[Kate Morris]

Thank you for the compliment John – just trying to give a little back to the community 🙂

Your tip works great – indeed, it doesn’t seem to matter what the low bit-rate is set to, so long as the maximum bit-rate (as described by Mediainfo) is set to the correct value.

One thing that interests me is that I can set the “average” bit-rate to pretty much any value I choose, and the “no recompression required” message still appears. If I set the average to something low (say 2,000,000), the file’s size is much smaller, but the quality is not as good.

Clearly there is some compression being applied in this situation, despite the “no recompression required” message and the extremely quick render time. In the interests of keeping quality as high as possible, I’ll probably keep using a CBR (constant bit rate) that is the same value as the maximum bit rate – I’m guessing that changing the average rate to the maximum bit rate in VBR (variable bit rate) would result in exactly the same video being produced.

Thanks for your help John, hopefully this thread can help others who encounter the same problem that I did.

[Kate Morris]

Hi John!

I apologise for the misunderstanding – fortunately, it has led to me finding the solution to my problem.

It was wrong of me to frame my topic in such a way that it might have been perceived to question your expertise. As I said in my reply to Mike, you contribute a huge amount of time and knowledge to this forum, and I for one am very grateful.

I let my frustration with Vegas get the better of me – I spent money I couldn’t really afford to buy a copy. Hopefully as I learn more about the software, I can pass on a few tips to people who are in the same position that I am in now.

All the best,

Kate

[Kate Morris]

Hurray! Thanks a million for pointing me in the right direction Mike, I’ve finally getting the “No Recompression Required” message when I render my MPEG-2 files. Like you said, it was all down to the bit rate.

I’m sorry for getting John Rofrano involved in this thread – I have been doing A LOT of reading back through the Creative Cow forums, and you and John have both given a huge amount of help to the community here.

I’ll put a new topic up explaining the settings I needed to get the MPEG-2 smart rendering working, in case it helps people in the future.

Thanks again, you’ve made a lot of people very happy 🙂

[Kate Morris]

Thanks for your help once again, Mike. Using a program called G-Spot I was able to determine that the “Sys Bitrate” is 10080 kb/s VBR, while the average rate of the test clip that I’m working on is 6986 kbps. Audio is AC3 48000 256 kb/s stereo (2/0). I-frame info N=12 M=3(100%), 2 max consecutive B-frames.

The codec solutions suggested that this was a “winning combination”.

A) MPEG-2 Demultiplexer/MPEG-2 Splitter/Mpeg Splitter (Gabest)
B) CyberLink Video/SP Decoder(PDVD10)
C) ffdshow subtitles filter
D) Video Renderer

The worry that I have is that there are so many different variables involved when creating a custom MPEG-2 export template that I will never be able to stumble across the correct one.

I will have nightmares about trying to get Vegas to work like I want it to work 🙂

Sorry I misunderstood you before, I thought you meant that there was no possible way that Vegas could handle MPEG-2 SD smart render.

[Kate Morris]

Let’s bring any newbies up to the present…here’s the 10.x upgrade issues…this is GOOD news not a slam. I like a company that publishes what it fixes.

Fixed an issue smart rendering to MPEG-2 standard definition.

I’ve been told on these forums that smart rendering to MPEG-2 standard definition is basically impossible …. since Vegas won’t let you render MPEG-2 SD without resampling the whole file.

What exactly did they fix – switching off the functionality completely?! 🙂

[Kate Morris]

I appreciate your help and advice Mike, thanks for your time. I will give it a try at a higher resolution and see if that helps.

For now, I’m using the 30-day free trial of “Womble”, which lets me chop my MPEG-2 videos up as much as I want without rendering/resampling. If I need to add some dazzle, I’ll no doubt plug my losslessly trimmed files into Vegas and get to work.

[Kate Morris]

Well, I understand your viewpoint about MPEG-2 SD being a dying format, but there are still plenty of people using it – the expense of HD equipment and storing the data it generates is not insignificant to everybody. And people will be resurrecting MPEG-2 data from their old hard drives and DVDs now and for many years to come.

I did try rendering to AVC just now, 640×480 was the closest match to my video. I had a chuckle to myself, the quality was awful! Big blocks and smears all over the screen, a strange silvery effect, and of course no sound.

I’m sure I’m doing something wrong!

[Kate Morris]

Users are always blaming Sony but the reality is that the hardware and software divisions rarely if ever talk to each other.

I know that blaming Sony is not really helpful, however I live in hope that a Sony representative might read this and other posts and decide that supporting SD MPEG-2 properly might add to their bottom line. If I ultimately put my Vegas license on ebay to recover some money, they will have effectively lost a sale.

With all due respect, why would you buy an SD camera (unless it’s the price) when everything these days is some version of HD?

The shop I bought it from only had 2 cameras – both were SD. The country I live in has crazy import tariffs, so high-end electronics are very expensive. And I’m far from wealthy, the price was definitely a consideration.

Also,I reasoned “My vids are going on Youtube, I don’t need them to be high-definition”. And I lack the bandwidth and the hard drive space to embrace HD.

Yes, I’ve tried the MPEG-2 render and it does recompress. On my stone age hardware,this means that I’m going to be spending a lot of time watching the progress bar. The end quality is good, as you say it is difficult to tell the difference with only one render. Once it is rendered in MainConcept MPEG-2, any re-renders display the message “No recompression required” in the preview window, which was what I’d been hoping to see all along.

So is it a good idea to upload to youtube in the MPEG-2 SD 720×576 format? Or should I be resampling again to a format that Youtube prefers?

Thank you for all the advice, I am new to the video editing game 🙂

[Kate Morris]

Thanks for replying Mike. That’s not good news for me – the raw MPEG-2 footage from the camera looks pretty good uploaded onto Youtube. Once it’s been resampled once or twice though …..

It’s a bit frustrating that a brand-new Sony camcorder (I foolishly bought it last month) is basically incompatible with Sony’s flagship video editing software. I live in a third-world country, they probably don’t sell SD cameras in your part of the world 🙂

Given that my footage is ultimately destined for youtube, do you think resampling to MainConcept MPEG-2 as per my “custom template” is the best way to re-render?

Also, is there any software that IS capable of editing simple cuts of my films without the need to resample?

[Kate Morris]

Thanks for the advice. Do you mean the “Adjust source media to better match project or render settings” box? I unchecked that, but it didn’t seem to stop the render resampling. The “long GOP rendering” is already checked.

I’m trying to render the file as a MainConcept MPEG-2 – as far as I know, it’s the only MPEG2 format that Vegas will render in. I have chosen the template “DVD Architect PAL Widescreen video stream”, because it is the only MPEG-2 render option that has 25fps, 720×576 and Pixel Aspect Ratio 1.457 as standard.

I have changed the default “Lower field first” to “Upper field first”, but it doesn’t seem to help. The format window mentions YUV, but there is no option to change that. Apart from “lower field first”, I left the other options at their defaults”:

Include video stream is ticked
Output Type DVD
Width 720 Height 576
Frame rate 25.000
Aspect ratio: 16:9 Display
I-frames: 12 B-frames 2
Insert I-frames at markers is checked
Profile: Main Level: Main
Field order: Upper field first
Prioritise quality over speed checked, set at maximum of 31
Insert sequence header before every GOP is checked
Bit rate is set as variable
Max: 9500000 Average: 6000000 Min: 192000

I’m not going to bore you with the Advanced Video Settings that appear incomprehensible to my untrained eye.

Anybody have any suggestions for me?