Rendering a piece in the original format

[Milt Lee]

Hi Folks,
I have a piece that I shot with my panasonic TCM 900 - which I set and recorded at 1920x1080 60fps - AVCHD.

My question is what would be the format that I would choose that would preserve the original quality? Vegas is not very easy to figure out what is what.

Thanks for your help!!
Milt

[Jeff Harper]

How you render your project will depend on what you need to do with it. Since Vegas cannot know this you need to know so you can select the proper template. Will it go on Bluray? Web? Archive to be played occasionally on a PC?

I often render things using Sony AVC template. Not perfect, but it gets the job done efficiently for putting on the web or archival purposes. My footage is not so precious that I need it much better than that.

For Bluray I use Mpeg-2.

[Rommel Portugal]

Another use case for this:

Since SVP doesn't save trimmed copies of the clips, I'd like to render out trimmed clips for warp stabilization in AE. I suppose I could switch to PP, but I just like the SVP workflow.

[Milt Lee]

Hi Jeff,
Thanks for info. Yes, I get it - the various formats for the various jobs. In this case, I need to send the edited stuff to a broadcast unit for public TV that wants to be able to re-edit the material in the highest resolution I can send them.

I decided to use the xdcam - but I also rendered it as an AVI file. The interesting thing is that the size of the finished piece becomes huge when you render it as an AVI file. A while back, I did a bunch of stuff for the local public tv station, and I delivered a master that I rendered as an .avi file. They seemed to love that, but like I say it's big - 30 gigs for 3 minutes. Amazing.

[Jeff Harper]

Sorry, Milt didn't realized you pretty much knew what you were doing. Yes, the AVI files are quite huge! It is amazing.

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Milt,

By necessity, most camcorders compress the heck out of the footage for economy of storage. Most formats (HDV, AVCHD, etc.) will use a 4:2:0 colorspace and heavy MPEG-2 or H.264 Long-GOP compression methods.

Some folks assume that to "keep" the quality, one would export to the same format they started with, such as HDV or AVCHD, but not really true. You'd be re-compressing already-compressed video, and any text, graphics, etc. that were added in post will also suffer from the 4:2:0 color and heavy compression.

A lot of users are working with the Avid DNxHD codec for delivery, which is similar in size and quality to Apple ProRes (which is not easily created on a PC). Another option for mastering/archiving would be a free "lossless" .avi codec such as UT or Lagarith. These will offer intra-frame recording with 4:2:2 color and lossless compression. Far smaller than uncompressed, but same visual quality. Note that the associated codec must be installed on the PC being used for playback (free download).

The 3-minute file that came out at 30GB was UNCOMPRESSED HD no doubt. That is overkill and will not provide a benefit when starting with AVCHD source footage.

For any footage destined for re-editing or conversion to yet other formats, avoid H.264 - it is highly compressed already since it is meant primarily for delivery and not further post-production work.

Thanks

[Rommel Portugal]

Assuming I had a 10 min. clip that I trimmed to 20 secs. What's the best way to render for further editing by another studio?

For the sake of this scenario, let's assume source footage is 1080p 24fps (Canon 5d3), and the "other studio" is using PP.

The point I'm making is that for whatever reason, I don't want to send the 10min clip.

[Mike Kujbida]

Rommel, try Sony MXF using the HD422 1920x1080-24p 50 Mbps template.
I know PP can read this format because I recently rendered out some files using the MXF format for a PP editor on a Mac and he was able to read them just fine.

[Juris Lielpeteris]

Originally Posted by Rommel Portugal

Since SVP doesn't save trimmed copies of the clips, I'd like to render out trimmed clips

SVP still have this option:

Smart render technology

Utilize smart render technology for faster encoding of cuts-only projects, or projects with minimal changes. No generation loss occurs because video frames pass through the engine unaltered. When rendering to any of the following formats, unedited video frames are passed through without recompression (smart rendering):

DV AVI
DV MXF
IMX MXF (IMX 24p MXF is not supported for smart rendering)
HD MXF
MPEG-2 (for files such as those from HDV and DVD camcorders)
XDCAM EX

Vegas Pro 12 Import, Export & Media Management
Need to use the appropriate format.

[Rommel Portugal]

Thanks Juris and Mike for the direction. I'll give both suggestions a try, and post my results. It's nice being part of this community.

Kind Regards :)

-RP

[Gerald Webb]

Rather than trying to guess anymore, if its going to anyone else for further work I just give them ProRes.
98% of the time its what they ask for anyway, and you will never get a call "I cant open this".
If you have no Mac computers its a pain I know.
Benefits of running both platforms :)
Just my 2c