Rendering options, which to select?

[Norris Combs]

My source is 1440 x 1080 30i, length of video is about 9 minutes. I would like to burn the video to DVD, while retaining the same HD quality as source.

[1] What should I select under "Save As Type"?
[2] What should I select under "Template"?
[3] For audio, for my other projects, I usually select Dolby Digital AC-3 Pro, is that OK?

Thanks!!!

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a67...e/DSC_7154.jpg
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a67...e/DSC_7155.jpg

[Chris Harding]

Hi Norris

I used MainConcept MPEG 2 and then I have a modified template based on the DVD PAL or DVD NTSC one..Just click custom and change the aspect from 4:3 to 16:9 and you are done.

BTW: Try dropping a Sony Sharpen plugin in the video tracks BUT leave the setting at zero..I dunno why but it makes a big difference to the IQ!!!

Chris

[Norris Combs]

Chris,

I thought MainConcept MPEG 2 is for DVD, as in low res 720 x 480. I'd like to retain the same higher res 1440 x 1080 as my source video. Anyways, just to make sure that was the case, I went ahead and rendered with MainConcept MPEG 2, and the output is in fact 720 x 480, worse quality.

Thanks,

[Garrett Low]

Norris, for a DVD your video needs to be 720x480. DVD is not an HD delivery format. Are you making a DVD to be played on a set top box or do you just want the video file to be on a DVD disc so that it could be played in a computer?

If it is for play back on a set top DVD player choose the MainConcepts MPEG2, choose the template for DVD widescreen. That will automatically downres the video to 720x480 with the proper pixel aspect ratio (PAR). I always render audio separately using AC3 Pro.

If you are just placing a video file onto a DVD for playback on a computer I would use the Sony AVC codec and matching the original video res (1440x1080) and 20mbps data rate. That will spit out an h.264 (mpeg4) file that almost all systems can read, Mac and PC.

Hope that helps.

[Norris Combs]

Garrett,

I think your suggestion of rendering to AVC is what I was thinking of, but not sure how it would work out. A few people have told me that as long as the video clip is shorter than 20 minutes, I can burn it on a DVD, and still have HD quality. I understand that this DVD will not play on a set-top DVD player, that's OK. Can some set-top BD players play this h.264 video? Thanks,

[Gene Gajewski]

There are some players that play a Blu-ray disk format on a DVD, but not all, and no one really has a right to complain since it's not specified behavior.

Recently, someone on the SCS forums complained up and down about how he couldn't get DVDA to make a Blu-Ray DVD the way he wanted to - he eventually went over to Encore to do it.

Supposedly, you should be able to submit HDV video *directly* in Encore directly and it will skip transcoding, which is the best fidelity you can get. Blu-ray nominally supports 1440x1080 MPEG-2.

If you use DVDA and/or Vegas, you're gonna get transcoded with HDV, and there's no way around it.

[Garrett Low]

Norris,

A 9 minute video at 20mbps should give you a file around 1.25GB so it will easily fit onto a DVD5. As for making it playable in a set top BR player I believe you'd have to pull it into DVDA which will only let you encode AVC BR's up to 18mbps. but you wouldn't even notice the difference between 20 and 18 mbps. I have don't it and it played on a lot of the newer BR players. If you are going to go that route I would render out an AVI from Vegas and then let DVDA render the AVC BR. That seems to bee the most full proof way to get DVDA to spit out a Bluray without running into a lot of errors. At least for me.

-Garrett

[Norris Combs]

Garrett,

I followed your suggestion, rendered out an .avi file. My 9 minutes of 1440 x 1080 became a 103 GB .avi file!! Of course that was because under Template, I selected Default Uncompressed, as there was nothing else I thought would work. I was looking for something like 1440 x 1080 but there was no option like that listed. What should I have selected?

[Garrett Low]

Hi Norris,

Yes, an uncompressed AVI will be very large. You could download the Lagarith codec which is a lossless codec and does a very good job of making the files a bit smaller without generational loss of pq. It's no problem that the AVI is large, you'll only use it as an intermediate file to transport your edit to DVDA to make an AVC DVD that could be played on some set top BR players.

Open DVDA and pull the AVI into the project and allow DVDA to render the AVC file to burn to the DVD.

You can set up a custom template for your 1440x1080 HD projects. Choose the Default template and click on custom. Under frame size choose custom frame size and then set the frame size to 1440 x 1080. Set the appropriate frame rate and field order (if your project is progressive choose none). Set the correct pixel aspect ratio (PAR). For a 1440 x 1080 HDV file it should be 1.3333. If you are going to use a compression codec set that (if you have downloaded the Lagarith codec you will set it here, another very good codec that I use is Cineform but that is not free).

-Garrett

[Norris Combs]

Garrett,
I have Cineform, been using it to process my AVCHD files. Vegas Pro 8 shuts down at the 1st sight of AVCHD! 8-)) So you would suggest that I process this 103 GB .avi file with Cineform, then import it to Vegas?
Thanks!

[Garrett Low]

Norris,

My typical workflow is to take the native footaage from the camera and transcode to Cineform. Then I complete all editing in Cineform. For DVD production I render out an HD Cineform AVI and pull it into VirtualDub to resize the video. Vegas has a terrible resizing algorithm for going from 1920x1080 to 720x480. I then pull the resized AVI back into Vegas to create the DVD compliant mpeg2 file. That allows me to retain an HD edit as well as an SD.

For the current project you are working on I would recommend just using the 103GB AVI you have already rendered. The quality isn't going to get any better than that. Place that file into a DVDA BR project and let DVDA render the BR AVC file and burn the file to a DVD disc.

-Garrett