An automated Vegas 24p workflow..

[Rick Barr]

When you say 'fix the aspect ratio', I only see a checkbox for 'maintain aspect ratio'. I tried on and off, neither made a difference. Does the fact that I am only using v.4.0 make a difference? I keep seeing people using 7.0 and wonder if my version is not quite ready for HD. If that's the case, would the $100 version of 7.0 suffice?

As an aside, I went ahead and grabbed the Huffy codec and the output is exactly the same.

[Ajit Bikram]

Just try to do the following..
1) Open the output file in VirtualDub (it should also look squashed)
2) Right-click and change the aspect ratio from "free" to "16:9" and then play it.
3) If it now looks OK. That would mean you had the same problem as mine. And this is how I fixed it.


Well what I meant by fixing aspect ratio is that..when you code it using those codecs, somehow the resulting file does not have the information that its 16:9 and the pixel aspect ratio is 1.333
So what you have to do is to tell your NLE that your clip is 16:9 and the pixel ratio is 1:333 instead of 1.0 or 0.912. And the way I do it is to right click on the clip, go to properties, it would tell what kind of clip it is (1440x1080, frame rate : 23.976, progressive, pixel aspect ratio..etc. etc.) there you change the pixel aspect ratio to 1,333 to fix the problem.


I am afraid I dont have any experience with Vegas 4.0 or the cheapest Vegas 7. Hopefully someone can help you with that! Sorry!

[Steve Szudzik]

There could be a setting that I can provide to the VDub script file to force those settings. I'll check on that later tonight when I get home and see if that will help fix this..

--Steve

[Ajit Bikram]

Originally Posted by Steve Szudzik

There could be a setting that I can provide to the VDub script file to force those settings. I'll check on that later tonight when I get home and see if that will help fix this..

--Steve

Oh that would be great Steve!

[Rastus Washington]

Just want to say thanks to Steve Szudzik, Farnsworth & Mike Dulay for the time and effort put into these scripts and workflows.

Rastus

[Rick Barr]

Ajit,

We're getting closer. I'm even further intimidated by the wealth of options this program provides, but changing to 16:9 does fix the aspect ratio......except when I play either the file itself or preview the output, it's choppy. This goes for Media Player as well. This is regardless of whether I use Lagarith or Huffy, running HV20 Pulldown on a raw .m2t file. I went ahead and fixed the aspect ratio, then did a SAVE AS and renamed the file, and viewing that in Media Player is choppy. Am I missing a step?

And I appreciate all the info, very useful. I'm learning a lot. :)

[Ajit Bikram]

Originally Posted by Rick Barr

Ajit,

We're getting closer. I'm even further intimidated by the wealth of options this program provides, but changing to 16:9 does fix the aspect ratio......except when I play either the file itself or preview the output, it's choppy. This goes for Media Player as well. This is regardless of whether I use Lagarith or Huffy, running HV20 Pulldown on a raw .m2t file. I went ahead and fixed the aspect ratio, then did a SAVE AS and renamed the file, and viewing that in Media Player is choppy. Am I missing a step?

And I appreciate all the info, very useful. I'm learning a lot. :)

Rick,
I would suspect that this choppiness that you are seeing in your video is merely due to its size! If you are making it of correct size using VirtualDub. Try resizing it at a small size (say 640x360) and save it with Xvid compression. Try playing the resultant file and it should not look choppy.
If the above mentioned thing is true for your video. Then dont worry about the choppiness. Go ahead with the original size files, edit and then go for making your final product.
As in my case its going to be a normal DVD (with the HD files saved for later when HD-DVD writer/players are a bit cheaper).
But in case your resized video also does not play smoothly than I would guess that problem is somewhere else. (excessive motion in video, shutter speed etc. etc.)
Hope this would help you.

[Steve Szudzik]

Rick,

I have seen some choppiness viewing the output files through WMP as well, but when I put them onto a proper 24p timeline in vegas and play them, they play very smoothly. After re-rendering them back out of Vegas, in my normal output format, the previous stuttering they showed is gone.

As for the pixel size (forcing the squished aspect ratio), I didn't see anything specifically related to that that I can control from VDub. The closest I could find would be do force a resizing. I've grabbed a few samples for that and am playing with it right now. I've been trying to put together my kids little league DVD this weekend, so haven't had as much time to investigate this issue yet. On another forum regarding this issue, one person said that they were able to work around it by installing XVid. I cannot account whether that really resolved it one way or the other. I have that installed myself and at least all of my Lagarith compressed files show the proper apect ratio. It could be that, but I certainly cannot confirm that it really is the case or not...

--Steve

[Rick Barr]

My movie files don't get choppy until I run them through HV20 Pulldown to remove the Pulldown.....what exact kind of difference am I supposed to be seeing after I do this? The only thing I see in my 24P videos that I don't really like is the blurring when I move the camera, is this supposed to take care of it? I want to do the right thing and make the videos as good as possible, but is the difference even noticeable?

Resizing doesn't help....once I put it through HV20 Pulldown, it seems the choppiness is here to stay. Steve, I have Vegas 4.0, and keep hearing about this 24p timeline, but can't find it. Do I need to upgrade?

Also, what is xVid? Do you have a download link? Where is it used?

[Steve Szudzik]

XVid is yet another codec and can be found here: http://www.xvid.org/.
Since the Lagarith codec has nothing to do with the XVid codec, I don't see that having it would have any impact personally, but somebody on another board mentioned that after installing it, it had helped them. Shouldn't hurt to try.

