Mixing Formats (HDV+DV). How should I set Vegas Properties

[Adi Head]

I'm about to start a project using Vegas 8 Pro in which I plan to mix different video formats in one project - mainly HDV (1080-50i PAL) and DV (720x576, 25fps) and some 3gp file as well.

I'm not 100% sure how I should set the Vegas project Properties settings?

This is what I figure, but please correct me if I'm wrong....

I figure, since the final product will be a DVD, I won't benefit much by setting the properties to HDV 1080-50i PAL, right? I think I'm better off setting it to PAL DV Widescreen. As much as I understand these things - I'll be losing the extra resolution of HDV (which isn't such a big deal since i'll be authoring it to DVD anyways) and then cropping and expanding the 720x576 DV footage so it fits the widescreen setting.

Am I right? Completely mistaken? I'm not a very experienced editor and this is my first time editing anything other than just plain old DV, so I'd really appreciate any insight on this.

Thanks!!

[Edward Troxel]

Since you have DV footage and the final destination is an SD DVD, I'd set the timeline as a standard SD Widescreen timeline exactly as you said. The good news is that you can actually pan and zoom inside the HD clips if you need to do so.

[Chris Barcellos]

Just as an anecdote, I recently shot a 48hour film, mostly in HDV. I captured and edited in HDV with some Cineform conversions too. However, one shot was done in DV SD, (using underwater camera set up), but I stuck it on the HDV time line, right along with the HDV, and it rendered surprizingly well for exibition in Cineforms HDV intermediate codec. Subsequently, when the entire project HDV project was rendered to Architect DVD video stream, it all seemed seamless...

[Adi Head]

thanks, that clears it up for me.

what i'm working on now is just a kind of trailer to help raise funding for the project. it'll be authored and presented on DVD, so for now i think i'll set the project to PAL DV Widescreen. If we end up getting the funding we're looking for we'll go ahead and purchase Cineform NEO and work on the actual project in HDV.

best,
adi

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

I am of a differing opinion, though the results may vary very little (I've seen fairly large differences, but it's not a hard rule).
Set your properties to the largest acquisition size used. If HDV is your largest format, then set properties to 1440 x 1080. If 1920 x 1080 is the largest size used (and comprises the bulk of your footage) then set properties to 1920 x 1080.
Vegas will edit faster because its not scaling in realtime, and all your titles, etc will be at highes resolution.
When you output, simply check the "stretch to fill" and render to widescreen DVD template.
Were I you, I'd toss up a variety of mixed footage, output both project settings to SD DVD, and notice as well, the playback speed of the timeline when using an SD project setting. You'll see it's slower.

[Adi Head]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

I am of a differing opinion, though the results may vary very little (I've seen fairly large differences, but it's not a hard rule).
Set your properties to the largest acquisition size used. If HDV is your largest format, then set properties to 1440 x 1080. If 1920 x 1080 is the largest size used (and comprises the bulk of your footage) then set properties to 1920 x 1080.
Vegas will edit faster because its not scaling in realtime, and all your titles, etc will be at highes resolution.
When you output, simply check the "stretch to fill" and render to widescreen DVD template.
Were I you, I'd toss up a variety of mixed footage, output both project settings to SD DVD, and notice as well, the playback speed of the timeline when using an SD project setting. You'll see it's slower.

Hi Douglas,
I was just about to post asking about this... and you beat me to it. :-)
I changed property settings to PAL DV Widescreen and playback while editing was sluggish. Then went back to HDV 1080-50i and playback was smoother again. I wasn't sure why this was happening, but you've answered it.

I guess what I should do is to render one minute of footage which has both formats in it - once with properties set to HDV and a second time with properties set to DV. Then I'll be able to see the differences in the final outcome. The only problem is that all I have to view with at the moment are two computer CRT monitors - not ideal :-(.

If I eventually decide that having the project set to DV provides significantly better quality outcome - is it possible to edit the whole project with properties set to HDV (for easier editing experience) and then after I'm done editing set properties to DV before rendering?

Thank you,
Adi

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

There is no reason to ever put project properties to DV when working with HD source in your case. Render from the HDV timeline to MPEG 2-SD.
BTW, I'll be back in your area in November, teaching at Cinema City.

[Edward Troxel]

Spot, what if you wanted to zoom into the HD footage? Perhaps to adjust some framing issues or some of the other various reasons people might want to zoom in. You can zoom in HD footage quite a bit on an SD timeline with no loss of resolution.

I can definitely see many reasons to leave the project at the higher resolution. I can even see why, generally speaking, you would want to do so. Just not sure I can see *no* reason to ever use an SD timeline.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

You can still zoom, source is still source resolution. It'll be washy/soft when watching in HD, but will tighten up when rendered to SD. The gain of seeing it tighter in SD is significantly offset (IMO) by the very sluggish editing experience he's going to have.
There are always going to be reasons to perhaps have an SD timeline with HD source, but I don't believe this is one of them. Were it hyper-critical color, for example...you'd want to work in SD the entire time, because of the 709-601 shift.

