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Softening of Vegas Pro MP4 renders
I’ve cut hundreds of hours in Vegas Pro over the years, with a wide range of target formats. File delivery these days has to be in an MP4 container. On a current project, I was experimenting with bit rate settings on the Sony AVC codec, and noticed that even at the highest bit rate and render quality, there is a fairly significant softening of detail.
Yes of course, there has to be a price to pay in the rendering process. Some degree of artifact or noise, or quantization, etc. I did also do a test output in AVI using the YUV Sony codec. Noticeably sharper, but a bigger file to boot. Not very portable either.
Maybe this is just the nature of AVC? Curious to hear any suggestions on getting as close to source sharpness as possible. Or maybe I already am.
Joe Mizera
Mizera Digital
https://www.austexvideo.com -
12 Replies
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If you try a decent x264 encoder like HandBrake you will notice the output will be sharper (with even lower bitrates) then Vegas’ one.
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Marco, thanks for the response. Sure enough, transcoding with Handbrake from the AVI yields a much sharper picture. Very close to the source preview. I wish I could get this quality right out of a Vegas MP4 render. Seems there may be no way around this extra step.
Joe Mizera
Mizera Digital
https://www.austexvideo.com -
If you don’t spare the effort of some extra installation maybe the Vegas2HandBrake workflow I once setup could help a little:
https://www.vegasvideo.de/vegas-2-handbrake-en.html
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Very interesting. Looks like a bit of doing to setup, but I can already see that once it’s done, a lot of time could be saved down the road.
Thanks for the info!
Joe Mizera
Mizera Digital
https://www.austexvideo.com -
Joe, believe me when I say that the package Marco put together is amazing! I had never tried frameserving until I got this setup and he explains so well that even I had no problems following it. I use it all the time and the results are definitely worth it.
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Thanks for the testimonial Mike. This definitely sounds like the way to go. Especially on some projects of mine, that end up with a multiple of shorter videos. I just installed Frameserver, and it’s showing up in Renderassistant. If it works with this process, it will be awesome.
Joe Mizera
Mizera Digital
https://www.austexvideo.com -
+1 Vegas to Handbrake script. Once set up, you won’t use anything else. If you have an Intel Processor, there is an option for using QuickSync for encoding–much quicker than CPU only. Regardless of which you use, it works wells.
wwaag
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Marco,
I have this setup and working, and the output looks great! I do have one question. I do still need to click start once Handbrake launches, which is hardly a big deal. I wonder if there is a way to automate that? Or perhaps I missed a step?
Joe Mizera
Mizera Digital
https://www.austexvideo.com -
If you mean the start button of HandBrake which then finally starts the render process, this is done on purpose though it could have been automated.
The reason is, you usually need to select a render preset first or even modify some of the given render settings before you would start the render process. Just like you would do when using a Vegas Pro internal renderer.
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Ah, that makes sense then. Still a great time and trouble saver. Thanks again for putting this together.
Joe Mizera
Mizera Digital
https://www.austexvideo.com
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