Vegas 9, Canon 5D MkII MOVs, splitting and rendering workflow?

VEGAS Pro

Vegas 9, Canon 5D MkII MOVs, splitting and rendering workflow?

Posted by Jason Lingohr on June 28, 2009 at 12:38 am
Hi all,

I’ve spent about a good week searching through COW for a definitive way to do this, to no avail.

I’m working with 5D videos in MOV. I had basically put together a 9 odd minute timeline, and no matter what I attempt to render to, Vegas bombs with lack of memory etc. I have done some splitting and things now work fine.

First, my specs:
XP 32 bit, 4gb RAM (only 3 of course is usable)
AMD Phenom quad core

A typical 5D movie:

Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : QuickTime Codec ID : qt File size : 179 MiB Duration : 37s 0ms Overall bit rate : 40.5 Mbps
Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : Baseline@L5.0 Format settings, CABAC : No Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Duration : 37s 0ms Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 39.1 Mbps Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 1 088 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16/9 Frame rate mode : Constant Frame rate : 30.000 fps Resolution : 24 bits Colorimetry : 4:2:0 Scan type : Progressive

Yes… they’re biiiiiiiig 😉

So, here are a few of my questions:
- Breaking the project up — what do you do? Just literally pick a point in time (possibly in the middle of an event) and then hit S to split? (And then of course, save as, lightning bolt remove unused etc)
- “Intermediate” rendering — this is my current sticking point. I didn’t buy quite an expensive camera only to re and re and re encode to the point where my quality falls through the floor. I could render out to something uncompressed, but I’m already working with huge files, and don’t have that kind of diskspace. What format would be best to render the parts to before rejoining, with little or no loss?
- And if the above is true, do I put my text, titles, credits etc into the final project so that they too don’t get mangled several times, or what?
My target right now is to both render to something that I can watch later via PCs and my Popcorn media box, and upload to YouTube… so, full 1080p in mp4 using the Mainconcept AVC codec (or perhaps even 720p). If I render the parts to this format, and my final project is that format, will Vegas re-render those and suffer more quality loss, or will it be smart and realise it doesn’t need rendering, and just “join” them?

(It doesn’t seem to make sense to goto WMV or something else when my source is H.264).

It is quite disappointing that Vegas isn’t more smart about memory management — eg. don’t keep all the events on the timeline open upon rendering! Just like the “close when in another app” setting, once the render starts, why not close events it hasn’t hit yet (and has already dealt with)?!? Then all of this would be moot.

(Probably worth noting that stuff encoded with MC’s AVC isn’t watchable via Windows Media Player out of the box, which is also a little annoying; even with CoreAVC installed).

So, I hope all this makes sense, and I’m just missing some clues.
Tom Graves replied 13 years, 9 months ago 6 Members · 15 Replies
15 Replies

John Rofrano
June 28, 2009 at 2:52 pm

> “Intermediate” rendering — this is my current sticking point. I didn’t buy quite an expensive camera only to re and re and re encode to the point where my quality falls through the floor.

You are missing the point of using intermediaries. A good intermediary codec can withstand lots of re-rendering with no appreciable loss in quality. CineForm NeoScene supports Canon 5D Mk II camera footage and I would highly recommend that you use it. It plays back smoothly in Vegas, it uses intraframe compression, unlike your camera which uses interframe compression, so it holds up very well to repeated re-rendering. Lots of people with cameras way more expensive than yours (including myself) use it because it produces very high quality output. IMHO, this is the best way to work with Canon 5D Mk II camera footage in Vegas Pro.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
Jason Lingohr
June 28, 2009 at 11:19 pm

[John Rofrano] “Lots of people with cameras way more expensive than yours (including myself) use it because it produces very high quality output”

Sorry John, I didn’t mean to sound like I was in the highend of the field. I guess I’m used to being considered that in the stills arena.

Excuse the continuing questions, but is Cineform NeoScene included with Vegas 9, or any Cineform codec for that matter, as I don’t see them. I read this from Sony’s site:

2. Go to File > Render As. The Save As Type should be set to “Video For Windows (*.AVI)” and the Template should be set to “HDV 1080-60i Intermediate”. Now click Save. The files will be saved as an AVI that utilizes the Cineform HD V2.5 codec. It retains all the detail from the M2TS file.

If you do not see “Video For Windows (*.AVI)” and the Template “HDV 1080-60i Intermediate” in your drop-down menus, then you can render the file to MPEG-2. Go to File > Render As. The Save As Type should be set to “MainConcept MPEG-2” and the Template should be set to “HDV 1080-60i”. Now click Save.

Does that still hold true for 9, or does one have to purchase this codec seperately?

(Oh and why wouldn’t the avi version show up?)
John Rofrano
June 30, 2009 at 4:23 am

No worries. When you pay a lot of money for a camera you expect to be able to use it’s output without a lot of transcoding but unfortunately, the best format for acquiring is not always the best format for editing.

Those statements about CineForm are from previous versions of Vegas Pro. The 32-bit version of Vegas Pro 9.0 ships with the CineForm codec but it doesn’t have any pre-made templates. You will have to make them yourself.

The 64-bit version of Vegas Pro 9.0 does not have a CineForm codec at all. You’ll need to purchase Neo Scene for that but it’s only $99 and well worth the money for what it does. I use it all the time. There is a public beta for the 64-bit version.

So just to summarize:

Vegas Pro 9.0 32-bit has the CineForm codec but no templates.

