HDV workflow in Vegas at DVinfo.net

John L. Miller · May 23rd, 2007, 11:06 PM

I would like to hear some suggestions on how some of you do your HDV workflow in Vegas. I cannot seem to render a file to put on DVD that is as good as my old XL2 in SD. The HDV files look beautiful, but when I compress them to DVD, they look worse than SD in my opinion. I have tried about every type of file imaginable and I assume my problem is which codec and the settings. So, with that said, if someone could enlighten me as to the BEST way and file type and settings to get my XHA1 HDV files to a DVD through Vegas and Architect, I would be happy as heck! Thanks. J

Alastair Brown · May 23rd, 2007, 11:14 PM

I shoot in HDV 50i with my XH-A1,
capture and edit with properties set to HDV 1080-50i (I'm in PAL land)
once project is finished I render out to MPEG2 DVD Architect Pal Widescreen video stream
render audio out as ac3

open DVD Architect and set project properties to PAL Widescreen
Author DVD menues etc
Select Make DVD button and burn disc.

Quality I am seeing is way WAY in excess of what my old SD footage looked like.

John L. Miller · May 24th, 2007, 05:57 AM

Thanks for your info. I have been shooting in 1080 24F with my A1 and editing the M2t file then I tried Rendering Mpeg2 but it doesn't look to good to me. I believe it compresses too much. What bit rate settings are you using or are you using the default settings? J

Tony Spring · May 24th, 2007, 09:27 PM

I render to HDV then use TMPGEnc 4.0 Express to convert to a DVD file, then I use Ulead Movie factory to author the DVD.

Bill Ravens · May 25th, 2007, 07:30 AM

John...

The default MPEG2 bitrate settings in vegas are too low. Reset them to 8 Mbps for both min and max.

Kris Bird · May 25th, 2007, 09:22 AM

Min/max at 8 Mbps? That sounds far higher than I'd be comfortable to send to clients, let alone for mass distribution ... :) We have a bunch of dvd players of varying ages and I find that min=5500 max=6500 is about as high as I can go without introducing skips in some devices. NOTE! 2-pass encoding gives a big quality boost for no extra bandwidth, but at the expense of render time.

Bill Ravens · May 25th, 2007, 09:32 AM

Kris...

Max allowable is 9600bps, but this leaves no room for audio. Every pro I know uses 8000bps. Sony recommends 8000. Neither they nor myself have ever experienced playback probs at this datarate. You may well do better with VBR, provided there's not a lot of pans in the video, but I would suggest max 8000, min 6000.

Kris Bird · May 25th, 2007, 10:44 AM

Cheers Bill, that's interesting! I'd love to hear more people's experiences? I've definitely read recommendations to keep it as low as ~5Mbps, my own tests found that to be overkill .. we saw very occasional problems at the ~7.5+Mbps level, with 5.5-6.5 being very very solid, and not a single skip (seen or reported) in a long time.

Kris Bird · May 25th, 2007, 10:46 AM

Oh, and I believe it's 9800 max, I use 9.8Mbps CBR when making "web masters" .. ie. mpegs from which to derive web/streaming versions of projects.

Neil McLean · May 25th, 2007, 10:53 AM

I've kinda glad this issue has been raised as I've being fixing the maximum, minimum and average all at 8000 or whatever is suitable given the length of my project.

I 2-pass 99% of the time, though in regards to DV many folk have questioned whether there is anything visual to be gained when rendering out to mpeg2.

I don't know what folk think of HDV 2-pass and the merits of rendering out to mpeg2 for DVD delivery.

Neil

John L. Miller · May 25th, 2007, 07:15 PM

I have been playing with the bitrates in an attempt to get a better quality, I was able to get better quality with the XL2 cameras, but with the A1, rendering from HDV down to SD, I just cannot get a good quality DVD. Many things look like they are waving around in places on the video...it just looks cheap. I had the problem with the XL2 in the beginning but after toying with those bitrates, that cleared up. But not so with my A1. I have been trying to render to MPEG2 and then burn in DVArch. Of course I have tried rendering to WMV too. Still no luck. When I render to HD it looks great on computer, but cannot burn that. Keep suggestions coming. J

Bill Watson · May 25th, 2007, 09:11 PM

Maybe I got it wrong from the start but I render the HD to SD .avi.

I then pick the .avi file up in Architect and mpeg it there as I've always felt that re-doing the mpeg twice leads to loss?

Chris Barcellos · May 25th, 2007, 09:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bill Watson

Maybe I got it wrong from the start but I render the HD to SD .avi.

I then pick the .avi file up in Architect and mpeg it there as I've always felt that re-doing the mpeg twice leads to loss?

I actually do the same thing. I ve had the same issue with direct to conversion to mpeg for DVD. It seems that the reencoding for HDV direct mpg for DVD has some issues. I've noticed this in both Vegas 7 and Premiere 2.0...

Jon McGuffin · May 27th, 2007, 05:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bill Watson

Maybe I got it wrong from the start but I render the HD to SD .avi.

I then pick the .avi file up in Architect and mpeg it there as I've always felt that re-doing the mpeg twice leads to loss?

Bill or Chris,

What settings do you specifically use while rendering to SD .AVI? Resolution, Bit Rate, etc, etc.

Jon

Bill Ravens · May 27th, 2007, 05:57 PM

Due to the way vegas 7 and DVDA software is written, you're better off rendering to NTSC DVDA inside Vegas, rather than rely on DVDA to do it.

