How to find the perfect render setting

[John Rofrano]

[Jamie Carsten] “I have a very basic knowledge of resolution, codecs (I render almost everything on H.264 – is that bad?), containers (again, always MP4)”

That’s OK for Internet delivery or for a media server. I wouldn’t use that if delivering on DVD which should be MPEG2. So the device your delivering to has to be taken into account too.

[Jamie Carsten] “What I would like to know is, I am working on some older videos currently on a camera that is long gone. I want to get the bitrate as high as possible for quality, but not put the bitrate higher than what the camera actually filmed in, as if my knowledge is correct, this will simply make the video a larger file without any improvement on quality. Is this correct?”

Yes you are correct but bit rate alone doesn’t determine quality. The encoding method also affects quality. For example 16 Mbps AVCHD has the same quality as 25 Mbps MPEG-2 because it uses better compression.

[Jamie Carsten] “If so, how do I check what bitrate the video is in Sony Vegas Pro so I can set the perfect MBPS on rendering.”

Use a utility like MediaInfo.

[Jamie Carsten] “I have the same question for resolution too. Am I right in saying rendering a video at 1080i/p will not improve the quality of the outputted video if the camera wasn’t capturing 1080 in the first place. This will simply make it a bigger file for no reason…”

Yes, that’s correct.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jamie Carsten]

Thanks John. Much appreciated and that certainly gives me a far clearer picture and understanding.

Just a couple of quick questions stemming from your answers. Just so I can know a bit more about which codecs to use and why, why would you use an MPEG2 instead of an MPEG4 for DVD/Blu-Ray? How does the compression of MPEG4 compare to MPEG2?

In regards to your last point, so does this mean a reasonably fail-safe way to achieve good quality is filming in 1080P, AVCHD (because of its excellent compression), then setting the bitrate when rendering to the maximum MB that the video was captured in on camera?

Lastly (promise!), does the SD card make a difference on quality? If I film in 50MBPS, am going to render in 50MBPS, but the SD card is only 45MBPS, that means some quality will be lost?

Thanks again.

[John Rofrano]

[Jamie Carsten] “Just so I can know a bit more about which codecs to use and why, why would you use an MPEG2 instead of an MPEG4 for DVD/Blu-Ray? How does the compression of MPEG4 compare to MPEG2?”

You would use MPEG2 if your source was already MPEG2, no need to recompress it. I still shoot HDV (which is MPEG2) so I use MPEG2 to make Blu-rays. When I shoot AVCHD, I use MPEG4 for Blu-rays. If I needed to fit more video on a Blu-ray than MPEG2 then I will also use MPEG4. It’s more of a personal choice so you whatever is convenient for you.

[Jamie Carsten] “In regards to your last point, so does this mean a reasonably fail-safe way to achieve good quality is filming in 1080P, AVCHD (because of its excellent compression), then setting the bitrate when rendering to the maximum MB that the video was captured in on camera?”

That’s a good plan. I do the same with HDV because my HDV camera is a better camera than my AVCHD camera. In general I like to deliver in the same format that I shot with.

[Jamie Carsten] “Lastly (promise!), does the SD card make a difference on quality? If I film in 50MBPS, am going to render in 50MBPS, but the SD card is only 45MBPS, that means some quality will be lost?”

If the card is not fast enough to capture the video you have bigger problems because you will loose data. If the card can’t save the data fast enough you will loose the data forever. Not less quality… gone forever.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jamie Carsten]

Thanks John. Greatly appreciated.

[John Rofrano]

You’re welcome Jamie. Glad I could help.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com