D. Eric franks
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“Television provides the opportunity
for an ongoing story – the opportunity
to meld the cast and the characters and
a world, and to spend more time there.”
— David Lynch
https://videopia.org -
I guess it’s possible that there’s a WMV lossless mode, but I’ve never heard of it. Basically, WMV is just Microsoft’s flavor of H.264, like DivX has there’s and MainConcept and Apple and… Some follow the ITU-T H.264 and ISO/IEC MPEG-4 AVC standards more closely than others and my understanding is that Microsoft mucked about with their version more than other did, but I’ll admit that was just a rumor I heard long ago (probably when I had lunch with the president of MainConcept… KIDDING). Anyhoo, there’s no question WMV is a great codec, but there’s also no question that more standardized MP4 will be more broadly compatible on Windows, OS X, iPods, etc. Ultimately, whatever works, right?
But H.264, by any other name, is not typically implemented as a lossless codec (although I believe that as a part of the spec, it can be). There are a number of lossless options, including Uncompressed AVI and QuickTime using a couple of codecs, like the Animation codec or PNG. I used to use PNG, but it really only offers a slight advantage in file size and is a lot more computationally intensive (read: slower renders), so, once again, I just buy more hard disks (which is also my solution to archives – I know, I’m lazy).
Data rate is going to be the fun part to play with and is almost everything there is to worry about in terms of quality. Again, 2Mbps is YouTube HD (pretty much a good minimum), 4Mbps is going to look very nice, 10Mbps is spectacular and (as you’ve noted) 17-25Mbps is a pretty decent acquisition format.
And, yes, 2 generations ago 2 core CPU laptops are not going to be fun to edit H.264 video on. It’ll even struggle on playback of HD video, much less on editing. Maybe WMV is just easier for Windows to play back? Possible.
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If you’ll let me toggle Old Man Mode on:
Why, back in my day, we didn’t have real time previews. And a 3 minute video took all night to render. And we had to walk to the studio in the snow in bare feet.
Ahem. OK, so the last bit is untrue, but it might illustrate why I am not at all bothered by large files, “slow” transfer times and long renders. And it might explain why I still recommend recording at maximum quality: you never know when a flea’s naughty bits are gonna be important and you will regret the lower quality mode.
As to slow transfers, why, in my day, data transfers happened in real time. You shot an hour of video? That took an hour to transfer. Oh, sorry, forgot to turn Old Man Mode back off…
Anyhow, I’m a nightmare as far as disk organization goes, so don’t listen to a word I say on that. My solution to inefficiency is to buy new hard disks all the time.
OK, now the two interesting parts:
(1) Workflow: MTS and other modern, highly compressed H.264 files are incredibly computationally intensive and do not play nicely with even the latest muscular computers. Next gen computers will be better, but by then, the camera people will have figured out a new “better” format to mess with us. I would just give up on realtime previews, learn to live with lower preview quality and, when necessary, SHIFT+B to render small sections to RAM to check the quality of important bits. I’m probably SHIFT+B previewing once every few minutes near the end of a project, checking final tweaks and what not. I definitely would NOT render to a lossy format (like WMV) and then RE-render to stitch it together. Definitely not. You want to keep as few render cycles in your workflow as possible, i.e., one (if you can). If do want to pre-render to speed things up you can (a) render out to a lossless format (QT MOV animation codec – HUUUUUGGGGEEEE files) or (b) Shift+M to selectively render in Vegas 9. Same same, just different technique: your call.
(2) Distribution to WMV at 6Mbps should look very nice at 720p. Personally, I like Main Concept’s H.264/AVC in the MP4 format (a bit more compatible with more computers, maybe looks better, maybe not). Vimeo/YouTube sits at 2Mbps, so you can go that low for really efficient distribution.
Oh, and one more thing: Your observation about planning is exactly spot on. The more time you spend in planning, the more time you will save in production. Now, you won’t actually save any time at all, and, for example, if you spend 2 hours in planning and 1 shooting, you could reverse that to 1 hour of planning and 2 hours of shooting: either way, it’s 3 hours. However, the actually shooting bit is the most difficult part and the most stressful… but it could be the most fun part too, so I’d recommend 2 hours of planning and then a really fun, energetic 1 hour of shooting. If you have that choice. And you should probably listen to what I say and not what I actually do: I never seem to spend enough time planning!
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Lots of great questions, so I’m pretty confident you’ve got this worked out. Just a couple of comments:
(1) I’d shoot as high-res as you can. You can always down-scale, but upscaling is always a losing proposition, however…
(2) 720p is a great format that will be fine anyhow, especially for distribution on the Internet and computers in general. Besides this being the current base HD format on YouTube, Vimeo, et al, it’ll also fit on more computer screens (not everyone is running around with 1080p laptops!). Even so…
(3) I’d still shoot in 1080p. See #1.
