then let architect transcode.
I know this sounds like sacrilege and I will get hammered, but you might be surprised. WMV9 is incredibly sharp.I won’t hammer you but I will disagree.
A WMV encode will compress the original quality.
Feeding this to DVDA means that a lower quality video has to be re-encoded once again to MPEG-2 for authoring purposes.
IMO, you’ll get much better quality by doing a proper encode to MPEG-2 directly from Vegas.
If the program is under 70 min. long, use a CBR of 8,000,000.
Anything longer and you need to use a bitrate calculator to determine a proper VBR setting. -
> I respectfully submit that multiple rendering at high bitrates does not “materially” degrade the output. In the old days of film, numerous copies had to be made in post.
Actually it does if the codec is “lossy” as WMV is. This statement is only true if a “lossless” codec is used. Rendering to WMV only to re-render as MPEG2 is not as efficient or high quality as rendering directly from the HD source to MPEG2 in the first place. Each conversion to a lossy codec, by definition, incurs some loss.
> Is there a quality software I should be using to get the best quality out of my rendered product in HD – 720p? If I use the DVD Authoring that came with Vegas Pro 8, will I get a better quality DVD?
Mark, to answer your original question… Why wouldn’t you use the DVD Architect that came with Vegas Pro 8.0? Windows Movie Maker is a toy, it’s free, and you get what you pay for. You should absolutely be using a professional tool like DVD Architect to make your DVD’s.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks to ALL of you. You’ve given me a lot of possible solutions.
First, I have been rendering everything in HD-720p and then trying to convert to the DVD. Based on what you folks are saying, I should be rendering the HD product in Sony Vegas 8 directly to MPEG2.
I’ll try all this.
THANKS!!
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