Worse quality by saving file 2 times?

[Kristofar Rieleef]

Try finding out what kind of files you are using and post the info, so people can get a better understanding of what you’re using. I’d suggest rendering the files to .m2t if they are HD.

[John Rofrano]

As Kris said, it depends on the codec that you are planning to use but in general, the answer to your question is: Yes, by rendering to make the file size smaller you will both loose quality and make it harder to edit. Then rendering again you will loose more quality but how much depends on the render type.

~jr

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

[Stephen Mann]

RENDERING a file doesn’t usually make it smaller, but ENCODING it does. You can RENDER an AVI file many times recursively before you start seeing any degradation of the image, but every encode to reduce file size will also reduce quality.

Don’t confuse encoding with rendering, notwithstanding that Sony puts both in the “Render As” menu.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Alexander Hellsten]

ok, thanks guys for your answers. I guess I’d give you seme more information. I’m making a fragmovie of CSS, and are recording the first video file as avi. When I render it in vegas I’ll choose avi, 1280×720, 30 fps, pixel aspect ratio 1, field order none, full-resoulotion rendering quality best (to get motion blur). These are the settings I’m using. Now if I would save one of my 10gb’s clips here with these settings, it will reduce alot. But then later I’d have have to use it again in vegas and render it once again…

[John Rofrano]

> I’m making a fragmovie of CSS, and are recording the first video file as avi. When I render it in vegas I’ll choose avi, 1280×720, 30 fps, pixel aspect ratio 1, field order none, full-resoulotion rendering quality best (to get motion blur).

It all depends on what codec you are using to make the AVI file and if the codec is lossy or lossless. If it’s lossy, you will lose quality. How much depends on the type of compression the encoder uses. Intraframe compression like DV and Cineform will hold up much better that interframe encoding like MPEG and DivX.

Let’s get back to your original statement:

> please help me, I just wanna reduce the sizes of the files, but not reducing the quality! 😛

The only way to do this is to use a codec that is lossless. Both Huffyuv and Lagarith are lossless codecs that are free. They still produce large files but they are smaller than uncompressed files.

You didn’t say what codec you are using to capture your video. Is it FRAPS? I would convert FRAPS to Lagarith. if the files are still too big, then you have a decision to make. If you want them smaller, you must be willing to lose quality. Otherwise I suggest you simply buy another hard drive. They are cheap and a much better solution that sacrificing quality.

~jr

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

[Alexander Hellsten]

I’m not using fraps to convert my material to avi, I’m using the source ingame stuff startmovie that reocords to frames, and then I later make them to avi in Vitrual Dub. What codec im using? If you mean the last compressing I’m doing it to x264, but thats after sony vegas so doesn’t belong to this part I guess.

[John Rofrano]

Are you saying that the games records as a series of images and then you make them an AVI in VirtualDub? You can do this right in Vegas. What codec do you use to save it in VirtualDub? If you are rendering uncompressed then try using the Lagarith codec to get smaller file sizes and no loss.

~jr

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

[Alexander Hellsten]

Okey, so earlier I’ve used picked “uncompressed” in vitrual dub, because I didn’t know what codec to use which woulnd’t make me loose the good quality. So If I instead use Huffrith or Lagarith it would for sure compressing it and keep the quality to 100%?