Vegas Pro 9.0 64-bit doesn’t come with the CineForm codec (because you need the 64-bit version)

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
Jason Lingohr
June 30, 2009 at 5:26 am

[John Rofrano] “When you pay a lot of money for a camera you expect to be able to use it’s output without a lot of transcoding but unfortunately, the best format for acquiring is not always the best format for editing.”

Yeah, exactly. Having said that, I’m not entirely sad that Canon chose a MOV container… and I’m definately happy they went with something smart like H.264 inside it!

[John Rofrano] “Vegas Pro 9.0 32-bit has the CineForm codec but no templates.”

Right. Thanks for the info; last bugging of you — what is the codec called! I’ve looked under avi and others and don’t see anything that directly names CineForm. I realise I need to goto Custom, but what dropdown do I select for the codec?

The closest I got was using m2t as per what I posted; as far as I can tell it has used CineForm (as wow, finally, I have realtime preview!) but can’t be sure, and would much prefer to be working with an avi container than an MPEG-2 TS.

Thanks SO much for putting up with the noobish questions thus far. I don’t get why any form of intermediate documentation has been both removed from Vegas’ help, and not updated in their knowledgebase…
John Rofrano
June 30, 2009 at 2:40 pm
> …what is the codec called! I’ve looked under avi and others and don’t see anything that directly names CineForm. I realise I need to goto Custom, but what dropdown do I select for the codec?

CineForm is an AVI codec within Vegas so you have to:
1. Select Video for Windows (*.avi) as the type
2. Then start by selecting the HD 1080-60i YUV template.
3. Press the Custom… button
4. On the Video tab change the Frame size: to HDV 1080 (1,440×1,080)
5. Change the Pixel aspect ratio: to 1.3333
6. Change the Video format: to CineForm HD Codec 2.1
7. Change the template name to “HDV 1080-60i CineForm” and press the Save icon (diskette)
8. Press OK to continue
The reason you need to change the frame size and pixel aspect ratio is because the CineForm codec that ships with Vegas is limited to HDV 1440×1080. To get full HD 1920×1080 you need to purchase CineForm Neo Scene.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
Jason Lingohr
July 1, 2009 at 12:16 am

Truly bizarre… I just don’t get that codec as an option. Followed your instructions to the letter. From what I can tell, the machine it is installed on is missing the cfhd.dll file.

From the sounds of it, NeoScene is worth the money, and I’ll want full 1080p renders anyhow so will go down that path.

Thanks SO much for your help John!
John Rofrano
July 1, 2009 at 1:26 am

> Truly bizarre… I just don’t get that codec as an option.

You know… I also have Vegas Pro 8.0 on this machine so maybe I’m picking it up from that. Which means that Vegas Pro 9.0 doesn’t ship with a CineForm codec at all. That’s just backwards. I guess buying Neo Scene is the only way to get CineForm if you don’t have an earlier version of Vegas. I don’t regret my purchase of Neo Scene. I use the CineForm codec to transfer video between Vegas and After Effects and the built-in codec doesn’t do that anyway. It only works in Vegas.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
Jason Lingohr
July 1, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Yeah, very backwards.

A few irksome observations having installed the NeoScene demo:
- Matching the intermediate project settings to my CFHD avi, and the preview works great. As long as the preview res matches, it’s fine. As soon as anything changes in the new project settings, including field order, the preview turns choppy.
- If I attempt to render to 30fps (native for the 5D Mk II footage), Vegas just sits there with the clocks running, and no frames written… ie. the classic Vegas hang (and I thought good practice was to match input settings)
I would have thought if I have progressive source media at 30fps, I’d want to stay with that… but as it stands, this seems impossible 🙁

Also, even though I rendered to 1080p, MediaInfo doesn’t even show a field order, and Vegas seems to think it’s still i. Changing the codec from Auto to Progressive made no difference.

So it would seem that I’m stuck with 1080i, when my source is 1080p.

Thoughts?

(Just discovered that there is a Vegas patch that may fix preview issues… https://techblog.cineform.com/?p=1424)

(Also, this is half relevant to the i/p issue: https://techblog.cineform.com/?p=1407 … but, as my source is MOV, my issue still stands. I guess when rendering to CF AVI, the codec has no idea of i/p or isn’t applicable?)
John Rofrano
July 2, 2009 at 8:08 pm

> Matching the intermediate project settings to my CFHD avi, and the preview works great. As long as the preview res matches, it’s fine. As soon as anything changes in the new project settings, including field order, the preview turns choppy.

This is to be expected. once you change the project properties to something different than the source you are asking Vegas to do a lot of work to play it back properly.

> So it would seem that I’m stuck with 1080i, when my source is 1080p. Thoughts?

I’m not sure why CineForm is capturing interlaced when the source is progressive. You might want to contact CineForm and ask them how it should work with the Canon 5D.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
Michael Tobin
July 26, 2009 at 3:44 am

I have the same Camera and had the exact same problem. After several months of no good solution I have found one that works great. It has nothing to do with Vegas. Vegas needs the Apple Quick Time codecs to support MOV files. The memory problem is in the QT codecs. Not sure if Apple made the windows version of the codecs crappy on purpose or they just write crappy code. But this solved the problem for me and the best part is you won’t have to play your raw video files in QT anymore. The free program MP4Cam2AVI converts the files to AVI (no recompression, so really fast and no quality loss). You will also need to install the ffdshow with VFW H.264 codecs. You can download MP4Cam2AVI at https://sourceforge.net/projects/mp4cam2avi/ and ffdshow at https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/

Good Luck!!!
-Mike

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