-
Better rendering quality
Why does my SD 720×480 DVDA render/burn not look as good in quality as a commercial DVD?
I’ve started with one HD 20 sec clip from a Sony HC-7. Shoots 1440x1080i M2T file-looks amazing in the timeline of Vegas 7(better than a commercial DVD).
My properties for the project are HDV 1080-60i (1440×1080, 29.970 fps) template in Vegas/Best rendering quality/Gaussian blur/none for deinterlace method.
Without any added fxs I render as MainConcept MPEG-2 using DVD Architest NTSC Widescreen video stream template/best render quality/high 31 video quality slider/constant bit rate 9,800,000.After the render I view it with WMPlayer and VLC media player and notice the obvious quality loss -not as crisp or sharp with less color depth. Even at this point the quality is not as good as a commercial DVD.
Now I start a new DVDA 4.0b single movie project set at NTSC Widescreen (720×480). I then prepare the DVD and optimize at a bitrate of 9.800.
After the burn I pop it in a number of different players and the results are all similar -quality has gone down even further from the original vegas render.
So what’s my problem! Why doesn’t the disc look near as good as the quality of a commercial disc or even the first Vegas render? Are there just too many things I’m missing?
Is it because I’m starting with mpeg2 files from the HC-7? I’ve tried capturing the footage with Vegas with no better results.
I’ve tried rendering to numerous formats but end up with the same results.
What’s your thoughts?
tks,
t.
-
10 Replies
-
[TerryAdrian] “bit rate 9,800,000”
This bitrate is too high for DVD. This means that DVD Architect will have to re-encode your MPEG-2 stream for DVD, which accounts for the second generation quality loss.
The fact that you are not getting commercial quality DVD from HDV is not a huge surprise, the commercial DVDs are encoded with very different techniques than you have available in regular video editing and DVD burning software. They simply have more money and the ability to encode far better than is possible for you and me.
Still, from an HDV source you should be getting very good results. It really depends on the source footage.
-
What is max bit rate for DVD then?
Thanks for the rest of the info -appreciate it.
Does the rest of my rendering processes sound right?
tks,
t.
-
8 is the generally accepted max bitrate. Anything over that and frankly it’s pretty much a waste of effort.
Don
-
Buy NEOHDV from Cineform ($250). Capture your HDV footage using NeoHDV (it tells you how). Edit your resulting Cineform in Vegas 7 and render it to MPG2 and AC3 then burn it on DVDA. I do this and I get unbelivebly clear DVDs. It looks almost as good as HDV and as good as commecial DVDs. Try it.
In fact I made a full length movie using Vegas 7 and Cineform. The DVD I made looks great (submitted to a festival). More about this later.
John K -
Tks for the info guys.
I’ll look into Cineform!Why wouldn’t you just you Vegas to capture? Curious?
Does anyone think that part of my prob is that I’m starting with mpeg2 footage from my HC-7.
t.
-
As a previous person commented, Vegas has to recompress the HDV footage to MPG2 usable by DVDA which adds one generation of compression loss.
However, when you capture by Cineform, CIneform (wavelet) converts HDV to an intemidiate HD AVI that is 4:2:2 and each HD frame is reconstructed (no data frames as in HDV) as a result you can edit it as you would DV.
When you ready to create MPG2 for your DVD the compression creates a much clearer MPG2 from the Cineform intermidiate footage.Go to Cineform.com and you will learn a lot.
John K
-
Just try Cineform. They have a trial version. I’ve used it two years and would never go back. It is an editable codec and produces much better results. I recently upgraded to Prospect to use with a 10 bit editor and was surprised to find I could render out my Vegas projects in 709 Colorspace 4:4:4.
JerryW
-
I don’t think you really need NEO if you have Vegas, but it does improve the work flow a little. As far as I can see, but I am happy to be corrected on this, if you capture with Vegas to M2T files, open these in Vegas and render them to the Cineform intermediate codec, you should get the same result (more or less) as you get by using NEO. You should then edit the new AVIs rather than the captured M2Ts.
You can improve the work flow by some creativity and VDub, so that you can batch-convert your captured footage to the cineform codec.
This will not work for 24p footage, but you can get free software that will perform the pull-down for you and save the result as a cineform intermediate. More about that on https://www.hv20.com/
-
Thanks to everyone who has been adding in on this thread. I’ve downloaded the trial version of Neo and I’m looking forward to converting some files.
I’ve been really bummed out with the lack of quality on my final burns, but I’m excited again to try Neo.
If anyone else has any comments or advice -bring it on baby!
tks,
t. -
Hi there,
I shoot with a Z1U and edit with Vegas. I have Vegas 6 and Vegas 7 Platinum.
I’m wondering if anyone can help me with capturing and rendering in HDV questions.
I shoot in 1080 60i and I want to be able to get the best quality I can with capturing and rendering settings.
Any feedback will be extremely appreciated.
Thanks,
Nick
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up