May 23rd, 2007, 11:06 PM	#1
John L. Miller Major Player Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Huntington, WV Posts: 260	HDV workflow in Vegas I would like to hear some suggestions on how some of you do your HDV workflow in Vegas. I cannot seem to render a file to put on DVD that is as good as my old XL2 in SD. The HDV files look beautiful, but when I compress them to DVD, they look worse than SD in my opinion. I have tried about every type of file imaginable and I assume my problem is which codec and the settings. So, with that said, if someone could enlighten me as to the BEST way and file type and settings to get my XHA1 HDV files to a DVD through Vegas and Architect, I would be happy as heck! Thanks. J

May 25th, 2007, 10:53 AM	#10
Neil McLean Regular Crew Join Date: May 2003 Location: U.K. Posts: 125	To Pass or Not 2-Pass? I've kinda glad this issue has been raised as I've being fixing the maximum, minimum and average all at 8000 or whatever is suitable given the length of my project. I 2-pass 99% of the time, though in regards to DV many folk have questioned whether there is anything visual to be gained when rendering out to mpeg2. I don't know what folk think of HDV 2-pass and the merits of rendering out to mpeg2 for DVD delivery. Neil

May 23rd, 2007, 11:14 PM	#2
Alastair Brown Major Player Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Glasgow/Scotland Posts: 626	I shoot in HDV 50i with my XH-A1, capture and edit with properties set to HDV 1080-50i (I'm in PAL land) once project is finished I render out to MPEG2 DVD Architect Pal Widescreen video stream render audio out as ac3 open DVD Architect and set project properties to PAL Widescreen Author DVD menues etc Select Make DVD button and burn disc. Quality I am seeing is way WAY in excess of what my old SD footage looked like.

May 24th, 2007, 05:57 AM	#3
John L. Miller Major Player Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Huntington, WV Posts: 260	Thanks for your info. I have been shooting in 1080 24F with my A1 and editing the M2t file then I tried Rendering Mpeg2 but it doesn't look to good to me. I believe it compresses too much. What bit rate settings are you using or are you using the default settings? J

May 24th, 2007, 09:27 PM	#4
Tony Spring Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: london UK Posts: 170	I render to HDV then use TMPGEnc 4.0 Express to convert to a DVD file, then I use Ulead Movie factory to author the DVD.

May 25th, 2007, 07:30 AM	#5
Bill Ravens Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: santa fe, nm Posts: 3,264 Images: 10	John... The default MPEG2 bitrate settings in vegas are too low. Reset them to 8 Mbps for both min and max.

May 25th, 2007, 09:22 AM	#6
Kris Bird Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: UK Posts: 173	Min/max at 8 Mbps? That sounds far higher than I'd be comfortable to send to clients, let alone for mass distribution ... :) We have a bunch of dvd players of varying ages and I find that min=5500 max=6500 is about as high as I can go without introducing skips in some devices. NOTE! 2-pass encoding gives a big quality boost for no extra bandwidth, but at the expense of render time.

May 25th, 2007, 09:32 AM	#7
Bill Ravens Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: santa fe, nm Posts: 3,264 Images: 10	Kris... Max allowable is 9600bps, but this leaves no room for audio. Every pro I know uses 8000bps. Sony recommends 8000. Neither they nor myself have ever experienced playback probs at this datarate. You may well do better with VBR, provided there's not a lot of pans in the video, but I would suggest max 8000, min 6000.

May 25th, 2007, 10:44 AM	#8
Kris Bird Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: UK Posts: 173	Cheers Bill, that's interesting! I'd love to hear more people's experiences? I've definitely read recommendations to keep it as low as ~5Mbps, my own tests found that to be overkill .. we saw very occasional problems at the ~7.5+Mbps level, with 5.5-6.5 being very very solid, and not a single skip (seen or reported) in a long time.

May 25th, 2007, 10:46 AM	#9
Kris Bird Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: UK Posts: 173	Oh, and I believe it's 9800 max, I use 9.8Mbps CBR when making "web masters" .. ie. mpegs from which to derive web/streaming versions of projects.

May 25th, 2007, 07:15 PM	#11
John L. Miller Major Player Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Huntington, WV Posts: 260	I have been playing with the bitrates in an attempt to get a better quality, I was able to get better quality with the XL2 cameras, but with the A1, rendering from HDV down to SD, I just cannot get a good quality DVD. Many things look like they are waving around in places on the video...it just looks cheap. I had the problem with the XL2 in the beginning but after toying with those bitrates, that cleared up. But not so with my A1. I have been trying to render to MPEG2 and then burn in DVArch. Of course I have tried rendering to WMV too. Still no luck. When I render to HD it looks great on computer, but cannot burn that. Keep suggestions coming. J

May 25th, 2007, 09:11 PM	#12
Bill Watson Major Player Join Date: May 2007 Location: Noosa Queensland Australia Posts: 248	Maybe I got it wrong from the start but I render the HD to SD .avi. I then pick the .avi file up in Architect and mpeg it there as I've always felt that re-doing the mpeg twice leads to loss?

May 27th, 2007, 05:57 PM	#15
Bill Ravens Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: santa fe, nm Posts: 3,264 Images: 10	Due to the way vegas 7 and DVDA software is written, you're better off rendering to NTSC DVDA inside Vegas, rather than rely on DVDA to do it.