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Vegas Platinum 9.0b optimal 1280x720p h.264 render profile?
Perhaps I haven’t found the right bit of the FAQ or got used to the settings yet, and sorry if this is a FAQ but…
I’ve filmed most stuff in 1280x720p, and a little bit in 1920x1080i, and after much experimenting previous to getting Vegas 9, I found that for my needs the h.264 codec is best for what I want to do – works well for youtube, my media player and provides good quality for general viewing balanced with reasonable filesize.
Almost two solid days of playing around, and I just can’t get the balance right for the rendering profile. Sounds crazy, but I get a much better result exporting as dv avi and then using a bit of freeware called xvid4psp to do the conversion to h.264! I’m thinking that surely my “paid for” bit of software should be able to do better?? Yes, I can get the same quality, but for example, the same output file in 1280x720p h.264 from Vegas is about 2-3x the size from the freeware converter. How can I correct this? For final rendering, good quality and small filesize is the key for me – doesn’t matter about render time, I can leave it overnight if needed.
Thanks!
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4 Replies
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Hello Jonathan.
I was hoping someone would reply to you with a solution, because I do pretty much the same thing. I think the “solution” is to upgrade to Vegas Pro, which gives you more flexible output options.
After spending countless hours trying to find an optimal h.264 output setting using Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Pro 9 (VMS), I now use an opensource program called “MeGUI” to render the final video.
I capture video in 1280 x 720, 59.94fps. I create the movie in VMS and render it as an uncompressed AVI. Then pass that file through MeGUI to output an h.264, MP4 file. I don’t create a lot of videos, so it is not a big deal for me.
Dale
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> Sounds crazy, but I get a much better result exporting as dv avi and then using a bit of freeware called xvid4psp to do the conversion to h.264! I’m thinking that surely my “paid for” bit of software should be able to do better??
What presets are you using in Vegas? Under the Sony AVC render type there are several PSP settings that should give you similar results to what xvid4psp is giving you.
> Yes, I can get the same quality, but for example, the same output file in 1280x720p h.264 from Vegas is about 2-3x the size from the freeware converter. How can I correct this?
DV AVI is 720×480 so you are feeding xvid4psp 2-3x less information which is why it is such a smaller file. As I said, try using one of the PSP settings in Vegas.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Apologies – two things I didn’t make clear.
I meant the output format which is 1280×720, not the DV-avi!
Also, xvid4psp is a bit of a misnomer, it actually does conversion from anything to anything else. Is there any way of making a new profile? For example, from looking in the profiles folder, I know this makes an excellent file:
video codec:
x264video cli:
–crf 21 –level 4.1 –ref 3 –mixed-refs –filter -2,-1 –bframes 3 –b-pyramid –weightb –8x8dct –trellis 2 –no-fast-pskip –no-dct-decimate –analyse all –subme 7 –me umh -
I’m not sure if the Movie Studio Platinum version of Vegas allows you to make new profiles/templates. If the Custom button is not grayed out you can use it to make a new template.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
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