Project Properties and rendering. I’ve read so much about it i’m getting confused

[Fabio Mereghetti]

I’m just an amateur so I’m not telling you what YOU should do but I tell you what I understood after many answers I got on the same subject. As I got all I know from the experts of this forum and I know they could be a little tired to keep on anwering to the same questions over and over, let me try and say what I learned here.

1. If producing DVD from my footage what should I change in the project properties. Do I need to deinterlace?
I have read so many posts about this that I now start to doubt myself. if i use the 1080 50i HDV template do i need to deinterlace this, as most if not all of my customers are going to view on an LCD television using a set top DVD player?

I have read lots of posts telling me to blend fields. Which is correct in this situation?

In theory, the best quality you can get from an interlaced source is to keep it interlaced. All the DVD players can deinterlace properly and they won’t let you notice if the source was interlaced or not. So, even if the TV set is the latest progressive one, if you watch the footage through a DVD player you are safe with your interlaced source.
Deinterlacing always starts with a main compromise (blend or interpolate fields), then goes on with what technic to use to deint and never ends with a better quality image than the original one, so…
Maybe, a little more important thing is the frame size. As you surely know HDV is 1440×1080 PAR 1.333 aka 1920 (1440×1.333)x1080 against the DVD widescreen format that is (PAL land) 720×576 PAR 1.456 aka 1049 (720×1.456)x576. So you have to deal with different DARs and you have to choose if you want black lines on the sides or to crop or resize the whole footage with the useful “match output aspect ratio”.

2. If I then want to use the same timeline to produce a Blu-Ray disc to i need to change the project properties? Which render template would be best to use for DVD architect?

I don’t know about BD but the project properties should always match the render settings (see the answer to you 3).
If you like the results, the best choice in term of productivity should be the built in Mainconcept “DVD Widescreen video stream for DVD Architect” template (maybe with the “save markers with media” option) because with it you get a straightforward way to go from Vegas to DVDA and, once there, you can automatically create scene selection menus with a single click. When you choose the template to render, be sure to choose the right settings to avoid a recompression in DVDA. You will have to render the audio stream alone (AC3 is a choice) and give the rendered stream the same name as the video one. When you’ll load the video stream in DVDA it will automatically load the audio too.
If you don’t like the Mainconcept output you can choose to frameserve to another compressor and do a little more work to import the chapters marks into DVDA.

3. If producing MP4 for website or Iphone use do i need to deinterlace or change anything else in the project properties for this timeline?

Yes, I think it would be better to deinterlace. If you choose to do it, be sure to chek these settings:

Project properties:

In the upper part of the dialog you have the settings that are used for all the generated media: titles, 3D transitions, ecc. Here you should choose “None” in the Field order box so all the media will be progressive.
In the lower part of the window there is a box called “Deinterlace method” or something like that: here is where you tell Vegas which method to use to deinterlace interlaced sources if and when needed. Understand that some plugins or effects might deinterlace and re-interlace without you noticing so it’s always safe to have something different than “None” in this box. Whether to blend or interpolate it depends mainly on the content of your footages.

Render templates:
At render time, in the render template, you should find there too a field order box where to choose between Upper field first/Lower field first/None (progressive).
At this time you should also check to be sure you won’t have black lines on the sides. If you didn’t choose to resize all the events or tracks with “Match output aspect”, here you should find a “Stretch video…” choice. But I’m not sure this would be the same.

Hope some of the knowledged people here will quickly correct me if I wrote something wrong or confirm if everything is correct.

Thanks.

(Sorry for the length.)

@John R.
Hope I could be considered a good pupil of yours.

[John Rofrano]

[fabio mereghetti] “@John R.
Hope I could be considered a good pupil of yours.”

lol… that’s pretty darn good!!!

In addition to Fabio’s excellent explanation, I can offer what I do since I shoot with the same camera (Sony HVR-Z1U) and mostly produce DVD’s with the occasional Blu-Ray.

I keep my project properties set to HDV. I do all of my editing in HDV. This way when I add a title from Generated Media it is also HD. I keep my interlace method set to Blend Fields because this always works best unless you are shooting race cars or something that is moving really fast, in which case they move so far between fields that you might have to use Interpolate Fields, but I haven’t had to use it yet.

