SD Video Artifacts

[John Rofrano]

What’s causing this is the rescaling of HD down to 5x smaller SD. For still images you can resize them in a photo editor which might do a better job of resizing but for video you don’t have that option obviously. You might want to add a slight blur to the scenes that it’s too pronounced but other than that, there is no quick fix that I know of.

~jr

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

[Nigel O’neill]

You might want to check your Deinterlace method in the project properties. This one had me stumped for a long time. Out of the box, Vegas sets it to NONE. Try setting it to blend field if you are working in PAL.

Taken from the online help:

Choose a setting from this drop-down list to determine the method used to render effects and deinterlace the two fields that make up a frame.

None
Performs no deinterlacing.

Blend fields
Uses contents from both fields and works well for high-detail, low-motion video.

Interpolate
Uses a single field at a time and works well for high-motion, low-detail video.

Note: No deinterlacing occurs in the Draft and Preview video preview modes. The Good and Best modes apply the selected deinterlacing method.

Intel i920, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 9 (X64), Vista x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S 4.1

[John Rofrano]

Out of the box, Vegas sets it to NONE

Actually, out of the box Vegas sets it to Blend. People change it to None and get themselves in trouble. This is a good thing to check though if it’s set incorrectly.

~jr

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

[Nigel O’neill]

John

I defaulted the settings as you suggested to me a while back and that process set it to none. I also then checked this on a laptop which had a new install of Vegas which I had never used for editing. It was set to none. Perhaps it is a default setting for the PAL DVD template and not NTSC.

Intel i920, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 9 (X64), Vista x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S 4.1

[Mark Prebonich]

Thanks for the responses. I did end up resizing the photos but it was for the HD version of the video. So, this all makes much better sense now. So, if I shot the video using the SD mode on the camera, would the SD video portion render look better?

All in all, I am still quite impressed with the overall quality of the video.

I initially ended up adding sharpen-light fx to the videos which I think made them overall look better. I guess that I will put up with the artifacts as seen. Thanks

-Mark

[John Rofrano]

Perhaps it is a default setting for the PAL DVD template and not NTSC.

That’s the tricky part. It’s not part of ANY template. The template settings only affect the area above the line below “frame rate”. Everything below that line is saved when you check [x] Start all new projects with these settings.

I just did a test. I set my deinterlace to None and clicked “start all new projects with these settings”. Then I closed Vegas and re-opened it and check the setting and it was still none. Then I closed Vegas and held down Ctrl+Shift while starting it and Vegas asked if I wanted to reset all of my preferences and I said Yes. I check the deinterlace setting and it was back to Blend.

I’m not sure why you aren’t seeing the same thing but Blend seems to be the default on my installations.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

So, if I shot the video using the SD mode on the camera, would the SD video portion render look better?

No. HD will look better because it starts with 5x more information. You can try shooting some SD and HD footage and see for yourself. It may have been just that particular footage because it had horizontal lines but I shoot everything in HD and deliver in SD and don’t have any quality problems.

~jr

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