Carlos Zapater
Forum Replies Created
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[John Rofrano] “Since Vegas Pro has it’s own M-JPEG decoder, what if you capture with Morgan and then turn Morgan off in it’s little control panel and let Vegas Pro use it’s own M-JPEG decoder?”
I tried that before all the mess and Vegas didn’t recognize the clips saying that “there was a problem with the codec”. Maybe because it was encoded with a 32bit version? Anyway I’ll try again as now only have Morgan.
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[John Rofrano] “Have you tried Lower Field first instead of Upper?”
Yes. I tried all combinations in both project settings and render between progressive/upper/lower
[John Rofrano] “Have you tried editing in 32-bit? Do you have an older version of Vegas Pro 11.0 or earlier that supports 32-bit?”
Unfortunately I don’t have that option. I only have Vegas 11 and Premiere. Maybe I could try an older Vegas demo if I find it… but anyway if it works I wouldn’t be able to purchase it.
[John Rofrano] “Does the flashing happen during playback or only when rendered?”
It happens while scrubbing in the timeline, while playing in the timeline and in the final render. It doesn’t happen when you play the raw captured video in software player but then it shows the jagged edges.
[John Rofrano] “It seems you are getting closer by capturing with Morgan.”
I hope so. Both codecs (PicVideo and Morgan) work better when you capture and edit with the same codec but still have problems. Vegas architecture seems waaaay old…
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[John Rofrano] “I do all of my screen capture videos with Techsmith Camtasia. They have one of the best intra-frame codecs for this type of thing. You could also look into the free Lagarith but the files will be huge because it’s lossless. Both support progressive video.”
I tested both of them and discarded them. Camtasia is really good but it takes too may resources in my computer and when I scrubbed the clips in editor the playback was unaccurate and choppy. The only software that manages the clips is Camtasia itself. And Lagarith was very good but it ate a lot of space so I discarded it too. I thought that with an MJPEG codec my problems would solve.
Now for the report of today. Restoration was OK although Morgan didn’t want to work as before. I uninstalled al MJPEG codecs and leave Morgan alone: didn’t work. Uninstalled it, installed the 32bit version, then 64 bit version and… it worked!! Don’t ask me why, but it worked. Let’s go with pictures. I suggest to click on images to view them in full resolution.
This is Morgan in progressive settings as I see it in the preview window with exact output size.
This is with interlaced upper field
As you see the interlaced effect adds to the jagged lines resulting in “double jagging”
I have rendered a little portion of the video several times changing project and render specs, all resulting wrong in terms of picture quality. Deinterlace in project was set to ‘Blend’. When render was set to progressive always had black frames and flickering. All other combinations resulted in typical interlace edges in areas where it was movement.
As additional data, when I tried to play the interlaced renders in VLC with deinterlace option set to auto, the result was the picture with both fields blended but the text and the picture remained with the original jagged edges.
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I edit the post because I’ve just captured my first clip with Morgan codec. It shows jagged picture when played directly but looks beautiful in Vegas. No jagged edges, no color banding. The problem is now the flicker. Picture sometimes and randomly becomes a lot darker for a frame. Strange thing is that when playing directly in VLC it doesn’t flicker (but then it shows jagged). Damn’t…
Seems that there is some incompatibility if you capture with 32 bit version and then you work with 64 bit version of the same codec.
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[John Rofrano] “Yes, I could not get it to render progressive. M-JPEG is a format that goes way, way back before progressive video cameras existed when everything was SD and interlaced. There is a new Motion-JPEG spec that supports progressive but these codecs do not implement that.”
I won’t be able to restore my system until late when I come back from work. I could do it within TeamViewer but that’s not a thing I like to do in the distance. In the meanwhile… what is in your opinion the best intra-frame compression codec to work with Vegas?
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[John Rofrano] “I would uninstall Morgan, uninstall PicVideo, then install Morgan and capture with that codec to see if it solves your banding problem. Then set your project to match the interlaced video that you captured and it should all work.”
Does Morgan encodes in interlaced as well?
Believe me. I have tried that and a hundred more combinations, rebooting always when I changed something and the system didn’t recognize Morgan again. Neither Vegas nor video players.
Hmm… now that I’m thinking about it maybe I can restore the system to a point before things began to misbehave. Let me try and I’ll tell you.
