Hi, I'm working on a PAL DV Widescreen project, which I'm handing over to an animator who wants it delivered in the highest possible quality. He has suggested the quicktime animation codec. I am using vegas 7 and my renders in mov always look steppy. When I select PAL DV widescreen and select the aspect ratio 1.457, I get a widescreen project but it looks awful. I thought it must be a problem with Vegas 7, because I always have difficulties rendering mov files. I downloaded a trial version of vegas 8 and rendered with the same properties, and the video is a high quality - I can't see any loss of detail - but it only seems to render in 4:3 not 16:9.

I am also trying to render an uncompressed AVI as another option for him. I have the same issue with not being able to render to widescreen. i.e. it comes out squeezed.

I have dropped both of these files into a new vegas timeline and changed the clip properties from PAL standard aspect ratio to PAL widescreen and they change to widescreen. Should I tell the animator to do the same (I think he is working in after effects), or is there a way of rendering out lossless files which are widescreen?

I render out my animations from Vegas in wide screen AVI all the time. I use the MainConcept MPEG-2 m2t template in the "Render As" panel, making sure I have the Aspect Ratio set to 16:9 Display under the Video Tab; Output type HDV, and make also sure your field order is Progressive, since it's for animation.

Thanks Paul

But I'm not editing animations myself. It's DV widescreen (not HDV) which an animator is going to composite over. M2T is an HDV file. I'm pretty sure that it's not lossless either. Thanks for your suggestion though.

Glen

I understand, but if your animator needs widescreen to animate upon, why can't you supply him with an HDV 16:9 format?

If he really needs lossless, then its going to be a big file.
Ask him if they can accept it rendered as a plain old ordinary .avi file?

Then all you have to do is ensure its 25fps, PAL and 16:9

That surely would save a lot of messing around, as he can then do what he needs and render as required.

Otherwise, get him to be very specific about the format and the bitrate. (eg; MPEG2, Audio and Video at 25Mbps in 16;9)


Ben

I think he's ok with a big file. I gave him a PAL DV widescreen AVI render and he said he wanted it in a higher quality. The clip is a 3 minute music video: 670MB for the AVI widescreen render -which will be higher quality than an Mp2 due to the heavy compression of mpeg files -the AVI uncompressed is about 7GB. He's working on studio quality gear, so I don't think the size is an issue as much as the quality. He is going to animate over the top of the video - cheesy glowing eyes, sparkling teeth etc.

The main thing I want to know is: Is it possible to render lossless avi or mov files which remain in the project's 16:9? (I always make sure my custom render properties are set to widescreen, but I always end up with 4:3) When I render dv widescreen avi or mp2 or other lossy files they come out as 16:9 - no problem.

yours confusedly

NOTE this is an edited post, I gave incomplete / incorrect directions before and have editied this post to correct same.

Go to Properties from the file dropdown menu and change your template to PAL widescreen, then render to .avi uncompressed and you're all set.

Thanks for your suggestion.... I'm shooting in PAL not NTSC, but I tried your suggestion anyway with no luck. I am starting to wonder if uncompressed files don't natively render to widescreen at all. Believe me, I have ticked all the boxes (at least 50 variations with different codecs). The only way I seem to be able to get it out widescreen is either Up-rezzing to HD or rendering as a standard dv widescreen avi file ( which is lossy as far as I know)

Glen

Actually, what you need to do is go to Properties from the file dropdown menu and change your template to PAL widescreen, then render to .avi uncompressed and you're all set.

Thanks Jeff,
That's the logical solution. The problem is I've already tried that to no avail. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact I'm testing on a trial version? I don't think this is the case because every other rendering situation I've put it through seems fine, also I have a similar issue in Vegas 7, which is not a trial version.

Sorry I couldn't help. All I can tell you is I tried it for you and it worked fine on my PC . I can't guess what your particular issue is...good luck, maybe someone else will have an idea...

