Hello,
I have an issue: when I render a clip in Vegas Pro, the audio quality decreases. I would like to know how to render it optimally to avoid this problem.
Even if I set the project parameters correctly, the rendered audio always stays at 16-bit. Even when using Vegas’ default settings, the problem persists: the audio loses quality.
Welcome to the Vegas forum.
Could you please advise which version and build of Vegas Pro that you are using.
Also, what is the format, bit rate and sampling rate of a typical audio event being used on the project timeline?
And please take a screenshot of the audio tab settings of the Properties window ... as well as the Audio tab from the Customize window of the render template that you are using - and upload those screenshots to the forum via the upload button when making a new comment on this thread:
And when you say that the audio loses quality, is this based on differences that your ears hear through the same loudspeakers or just based on technical data?
It will be also good to know the intended destination for where the rendered video will be used.
Thank you for your response. I’m using Vegas Pro 23, and here are the screenshots you requested.
For screenshot 2, I’ve already modified it manually, but by default, the settings are 48 kHz and 192 kbps.
When I manually set it to 44 kHz and 24 kbps in the custom settings, the audio becomes really bad.
With the default settings (48 kHz and 192 kbps), the quality drops slightly, but it’s not nearly as terrible as with 44 kHz and 24 kbps.
And when you say that the audio loses quality, is this based on differences that your ears hear through the same loudspeakers or just based on technical data?
It will be also good to know the intended destination for where the rendered video will be used.
Yes, it is based on what I can hear through the same speakers.
It's hard to say what the cause might be because we still don't know the specifications of the original audio on Vegas Pro's timeline - e.g. the format, the bit rate (192k or higher) and the sampling rate (how many bits).
In the meantime, the noticeable issues are that the sample rate in Properties audio is 44,100 not 48,000 as per the render template, and that the audio render template shows a very low 24,000 - though your image shows that being at Kbits/s whereas my English equivalent in Vegas Pro shows that as being bps. I somehow think that Kbits/s is really bps because Kbps means that 24,000 would in fact be 24,000,000 bps.
this is the specifications of the original audio the original audio
Thank you for the info.
Given that the original audio is 44,100 KHz, I doubt that 48,000 KHz coding anywhere in Vegas Pro is going to make much difference because 48 coding is unlikely to improve or worsen audio quality. I think that the problem is that the bit rate of 24,000 kbps in the render template is very likely the problem. Try selecting a much higher bit rate in the render bit rate field (128,000 kbps is the minimum recommended for YouTube).
Sorry, but in my previous comment I think that I confused bit and sample rate settings - and I suspect that the bit rate in the render window in Vegas Pro 23 is missing the 'k'.
A CoPilot search outlines the differences between 16 and 24 bit audio:
This summarises my understanding of the differences between 16 and 24 bits over many years.
@ToFann Increase the bit rate in your render template by a factor of 10 from 24000 to 240000 and slap yourself up side the head.
@ToFann John Dennis has the correct advice.
For default stereo video renders I nowadays usually take the AVC (H.264) default render template (Internet HD 1080p 25fps NVENC) in VP23 but with an adapted (increased) audio bitrate of 320 kb/s. The default 192 kb/s is a "tad" on the lower quality to my taste.
a side note: for 5.1 audio renders, obviously you need increase more (like 512 kb/s) as you have more audio channels.
@ToFann Unfortunately Vegas doesn't currently have the general purpose ability to render video with a 24bit lossless audio track. There are MXF templates, but they are somewhat outdated and limited to HD. Only contemporary way I know to get a video like that from Vegas is to do separate audio and video renders and patch them together outside of Vegas. All my recent YouTube projects were done successfully that way. I've been rendering from Vegas with video to mp4/aac and audio to 24bit Wav and then copy/merging the mp4 video stream and the wav audio stream into a mov container without any resampling. I repackage folders-full at once with ffmpeg but it can probably be done manually one clip at a time with ShutterEncoder.
Details on doing the repackage with ffmpeg are in this thread: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/audio-for-youtube-uploads--149798/
Thank you for the info.
Given that the original audio is 44,100 KHz, I doubt that 48,000 KHz coding anywhere in Vegas Pro is going to make much difference because 48 coding is unlikely to improve or worsen audio quality. I think that the problem is that the bit rate of 24,000 kbps in the render template is very likely the problem. Try selecting a much higher bit rate in the render bit rate field (128,000 kbps is the minimum recommended for YouTube).
Sorry, but in my previous comment I think that I confused bit and sample rate settings - and I suspect that the bit rate in the render window in Vegas Pro 23 is missing the 'k'.
Thank you, this is the solution I used: I increased it from 44 kHz to 96 kHz and set the bitrate to 320 kbps, and now the audio of my video sounds the same as my WAV file.
@ToFann Unfortunately Vegas doesn't currently have the general purpose ability to render video with a 24bit lossless audio track. There are MXF templates, but they are somewhat outdated and limited to HD. Only contemporary way I know to get a video like that from Vegas is to do separate audio and video renders and patch them together outside of Vegas. All my recent YouTube projects were done successfully that way. I've been rendering from Vegas with video to mp4/aac and audio to 24bit Wav and then copy/merging the mp4 video stream and the wav audio stream into a mov container without any resampling. I repackage folders-full at once with ffmpeg but it can probably be done manually one clip at a time with ShutterEncoder.
Details on doing the repackage with ffmpeg are in this thread: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/audio-for-youtube-uploads--149798/
This is also another method that works.
It is the higher bitrate that makes the difference. increasing the original 44.1 kHz sample rare to 96 kHz is like putting a gallon of water in a 5 gallon container... It'a still a gallon. I only use 96kHz for music tracking sessions, the final distribution files are 44.1 or 48k for videos.