[Jack Mcgee]

Hi, you maybe interested to hear what I did in the end. Thankyou for your help and assistance in finally putting me on the right track. I stuck with Vegas 10 (32bit) since my plugins are 32bit also and things have always been tempermental I did not want to attempt upgrade. My system is 64bit but I have patched the vegas exe file to be able to consume upto 4Gb of ram.

1) I changed the recording format on the camcorder to from 50P to:

HA (17 Mbps / VBR), (1920 x 1080/50i) (which I believe is basically 25P)

2) Project properties in Sony Vegas are now:
HD 1080-50i (1920×1080 25.000fps)

3) I attempted different render formats but the best result was: Sony AVC = AVCHD 1920×1080-50i (this produces a M2TS file which I gathered I can archive as my edited footage. This file also played natively on my Blu-ray player via USB stick.

Other formats such as MainConcept etc…though rendering was quicker there were various issues present when watching the footage or inserting into DVDA

4) DVDA project properties were set to:
– Blu-ray disc
– 25GB
– 18Mbs Bit Rate
– 16:9
– 25.000 Interlaced (frame rate)
– AC-3 stereo (audio)

Note…there was no 25P frame setting in DVDA. Tests using the 24 frame rate resulted in jagged footage when movement filmed.

Blu-ray burnt – result similar or visually indifferent to original footage.

Heres some timed tests I did on 10sec HD footage filmed in HA (17 Mbps / VBR), (1920 x 1080/50i)

SONY VEGAS RENDERS
******************
Render Format + Time taken to render
**********************************

1MainConcept_BR_1920x1080-50i_25Mbps.m2t————10sec (no audio recorded)

2MainConcept_BR_1920x1080-50i_25Mbps+Audio.m2v——30sec (had to manually selected Audio setting)

3MainConcept_HDV_1080-50i.m2t———————–20sec

4sonyavc_1920x1080-50i.m2ts————————-56sec

5Sonyavc_Bluray_1920x1080-50i_16Mbs.avc————-56sec

6Sonyavc_Internet_1920x1080-25P.mp4—————–45sec

DVDA Blu-ray creations
**********************
1MainConcept_BR_1920x1080-50i_25Mbps.m2v———–Did not test because of no audio

2MainConcept_BR_1920x1080-50i_25Mbps+Audio.m2——12sec (Audio file auto picked up in DVDA)

3MainConcept_HDV_1080-50i.m2t———————-45sec

4sonyavc_1920x1080-50i.m2ts————————13secs

5Sonyavc_Bluray_1920x1080-50i_16Mbs.avc————Did not test because of no audio present in DVDA

Only the BR for file No.4 above played perfectly fine with smooth motion and no jagged motion – like the native file. Though MainConcept render was quicker in Sony Vegas. It took longer to convert in DVDA.

[Jack Mcgee]

Appreciate your replies. I had no idea about this. I will start to keep the original files now.

I have now a major problem, how can I Sony Vegas 10.0 on my footage for editing? Can you tell me what render setting I should use in Sony Vegas for my 1080P 50fms footage? All the templates are all 50I, 60I or 24P, if I use any of them I get jagged lines on any movement footage. Can I actually use Vegas for editing and rendering such footage?

I plan to render to MainConcept (M2T) since its fast and then import into DVD Architect (I dont want to render it to Sony AVC which has the same 50i/60i/24p template options but it takes 10 times longer to render to AVC).

I really hope I dont have to ditch using Sony Vegas now with this new camera and be stuck to use some basic HP Writer software that Panasonic supplied. This would be disastrous.

Thankyou again and hope you can advise.
JM

[Jack Mcgee]

Just a further update.

That same M2T (HDV 1080I – 50-PAL) 3 hour footage (35GB) file in DVD Architect. This time I chose to prepare DVD instead of Blu-ray.
The optimize to disc meant quality rate went from 8000 to around 4600. Time take to prepare disc: 15 hrs and 10min

[Jack Mcgee]

Hi Steve, thankyou for your reply. Appreciate your assistance and time

I used Sony Video Capture – to capture HD files straight off a Sony HD Camcorder which records onto miniDV tapes (unfortunately this is time consuming since you have to play the files in real time).
An hours footage comes out as a M2T file at around 13.5GB.

When editing these, using older versions of Vegas its always been nice and smooth. Since I only do home movies with limited effects – some footage does not require recompression so rendering the file edit has always been fast.

I’m using a AMD – 6Core (3.2Ghz) 8Gb ram – Win7 Home Prem.64Bit.
Vegas 11 64bit had those issues I mentioned earlier. I then installed Vegas 11 32bit aswell – which had the same issues with M2T files. I then uninstalled Vegas 1164bit – Vegas32bit still had issues.

I then uninstalled the whole lot – removed all reg entries etc and went back to Vegas 10 32bit. Its now working fine with Vegas 10 32bit and editing M2T files is nice and smooth. I am going to leave it alone and stay with this.

The only benefit I have with the 64Bit PC is that I can open lots of 32bit appliations at the same time due to the 8GB ram (correct me if I am wrong).

Thats ok since I use that PC for lots of other things.

Vegas 10 crashed yesterday though – faulting module was: MSVCR80.dll
I am hoping this is a one off.

Appreciate any advice or opinions.
Thanks

[Jack Mcgee]

John,

I really appreciate your help. I am half wondering now why I have bothered paying extra money for Win7 64bit OS and 8Gb ram. One more question. Do you think I could install both 64bit and 32bit Sony Vegas on this computer?

Then I could use 64bit for long HD projects (this going to be miniDV from HD camcorder)…and the 32bit for smaller FX files etc.

Let me know your opinion.

Thanks again

[Jack Mcgee]

Thanks for your response. It seems the burn setting BIT rates are fixed in sony vegas…so its either 8Mb,15 or 25MB.
Also it wont allow me to use AC-3 even though I have DVDArch. installed (says plugin not there etc)

I have thought about buying blu ray recorder…however I Live in “Rip Off Britain” where they are still too expensive for me at the moment. Everything here is many times more expensive than in US.

Thanks again for your advice – appreciate it

[Jack Mcgee]

Hi John,

I really appreciate your help with this, thankyou. AviDemux worked a treat just like you said…however I had one little issue…

I want to do batch conversions (since these mini cams make so many little files). I followed the article about scripting this and I got:
—
set avidemux=”C:\Program Files\Avidemux 2.5\avidemux2.exe”
set videocodec=M-JPEG
set audiocodec=PCM
for %%f in (*.mp4) do %avidemux% –video-codec %videocodec% –audio-codec %audiocodec% –force-alt-h264 –load “%%f” –save “%%f.avi” –quit
—

However, for some reason the script does not understand “M-JPEG”. Is there some other special word/name for this to get the script to use the M-JPEG codec?

Thankyou again for your help – you really have put me onto the right path.
J.