[Rich Kutnick]

Are the SD files formatted for Blu-ray or DVD? If the former, I can understand why they require a Blu-ray player for viewing. However, my question is about the latter: can SD files authored for a DVD be burned on to a Blu-ray disk and be played back on a standard DVD player? Will this work?

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

I have another thought about these processes. What if I just work in native 4X3 and render as such, but check the “Stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox)”. I experimented with this, and so far I am not cutting off any heads. If this does occur, though, couldn’t I go back and adjust the pan/crop in Vegas for the offending clips? This process gives me a full 16X9 playback and the slightly softer video is hardly noticeable.

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

Thanks so much for the detailed response, Nigel. I want to ask you, though, why do you set everything for 1440 instead of 1920? Does this give you the best quality? Smallest files sizes? Fastest renders? I, myself, would rather have a higher quality product than the fastest process. What are your thoughts and results?

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

Thanks, John. I will experiment with these various methods and report back.

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

I decided that 15 hours was WAY too long for a render, so I (reluctantly) turned my GTX 560 video card back on in Vegas 12. I proceeded to create an m2t file (containing both audio and video) so that I could author in Corel VideoStudio 5. In Vegas I chose the HDV 1080-60i template, setting the video to 24Mbps CBR 1440X1080 and the audio to 192Kbps–everything else was left at the default settings for this template. I disconnected my ethernet cable from my router, turned off my antivirus software and let it do its thing. 5.5 hours later I had a usable m2t file! I authored this file in VideoStudio 5 (nice preset motion menus–little user intervention required to create great-looking menus and navigation). I then instructed VideoStudio 5 to create the Blu-ray folders at 24Mbps CBR and Dolby Digital audio at 192Kbps (no rerendering for MPEG 2-compliant video), and about an hour-and-a-half-or-so later, the folder was ready to burn. I again used a BD-RE (rewritable) to burn so that I could test the production. It took about 45 minutes to burn the BD-RE in ImgBurn and around 15 minutes to verify, and the end result is great!! If future productions warrant my using DVD Architect 6 to author (for simpler authoring solutions), I may again try the Sony AVC encoder (with the GTX 560 enabled), as I do not believe that VideoStudio will accept separate A/V streams. I hope this process may help others in the future.

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

SUCCESS AT LAST, and here is the explicit path that I took with the hope that it will help anyone else in my position:

1) Shut off my GTX 560 video card from SVG Pro 12 before rendering/encoding. This card works great for everything EXCEPT SVG Pro 12. I went back and forth using it during editing, for I am not sure whether it helped or hindered during that stage of production.

2) This was a 1 hour 57 minute production shot on HDV, so I worked and rendered/encoded in HDV 1080i (1440X1080). There was quite a bit of color correction and audio post-processing, as well as using Sony Levels on each discrete video track to Map 255 to 235, leave 16 at 16. I trust that this was the correct action to take as advised on this Forum.

3) In the later stages of editing, it took every bit of 2 minutes to load the veg file, so I had to be VERY patient and enjoy the spinning circle during the loading cycle. If I changed my PC’s focus to another program, when I went back to Vegas it took at least 30 seconds for Vegas to react to commands. This HD stuff really takes up a lot fo resources, and this is an understatement!!

4) My audio render/encoding was AC3, 192kbps, and I recall it took around a dozen minutes or so to render/encode, but this was not my main concern. It was the video, for which the Sony and Mainconcept AVC rendered/encoded files failed to load in any program I have on my PC (DVD Architect, Corel VideoStudio 5, VLC Media Player). My only hope was to use the Mainconcept MPEG-2 Blu-ray 1440×1080-60i, 25 Mbps video stream template, which I throttled back to 24Mbps. This template was not highly regarded by some on this Forum, as they favored the AVC templates. Before I began rendering/encoding the video portion I pulled my ethernet cable out of the router and shut off my antivirus software, as I was told these may interfere with the render/encode process. However, some 15 hours later I had a
usable m2v video file that loaded seamlessly into DVD Architect 6 as the ac3 file automatically followed. I prepared it as a single movie for my testing purposes and wrote an iso file, which took about an hour and a half to create. All of my chapter points from Vegas also transferred seamlessly to DVD Architect, by the way. I then burned a Blu-ray BD-RE successfully (45 minutes), and it played fine on my Vizio Blu-ray consumer player, save for only 2 places where the program froze for 1 second each time then picked up playing at the respective point.

5) For the next go round (after a bit more tweaking–some scenes need more attention, as they still are a bit blown out due to direct sunlight entering the room during the ceremony the morning of the wedding), I also plan to render/encode an m2t that contains both audio and video streams so that I can test it in Corel VideoStudio 5, which has some interesting canned motion DVD menus that I may want to use instead of going the DVD Architect route–we will see.

