Rendering

[Mike Kujbida]

Use the Mainconcpet mp4 template, specifically the iPod 640 x 480 option.

[Brett Underberg-davis]

That’s the best choice if you’re aiming at YouTube’s normal quality but since mid-December there are many other options. I don’t know if you can create custom render templates in the trial version, though. If you can, however, and your original footage is NTSC or PAL widescreen, you might want to create a 640 x 360 template (in MainConcept or Sony AVC (mp4) to get what YouTube calls “High Quality”.

Or you can go as far as a 3-10Mbps, 1280x720p (square pixel) render to get their new “HD quality.” The format CAN in theory be almost anything Vegas will render to, but again, the AVC/AAC codec combo, multiplexed into an mp4 container is usually your best bet, especially if you decide to go past the trial stage and use full-featured Vegas Pro.

If either mp4 option is unavailable in your version of Vegas, some of the WMV or QuickTime presets in the older, consumer-crippleware’d or trial versions might be the next best choice.

Whatever you do, be sure when you render to make the pixel aspect ratio square (1.0) or you’ll wind up with some aspect ratio distortion in most cases, assuming your original clips come from a camcorder that uses an anamorphic format such as NTSC Wide or HDV.

You may speed up rendering slightly by also making your Project settings a near match to the resolution that you’re looking to create on YouTube, but I usually try to make it match my main source quality and then down-render to something that matches my target transcoding quality for YouTube — especially if the project is also something I think I might also want to render at some later date for DVD production, or for BluRay, once burner and BD blank media prices drop significantly and more people are demanding that format.