Using third party codecs with Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 6

[Steve Rhoden]

“How do you use codecs in Sony Vegas other than the ones that came preloaded, please? I’ve found lots of interesting things on the web and in the help file but not the answer to what I really want to know!

Well Steve,
You work with other codecs just like you would with what comes with vegas…when you purchase a codec and install it, you can select it
during rendering in vegas where you can view its finished output.

But codecs and rendering is not what i would advise one to be focused
on…..Content quality and how you edit your scenes along with music, Audio integration, Color correction and Color grading with proper lighting,etc….these are the corner stone one should focus on to produce brilliant and visually appealing video content…and even seasoned professionals still aspire to perfect their work in these fields.

Your statement is a bit broad….be specific about the topics you really want to know here…you will get accurate and specific answers from the many members we have.

Steve Rhoden
Creative Director
TNX EFFECTS STUDIOS.
http://www.youtube.com/hentys

[Steve Boreham]

Thank you for such a fast reply, Steve.

I agree entirely on your comments regarding editing scenes, colour, audio integration, and so on since this is where I spend a hill of time pursuing the holy grail and where there will always be room for improvement. As an example, my last project (a simple family documentary) had a 75:1 ratio between time spent designing and editing versus end product run time. I have many years stills photography experience that helps in trying to think what I’m going to do (I make mental notes at the stills or video shooting stage even if the shot is an impromtu one) but being a perfectionist no wonder projects tend to be done when the rest of the household is asleep! 😉

Anyway, to give more background to my post: there may be codecs outside the standard set that ships with Vegas that can improve on any aspect of what I do and how I do it. For example, improved rendered product image quality, improved audio quality, reduced rendering time, more efficient compression, or whatever. A codec that crops up a lot is the Lagarith lossless codec so I downloaded and installed it but can’t work out how to use it; from the info I found on the web I expected to see it listed in the Vegas “Make Movie” and “Render As” menu items, whereupon I would then expect to be able to choose it and configure it. In practice all I get to see are Mainconcept, Quicktime, Realmedia, Video for Windows, and Windows Media Video. No option for Lagarith. I then went carefully through Options / Preferences but couldn’t find any setting that looked like it was blocking usage. Lagarith is just an example and I expect that whatever the answer to my question is will apply to any codec.

Perhaps I miss the plot, pardon the pun?

[John Rofrano]

> I expected to see it listed in the Vegas “Make Movie” and “Render As” menu items, whereupon I would then expect to be able to choose it and configure it. In practice all I get to see are Mainconcept, Quicktime, Realmedia, Video for Windows, and Windows Media Video. No option for Lagarith.

You are confusing CODECS with CONTAINERS and it’s a common misunderstanding. Quicktime, Video for Windows, Windows Media Video, etc. are containers that can use multiple codecs. Lagarith is a codec that requires a container. I believe Lagarith uses Video for Windows (AVI). So you would select Video for Windows and then select a template and press the Custom… button. Then on the Video tab you would select the Lagarith codec as the Video Format. Don’t forget to save the template for future use.

~jr

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

[Steve Boreham]

Well, what can I say except a big THANK YOU, John!
Problem well and truly solved.

Having seen the MPEG-2 container (as I now know it is!) prefixed with the proprietary name “MainConcept” I’d assumed that it was infact a codec itself. Now I know differently.

After playing with Pixel Ratio and a few other settings I re-rendered an existing 15 minute project and the output is superb. Sure, the filesize has jumped from 452,900 KB with MPEG2 to 9,587,900 KB with AVI, but that doesn’t worry me when the result will be authored to DVD with Sony DVD Architect anyway.

The only downside (obviously) is increased authoring time that more than cancels out the small rendering time improvement gained with Lagarith. Again, no problem.

Cheers! 🙂

Now to find a suitable 5.1 codec…

[John Rofrano]

Steve,

I’m glad that worked for you but I’m not sure you are going about this the right way. If your target is to make a DVD (which only accepts MPEG2), then why would you render your final video to any codec other than MPEG2? Why the extra step to Lagarith?

I can only assume as your original post said that you are experimenting and learning to see what’s best. Let me save you a lot of time. A codec does not enhance your video. In fact, most degrade it which is why you want to limit re-rendering as much as possible. If I were you I would render directly from the Vegas timeline to the final MPEG2 format that will be used on the DVD. This will give you the absolute highest quality possible.

> Now to find a suitable 5.1 codec…

I don’t follow. Why would you have to find one. Doesn’t Vegas Movie Studio Platinum already come with a Dolby Digital AC-3 encoder?

~jr

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

[Steve Boreham]

Hi John,

Thank you for your continued help.

Yes, you are right that this is all about experimenting and learning but rightly or (actually) wrongly it has some logic behind it too including the wish to minimize the rerendering impact that you mention. I’ll share my lack of knowledge so that someone else can search for and find it in future; Authored DVDs don’t have a single .MPG file in them but instead two folders AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. I assumed this meant that the format was not MPEG2 and that my source file was therefore being rerendered to another format. Rather than give DVD Architect an .MPG file that has already been compressed to kingdom come and then ask it to reformat to something else, it made sense in my mind to give it a file that preferrably had had more minimal compression and “handling”. Here, a lossless codec made sense, and .AVI chose itself as the format on the back of kind advice earlier in the thread.

So, my method of working went from rendering an .MPG in Vegas and opening this in DVD Architect to rendering an .AVI in Vegas and opening this in DVD Architect instead.

