Rendering lossless avi and mov files in 16:9

Rob Wood · October 1st, 2008, 09:43 AM

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).

Glen Maw · October 4th, 2008, 05:09 AM

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

Glen Maw · October 4th, 2008, 05:13 PM

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.

Nick Stone · October 7th, 2008, 11:38 PM

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

Nick Stone · October 7th, 2008, 11:52 PM

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

Glen Maw · October 8th, 2008, 06:58 PM

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

October 1st, 2008, 09:43 AM	#16
Rob Wood Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Vancouver, Canada Posts: 146	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).

October 4th, 2008, 05:09 AM	#17
Glen Maw Regular Crew Join Date: May 2007 Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland Posts: 45	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

October 4th, 2008, 05:13 PM	#18
Glen Maw Regular Crew Join Date: May 2007 Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland Posts: 45	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.

October 7th, 2008, 11:38 PM	#19
Nick Stone Regular Crew Join Date: May 2008 Location: Australia Posts: 133	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

October 7th, 2008, 11:52 PM	#20
Nick Stone Regular Crew Join Date: May 2008 Location: Australia Posts: 133	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

October 8th, 2008, 06:58 PM	#21
Glen Maw Regular Crew Join Date: May 2007 Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland Posts: 45	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