Need some help with rendering video’s

[John Rofrano]

Here are some answers to your questions:

– Is it anyway possible to automatically apply the settings from the input file to the output file (so without doing everything manually)?

No. This would be a welcome feature but it doesn’t exist. Vegas Pro 9.0 will place an equals sign (=) next to render templates that match your project settings but if none exists, there is no way to make one other than manually.

– How do the project properties (file, properties) relate to the rendering templates. When I save a project template I notice that this template is not shown in the rendering menu.

The project properties are independent of render templates. Quite often a project is rendered in several different formats for Blu-ray, media server, Internet, iPod, etc. The relationship is one-to-many and not one-to-one.

– Some settings from the project properties seem to be unavailable in the rendering menu templates (for example the pixel aspect ratio). If this is true, how can you still apply those settings?

Pixel Aspect Ratio is available in the rendering menu for those codecs that support it. If it is not available, it probably means that the codec you have chosen doesn’t support pixel aspect ratios other than 1.0.

– When going to the custom settings in the rendering menu you see all kinds of video settings. Most of them are pretty straight forward (aspect ratio, frame rate), but I’m not so sure about some of them (e.g. b/i frames, profile, level). Are they important or can than stay untouched. As for the bitrate settings in the same menu, I’m not so sure what do with them. Until now I’ve used the bitrate info from MediaInfo, but I doesn’t feel totally right to change these settings manually(or it is right? :)).

You are correct to not touch settings that you don’t understand. It can lead to files that don’t play. In general, you should leave the profile, level, I/B/P frame settings alone unless you have a specific reason to change them to conform to some particular format.

As for bitrate, this determines the size and quality of the file. Lower bitrates produce smaller sizes at lower quality within a given codec. One example of when you would want to change the bitrate is if you were try to fit more than 1 hr 20 minutes onto a standard DVD. Lowering the bitrate allows more video to fit on the disc but making it too low will show in the lower quality output.

– As for audio, most of the files I have, use the AC3 codec for audio. I’ve been unable to change the audio settings to AC3. Vegas seems to be using MPEG audio. Can I change this?

Vegas will always use MPEG2 audio for MPEG2 files. You can render a separate AC3 audio and just a video stream and use them to author a DVD but it will not place AC3 audio into an MPEG2 file.

~jr

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

[Daan Odinot]

Thank you very much for your answers.

I’m still a bit unsure about the project properties and the rendering menu templates.

As I understand from your answer, whatever project properties you choose allow all renderings? Does that mean that the only thing the properties basically do, is add = sign for renderings that (partly) match the properties? In other words, they give you a framework/guidance of what you should do?

As for the pixel ratio, I started trying out some more things. Now I notice the following. If you go to the video properties of the file you can select the pixel ratio of the video itself and the video gets stretched according to what you selected. If you go the project properties the total image with black borders is cut of accordingly, while not changing the video image. So as I understand these aspect changes are only really relevant for the preview, because when you go to the rendering the video is rendered in the default (= dependent on the video input) pixel ratio, right?

[John Rofrano]

As I understand from your answer, whatever project properties you choose allow all renderings? Does that mean that the only thing the properties basically do, is add = sign for renderings that (partly) match the properties? In other words, they give you a framework/guidance of what you should do?

Guidance is a good way of thinking about it. If you are rendering to the same format as your source, then having the project properties also match will insure that what you see is what you get.

Most of the time your project format will match your rendering format. DV is a good example of this. If your source is DV and your target is DV then your project should also be DV. Editing HD for Blu-ray is another good example. You project, your source, and your render format should all be HD 1920×1080. You might, however, also want to render a DVD which is obviously not HD. In that case, all you really need to do is render to the DVD format. There is no need to change your project properties for this.

In general, it is best to keep your project properties in the same format as your source files and then render to whatever formats you need. These are just general guidelines. There are times when you might not want to match the project to the source.

As for the pixel ratio, I started trying out some more things. Now I notice the following. If you go to the video properties of the file you can select the pixel ratio of the video itself and the video gets stretched according to what you selected. If you go the project properties the total image with black borders is cut of accordingly, while not changing the video image. So as I understand these aspect changes are only really relevant for the preview, because when you go to the rendering the video is rendered in the default (= dependent on the video input) pixel ratio, right?

You should always make sure that the aspect ratio of the media is actually what the media is. In general you don’t want to play with that setting unless Vegas gets it wrong. This information is used by Vegas so that it can display mixed aspects correctly. The final aspect of your project can be whatever you want and Vegas will compensate. If you render a 16:9 project to 4:3 Vegas will add the appropreate letterboxing on top and bottom to keep the 16:9 ratio.

~jr

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