Need Help Rendering For Decent File Size.

[Allen Campbell]

I'm new to Vegas and have done some searching and am trying to read up but cannot get at it fast enough.
My Vegas Pro 10 settings are at default.
I shoot a PD170 and need some jump start help in suggested settings for rendering to a happy medium between file size and quality.
I transfer via Fire-wire to a non OS HDD and render to another non OS HDD.
My clients are happy with .wmv files and most of them are PC users. So anything that will open on a windows PC without the client jumping through hoops is fine.
If the clips are below 10MB I can email them and if not they go up to my server and I provide a link.

These are investigation videos so they need to be of decent quality. And to eat my cake too I need a decent file size.

Any suggestions or links to "video file size & formats for dummies" would be great.

Thanks.

[Chris Barcellos]

Out of curiousity, I just took a one minute clip from my Vx2000 and converted it to MainConcept Mpg 4, using Vegas Pro10. I got a file of about 31,500 kb, from original file of about 227,700kb.

I selected default on the Mainconcept page, and then went into the customs settings and increased variable rate bitrate to 4,000,000 on both lines. Play with it abit to get it where you want it.


PS: Mp4 will play in Quicktime and the free VLCMedia Player.

[Edward Troxel]

For both WMV and MP4, file size is all about the bitrate used. Use a higher bitrate, get a bigger file with higher quality. Use a lower bitrate, get a smaller file with lower quality. So that "happy medium" location is really totally up to you.

[Allen Campbell]

Thanks,

So which is the preferred or better quality bang for the buck? wmv or mp4.

[Seth Bloombaum]

The meaningful measure is "picture quality for a given bitrate". In this, MP4 wins by a few percentage points.

However, wmv is darn good, and is more universally playable on PCs old and new, with consistent performance. Chris referred to QT, pretty inconsistent on older PCs, and VLC, which is pretty good, but requires a download and install which might not work for your intended distribution.

Try some WMV renders at 640x480, 1.2 to 2 Mbps. Is your investigative video shot under low light conditions where there is video noise in the original clip? This tends toward the higher bitrates. This is one of the reasons that it's hard to provide a single formula, all video is *not* created equal!

Look at these tests full screen - if it looks good, it is good!

[Allen Campbell]

Thanks,

Yes, too often I am challenged by lowlight conditions thus me getting a PD170, a life saver. Thanks in the bit rate & low-light comment.