Bone-head beginner question(s)...

LifeIsPhun wrote on 2/29/2008, 12:46 PM
Wow! All you brilliant folks...almost afraid to ask.

Camera: Sony HDR-HC3 (HDV)
Footage: Helmet mounted powered paragliding (flying)
System: WinXP PC
Vegas: 8.0b & DVD Architect 4.5b

The captured footage looks pretty good, but anything I render to DVD looks like crap. I get lots of artifacts, blur, noise, and it is almost un-watchable compared to the source material. I think DVD Arch. may be re-encoding??

I see from you bit jockeys that there are a bunch of settings that I should be trying...but I don't understand any of them!

I use Render As | MainConcept MPEG2 | DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen template and turn on audio. Is this what I should be using?

Can anyone point me to somewhere that can give guidance of what render template customizations I should make to get from MPEG2.m2t HDV footage to DVD with as little noise/loss as possible? There has to be some settings that should work for basic render of "as good as possible" for output to DVD.

Sorry, I just don't know where to start debugging my quality issues.

Thanx,

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 2/29/2008, 1:25 PM
don't turn on the audio. render to ac3 & you should be all set. could be dvda is re-rendering because you put the audio in with the video in the mpeg.
LifeIsPhun wrote on 2/29/2008, 5:21 PM
I tried separating the audio from the video and the video is still of the same chunky quality. Are there some magic bits I should be setting that can help to even out the video quality?
PeterWright wrote on 2/29/2008, 5:26 PM
I don't know how much variance there is between NTSC and PAL, but I always use BEST quality when rendering HDV to DVD.
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 2/29/2008, 6:35 PM
Rendering as Best will provide better results when downrezzing. It's 2 different types of anti-aliasing. Good = bi-linear AA, and Best = Trilinear AA. This doesn't matter usually because SD to SD doesn't need to be best unless you're doing P/C and still etc..., but when you're shifting down from HD to SD you need that extra quality and it makes a lot of difference in the final product.

Give that a shot and see how it works for ya.

Dave
musicvid10 wrote on 2/29/2008, 7:45 PM
Look at the length of the video and use a bitrate calculator to set your render bitrates in Vegas. If DVDA insists on rendering again, that means your bitrate is too high to fit the video to the media. If you're going from HDV to DVD, your going to see some loss regardless. However, if you keep the length of your program to an hour, the losses will be minimized.
LifeIsPhun wrote on 2/29/2008, 7:57 PM
FrigidNDEditing...thanx. If I pick Best, DVDA wants to re-render when preparing for DVD.

Where do I set anti-aliasing for MPEG-2 | NTSC DVD Widscreen template? In "Custom" I don't find that setting.
LifeIsPhun wrote on 2/29/2008, 7:59 PM
MusicVid...thanx. I am just using a small 2 minute chunk to do my testing...so I don't have any problems DVDA re-rendering again because of that. If I use "Best" as others have suggested DVDA will re-render...if I use the default "Good" it will not.

Quality still suckin.

Please, please keep the suggestions coming and I will try them ALL!

Thanx for all your input.
John_Cline wrote on 2/29/2008, 8:20 PM
MPEG2 quality is mostly affected by bitrate, if your video is under about 74 minutes, then encode CBR at 8,000,000 bits/sec. If you video is under 60 minutes or so and you're using 192Kbps .AC3 audio, you could possibly get away with 8,500,000 or even 9,000,000 bps. The DVD standard for total bitrate of the audio and video combined is 9.8Mbps. If you encode at over 8Mbps, you may have to change the maximum allowable project bitrate in DVD Architect to get it to accept the higher-than-normal bitrate files.

John
LifeIsPhun wrote on 2/29/2008, 9:47 PM
Thanx John, I'll try that. Now I am starting to get somewhere...
LifeIsPhun wrote on 2/29/2008, 9:54 PM
Ok, not sure I see a difference with or without including audio in the .MPG output file. If I don't include audio stream (the default), then do I select "Save as separate elementary streams" on the "System" tab of the Custom Template??

Also, AAC is not an option for audio in the MPEG template?? Only Psycoacoustic Model 2...
John_Cline wrote on 2/29/2008, 10:15 PM
Select the DVD Architect DVD template, hit the "Custom" button and change it to CBR at 8,000,000 bps. Do NOT select to include the audio.

Then render the audio separately as .AC3 by selecting "Dolby Digital AC-3 Pro", once again, hit the "Custom" button and set "Dialog Normalization" to -31, then go to the "Preprocessing" tab and set "Line Mode Profile" and "RF Mode Profile" to "None." This will prevent the AC-3 encoder from changing your audio levels.
teaktart wrote on 2/29/2008, 10:23 PM
I've had similar re-renders with DVDA when I thought I had done the job right in Vegas.

The reason was I had checked the "Reduce Interlace Flicker" in DVDA and that made it re-render my mpeg2 files and that not only took time but looked awful.

Uncheck that if its checked, and see if that was the cause of you re-render / problems.
LifeIsPhun wrote on 2/29/2008, 10:34 PM
John...Thanx. Man, this was the perfect title...I feel like a real bone-head right now. I have a short 10 second HDV clip that looks great in v8.0b that I am using for testing. I did exactly as you suggested and set CBR to 8,000,000 with no audio. However maybe I am missing a template type but I don't have a "DVD Architect DVD template"...I do have a DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen video stream" that I have been using.

I render my .mpg file and my separate .ac3 (with your suggested settings as well) and DVDA barfs on loading the .mpg file giving the error messagebox "The selected file is not of the required type".

I am not stupid, but I feel real stupid right now.
LifeIsPhun wrote on 2/29/2008, 10:36 PM
Thanx teaktart...RIF not set in DVDA.
LifeIsPhun wrote on 2/29/2008, 10:48 PM
Ok, had something weird going on with DVDA...maybe it didn't like all the testing I was doing, so I quit, restarted DVDA, started a new project and added the 10 second test .mpg (@ CBR 8,000,000) and .ac3 file. All is looking better now. I'll try a burn to DVD and try it on my TV.

Thanx for now...
John_Cline wrote on 2/29/2008, 10:56 PM
Yes, the "DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen" template is the one I was talking about. I was typing the previous message from memory.

I have no idea why DVD Architect is rejecting your .MPG file. Are you using the "DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen" template and only changing the CBR and bitrate parameters?
LifeIsPhun wrote on 2/29/2008, 10:56 PM
Burned to DVD and looks WAY better than before. Thank you John and others...feeling just a little less stupid right now.
LifeIsPhun wrote on 2/29/2008, 11:17 PM
Thanx John, I am on the road to recovery. I think DVDA had a memory problem (not unlike me sometimes). Straightened things out and getting MUCH better results with your guidance.

Thank you very much for your input.

Mark@LifeIsPhun.com
teaktart wrote on 2/29/2008, 11:24 PM
Glad you got it worked out