[Edward Troxel]

Thanks for the explanation.

[Adi Head]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

There is no reason to ever put project properties to DV when working with HD source in your case. Render from the HDV timeline to MPEG 2-SD.

Hi Douglas. Thanks for the help. I've followed your advice and just about done editing.
As mentioned, I will be authoring this to DVD. Two questions - not just for Douglas (-: anyone who knows, feel free to answer:

Should I render in two phases? or just one?

Previously, when working with DV material, I would render the project in two phases. First I would render all the tracks and effects in my project to DV PAL .avi file. Then I would render the .avi file to mpeg-2 for DVD authoring. I found the rendering process to be faster this way rather than having Vegas render the effects n'all plus compress to mpeg-2 in the same go. (I'm pretty sure I got the tip about doing this somewhere in this forum a while back)

So now that I am about done with my first HDV project, I'm curious to know if a similar workflow should be followed, if so what exactly? Or should I just select mpeg-2 PAL Widescreen DVD Architect template and render once?

Black margins at both left and right edges of the frame after rendering to mpeg-2

I did a test render of one minute straight to mpeg-2 just to see that everything is working okay (deadline is closing in and I don't think I'll have much time to spare if things don't workout towards the end). The outcome seems okay except for black margins on both sides of the frame. Why is this? and more importantly, how do I avoid it?

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

BTW, I'll be back in your area in November, teaching at Cinema City.

What will you be teaching? Didn't know they had any study programs there... thought it was just a cinema.

If you need any tips... like where to get good humus, feel free to ask :-)

[Christian de Godzinsky]

Hi,

I just finished my first project that on the timeline includes all kinds of source material: SD, HDV and AVCDH (all PAL 50i and at 16:9 AR), together with a bunch of png stills. I could not just agree more with the guru's here - you should keep your project settings at the same resolution as the highest resolution material you have on the timeline (excluding the still images from this judgement, of course). 8.0c rendered this project just fine, without any hickups :) I must knock wood, even if I have had problems with Vegas during editing, I NEVER har a single project that would not have rendered fine.

I did some tests and found out that I got the best results (rendering to either DVD or BLu-ray) if I kept the project settings the same as the highest resolution source material.

You benefit from it, preview generally IS faster, and you have the possibility to render out as HD and/or SD, without changing anything on the timeline. Even if you deliver SD only (DVD) you wold benefit from having the project at the highest used resolution. Panning and zooming in HD material is still possible, and can give you extra punch. This will look excellent in SD, as long as you don't zoom furter than approx 150%. Doing that in a HD deliverable project only, is not recommended. However, don't forget to select deinterlacing option in the render options. if you do some zooming. I have found out that it gives you the best quality, and the least interlace artefacts in the final output.

Rendering in two phases is unnecessary and will also degrade your quality, unless the first phase is lossless. AVI is not. You SHOULD plan ahead so you at an early stage can approximate how much "real estate" is avail on your DVD for the video&audio, so you can decide what bitrate to use during the render. I normally never let DVDA decide the final bitrate and do some re-rendering. If you do that you loose the control of the final quality. If the best quality is not that important, then its another story.

Many of these things are according to your personal taste. Of course the guru's wise words in this forum are important (I thing you know who im talking about - I'm certainly not one of them -but I'm constantly learning!). But its good if you have time to experiment yourself, to compare the results just rendering some short test clips, and not complete projects. Using rewritable media results in a no-cost experiment...

I would NOT be worried about the small black margins at left/right, and leave them as they are. They will guaranteedly disappear on all CRT-display devices, and on the majority of the bigger screen TV's due to overscan. Even if they are visible, very few people will notice them. Stretching the material by selecting "match aspect ratio" would cause again a quality reduction (albeit small).

Just my 0,02 dollars...

Cheers,

Christian

[Kevin Janisch]

Just did my own testing after reading this helpful thread. I'm doing a project acquired with HDV with SD DVD final delivery with panning and scanning on some of the B camera shots.

For Vegas Project settings, in terms of sharpness and image fidelity in the final DVD output, using either HDV preset or DV preset results in the same image quality.

Playback performance is equal on preview full mode in my case, but in Best->full, the HDV project preset plays at realtime whereas the DV preset struggles to get 11fps.

When rendering from the HDV project however, you'll get black bars on the sides due to the different aspect ratios. You can select "stretch to fill the frame" but this will distort your image. If you change your project settings back to the DV preset before rendering and ensure that your events "Match Output Aspect" of the DV project, then your footage will be slightly scaled both horizontally and vertically without distortion.

Be sure to do the above step only once as if you continually "Match Source Aspect" and then "Match Output Aspect" over and over, it zooms further and further. So just restore and then "Match Output Aspect" once.