Thanks Jeff... If there's anyone else out there who has overcome a similar issue, I'd love to hear from them.

You know, it might be the demo thing you mentioned...anyone else have any ideas?

Hi Glen,

You might try downloading Huffyuv (http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/huffyuv.html). It's an uncompressed CODEC that you can export your project to as an uncompressed iin a widescreen avi wraper.

The install instructions are at the URL page and you just follow the Vegas "render as" guide on export, making sure the PAL PAR (pixel aspect ratio) is set.

Good luck,

Mike

Thanks Jeff... If there's anyone else out there who has overcome a similar issue, I'd love to hear from them.

Can't offer any advice Glen because I am having the same issues with Vegas 7.
Trying to render a DV pal widescreen to a mov widescreen seems to be impossible as I have tried
just about every combination possible and I either end up with a squeezed mov or a letter boxed mov. Love to find a solution but it looks like it may have to be on some other software. . . anyone got any ideas?

Mark

i must be missing something here...

1) if the output is for an animator, wouldn't it be more convenient to render in a square-pixel format? (1024x576 PAL WS)

2) shouldn't the colorspace be shifted to ComputerRGB on output since animated content is going to be overlaid?

3) the animator mentioned QuickTime, why not use QuickTime-PNG (lossless compression) or PhotoJPEG at 100%? Both are on Mac and PC.

I was thinking of something like:

QuickTime 7 Custom Settings
Frame Size: 1024x576
Rate: 25
Field Order: None
Pixel Aspect: 1.000
Video Format: PNG (or PhotoJPEG)
Compressed Depth 24bpp
Quality: 100%

...and possibly a levels or cc filter on output to shift the colorspace from YUV to RGB (StudioRGB to ComputerRGB).

Hey Mark,
I guess I'm reluctantly relieved knowing someone else is having the same issue as me. It would seem we're either doing the same thing wrong or it's an issue with Vegas. Other posters have rendered uncompressed widescreen, so I'm baffled. I've even tried different lossless codecs - huffyuv, lagarith - but without luck. If I find a solution, I'll let you know.

Glen

Wow! Rob, thank you. It worked! It seems changing the frame size to 1024x576 and using square pixels has solved my issue.

I also understand that the PNG codec is visually lossless when the quality slider is set to 100%.

Just out of interest: if I render in studio RGB my colour range is going to be 16-235 in the render I output - regardless of whether I adjust my levels i.e make legal. But if I render with the computer RGB switched on i'll get 0-255, so I can let the animator deal with making everything IRE legal?

The other thing I wondered is that it seems a little stilted when played back in my quicktime player, is this just because it is a large lossless file? To test this I rendered a few seconds of my footage, put it back on my timeline, then re-rendered to an lossy mpeg just to see what would happen once the animator rendered out in the end, and it seemed to play back smoothly.

I to am having a similar problem with rendering out to Avi from Vegas 8.c.
This is what I want.
I have a HDV 1440 x 1080i Pal timeline. I want to render this timeline out to uncompressed Avi 720 x 576 widescreen. It seems that every setup that I have tried to render this format to comes out in a 4x3 frame where all the footage is squashed into this frame. For some reason I cant get a 16.9 uncompressed Avi from a HDV timeline.
I have tried Rob Woods approach and this works but I don’t want quick time, or do I?
I want an uncompressed file so I can drag into Sorenson Squeeze and then compress to different formats

How do I do this?

Nick

Ok I found out how to do it.
All you do is pick AVI for Windows then select Pal DV widscreen template and off you go.
I kept using custom settings and fooled myself into thinking this was harder.
But one thing is this really uncompressed as it looks like a bit of compression has occurred.
Uncompressed is what it is but is there a better way of doing this within Vegas to get the highest resolution possible?

Nick

Hi Nick,

I'm pretty sure that by using the defaults and not custom selecting 'uncompressed' you haven't got a lossless file. You might want to compare the size of your 4:3 uncompressed AVI and your widescreen one, just to check.

Glen