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Yes, I did it when I read your lasts suggestions and before I messed up all the things with the Morgan codec (remember that with PicVideo and Vegas the only issue I had was the color banding)and as I said in last post the result was bad. It mixed the jagged edges with the interlaced effect. Some kind of “double jagging”. Then I switched back to PicVideo to see the interlace settings and couldn’t switch again to Morgan.
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I’ve done something that have messed up Morgan codec. I was following your indications and it didn’t solve the problem. Mediainfo confirmed what you said. Raw videos were encoded interlaced top field first which kind of shocked me as when I played them in VLC with deinterlace disabled didn’saw anything that suggested it was not progressive. But when I saw video in preview window it was ‘double-jagged’. Tried all combinations and field orders but it didn’t fix the preview or the render.
Then I decided to install back PicVideo to search for an option to encode in progressive and that made something that for now I couldn’t fix. Morgan can be installed but it is not active. No matter if it is alone or not. I’ve passed all afternoon installing and uninstaling codecs and neither Vegas nor media players detected it.
So, I think I’m going to give it up for the time being. The only workflow that actually ‘worked’ was PicVideo with Premiere and that’s the one I’m going to adopt although I hate Premiere and it doesn’t recognize different audio streams in a single avi as Vegas does. It is a shame but … 🙁
Thank you very much for your guidance John. I hope to return you a favor in future.
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[John Rofrano] “You have to select the correct format to begin with. The Morgan and PicVideo codecs are Video for Windows (VFW) coded so you must start with the Video for Windows (*.avi). In your screen shot you are using the MainConcept AVC which always uses the AVC H.264 codec. You’ll see the Configure button after you select the Morgan MJPEG Codec under Video for Windows. “
I see… but the final format must be an H264 .mp4 video. Do you think that first I have to render it to Morgan an then again to H264? The thing is that original clips are captured in MJPEG but final video has to be in H264.
About the properties. There you have the screenshot.
The size of the picture is 1280×800 because is the closest to 720p but in a 16:10 proportion instead of 16:9. That is because the screen capture is also 16:10 and didn’t want to crop it or stretch it. I tried also with a 720p project but results were the same, so I went back to original size.
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[John Rofrano] “If you want the footage to be progressive then you probably have to press the configure button under the advanced render template settings and configure Morgan to produce progressive video.”
I must be stupid… I know in older versions of vegas you could access to codec settings pressing that button but in Vegas 11 I’m not able to locate it. It seems like you only can make changes in the template without changing the codec or codec settings.
Also, you cannot create a template from scratch defining the codec to use.
Anyway when I said that preview looked great I was wrong. In my home pc I only have one monitor and preview window was small, so it looked good.
But when I arrived to pc2 with two monitors I saw in preview monitor that I was wrong. The jaggy picture was there.
Looking at the picture more accurately it doesn’t seem an interlace issue to me. The jagged lines of the interlacing appear when there’s some movement and they are thinner than those. In this picture all the image is afected, even the static text that says “Zapa_ESP grabbed and stabbed…” and the other one at the bottom. I would say that it is like a picture with half the lines needed to complete the real resolution and that’s why when it was small it looked good. If it was about interlacing it would look bad despite dimensions, I think.
In Premiere CS6 it also appear jagged in preview in real dimensions which take things weirder as it uses directshow If I’m not wrong. It seems indeed a codec setting or limitation (again). If you click morgan codec properties in the system tray quick access there are some deinterlace related checkboxes that doesn’t affect the preview of both editors.
You said that you have a good picture in preview. Was it at original size? Are you using 32 or 64 bits OS? Is your Vegas 64 or 32 bits?
I really appreciate your help and time, John. This thing is driving me crazy!
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[John Rofrano] “That’s really strange because I rendered some HD footage with the Morgan MJPEG codec trial and it looked great. No jagged edges or anything. I was using the 64-bit version of the Morgan codec.”
In which format did you rendered that footage? The thing that shocked me most is that no matter what preset I used in Vegas and Premiere, the result was the same. And no matter what player and filter I used, the picture was jagged. But in the timeline and preview window it looked great.
I’ll try to post a screenshot during this morning if I can manage to connect to my home computer via Teamviewer so you can watch it. Maybe it will enlight us 🙂
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Edit to include link to img