Vegas 4.0 might not have the 24p timeline. Does Vegas 4.0 even do HDV? My first version of Vegas was 7.0, so I don't have any experience with the older ones, except for what I've read & heard in the boards.

[Ajit Bikram]

Steve,
I do have Xvid installed my computer and my clips behave exactly the way you mentioned. The choppiness is not there when taken to vegas etc. and also in the the final output. But the avi file does judder a bit when viewed directly with vlc, wmp or virtualdub. But when re-encoded to a smaller size resultant clip does not judder.

@Rick, in case your still have choppiness in your video after installing xvid and resizing please try to check your shutter speed. I was wondering if you could upload a small sample clip for us to see.

[Rick Barr]

Hmm....I think I need to re-summarize what I'm experiencing. I may have confused the issue.

Any video taken directly from the camera, is fine, even when I rename it to .wmv. It looks great to my untrained eye. If I want to do a little editing in Vegas 4.0, I can work with the .m2t file, then generate a WMV from that. I do notice a tiny loss of detail doing that. But the result is fine.

If I take an .m2t file and run it through HV20Pulldown, I get this:

<A HREF="http://www.barr26.com/personal/movies/cosmote after 24p pulldown - lagarith.wmv">After 24p Pulldown using Lagarith</A>

You can see that the video is not choppy, but the perspective is lost, it's no longer 16:9. It's when I open the above file in VirtualDub that it gets choppy. Simply opening the file and trying to play it is bad. I went ahead and changed the perspective to 16:9, then did a SAVE AS and chose a different file name, no other options. The resulting file was too large to put up here, but it was basically very choppy AND had lost the perspective fix I had put on it. I opened that in Vegas, rendered as a .wmv, and it wasn't choppy anymore, but was also not 16:9.

I think I could do away with VirtualDub if I could just get HV20Pulldown to not mess with the perspective of my files. As for xvid, I installed the program, but was there a simple codec that comes with it that I can install and use with HV20Pulldown?

And it sounds like I may have to bite the bullet and upgrade my Vegas. :)

[Ian G. Thompson]

Rick, I know what you mean in regards to being choppy. I think it's probably a combination of the file being so large (once rendered through pulldown.exe)and the computer processor you are using. I have a core duo 2.4 with 2 gigs ram and mine also plays back choppy when rendered out to a huge AVI file. Once you go back into the Vegas timeline and render out a smaller (more manageable) file then it plays smooth. V-Dub also screws with the aspect ratio. I just fix it when rerendering in Vegas.

[Ajit Bikram]

Originally Posted by Rick Barr

Hmm....I think I need to re-summarize what I'm experiencing. I may have confused the issue.

Any video taken directly from the camera, is fine, even when I rename it to .wmv. It looks great to my untrained eye. If I want to do a little editing in Vegas 4.0, I can work with the .m2t file, then generate a WMV from that. I do notice a tiny loss of detail doing that. But the result is fine.

If I take an .m2t file and run it through HV20Pulldown, I get this:

<A HREF="http://www.barr26.com/personal/movies/cosmote after 24p pulldown - lagarith.wmv">After 24p Pulldown using Lagarith</A>

You can see that the video is not choppy, but the perspective is lost, it's no longer 16:9. It's when I open the above file in VirtualDub that it gets choppy. Simply opening the file and trying to play it is bad. I went ahead and changed the perspective to 16:9, then did a SAVE AS and chose a different file name, no other options. The resulting file was too large to put up here, but it was basically very choppy AND had lost the perspective fix I had put on it. I opened that in Vegas, rendered as a .wmv, and it wasn't choppy anymore, but was also not 16:9.

I think I could do away with VirtualDub if I could just get HV20Pulldown to not mess with the perspective of my files. As for xvid, I installed the program, but was there a simple codec that comes with it that I can install and use with HV20Pulldown?

And it sounds like I may have to bite the bullet and upgrade my Vegas. :)

Rick,
I think I understood what you are saying. Its just a small issue which you can fix without upgrading.
The information that is lost while doing hv20pulldown removal is that the pixel ratio is 1.333 and nothing else. So do the following...

1) take a clip (*.m2t) and run it through hv20pulldown.
2) Open the resultant .avi file in virtualDub.
3) right click and tell the aspect ratio to be 16:9 (not required)
4) Go to video -> filters ; choose resize and give this 640x360 size (output)
5) again in video go and choose some compression you like (I selected xvid)
6) Save as avi. (new file name)
7) Play the resultant file.
8) It should have correct aspect ratio and no choppiness.


Let us know.


Edit: I think Ian is correct. Thats why this resizing is going to reduce the load on your computer and should play smooth.

[Steve Szudzik]

One other option is that when you bring the AVI back into Vegas, make sure you have the pixel aspect ratio set to 1.333 before you re-render out to your smaller file. My guess is that VDub winds up setting it to 1.0 for square pixels. I'm still trying to find a way so that it will not do that.

As far as HV20Pulldown.exe messing with the aspect ratio, it itself doesn't have anything to do with that. The automation exe only automates the process of ushering your clip through DGIndex & VirtualDub. It by itself doesn't touch the video files in any way at all. The closest that it does to that is by selecting one of the compressor scripts (which just came out of VDub) or by altering the DelayAudio setting in the .avs template produced by DGIndex. It absolutely will not do anything other than that.

For the re-sizing, you can have the exe automatically do that as well. Just add the resize VDub call in the compressor script that you are sending into VDub. WIth the last update of the exe, the templates are stored in a .XML file that you can update as you see fit.

-Steve