Best Quality?

eLmO wrote on 2/28/2004, 12:52 PM
Hi,
Im fairly new to Vegas and im not sure on the final output quality settings. I have tried many different settings and yet the only good quality output video i can create is with "uncompression" selected, therefore creating a huge file size with only a few seconds of film.

So could anyone tell me a few settings i could change or point me to some usefull tutorials.

The final movie, i would like to play is with DivX codex...

Thnx for any help

Comments

TVCmike wrote on 2/28/2004, 2:29 PM
Before you start Vegas up, make sure you have a version of the DivX CODEC installed that allows you to create DivX output. Then, after you're done editing your video in Vegas, simply do a Render As... from the File menu. A dialog will come up. Select .AVI as your Save As Type, and DivX as your template. Go into the Custom... dialog to set your bitrate and other settings, and your Video Render Quality to Best, and then click Ok on everything. You should be on your way to rendering DivX in no time.
eLmO wrote on 2/28/2004, 3:14 PM
hmmm theres no DivX template, yet i do have it installed.

The only way i can record as DivX is by going into custom and making my own template.

Do you have a DivX template?

If so can you run me by the things i would need to create a good quality one
Spot|DSE wrote on 2/28/2004, 4:16 PM
Just out of curiosity, why are you even interested in DivX? For editing, it sucks. For general use, it sucks. For conversion to another compressed format, it sucks. Compared to the Sony codec, it sucks. Compared to Windows 9 it sucks. To deliver it to a buncha people if they don't have the codec, it sucks.
What's the point? Granted, DivX is no longer relegated to the exclusive arena of pirates, but what's the main benefit? If any?
TVCmike wrote on 2/28/2004, 6:48 PM
What kind of video do you want to make? If you're trying to transcode a 1 hour movie, you'll probably want to do a 2-pass run at around 1500kbit/s, 720x480 29.97fps and turn on subthreshold pixel correction and all of the other quality goodies in the CODEC control panel. That'll give you fairly decent quality video. If you want to fit a 2 hour movie to a CD, youll have to cut your bitrate in half.
goshep wrote on 2/28/2004, 10:38 PM
Spot,

Just so we're all clear, what is your stance on DivX again? :)


P.S.
Thanks again for the help with analog conversion.
Cheesehole wrote on 2/28/2004, 11:56 PM
>>what's the main benefit? If any?

We use it as an intermediary format for transferring source video over the net. We tried Windows Media 9, but Vegas 3 doesn't like to deal with it on the timeline. We'd get black frames and the lip sync was sloppy in the final render. Placing more than one Windows Media file on a timeline was suicidal. I won't go into that...

DivX 5 files encoded at a high bitrate function perfectly on the Vegas 3 timeline. I get perfect lip sync and flawless performance just like DV. No problem using as many files as I like on the timeline. Combined with a flexible encoder it seemed like a godsend to us after dealing with Windows Media for so long.

All around DivX 5 feels like a much tighter system than Windows Media 9. Everything works the way I expect it to.
eLmO wrote on 2/29/2004, 4:12 AM
I am creating a movie of various computer games for a project i am working on. Many other videos i have viewed are compressed using DivX and thats the only reason i am using it. Since they have used DivX the file size seems a lot smaller than other compressions i have tested yet at the same quality. I followed your instructions TVCmike (and thnx for the help) about increasing the birate and it seemed to work, but sill not as good quality as i would like. Any more tips?

(Maybe if you could take a screenshot of the config menu? That would be a great help)

Thnx
Cheesehole wrote on 2/29/2004, 12:33 PM
>>(Maybe if you could take a screenshot of the config menu? That would be a great help)

You should be able to copy that string of characters from the bottom of the DivX window if you want to transfer a preset easily. No need for screenshots. I think Windows Media 9 has that too. It is an awesome feature. I wish Sony would add it to all their render formats! :)
eLmO wrote on 2/29/2004, 3:17 PM
What would you guys rate the best quality video at a small file size compression to be?

(and not *.mpg)
TVCmike wrote on 2/29/2004, 6:29 PM
It's really tough to gauge what the "best quality" video would be. I think it's reasonably safe to say that an MPEG-4 derivative CODEC (like DivX, Xvid, etc.) should be better looking than the same video in MPEG-2 at the same rate. The main factor is the content itself. That is, if you have a lot of dark or subtle color changes, or if you have a lot of rapid movement or image complexity, you'll have some pixelation.

Visual quality is, in and of itself, very subjective. What looks good to one person may not look good to another. Maybe you can tell us about your source. If you have old VHS footage, you'd need to pre-filter it prior to rendering it to your destination format. If you have noisy DV, there really isn't a whole lot you can do because of the way the discrete cosine transform works on sections of the image. If you have a DVD from a major movie studio, you should have pretty good quality out the gate but you'll still see some image degredation by virtue of the fact that MPEG-2 is inherently quite lossy to begin with which you then compound by recompressing into an MPEG-4 like format like DivX.

Again, if you're at liberty to say what your original source is and in what condition it's in, then I think we can give you more help. Otherwise, the only other thing I can advise is to up your bitrate some more with a 2-pass encode or to change CODECs (e.g. WMV9).