best compression and quality

[Mitul Patel]

hey,
sorry if this has already been answered before but i couldent find it so, here it is, i just created a video in vegas but i need to render it to the smallest size possible and to the best of it ability.

and sugguestions on what to use?

[Julian Luttrell]

Mitul,

that's one of those "how long is a bit of string" question!!!

If you are delivering to full screen DVD then just experiment with different MPEG2 settings to see what happens!! If your footage is "difficult" then you will benefit from using multiple pass encoding.

For web delivery - well, that's an art... Have a look at Windows Media (wmv) - this usually has small file sizes and good quality. How small a postage stamp image to you want the result to be on screen? The smaller the picture, the smaller the file size! How long do you want people to have to wait before seeing some of the video? Do you want it to stream (play before fully downloaded) or fully download before playing - full download may give a long delay?

For CD-ROM delivery - most rules about web apply, but download delays will be _much_ less. I have managed to author 512x288 (square pixel 16:9) 25fps video on a commercial CD with no visible artifacts using Flash Video.

Regards,

Julian

[Mitul Patel]

Thanks Julian, ill try and play around with the MPEG2 settings a let you know to see what comes out best.

Thanks again for your help

[Mark Jefferson]

I have created a video tutorial on how to encode with WME 9, if you're interrested.

http://www.slakrboy.com/videos/wme9-tut.wmv

[Mitul Patel]

thanks was informative, but iam really trying to stick with MPEG since when it comes time to burn i dont have to go back and encode, just to save time as i gotta make like 700 copys of it.

[Rob Lohman]

Why didn't you include such information in your original post? You
ask for the smallest size but not with mpeg. Things like that with
get you incorrect responses as we've just seen. Always be as
clear as possible with your request.

Which MPEG do you need to go to? MPEG1 or MPEG2? Is it going
to be on a VCD, SVCD or DVD? Because all of this will determine
what you can or can't do.

With MPEG it boils down to a simple fact. The better your encoder
the lower your bitrate can go (basically). Another question is which
MPEG encoder(s) do you already have.

For DVD encoding MPEG2 VBR (usually 2 pass) encoding is the
way to go. SVCD uses MPEG2 CBR at 480x480 or 480x576 (PAL)
and VCD uses MPEG1 at half resolution.

One of the best encoders today can be found in ProCoder (Express).
You can download a demo.

[Mitul Patel]

hey Rob,
My bad, maybe i should have been more clear, as for which MPEG i don't realy care its for a DVD, actaully see what happen was i now "work" for a non-profit org, and they need a DVD compiled of a play they just did, but I cant seem to figure out which quality will come out best. I captured though Firewire and came out awsome (captured though Vegas Video) but the rendering in MPEG left dots everywhere on the screen, like you can almost see small dots, and thats NOT what i want, i want it to be as clear as possible. and i have put together the DVD its 2 hours longs and i cant get it to fit onto one DVD even though the DVD says it can hold 120 mins, being 2 hours.

so hopefully from this information yall maybe able to help me out some more, but i will download theos 2 other codecs and try them, as for which onces i have now, i dont have any at all, but am willing to buy any to get awsome quailty.

Thanks again in advance for you help.

[Mark Jefferson]

Unfortuanatly for you, you are going to have a hard time fitting 2 hours of video onto a DVD at the quality you want. I will offer up some suggestions, but you're still going to have to find that "sweet spot" of size vs. quality.

I'm going to take a guess that since this is a play, the camera is pretty static. This actually works in our favor because the video will not have a huge amount of movement, so we can lower the bit rate.

There are a lot of MPEG encoders out there, I use TMPGenc. You can get a free version, but it only does MPEG-1, and you need a DVD complient MPEG-2 file. There is a trail version you can download, but it is time-bombed at 14 days. Download the trial version from http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/download/index.html.

Save your file as ans AVI if you havent already done so, then open TMPGEnc. There is a wizard that appears to guide you through the rest of the process. You will have to use a lower bitrate, averaging about 4MB/sec in order to fit the file onto a DVD. Once the file is encoded (will take a LONG time, probably 15-20 hours), you will need to encode the audio as 192KB/sec AC-3. The default is a wav file that will probaly be about 13GB or so. TMPGEnc has an AC-3 plugin available that will do it for you, but I have other programs I use for that.

Once you have your MV2 (video) and AC-3 files, you need to use a mastering program to make your DVD. I use DVDit PE (this is what I actually use to make my AC-3 file, it can convert it for me. Not all programs support generating AC-3 files, so watch out for that) to master my DVD. Once it's done, burn the TS_VIDEO directory to a DVD. DVD+/-R can hold 4.7 GB, so make sure your files are smaller then that. Hope this helps.

[Rob Lohman]

Mitul: you might not care, but the DVD format spec certainly does.
It *ONLY* supports MPEG2 at the correct framesize (720x480
for NTSC and 720x576 for PAL), framerate (23.976 fps, 29.97 fps
[NTSC] or 25 fps [PAL] or their interlaced versions) and certain
bitrates etc.

Vegas (I'm assuming you are using version 4) comes with an
MPEG2 encoder. Simply select MPEG2/DVD as output format and
fiddle with the settings. The best result (and longer encoding
time) almost always comes with VBR encoding.

After that you'll need an authoring application like DVD Architect
(counterpart of Vegas), Adobe Encore, one of the many Sonic
products, etc.

[Mitul Patel]

thank yall. ill try it out and then post the results. soon. but thanks for all your help.