I've recently spent a lot of time and effort striving to get better H264 encoding than is offered natively in Vegas. In my opinion neither the Sony AVC nor MainConcept AAC/AVC offers as good quality as, for example, a well done Xvid encode. The MainConcept codec in Vegas in particular is very old now (version 2, compared to the current version 7), and in my opinion the Sony AVC codec does not deliver good results for larger videos. It lacks detail and has too much contrast for my liking.
So I've been looking into the open source x264 codec which was rated 2nd behind the up-to-date MainConcept encoder in this comparison.
My general workflow for producing videos is to frameserve from Vegas with the Debugmode Frameserver, deinterlace and resize in AviSynth, then encode/mux in MeGUI.
x264 can also be encoded with the Video For Windows codec x264vfw in VirtualDub and then muxed with AAC audio in Yamb, a front end for mp4box but the purists tend to push the Direct Show version of the codec.
The results have been quite good but there are playback compatibility problems with Quicktime and Vegas so one has to be very careful with the settings in x264/MeGUI.
After extensive testing, I've come to these conclusions re compatibility of x264 in Sony Vegas Pro:
If there [B]is audio[/B] muxed with the video then I8x8 (an x264 macroblock option) is compatible for Vegas playback but b-frames cause only the audio stream to be displayed in Vegas and no video. This is true whether the file is encoded in MeGUI or with x264vfw in VirtualDub.
However the situation is different if there is [B]no audio[/B] muxed with the video, and it differs depending on where the file is encoded:
[B]Case 1: No audio, mp4 encoded in MeGUI:[/B]
b-frames are OK but I8x8 crashes Vegas.
[B]Case 2: No audio, mp4 encoded in x264vfw in VirtualDub:[/B]
I8x8 is OK but b-frames cause the file not to open in Vegas. In other words effectively the opposite of case 1.
In all cases I'm using x264 core 59 r819bm. The mp4box muxing command line used by MeGUI and Yamb is the same in all cases. I've attempted to make the x264 settings as identical as possible and studied the AVInaptic reports to cross-check but still the encoded files behave differently in Vegas depending on whether they were encoded with x264 or x264vfw.
All the encodes that work in Vegas are reportedly decoded by qt7plug.dll (Quicktime codec) whereas H264 encoded by the Sony AVC or MainConcept AAC/AVC codecs in Vegas, are decded by mcmp4plug.dll (MainConcept codec). I wonder if there is something I could write into an x264 mp4 file to make it get decoded by the MainConcept codec in Vegas instead of the Quicktime codec. Any ideas?
Another thing... b-pyramid causes Quicktime to choke on larger videos (e.g. 960x540) so I don't use that now.
Anyway I just wanted to get all that down in the forum before I forget, in case someone else goes down the same route as I have and runs into trouble.
So I've been looking into the open source x264 codec which was rated 2nd behind the up-to-date MainConcept encoder in this comparison.
My general workflow for producing videos is to frameserve from Vegas with the Debugmode Frameserver, deinterlace and resize in AviSynth, then encode/mux in MeGUI.
x264 can also be encoded with the Video For Windows codec x264vfw in VirtualDub and then muxed with AAC audio in Yamb, a front end for mp4box but the purists tend to push the Direct Show version of the codec.
The results have been quite good but there are playback compatibility problems with Quicktime and Vegas so one has to be very careful with the settings in x264/MeGUI.
After extensive testing, I've come to these conclusions re compatibility of x264 in Sony Vegas Pro:
If there [B]is audio[/B] muxed with the video then I8x8 (an x264 macroblock option) is compatible for Vegas playback but b-frames cause only the audio stream to be displayed in Vegas and no video. This is true whether the file is encoded in MeGUI or with x264vfw in VirtualDub.
However the situation is different if there is [B]no audio[/B] muxed with the video, and it differs depending on where the file is encoded:
[B]Case 1: No audio, mp4 encoded in MeGUI:[/B]
b-frames are OK but I8x8 crashes Vegas.
[B]Case 2: No audio, mp4 encoded in x264vfw in VirtualDub:[/B]
I8x8 is OK but b-frames cause the file not to open in Vegas. In other words effectively the opposite of case 1.
In all cases I'm using x264 core 59 r819bm. The mp4box muxing command line used by MeGUI and Yamb is the same in all cases. I've attempted to make the x264 settings as identical as possible and studied the AVInaptic reports to cross-check but still the encoded files behave differently in Vegas depending on whether they were encoded with x264 or x264vfw.
All the encodes that work in Vegas are reportedly decoded by qt7plug.dll (Quicktime codec) whereas H264 encoded by the Sony AVC or MainConcept AAC/AVC codecs in Vegas, are decded by mcmp4plug.dll (MainConcept codec). I wonder if there is something I could write into an x264 mp4 file to make it get decoded by the MainConcept codec in Vegas instead of the Quicktime codec. Any ideas?
Another thing... b-pyramid causes Quicktime to choke on larger videos (e.g. 960x540) so I don't use that now.
Anyway I just wanted to get all that down in the forum before I forget, in case someone else goes down the same route as I have and runs into trouble.