Best Render for 720×576 WS PAL to media player on HD TV

[Mike Kujbida]

HD media players can handle a wide range of formats.
Let us know which model(s) you’re considering and we can make some recommendations.

BTW, you can customize the “DVD NTSC” template (includes audio) to give you widescreen.

If the player will handle the format, the Sony or MainConcept AVC formats (mp4) would be a much better choice as the quality is excellent, especially at higher bitrates.

[Mario Nicotra]

Hi Mike

Yes I have been tweaking the MainConcept Custom setting and setup a custom template “DVD PAL Widescreen with Audio”

I have a Netgear EVA9150 HD media player which handles HD very nicely. Yes it does handle mp4. Which Vegas Pro render codec and setting would you recommend?

I wanted to get higher quality but is it worth rendering at a higher resolution even if the original image was recorded at 720×576 SD?

Many thanks

[Mike Kujbida]

I recently edited a 16th birthday video for my daughter that I uploaded to Facebook.
The camcorder was an older Canon SD model (NTSC, 720 x 480, 16:9 mode).
I used the Sony AVC Internet 1280×720-30p template and, even though it was upscaled, it still looked really good.
The MainConcept mp4 template allows 2-pass renders which the Sony doesn’t.
All I can suggest is that you render a small video using both the Sony and MainConcept mp4 templates, try several different bitrates and see which one looks the best for your particular application.

[Bob Linsdell]

Here’s the solution that worked for me:

Background: I have 16 hours of home video; comprised of 213 edited movies, most of which is standard definition captured as DV from tape (PAL & NTSC). The video was cropped, filtered, color corrected and deshaked using VirtualDub. Editing and final color correction was done in Sony Vegas. The project setting used was the final HD output that I desired.

I’d previously created DVD’s. They were okay, but I could see some loss in quality compared to the DV version. When Blu-ray became affordable and I’d done some tests, I decided that this was the way to go. I’ve now rendered all my video from Vegas to AVC video and PCM audio. I wanted the best quality possibly and damn the space; I used the following:

Video – Sony AVC, Blu-ray 1920×1080-60i, 16Mbps (for PAL use 50i)
Audio – Wave, 48,000 Hz Bit, Stereo, PCM

Some may say this is overkill, but I have piece of mind that it’s as good as I can get it.

My 16 hours of video uses 111GB of space.

Around our home we have Western Digital TV Live Plus media players. Because AVC files don’t contain audio, I use mkvmerge with the ‘mkvmerge GUI’, to combine the Video, Audio, and subtitles converted from DVDA, into one file that streams perfectly to our HD TVs.

Note: Although I had captured PAL video, it was rendered from Vegas to 60i as I live in NTSC land now.

[Mario Nicotra]

Excellent information

Many thanks Mike and Robert.

I now will try out some test renders and see which works best for me. I need to determine which is better, the Sony or the MainConcept codec. I would prefer to have audio on the same video file without too much fiddling.

Big drives are so cheap these days. I already have some 5 Terabytes of storage drives connected to a raid NAS to which the media player has access so space is not an issue!

[Bob Linsdell]

“I need to determine which is better, the Sony or the MainConcept codec”

If the MainConcept is Mpeg-2, then for the same size file as an AVC+audio, the AVC gives better quality. I read that Mpeg-2 has to be 20+ Mbps to equal the quality of a 16Mbps AVC. Having said that, this was probably realized when the source was true HD.

If you do use separate video and audio files, and then use them in a Blu-ray project, they will be combined into one file when written to disc. The combined file can be copied from the disc and renamed as required. Such files are saved on the disc in the BDMVSTREAM folder, and have the extension ‘m2ts’. My media box plays the m2ts files; they don’t however contain the subtitles. FYI: I use subtitles to provide information e.g. who, what, where, when.

Please let us know what format you decide to use.

[Mario Nicotra]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the information.

I am wanting to create a single file containing both Video and Audio streams for playback from a media player and not to create a Bluray disc.

MainConcept MPEG2 HDV 720 and 1080 codecs do this.
Sony AVC/MVC codecs AVCHD 1920×1080 also creates a single file with Video/audio but I can’t seem to find an equivalent 1280×720 format template.

The decision is really do I go 1280×720 or 1920×1080 to render my original format SD 720×576 PAL master tapes?

Is there really any advantage going to the very large file 1080 HD when 720 would suffice?

I am still running render test between Sony and MainConcept codecs ..

[Mario Nicotra]

Some test results.

Source: Digitised 4 min video clip 720×576 PAL miniDV format avi

Codec ———————————- Render Time (mm:ss) — File size (KB

MainConcept HDV1080 25 Mb/s & PCM ——- 3:27 ———— 761,822
MainConcept HDV720 18.3 Mb/s & PCM —— 1:43 ———— 573,810

Sony AVCHD 1080 50i 16Mb/s AC3 ———— 18:38 ———– 495,168

So the Sony AVCHD codec does produce a smaller file size and has embedded AC3 audio but at the expense of significnat render time (more than 5x that of the MainConcept codec)

Decision:

PAL 720×576 WS Original – As I have over 50 hrs of original footage to convert and as it is PAL SD native resolution then I will compromise and use the Main Concept HDV720 format which still produces an image comparable to the Sony AVC codec (as far as the eye can see) but at a significantly shorter render time.

PAL 1920×1080 HDV – Although I haven’t performed any test yet on my 1080HDV recorded material, I will most probably use the Sony AVCHD codec to get the most image quality and smaller file sizes. This I will finally decide when I do some actual test.

I welcome any comments or suggestion here…

Thanks

[Bob Linsdell]

I think your decision is good, a fair compromise, and should meet your requirements. I’d just check that it streams smoothly with a large file.

Regarding choice of resolution (720 vs. 1080). The decision was made for me by the Blu-ray standards, see below.

Resolution—Aspect/fps—-Type
1280 × 720—16×9 23.976—Progressive
1280 × 720—16×9 50.00—-Progressive
1280 × 720—16×9 59.94—-Progressive
1920 × 1080–16×9 29.97—-Interlaced
1920 × 1080–16×9 25.00—-Interlaced
1920 × 1080–16×9 23.976—Progressive

From the table you can see that I had to use 1920×1080 for my interlaced video. The standards just don’t allow 1280×720 interlaced – very odd I thought. Had Blu-ray allowed it, I would have gone with 1280×720 interlaced for my converted SD video.

I use 1280×720 at 59.94fps progressive for digital camera video (1280×720 30fps progressive). I had to create a 1280×720 Vegas template from one of the existing 1920×1080 templates.

Side note: To de-interlace or not?
I had done a number of tests converting my interlaced video to progressive, including converting the interlaced fields to progressive frames (doubling the frame rate), but overall I felt I wasn’t gaining much, if anything. I found that my equipment does a good job of presenting the interlaced video on our HD screens.