Of course I have now found something I missed in the help file that explains all this and the 5.1 bit too;

“If you have DVD Architect software, you can avoid unnecessary transcoding or recompression by using Vegas software to render your media files in the appropriate formats prior adding them to your DVD Architect project. The Sony Media Software AC-3 and MainConcept MPEG-2 encoders provide templates that will produce files that do not require recompression (unless the file size is too large to fit on a DVD).”

This implies that I should be rendering audio and video separately rather than together as I have always done (which probably explains why I could never see the point in “Make Movie” when it appeared to do the same as “Render As”). This also implies that I have a Sony Media Software AC-3 “container” even though a quick search through the available rendering formats didn’t reveal it. I’ll now dig again more thoroughly.

Steve

[John Rofrano]

> Authored DVDs don’t have a single .MPG file in them but instead two folders AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. I assumed this meant that the format was not MPEG2 and that my source file was therefore being rerendered to another format.

It will not be re-rendered. This gets back to containers and codecs again. DVD’s use a VOB container that supports the MPEG2 codec. If you render with a DVD compliant MPEG2 template, your video will simply be copied into the VOB file.

I don’t have the Movie Studio version of Vegas but in the Pro version there are a set of templates with DVD Architect in the name. These are the ones that are compatible and won’t get re-rendered.

~jr

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

[Steve Boreham]

Hi again John, and thanks again too for advice shared.

I took a look, and yes, I have four “DVD Archictect” templates in Movie Studio too so after experimenting with the “PAL DVD” one share the results.

Something I have never liked with the MainConceptMPEG-2 container (and Default template) was that still sections tended to flicker badly when a rendered movie was played back on any computer with almost any video player; only Media Center (my o/s is XP SP2 MCE 2005) with the appropriate NVidia codec stopped the flickering completely. The same was true when I authored a DVD of the same MPEG file with DVD architect and played it back on PC or my (50Hz analogue CRT) TV; flickering was very pronounced where complex still photographs had been the source. Forget the usual reds, I am talking, say, pictures with lots of parallel lines or something “coarse” like a gravel beach.

Historically I tried every combination of Field Order, Deinterlace Method, and Render Quality or whatever (remember I am learning by experiment usually with just the Help File as my sidekick), but the result was always the same. Frequent flicker where still photos were the original source.

When I tried Lagarith however in harmony with Progressive Scan for the Field Order and Best resolution quality (It had to be all three), flicker was completely absent on every playback device (any PC video player or my TV) and every other aspect of video quality was at least as good as when rendered from MainConcept MPEG-2. This is what caused me to be so happy a few posts back; still photos were just that. Still. Like looking at a print.

I have since (just) tried MainConcept MPEG-2 together with the “DVD Architect PAL DVD” template instead of the Default one, but the result is the same as with the Default template; frequent flicker on still sections.

As things currently stand therefore, the “Lagarith lossless / Progressive Scan / Best quality” combo gives me by far the best result, whatever the theory says should happen, but for the price of (twice) having to wait a long time for rendering.

I’m still happy to try other things therefore, so long as flicker stays absent.

Finally, I still can’t find a 5.1 codec in any Movie Studio rendering template for love or money…

Cheers,
Steve

[John Rofrano]

The flicker is caused by a combination of thin horizontal lines and interlacing. Since PAL video displays 50 interlaced fields per second there is the possibility that a horizontal line can be so thin that it is only one field thick. At 2 alternating fields per second, the line will display in one field and not the other thus flickering on and off 25 times a second.

As you have seen, rendering progressive removes the interlacing and thus gets rid of the problem. It does this at the risk of reduced resolution but the flickering is gone. You didn’t need Lagarith for this, you just needed to render progressive. Alternately you could set the Reduce Interlace Flicker property on the image events in Vegas. If that doesn’t remove it totally you could also add a 0.002 Gaussian Blur to the events to make the thin lines not a sharp.

The 5.1 Surround template is under Dolby Digital AC-3 as the “save as type”. Your project must be configured for 5.1 Surround Sound for it to be displayed. Perhaps the Movie Studio version doesn’t have the AC-3 encoder.

~jr

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

[Steve Boreham]

Hi John,

In all cases progressive scan was used and tests were repeated using both “Good” and “Best” rendering quality.

MainConcept MPEG-2 with Default template
Bad flicker on complex “still” scenes

MainConcept MPEG-2 with DVD Architect template “PAL DVD”
Identically bad flicker on complex “still” scenes

MainConcept MPEG-2 with DVD Architect template “PAL DVD” and property “Reduce interlace Flicker” = On
Greatly reduced flicker on complex “still” scenes, but still noticeable. Image also slightly “softer” than with the default template, this being most noticeable with text overlays lacking a truly sharp edge to each character.

MainConcept MPEG-2 with DVD Architect template “PAL DVD” and property “Reduce interlace Flicker” = On, plus Gaussian Blur 0.002
No noticeable difference to without Gaussian Blur (Yes, I did re-check that it was being used!)

Video for Windows AVI with Lagarith Lossless template
Some flicker with “Good” rendering quality but absolutely no flicker what so ever – stunningly stable – and no visible loss of picture fidelity or resolution when “Best” was used.

I’m still happy to try other techniques during my “night shifts” (i.e. with the rest of the family in bed which is when I get time to play!), but “AVI / Lagarith / Best quality” remains the only one to work with 100% success.

Back on the 5.1 topic: How do I configure a project so that the Dolby AC-3 “Save as” option is displayed, please? I ask because it doesn’t display at the moment which implies configuration is incorrect but the help file makes no mention of any necessary configuration being needed; it simply says to select this container from the list to encode in Dolby, and then goes on to explain how to ensure that dynamic range compression doesn’t make the resultant soundtrack too quiet.

Many thanks
Steve