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Render WMV quality taking a hit
Hey guys, my first post on the forum and I am an admitted newbie in the video world. (Please be gentle 🙂 ) I am a music composer and mainly use Vegas to chop my video for scoring cues. I have also started making some screen capture tutorials and editing in Vegas.
I just received a job where the client asked me to complete the “post production” in the form of adding music to the final video, and providing them a WMV file. (The original is also a WMV file)
I import with the “best” quality, I match all the settings, in the form of video size/frame rate. I then add music and export, again, matching all the settings I can. On the final render, the color comes out just a shade or two lighter than the original and the image is not as sharp. It is slight, but I notice, which means the client will notice. I have been racking my head over this and don’t want to disappoint the client.
I am using Vegas 11 HD Movie Studio Platnum. Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated.
I was trying to scour the forums and read replies about codecs, I have not installed any extra codecs, outside of what Vegas provides. But I am only dealing with WMV, so I don’t know if that applies in this case.
M&J Music Creations
http://WWW.MJLMusic.Com -
5 Replies
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WMV is what’s called a delivery format, not an editing format so you face problems before you even get started.
It’s like expecting an mp3 to be as good as the original WAV file. It’s just not going to happen no matter what you do.
Your client needs to understand that there will be a quality loss and that there is nothing you can do about it no matter what tools you use.
You can play around using Color Curves and/or Levels to get the output to match the source.
For sharpness, try a light Unsharp Mask FX.
Once again, nothing you do is going to be as good as the original so don;t beat yourself up over it.
If the client expects perfection (they all do!!), then they need to provide you with the original video files and not an edited version. -
Mike –
Thank you for the response. Obviously I have alot of ignorance when it comes to video. Here is what I was thinking.
In audio – if you mix a wave to a high quality MP3, say 320kbps you will get a loss in quality. However, if I start with the 320kbps in my projects, then layer another track on top, as long as I mix down to 320 kbps again, I should not lose quality of the original MP3, because I am not compressing that track any further. Atleast this is how I have come to understand, I have used this method in real world projects without noticable degregration.
I guess I assumed with video, as long as I did not render to a ‘lower’ format that what I started with, I should not lose video quality. Am I to assume that any render will lose quality in some way? This sounds like it would be difficult to deal with in the video world.
Thank you again for your time. My clients usually give me Quicktime videos, this is a rarity that they prefer WMV.
Mike
M&J Music Creations
http://WWW.MJLMusic.Com -
You say you got as close as possible to the same settings. What did you miss out on?
Mike has said that the format is not good for editing. So you may be struggling, but at least we may be able to help get the best you can.
Try grabbing a free programme called MediaInfo. Apply it to both the input and out put files. That will show you what is different. If you ask to view Text, then copy and paste to a notepad document or other text file, then post it up here, maybe somebody can ID places that need a fix.
Nick
Head: Hertz Music -
Nick –
Thank you for the reply. I downloaded the program and saw several differences, none of which I could identify the cause. I was eventually able to obtain a Quicktime version of the project. I then added the music and exported as Quicktime, it seemed to hold the original quality.
I will keep the mediainfo on hand for future use. Thank you for the reply and tip.
-Mike
Mike
M&J Music Creations
http://WWW.MJLMusic.Com -
OOI, any chance of posting up the text results, so we can see them? It is always nice to learn from others’ experiences, and maybe someone can ID the reasons.
Nick
Head: Hertz Music
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