When I render DVD’s, I don’t bother with the slight pillarbox black bars because most people won’t even notice them on their HD TV. You could check the settings that says Stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox) and it will stretch the video to eliminate these. In Vegas Pro 9 & 10 there is a project properties option: Adjust source media to better match project or render settings that will also take care of the slight difference in aspect between PAL/NTSC Widescreen and HD 16:9.

When I create my Blu-ray disc I just render with the Blu-ray 1920×1080-60i, 25 Mbps video stream video template and AC3 audio template.

For Internet delivery I render to Sony AVC with one of the Internet 16:9 HD… settings. These templates automatically deinterlace the video for you do there’s nothing to even think about.

~jr

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

[Stephen Kettyles]

Thanks for your replies guys. Very clear info there but i’m still confused…..when reading fabio’s post I would assume that the best thing to do is set the de-interlace method to NONE. But then when I read John’s post he says that he sets the deinterlace properties to BLEND. Am I reading this wrong or does it depend on what template you choose for the render and ultimate delivery.

thanks for any more info.

Stephen

[John Rofrano]

[Stephen Kettyles] “.when reading fabio’s post I would assume that the best thing to do is set the de-interlace method to NONE. But then when I read John’s post he says that he sets the deinterlace properties to BLEND. Am I reading this wrong or does it depend on what template you choose for the render and ultimate delivery.”

Read Fabio’s post again. He said exactly the opposite. Here it is:

In the lower part of the window there is a box called “Deinterlace method” or something like …it’s always safe to have something different than “None” in this box.

Different than none means DO NOT set it to NONE! (i.e. anything but none)

~jr

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

[Stephen Kettyles]

In fairness John, I think that he says that in reference to my point about rendering video for web delivery.

I was refering to delivery on DVD. I believe he says that deinterlacing shouLd be set to none for this.

” In theory, the best quality you can get from an interlaced source is to keep it interlaced. All the DVD players can deinterlace properly and they won’t let you notice if the source was interlaced or not. So, even if the TV set is the latest progressive one, if you watch the footage through a DVD player you are safe with your interlaced source.”

[Fabio Mereghetti]

Stephen, I really understand you, I’ve been through all that not more than a couple of months ago, before John put all his patience together and took me by hand to this path. More than a step by step process it was like some southern Italian religious march: two steps forward then one step back, two forward and one back……
But… slowly, slowly catchy monkey!

I think your last doubt is my fault because I felt the lay-out of my post was not perfect, especially about the answer to your third question, but I thought it was all to long already so I delivered it.

What you have to bear in mind is that whatever the rendering template you will chose at the end of your editing, the “deinterlace method” will be used by Vegas only if and when it will need to.
I don’t know when this is needed but “if and when” it will, Vegas will look at that box and will use the method you choose. Even in this case, if you then will choose to render to an interlaced output Vegas will give you just what you asked for: an interlaced output.

So, in short, that box bear no relations with your output. At least not a direct one…

To really understand if and why an output should be interlaced or not, you should look around the net and learn in detail what interlacing is. Then you can go on with what the different methods and tools can do to turn it into progressive. You will soon discover that many horrible things can take place like create a frame mixing pieces of information taken in two different instants in time or throw away half of your so-many-pixels frame that made you choose that camera instead of the less-pixels one, just to mentions some. Maybe there are smarter deinterlacers around but with them it will take an hour to render five seconds!

At any case, I did some tests with the same clip of few seconds and tried all the permutations of the settings I could use and with the help of some clever tools (Virtualdub and Avisynth) I could easily compare the different outputs and choose the best. In case of DVDs, you should always try your tests with a DVD player and, at least, two different TV sets: a good one and a poor one. I wasted a couple of weeks trying to understand what I was doing wrong and when I moved the DVD player to the 37″ Pana plasma I discovered that my DVD was of a real good quality. It was just a wrong TV set problem.

[John Rofrano]

[Stephen Kettyles] “I was refering to delivery on DVD. I believe he says that deinterlacing shouLd be set to none for this.”

You should never set the deinterlace method to None unless your entire workflow is progressive or you plan to use your own 3rd part deinterlacer within Vegas. Otherwise you must tell Vegas what method to use to deinterlace your footage.

~jr

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