So there you have my adventures in HD in a nutshell, and at 15-20 hours to render this gigantic file EACH TIME and have it fail on two different AVC templates, it has taken well over a week all told for me finally to have a usable product for my efforts. I have absolutely no idea why the AVC renders/encodes failed, as AVC is supposed to be a more efficient codec, but the bottom line is what works, works!

I hope that my experiences will help anyone else faced with a large project. While AVC DID work for me on a 1.5 hour project with no Vegas processing AND on 30 minute-or-less segments of my current project that were heavily processed, this complete project would not give me a usable render/encode unless I used the Manconcept MPEG-2 template. At least this was my personal experience.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who pitched in with their advice and suggestions, which helped me significantly in my quest for success. It is through groups such as this that we all can benefit from to perfect our craft, perform it efficiently, and give our Clients what they are paying for!

OK, I have to get back to work now…

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

John, I am about to commence per your instructions. Wish me luck!!

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

Regardless of know issues and specific combinations of factors, I guess that I just am one of the “lucky” ones, but exactly as with the Sony AVC render my Mainconcept render last evening/this morning completed without incident. However, when I ran DVD Architect 6 and tried to load the 17GB AVC file, DVD Architect just sat there with a spinning circle and did not respond. Neither would VLC Media Player play these respective AVC files either. So I have experienced the same scenario with large AVC files regardless of whether they were Sony or Mainconcept. However, I did find that on smaller renders (30 or so minutes or less length veg files) that if I rendered with Mainconcept MPEG-2 that these resulting files loaded fine in DVD Architect as well as VLC Media Player. This evening I will try the complete 2 hour veg file render to Mainconcept MPEG-2 this time, and report back my findings. If this does not work, and rendering sections does work, would I be best to load the segments individually into DVD Architect and author it to play as if I was just one big file? I believe that DVD Architect has the ability to play segments back-to-back seamlessly so it appears as one program, correct? So if I render pre-ceremony, ceremony and post-ceremony separately, why can’t I author it as a 2-hour wedding celebration and place chapters where I desire? I have the VASST DVD Architect training disk that came with Vegas Pro 8 (and John Rofrano’s long hair), but I am not sure if John touched on this particular procedure back then (great stuff, by the way, John!). Any advice on this plan, should the MPEG-2 render also not work properly, would be most welcome and helpful, so thanks in advance.

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

Here is my most recent finding regarding GPU acceleration. I tried to render just the audio portion of a 1 hour, 57 minute wedding video to Dolby AC3. With my Nvidia GTX 560 ON, the render kept being held up at 39%, the timer left counter went to 0 after about 6 minutes or so, and the timer counting the minutes used just kept going. I repeated this scenario at least 3 times! I then shut of my GTX 560 and rebooted. I attempted a re-render using the same template, and within 6 minutes the render completed successfully, as I checked various portions of the audio track using VLC media player (beginning, middle and end). Now I thought that the GPU only affected the video, but it appears in this particular case it also affected audio procesing. Could it be that Vegas’ memory handling is SO poor that the GPU processing also is messing with the portions of memory that handle audio? In my situation, it appears so. Until Sony faces up to whatever they need to do to get this right, I am going to try leaving my GTX 560 completely disconnected from SVP 12 and see if this makes a difference in my total workflow. I know that in my own testing I have found that SHORT video renders have taken a few seconds less with the GPU ON, with the GPU OFF I seem to gain more stability and have less rendering problems. I also read on another forum that one of our resident gurus performed a render test with his expensive graphics card, and I quote,

“stock Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz and rendered with GPU turned on and off and here are my findings:

V12 CPU: 51 seconds with 50% or less CPU utilization 0% GPU
V12 GPU: 89 seconds with 20% or less CPU utilization 93% GPU

So in that particular test, my $800 Quadro 4000 takes 50% longer and my CPU’s are no where near fully utilized. I wonder if the parent compositing that is used in the test is GPU accelerated? If not, it could explain the difference. Still, I’m not happy with the results.”

If he is having such issues and results, it appears that misery loves company–all of this information is a real eye-opener.

I would love for him to chime in here and elaborate!

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS

[Rich Kutnick]

That would explain a number of things–THANKS. I now have unchecked the track buffering option, and we will see… With respect to the 4GB AVC issue, I have switched to using a Main Concept MPEG-2 template, and this seems to work a lot better, save for the fact that I still am rendering in segments rather than the whole 2 hour project. I will continue to experiment and report back any significant findings, if anything occurs differently.

Rich Kutnick
VIDEO IMPRESSIONS