[John Allen]

Great response, Dave. Thank you.

(1) Did I re-multiplex or render. I re-multiplexed. Took the non-performing mt2s file and put it thro AVS Video Converter to mkv.

(2) I think one of your key observations was “the gigabyte difference … tells me you’re not rendering out at the same format you’re using as input. It’s likely you’re not rendering out at the same bitrate as you’re accepting”.

Vegas tells me the original file is 1920x1080x12 25 fps interlaced AVC. Incidentally, its about 35 mins long, and I am editing out about 4 mins, ie editing in trimmer, dragging to the bottom of the time line, then rendering.

So I rendered the following combinations and permutations –

(1) MainConcept (MPEG-2), HDV 1080-50i, .m2t file. Played back absolutely perfectly.

(2) Sony AVC, Internet 1920×1080-25p, .mp4 file. Played back ok

(3) Sony AVC, AVCHD 1920×1080-50i .m2ts file. Falls apart after about 30 secs. Absolutely brilliant up to that point.

(4) MainConcept (MPEG-2), BluRay 1920×1080-50i 25 mbps video stream. .m2v file. Very fast rendering, played immaculatly on my laptop but my AC Ryan PlayOn HD2 media player did not recognise the file type, so it didn’t play.

I wld be inclined to go with (1) here-on-out.

Again, thank you for all your help.

Regards

John

[John Allen]

Dave, thank you for your reply. Most appreciated.

Can I just make a few comments –

(1) I experimented with rendering to mkv and mp4 as you suggested. Both of these formats worked. I cld change the size of the mkv file over progressive renders. The quality was nowhere near as good as the original m2ts as you wld expect. I’m trying to maintain quality. The mp4 on the other had was scarcely distinguishable from the original m2ts file. So I guess that’s a happy ending. So again, thank you.

(2) I have had access to WD TV Live, Seagate Theatre+, and AC Ryan PlayOn HD2 media players. All three of them exhibit this playback behaviour. I find that a bit strange, a bit coincidental. As you say, pretty easy to demonstrate.

(3) This is the bit that I don’t understand. The original m2ts file recorded on a Panasonic DMR-BW850 HD recorder plays perfectly on all three media players. However, the edited (on Vegas Pro), and then rendered, verson to an m2ts file, slightly smaller (about a gig) than the original, doesn’t play on the media players. That suggests to me that the rendering spec in Vegas may not be the same as that of the Panasonic HD recorder??

However, mp4 cetainly works.

Many thanks.