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Sony Vegas Pro 12 Best Settings
Thank you in advance for reading this and helping me obtain a higher quality product. I live in the USA and been using Sony Vegas Pro for years (currently on version 12) but am in the process of educating myself and trying to upgrade my video files for better quality. I recently purchased Vegasaur and realized that I’m probably doing several things wrong that have hurt my quality. I download music videos from YouTube and add words to them to sing to in my Sunday School class at church. The projector we use is XGA with the aspect ratio set to 16:9. I thought we had an SVGA, so my videos have a lot of room for improvement!
Current process:
Most of my videos have a 360p or 480p resolution. If the frame rate was not 29.970 fps, I used a video converter to correct that.I used these project settings in Vegas:
NTSC DV (720×480, 29.970 fps)
Field order: Lower field first
Pixel aspect ratio: 0.9091 (NTSC DV)
Frame rate: 29.970 (NTSC)
Pixel format: 8-bit
Full-resolution rendering quality: Best
Motion blur type: Gaussian
Deinterlace method: None
Adjust source media to better match project or render settings (checked)I rendered with these settings:
MainConcept MPEG-2 Program Stream NTSC
I used all the default settings except changed the field order to “lower field first” and put in a constant bit rate of 7,000,000.New process:
I’ve downloaded the same music videos as 720p off of YouTube and changed the frame rate to 29.970 fps. Based on what I’ve read and being told in Vegasaur, are these the best project settings to use?:HDV 720-30p (1280×720, 29.970 fps)
Field order: Lower field first
Pixel aspect ratio: 0.9091 (NTSC DV)
Frame rate: 29.970 (NTSC)
Pixel format: 8-bit
Full-resolution rendering quality: Best
Motion blur type: Gaussian
Deinterlace method: Interpolate fields
Adjust source media to better match project or render settings (NOT checked)I render with these settings:
MainConcept MPEG-2 HDV 720-30p
I use all the default settings except changed:
Output type: DVD
Field order: Lower field first
Video quality: High
Constant bit rate: 8,000,000Here are a few questions that I have:
1. Do the new settings above allow for the best image quality?
2. XGA video projectors have a 1024×768 resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio. With me creating and rendering at 1280×720, will I notice that much quality difference? Should I be creating and rendering at 1024×768 to match the properties of the video projector?
3. When I input my music video into my project, should I be changing the field order and pixel aspect ratio properties to match the project properties (or should I leave that as is since it will be changed when rendered)?
4. Once the music video is rendered, I will either burn it to DVD for playing through a DVD player or input it as a video file in Powerpoint for playing through a laptop. When broadcasting the video through a XGA projector, should my render settings be any different when my source is a DVD player versus a laptop?Thanks again for your help with this!!
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3 Replies
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If you’re burning to DVD, render to DVD files at DVD resolution. HDV 720 is not a DVD resolution. Neither is 1024×768. Use the DVD Architect presets if you’re burning to DVD.
If you’ll be playing it back on a computer, sure, you could render to the projector’s resolution. It won’t make the background video look any better, but might give you some improvement on the new text you’re adding.
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Radio guy in a TV world. Bigasssuperstar.com -
I don’t use Architect, so would I select the “Program Stream NTSC Widescreen” and change the width and height to 1280×720 if burning to DVD or 1024×768 if playing on a laptop?
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NO. It doesn’t matter whether you use Architect or not. If you’re burning a DVD (and by that, I assume you mean a DVD that plays in DVD players according to DVD standards, and not just any old file on a DVD-R), the standard is the same: an mpeg2 file with specific resolutions and bitrates, with specific kind of audio. The resolutions you’ve mentioned are NOT DVD resolutions.
So, whichever DVD-authoring/burning program we’re talking about, you’ll be using the DVD template. Rendering something with a higher resolution is NOT DVD-compliant and WILL be resized and re-encoded by a DVD authoring/burning program, which WILL be a headache you don’t want.
If you’re rendering a video file to be played on a computer and output on a projector, sure, go ahead and render to the projector’s native resolution. If your computer is capable enough to play mp4, you might as well use the Sony AVC template and adjust as necessary.
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Radio guy in a TV world. Bigasssuperstar.com
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