Insane Rendering Time In DVDA Pro 5.2!!!! Is this right?

[Colin Anderson]

Hi again,

I omitted some details that may or may not be the cause. As I’ve said, I’m a neophite when it comes to video editing, rendering and video formats and I’m confused as to what properties I should use for the project. I need some advice.

My video footage were shot with a Sony HD handycam which produces 1920×1080@60i avchd files (m2ts). So the video footage are interlaced. It is my understanding that I should then set the properties of the project in Vegas to reflect that. So I set it to Upper Fields first as per the video files properties. This is where I’m a bit confused. If the material will be viewed on LCD and plasma screens, Do I need to set it to progressive with no de-interlacing even though the source material is interlaced? In this particular case, I set it to interlaced and upper field first.

Now when it came to render the file in Vegas Pro, I rendered several 4 minute tests to compare the different formats and which provided the best quality. I tested the Sony AVC Blu-Ray templates, from AVC at 20 000 Mbps to AVCHD at 16 000 Mbps, tried both interlaced and progressive and both 29.97fps and 23.97fps. The audio was rendered separately as AC-3 Pro. I also tried the Blu Ray Main concept templates which, for whatever reasons, looked like crap.

In the end, Sony AVC (AVCHD MPEG-2 transport stream) at it’s max of 16 000Mbps, interlaced upper field first yielded what appeared to be the best visual results and I rendered the full file that way which looks great. But does this sound right? This is 4000 Mbps less then the max 20 000 Mbps AVC format.

Now once in DVD Architect, What should I set the project properties to? AVC or MPEG-2? and what should the default bit rate be if I want no recompression. I originally set it to the max of 40 000Mbps but now I realise that all video files were rendered at 16 000Mbps in Vegas Pro. Should I set it to 16 000 then? And what if I rendered it in AVC at 20 000? Should I then set it to 20 000Mbps? Also, I believe that I need to leave it to interlaced, correct? But what of the photo compilations? Those are still images. Should I set their recompression properties to interlaced or progressive?

I’m sorry if I sound like another noob who can’t be bothered to read up on this stuff. Truth is I have read up on it and have searched through this forum and others but I’m still left confused on certain things and have difficulty interpreting the minimal information provided with the Sony programs.

If one of you experts could just answer these questions, I will have a much better understanding of what I’m doing here. Because clearly I don’t.

Thank you again.

[Colin Anderson]

Oh, and one more thing, this Blu-Ray disk is to be played mostly on a latest generation stand-alone Blu-Ray player which I haven’t acquired yet.

Thanks

[Colin Anderson]

Well,

I got through it finally. Some help would have been welcomed but I couldn’t wait around in the hopes someone would reply to this, other than myself. I re-worked my entire project to the point where the only re-compressing DVDA would have to do were the composited graphics (text and buttons) on the menu pages. I replaced the still images used for some of the menu backgrounds with compliant video files I rendered in Vegas Pro. The video files were just a still image extended to the same length as the audio track of the menu. I also reduced the bit rate to 26 Mbps in DVDA. I read that commercial Blu-Ray players could struggle with BD-R encoded in anything higher than 25Mbps.

When I rendered the iso in DVDA, it gradually worked up to 60 hours of time remaining but in reality it only took 4 hours.

I’m still left with unanswered questions about this whole thing but I think I’ll just ask them in a different thread and or continue to experiment on my own. It’s a good thing I splurged on them 50GB BD-REs!

[Christopher Smith]

Colin,

I’m sorry no one was here to reply to your posts. It sounds like you ended up making good decisions, though. The encoding settings you make in DVDA only affect the assets that DVDA must (re)compress. If assets are already in a format compatible with the type of disc you’re making (DVD or BD), then DVDA shouldn’t recompress them.

Yes indeed, preserving the field order of interlaced video is critical. You did well to keep Upper field first setting throughout your workflow. You’re correct that viewers will see your video on progressive displays, so you can deinterlace your video, but I’ve found that keeping interlaced video as interlaced just means there’s less room for error. Progressive video does compress better, so if you’re doing a project where space is a severe constraint, you can deinterlace to make the encoding tighter.

As the still pictures are still, there’s no reason not to encode them as progressive.

I know it’s frustrating when you’re in the middle of a project and can’t get help, but sometimes we get busy and don’t check the forum. Please don’t give up on us.

Christopher Smith

CBN WorldReach

[Colin Anderson]

Hi Chris,

Thanks again for taking the time to help me crack this big nut that is video authoring and encoding and all this stuff. You know as I’ve finally got one in the can as they say and am quite satisfied with the outcome, it made me realize that editing the video in Vegas was the easy part 🙂

To recap on what you’ve explained, when viewing interlaced content on progressive displays (LCD, plasma, LCD monitors), you recommend leaving it interlaced and let either the display or the player handle the de-interlacing as this leaves less room for error during the rendering process, correct? This is assuming of course that what ever will be playing back the media does handle de-interlacing properly.

So when setting the de-interlacing method in project properties in Sony Vegas (Interpolate or Blend) does Vegas actually convert the interlaced media to progressive when rendering or is this simply for previewing?

And finally with regards to still images, if I render them as progressive, but the rest of the project is interlaced and set as interlaced in project properties in DVDA, how will DVDA handle this progressive media? will it re-compress it?

Thank you.

[Colin Anderson]

Man, coming back to this old thread and seeing how long my posts are, it’s no wonder only one person other than myself has read them. lol

Anyway, I understand and figured out a few things since my original post.

In the end, after rendering all audio and video to compliant formats prior to bringing them into DVDA, the only elements DVDA had to re-encode were the menu pages because of added buttons and text. And even though as it begins the rendering process it would estimate some 90 hours or so to complete, it really only took 4:30 hours.

Cheers.