[Greg Mcdonald]

Sorry, I’m not sure exactly what you mean – I have a guess of what you’re talking about but I’m not sure.

I’m actually looking at playback of the DVD outputs within the same one set up. I compared all of the DVD outputs: (1) from Vegas with no adjustments to contrast, (2) from Vegas with minus -15% contrast, (3) from Premiere with no adjustments to contrast – on the same computer/monitor in the same player programs and I tried several just to make sure; PowerDVD, Real Player, Nero Showtime and Windows Media Player – and they all showed the same results upon direct comparison, that the DVD output from Vegas had an increased amount of contrast.

I also tried playing the DVD in a DVD player on the TV – still same increased contrast.

I grabbed all of those frames that I posted from within the program PowerDVD – not within Vegas. (with the exception of the source .mov file which I exported from quicktime)

The increased contrast is definitely hard coded in the file output. It’s not a result watching the DVD in different RGB setups.

Is that what you were referring to?

[Greg Mcdonald]

Sorry about being gruff when you were trying to help. No, I understood what DSS said and I called Sony and I actually got someone on the phone that said, yes you can export to a .mov file encoded with h.264. But then I found this at: forums.digitalmedianet.com where someone asked the exact same question and the last message posted on July 17, 2007 was this:

————————————————-
Here is the response I got from Sony Tech Support.

“There is no support for the H.264 format in Vegas. Even if you have the Quicktime Pro update installed, Vegas does not recognize this format or allow you to export to it. It may be listed under the Qucktime codec, or under .AVI but the format is not actually supported. However, you can render to the AVC format in Vegas which is a form of .mp4.”
————————————————-

So I don’t know who to believe, this guy says Sony Tech says no, I call Sony they say yes, and DSS says yes. I really don’t want to have to buy it, only to find out later that it doesn’t.

There must be someone with Vegas 7 that has tried this, yes?

Exporting to a .mp4 file using MainConcept or Sony AVC and changing the extension doesn’t work on my pc, the file doesn’t play – when I do it I get an error message saying it’s not a movie file.

Besides, these encodes are for web streaming/progressive download on a web site so I need the .mov wrapper. Even if the files did play after changing the extension to .mov, it still wouldn’t give me the wrapper with the faststart optimized for streaming that I need.

[Greg Mcdonald]

DSE/Spot – thank you for answering my simple question.

Terje – My question was regarding a specific functionality in the Vegas 7 program, does it export a certain kind of file with a certain codec. I wasn’t asking if someone could tell me why I would need such a file and to open up a debate about it, so there was no point in responding to your question about why I should care if it’s a .mov file or not.

[Greg Mcdonald]

“You don’t know if Vegas uses the .mov wrapper for h.264”

Well that’s exactly what my question was. I was hoping someone who uses Vegas and has tried this could tell me.

For anyone who does have Vegas 7, it’s an easy answer, go to “Render as”, choose “Quicktime 7”, then “Custom”, then under the “Video” tab, go to the drop down menu for “Video Format” and all the codecs will be listed. If you have h.264 installed on your computer with Quicktime Pro, h.264 will be listed in the drop down menu but won’t work if Vegas doesn’t support it in a .mov export. So you have to select h.264 and start the render to see if Vegas will render it.

I know this because I have Movie Studio Platinum 7 and it works the same way and it definitely does not support h.264. I was hoping what Sony calls their “pro” version might, but it doesn’t seem so.

Rather than speculation, does anyone know for sure?

[Greg Mcdonald]

Ok, I guess that pretty much answers my questions in a general sort of way, although I was hoping for more direct information regarding these specific menu settings.

So the story is if “V Res” is set to “progressive” keep all the “V DTL LEVEL” and “H DTL LEVEL” settings low, but they don’t necessarily need to be set to zero, like the manual says. And that’s the H & V Detail settings in the “Low Settings”, “Med Settings” and “High Settings” options under the main “Paint” option. Is that what you’re saying Steve?

And the Super V Mode might be doing some kind of sharpness enhancement, but you’re not sure that’s what is really going on in the SDX900, right John?

I understand about doing tests, I’m just trying to figure out what I need to test and what I don’t need to test. For example, if the Super V mode is indeed doing some kind of sharpness enhancement similar to sharpening a photo in Photoshop, then I know right away that I don’t need to spend any time testing that because I don’t want that result.

I know I’m probably being way to anal about this, but I’m at that point where I need to get to the bottom of this or I’m going to go crazy. It’s kind of like when you’re trying to remember the name of the band who sang some song, and you can’t rest until you come up with the group’s name.

The manual says and I quote, “In the SUPER V mode, the signals of the photodiodes in the vertical direction of the CCDs are not mixed with the output signals so that the vertical resolution is enhanced.” Then it says, when you’re in the SUPER V mode, your options are either 1/30 sec, or 1/60 sec for shutter speed.

Can anyone tell me what that means? How does it affect the picture?