[Dave Haynie]

You should look at your whole toolchain to decide if this is even an issue.

For example, if you shoot in HDV, and render a 25Mb/s MPEG-2 video stream from that, you’re pretty much running at the full quality of your camcorder. Going to AVC might give you the same quality at lower bitrates, but it’s not going to improve quality.

In theory, AVC has about twice the encoding efficiency of MPEG-2. That means that an AVC bitstream at 12.5Mb/s should deliver the same apparent quality as an MPEG-2 bitstream at 25Mb/s.

This is not always the case. For one, MPEG-2 is a very mature technology. Back in the mid-90s, there were drastically different qualities from different MPEG-2 encoders.. these days, they pretty much all do a good job. AVC is still kind of in development.

You know this, if you’ve played with AVCHD and MPEG-4 camcorders. It wasn’t really until this year that AVC camcorders routinely produced better quality video than HDV. Most of the consumer media camcorders (HDD, flash, DVD/BD) went to AVC to lower the storage demands. However, AVC is complex enough that, doing the encoding in realtime on a low powered camcorder, they didn’t even really match MPEG-2 quality. The evolution included both improvements to the encoders and upping the bitrate… all the way to 24Mb/s on consumer models.

With that said, given all the time it wants, an AVC encode on a PC should be good. It’s still algorithm dependent (eg, it’ll probably be better next year, if work is still being done), but taking the time element out helps. On Vegas, you have issues, though. Sony’s encoder is CBR-only, and limited to 16Mb/s or so. MainConcept’s can go to 20Mb/s and supports variable bitrate, but it wasn’t initially the one recommended for Blu-Ray, but rather for device stuff. I don’t know way.. but clearly, things are still in flux.

Of course, if you’re starting with an AVC source, and SmartRendering works, that’s a big advantage… SmartRendering means you’re not re-encoding, so quality will be optimized. I haven’t managed to get AVC to SmartRender at all, but then again, I’ve mainly been shooting beyond the Sony/MainConcept limits on my AVC stuff (1080/60p @ 24Mb/s).

The bottom line: unless you need the space on a BD, you probably get no advantage out of AVC. There may be disadvantges, maybe not.. other than the 3x encoding time.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Well, capture from the camcorder doesn’t change the video.. you get your 1440×1080@30p just as it’s recorded on tape, in an MPEG-2 transport stream “wrapper”.

Fortunately, this is a supported format on Blu-Ray, so as long as you’re not building long films, you don’t really need to chance the video at all.

You probably have to re-render… HDV is damn close to Blu-Ray format, but there’s apparently something different — DVDA doesn’t want to produce a BD without re-rendering you HDV. Different GOP structure, maybe?

Anyway, you should create a Vegas or DDVA project at 1080/60i. Blu-Ray does support the 1440×1080 resolution of HDV as well as “full” 1920×1080, but it doesn’t technically support 30p. When you render 30p as 60i, what you’ll see on most modern televisions is effectively 30p anyway (few modern displays can actually display interlaced video anyway).

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

You should elaborate on the “black lines”.. are you getting letterbox (lines at the top and bottom) or windowbox/pillarbox (lines on the sides)?

The most common problem with HDV or other HD formats converting to NTSC DVD is this ugly little secret about NTSC DVD… scaling a perfect 16:9 video to DVD gives you a 704×480 image. But the usual DVD resolution is 720×480. Thus, if you directly render from a 16:9 source to DVD, you get 8-pixel pillars on either side. These should be well into overscan on most TVs, but sure, it’s an issue.

Here’s the math… as with many older video sources, DVD pixels are not square. Normally, the aspect ratio is 1.2121 for 16:9, 0.901 for 4:3 (PAL sizes are different, due to PAL’s 576 lines). So, you find the horizontal pixels from the vertical this way:

H = ((480 * 16) / 9) / 1.2121 ~= 704.

What can you do? Well, you can render MPEG as 704×480… DVDA will accept this just dandy. You may find your player adds in the pillars, though.

The other alternative is to change your video aspect ration ever-so-slightly. Uncheck “Preserve Aspect Ratio” in all of your clips, and Vegas will stretch the video by 2.3% to fill the frame out to 720 pixels wide. Just don’t tell you subjects you’re making them 2.3% fatter!

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Check you “Optimize Disc” dialog, and/or your project settings.

For any given DVDA project, there are target settings for video and audio, and they don’t mix and match. So, for example, if the BD project is set for MPEG-2 and AC-3 assets, but you supply AVC and PCM (WAV), these will re-render, even if they are legal BD formats. Change these (from the Optimize Disc or Project Settings dialog), and DVDA should no long flag those assets for re-rendering.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Adobe doesn’t have much in the way of actual 64-bit programs. But, for the CS4 edition, they are fully 64-bit buzzphrase compatible:

“Gain up to 227% performance improvement when you use Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 on a 64-bit system with more memory.”

“Adobe Premiere® Pro CS4 software is architected and optimized for 64 bit operating systems.”

Most people would ASSUME that means this is a 64-bit application. It’s not. Apparently, they have just fixed some bugs working on 64-bit systems, and made the applications IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flagged.

That’s not useless… an IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE 32-bit application on a 64-bit system can get twice as much RAM as a default 32-bit application on a 32-bit system. Not that they’re bending over backwards to clarify this.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Rendering is a learned skill… there may be a little black magic, but it’s not RF electronics design or anything (the “black art” stuff I’ve been doing lately in my day job).

