1920x1080 60i workflow

[Steven Davis]

Well, since I bought my Canon XF300s, I shoot 1920x1080 60i. Vegas does fine editing. But I've quickly learned that even though my machine which is pretty hearty, it doesn't really favor any color correction. For example, rendering a 19minute dual camera corrected clip took about 6 hours. I had some curves and color adjustment on it but really nothing major. I rendered it to Mpeg-2, 1920x1080 with a constant bit rate 50,000,000.

An uncorrected 2 and half hour clip took about 3 and half hours to render. I know many factors come into play such as drive speed, cpu etc, but coming from HDV, this render process is a lot longer.

The reason I want to keep the HD file is for the web, most of my weddings go to DVD, so I render HD to keep both.

I've toyed with the idea of converting the MXF files to mpeg prior to color correction but not sure.

My pc is i7 950@307ghz with 12.gig of memory, 64bit. I'm running Vegas 10.e

I'm totally open to feedback for improving my workflow. Thanks in advance.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Steve

I shoot 50i and have 10e also and no issues BUT I render out to MPEG2 for DVD so it's way faster. On my machine around 3 times real time so a 20 min clip is rendered in about 7 minutes.

I would say your issue is the render format ..what are you using that for ?? Is it to burn to BD??

Chris

[Steven Davis]

With most of my projects, I'm going to DVD, so after I cut, I make a file/render that I can have the HD ratio for maybe the web and then use it for DVD. For example, my highlights are to dvd, but if I put a file on the web, I want to be able to go back to he HD file. Yeah, not sure why it's taking so long.... befuddled.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Steve

If some of my clips are going online what I do is render to MPEG2 DVD Pal so Vegas takes the 1920x1080 timeline and renders to a 720x576 16:9 file (we are pal) ..then fir online use I will render the same time line to Sony AVC using the internet template MP4 at 8000 kbps and 1280x720

Surely your DVD is only SD so that file rendered from 1920x1080 should be pretty quick! Why are you putting such a huge file online ? 1920x1080 at 50 mbps sounds a bit of an overkill for an internet file and even a highest quality SD file isn't more than 8000 kbps

The extremely high bitrate is the reason for your the long render but I cannot understand why you need such a high rate for DVD?

Chris

[Steven Davis]

Hi Chris,

Thanks again for the time. After more testing, I figured out part of the slow speed is not turning off the clips I cut from, I use Ed's Excalibur, so turning off the 1 and 2 clips below the Master and that helped speed up the render.

As for the 50mbs, I read somewhere that rendering to the same speed as your original clip will decrease compression times and speed up render.

As for this specific clip, I had to run my iris a little hot on one of these clips due to some crazy lighting, so I figured 50bps would help me correct the color/curves a bit better, give me a better file for my final.

So now I have my final file to work with, are you saying that 10bps would be enough for the final mpeg render?

[Chris Harding]

By Default Vegas uses a mere 6000kbps bit rate on files you render to MPEG2 which is plenty enough. I have often dropped that for non critical footage to 4000kbps and it still looks pretty good. Just stay with the default of 6000 for DVD and to be honest anything that's going online (vimeo/ youtube etc) I tend to make 1280x720 and 4000kbps and I have yet to have any complaints over the last 15 years!

[Steven Davis]

Thanks again Chris.

[Steven Davis]

Hey Chris,

I finally broke down and built a new machine and updated to Vegas 13. Now, I was working on a project today, again with my 1920x1080 and the speed is so much better.

But today, I saw something kinda odd. When the render got to some images I had layed over the video, I could see the video underneath on the sides of the picture, I played the actual file and sure enough, the picture was not as wide as the frame, and the video was seen on the sides.

On the timeline, the picture fully covers the video. Have you seen that before, where the picture looks fine on the timeline but when you render, the picture isn't as wide as the video/frame?

[Steven Davis]

Ok, I found a work around. If I unclick on each image 'maintain aspect ratio', then the image 'stretches' to fill the frame on render. I give credit to the forum, someone else had this same issue. Odd indeed.