(4) I’d also max the quality on the camera and not worry about space. Memory cards are pretty cheap, so I’d go grab another one. Once again, you can always down-sample quality, but you can never ever go the other direction.
(5) I’m not certain what the crazy “1990x180x12” format is, but I know what it means: 1990 across, 180 up and down (really narrow!) and 12-bit color (kinda strange, but not outrageous). 1920×1080@24 is pretty standard 8-bit per channel color.
As to your OBJECTIVE (and a little summary), I’d say that you cannot maximize quality and minimize file size at the same time. You can either compromise with mediocre quality and medium-sized files or you can pick one or the other. My recommendation is that you get more memory cards/HDD space and don’t worry about file size and efficiency. Go for maximum quality source/edit and don’t worry about render times. Render overnight. Render when you’re watching TV. Render during dinner. Use render times to play XBox or post on the CCow.
Now, when you get to distribution, THEN you need to figure out a reasonable compromise between file size and quality, but that is a whole other post…
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“The length of a film should be directly related
to the endurance of the human bladder.”
— Alfred Hitchcock
https://videopia.org -
Two things to try as you troubleshoot: (1) Watch the frame-rate indicator at the bottom of the Preview window – Does it dip lower during playback? (2) Shift+B a loop region to do a dynamic RAM render.
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Well, if the project matches the source video, there isn’t any reason this would occur. If the project is 30fps, but the source media is 24fps, that could be the cause. As an aside, 24p is generally not as smooth for pans or motion in general, but that’s not your issue here (I don’t think).
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OK, then it’s digital and we can be confident that the “capture” process isn’t actually capturing/converting anything and you’re getting digital data transferred from the camera to the computer, right? And you shot 720/24p, so if your Vegas project is set to HDV 720-24p (1280×720, 23.976 fps), we should be good to go. Set the Preview window to Best (Full) and you can be confident you are seeing your actual pixels (you can toggle the Disable resample on and off to check for sure – it shouldn’t make any difference, but it might if you were working with 24fps animations, which you’re not…).
Anyhow, after that, I don’t know what to say! At least I know how to troubleshoot and identify the problem, but I’m afraid I can think of a fix or a way to minimize the problem. Sorry!
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If you are “capturing” digital, then what you see is what you get, meaning that you get the same bits and bytes on your computer that are on the tape/memory on the camera. If your project settings match your source footage exactly, then Vegas also wouldn’t process or “enhance” the blur and maybe what you are seeing is just a result of seeing the video on a computer monitor. You can check this by either (a) matching the project settings exactly or (b) right-click the clip on the timeline and select Disable resample. In both cases, you should also set the Preview window to Best (Full) to make sure you see the pixels. To see this in motion, you’ll need to make a selection area and perform a Shift+B RAM preview. The only way to truly judge the results is to look at the video in motion, since looking at a still frame can only tell you so much about the video.
If you are capturing via an analog link (component, for example), then the format/capture settings could definitely be a factor. What camera are you capturing from?
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“Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.”
— Jean Cocteau
https://videopia.org -
First, depending on how much content you already have recorded, this might be a situation where a “reshoot” is a good idea, esp. for the audio. I would only ever use any sort of noise reduction, gate, EQ to fix absolutely unavoidable accidents in existing footage and it’ll never be as good as just recording it the right way. In fact, for VO/narration work, it’s entirely possible that it’ll be EASIER to re-record than it’ll be to try to fix the bad audio.
Second, 800×600@15fps square PAR source to 720×480@29.97 with 0.919 PAR project to 640×480@29.97 square PAR on YouTube sounds like it might work (which is always the end-all-be-all ultimate test), but it also sounds like a nightmare of formats to be converting through that could lead to all sorts of problems. At a minimum, I’d render out to YouTube native 640×480@29.97 square PAR, but I honestly don’t know if that is going to work, and besides…
This also might be a case where you want to “reshoot.” If it’s all screen grabs, you might as well go HD. 720p@24 (1280×720 at 24fps) will yield outstanding quality. I know 800×600 is a computer screen resolution, but it doesn’t make sense for YouTube distribution. So if “reshooting” is not an option, I’d at least consider converting to an HD video standard for the future and adapt your recording to fit (i.e., you only record part of the window or set your app window to 1280×720). If you are distributing yourself, then it doesn’t matter, and you can do any old odd resolution you want. But if you have any plans to distribute more widely (e.g., YouTube, television, DVD, Blu-ray), it makes sense to “shoot” in a standardized format and distribute in a standardized format.
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“You know, it is a terrible thing to appear on television, because people think that you actually know what you’re talking about.”
— David Attenborough
https://videopia.org -
Could be gremlins, but it might just be the render settings. Double-check to make sure your Project Properties match your render settings, especially 720×480 0.919 PAR (for SD DVD). Also, toggle the Preview window to Best (Full) to check for issues like this – some gremlins won’t show up in other preview modes. Oh, and don’t feed them after midnight.