Basically, to get DVDA happy, you have to produce DVDA (and thus, DVD) compliant MPEG-2 video, and match the specifications from project to project. The simplest way to ensure you’re getting correct MPEG-2 is to use a “DVD Architect…” template when rendering your MPEG-2 (I assume Vegas Studio has these… I’m a “Pro” user, so poke me if I suggest things VSP doesn’t do).

When importing to DVDA, you have to match kumquats with kumquats. If you render a 16:9 video, but import to a 4:3 DVD project, DVDA will want to recompress (change to a 16:9 project, and that desire should ebb). Same with NTSC vs. PAL… if you export PAL video using a proper “DVD Architect PAL Widescreen video stream”, make sure you have a PAL project, 16:9, selected in DVDA.

It’s impossible to comment on the quality of your AVI re-render in DVDA, simply because an AVI can contain just about any old video CODEC. If this were an uncompressed/lossless AVI, it really shouldn’t be any different in quality than the other two. You might want to check settings there.

You are very correct, though, in wanting to avoid re-rendering… unless you’re using original sources, HD video, etc. in DVDA for the “fit to disc” trick, you have more control in Vegas, so you want all your rendering to happen there.. the only rendering in DVDA should be the occasional menu or some-such. If the re-rendering was really ugly, my guess is that your original MPEG-2 was something weird.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

If you’re rendering using a “DVD Architect” template (or some variation thereof), DVDA should absolutely accept the MPG file without recompression.

You should double-check your project settings in DVDA. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the 16:9 vs. 4:3 mode is kind of a global setting (it’s actually part of a thing called a titleset… DVDs can have multiple titlesets, but DVDA only permits a single titleset). This is controlled in the “Project Properties” dialog. Fire that up, go to the “Properties” tab, and look at the “Aspect ratio” setting. Make sure that says “16:9”. Some of the other properties are just for MPEG-2 generated by DVDA, not important.

Another thing to consider… aren’t you rendering 24p video? In DVD land, 24p video is stored at 60i video with a flag that says “24p”, or something like that. Basically, you encode the video including a 3:2 pulldown. Players that know what to do with 24p reverse-telecine this; others simply play it as if it were 60i. But if you give DVDA straight 24p MPEG-2, it’ll re-render..

The is essentially the same thing tape-based 24p camcorders have always done. Technically speaking, the format for 24p DVD is called “24pA”, or “advanced pulldown”. Standard 3:2 pulldown repeats the 2:3:2:3 cadance, while 24pA does 2:3:3:2. This prevents any useful 24p frame from being split between two 60i frames… it’s kind of technical.. you can find a good article on this on Wikipedia, look up “24p”. There’s a “DVD Architect 24p NTSC Widescreen video” template that imports just dandy into a widescreen DVDA project without recompression. I’m pretty sure that’s a stock template… if it’s actually one of mine, I can forward details.

Fortunately, going to Blu-Ray, they support natural 24p. The main advantage being more efficiency.. in 24pA, you’re compressing redundant data, stuff that’s just going to get tossed out for any progressive-scan player.

You can always check the “File/Optimize Disc…” dialog to see what DVDA thinks of your various assets. Usually, re-rendering is due to some difference in settings between your DVDA project and your assets. Often, particularly for audio, you can simply change settings in DVDA.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

The pillarboxing is due to some weirdness in aspect ratio here. Technically, 16:9 in NTSC DVD maps to 704×480 pixels in 16:9 mode, so if you strictly convert from most HD formats to DVD, you get these 8 pixel pillarboxes on either side of the video. This is well outside the title-safe area, and is extremely likely to not show up on SD televisions.

You can eliminate this by unchecking the “preserve aspect ratio” setting on your video tracks.. that forces whatever video you have to render to the full size of the output video.

Aspect ratio on your render is just metadata… there’s some data that indicates if the rendered video is considered 16:9 or 4:3, but there’s no other salient difference.

That’s kind of how DVDs work, too. There’s a global setting (well, close enough) that indicates to a player whether the video is 16:9 or 4:3. Additionally, players all have a setting somewhere to determine what to do in the presence of 16:9 video for a 4:3 screen. The usual options are letterbox or “pan and scan”… the DVD can supply pan and scan vectors, to decide where the 4:3 aperture will be placed over the 16:9 video. Without pan and scan vectors, you get a 4:3 centered aperture.

Years back, when I first got into DVD creation, I was using primitive software that didn’t support 16:9 mode. Since I was already shooting everything 16:9, I was able to edit the DVD settings after authoring the disc (at least for fairly simple discs), changing the 16:9 bit using a tool called IFOEdit.

Older systems do nothing special for a 4:3 video on a 16:9 display.. the assumption is that the display itself has upscaling/format controls, which is usually true. More modern players will automatically pillarbox a 4:3 video attached to a 16:9 display, and may have settings to enable/disable this behavior.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Jay’s right about selective pre-render, at least as far as speeding up complex sections of video. If your whole project is too slow, this won’t help. But if you’re stumbling over some area of too much complexity, it’s just what you want.

Basically, you put the “loop area” over a section of your project. You get a pop-up that basically lets you select an output format — generally you’d choose the format you intend to render to later. Do this, and that trouble area is transparently replaced by the pre-rendered version.. fast now!

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

It sounds to me like a video or audio plug-in is crashing while being intitialized by the DirectX system. You might try a DirectX plug-in manager, such as DXman: https://www.analogx.com/contents/download/audio/dxman.htm.

Now, it’s quite possible this will crash, too, but hopefully not. This allows plug-ins to be registered or unregistered — you can effectively turn them on or off without uninstalling.

-Dave