[Chris Harding]

I found that the image (I'm presuming you are talking about a still image here?) needs to be resized to exactly 1920x1080 but also setting to "maintain aspect ratio" will also work. Just for interest if I tell my image editing software to make the image with an aspect ratio of 1.777 it wants to resize it to 1920x1081 not 1080 so I just make it the correct size and it seems to work. Remember most still cameras will shoot a still that has an aspect of 1.5 not 1.777 so you need to crop a bit off the bottom and top so it conforms otherwise your normal still picture might be stretched in Vegas if you say "maintain aspect" and look weird?

[Steven Davis]

Thanks Chris.

I found it crazy that the photos look good on the timeline but render differently. Wonder if that's a bug?

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by Steven Davis

Wonder if that's a bug?

It’s definitely a serious bug. The final render should look exactly the same as on the timeline during the edit, except scaled to the size of the final render. That way you can produce a number of renders at different resolutions. This is a must if you want to create a DVD, a Blu-ray Disc, a YouTube upload, etc.

[Chris Harding]

I have never had an issue with still images ,,they look just as good on the rendered file. Then again if you take a 600 x 360 pixel image and drop it onto a 1080 vegas timeline the NLE will stretch it so it will look terrible on the render. You need to shoot your stills at a big enough resolution so they can be downsized (not upsized) to 1920x1080 ... any still image smaller than the project size will degrade!!! You still can also be larger than 1920x1080 of course but make sure if you crop a large image it is cropped with a 1.777 aspect ratio ..remember most still cameras shoot 3:2 (1.5 aspect) and not 16:9 (1.777 aspect) ..you will get no issues with a correctly sized file

[David Johns]

Originally Posted by Steven Davis

I was working on a project today, 1920x1080. When the render got to some images I had laid over the video, I could see the video underneath on the sides of the picture.

I played the actual file and sure enough, the picture was not as wide as the frame, and the video was seen on the sides. On the timeline, the picture fully covers the video.

I'm guessing here a bit but...

If your project is HD but you're rendering to SD, then - at least in PAL - I seem to recall that SD is, strictly, actually slightly wider than 16:9. So it's not 1024x576 in square pixel terms but 1048x576 (for some technical historical reason to do with scan lines on CRT TVs)

Therefore when you ticked "match output aspect ratio" on your images in the pan and crop window, they will be sized to 1920x1080 and will cover the image when viewed on the timeline as both images and video are sized to HD.

But when you render to SD, the video is resized to 720x576 at 1.45 PAR (aka 1048x576) but the images are still being resized to match the *project* aspect of 16x9 ie 1024x576. Therefore the edge of the video (some 12 pixels on either side) will show through.

Unchecking "maintain aspect ratio" thus enables Vegas to squish them to the wider size during render.

Regards
David

[Steven Davis]

My images are 7360x4912, plenty of size for a 1440x1080 project. I've sent my veg file to Sony, and after some back and forth, this was their response. It's not very comforting to have this glitch two weeks after upgrading to 13. I certainly think it would be helpful if the playback was the same as render, i.e. showing me the same so I could fix it.


"Hi Steven,

Thank you for writing back. From what I can see, burning to DVD is causing the aspect ratio to be a bit off because your original footage is HD. What I recommend is to change your project properties to what you will be rendering to in the end. In your case, go to File | Properties and change the template to something like NTSC or NTSC widescreen. This will let you see what the end result will look like in the preview window. If you see black bars or see that the image is cropped a bit, you can then use Pan/Crop to adjust the image so that it fits better in frame.

Then, when you render to one of the DVD options, your render should look just like your preview window.

If you still have a follow-up question on this particular incident, please feel free to update it. If you have a completely different question, please create a new incident.

Sincerely,

Travis G.
Customer Service
Sony Creative Software Inc
Sony Creative Software - Vegas video - ACID & Sound Forge audio editing "