Jerry, thanks, however I have tried every option I can find within the "render as" section of Vegas, and none of it looks similar to the choices within the graphic within the tutorial. My guess is that there was a rewrite between Vegas 10 and 11 of that section, or so I remember. It does not look the same.

After I downloaded the Avid Codec, by the way, 2.3.5 and then 2.3.7, the installation appeared normal, but there were no choices or options and I was not sure what to do next. I clicked "finish" and the install simply closed. I was hoping that when I fired up Vegas that the Avid codec option would be there, but it was not.

My guess is that this is one of those things that is really really smple for an experienced Vegas user, something obvious that I am missing. At times I have trouble simply deciphering the video jargon, over my head.

Bright Cove suggests uploading in the highest resolution possible. They convert it to multiple files, in a variety of lower resolutions for playback on a variety of internet connections, as well as different platforms. I am not the IT guy in my firm, but from what I understand, we send them one high quality file, and they take care of the rest.

Follow this picture from left to right.

Avid LE Codec in Quicktime in Vegas Pro 11

Render As: Quicktime 7

Select any video bit rate and strike Customize Template.

Follow the tutorial settings (not neccessarily my picture) from there.

I think the confusion is the missing "default template" in Vegas Pro 11.

I don't know anything about Bright Cove, but if they want the highest resolution (bit rate) possible and you have the bandwidth, you could send the AVID uncompressed files.

Thanks for that diagram John. I think I found the problem. On the "Render as" screen, there is no "QuickTime 7" option. Underneath "MainConcept MPEG-2" is "RealMedia 9", no QuickTime 7.

Is this some sort of add on, something extra to purchase?

Anyway, thanks. For a moment I thought I had picked a bad day to stop drinking.

"On the "Render as" screen, there is no "QuickTime 7" option."

Silly question, do you have Quictime 7 player installed on your computer?

"Is this particular color issue specifically about YouTube or is this a more universal issue when uploading files to the web?"

Neither.
It's the specific behavior of the Vegas Preview, which by default displays in RGB space. This is unlike Premiere or other Windows NLEs, thus requiring specific attention Our approach to it is not the only one, but it gets the job done.
;?)

You have to download and install Quicktime from the Apple site.

I haven't been drinking as much, lately. I think something is wrong.

Funny. Thanks John. I will do that... just when I think I'm so smart. When I figure this out I will try the AVID files.

We told Bright Cove that some of our training files might be 5 gigs or so for typical twenty five minute videos, and we might have 100 of them, they said no problem. They advised to not downsize them, keep them high res, let them do the downsizing.

Musicvid, this has likely been asked and answered many times... all makes sense, so do you use your approach in all of your videos, since the issue is the Vegas preview? Are you in the habit of adding the "Levels" FX for every file? I did notice when I added it that my preview had a slightly washed out look, the blacks were not as black, but no worries I thought, it will improve the uploaded look.

But if your video will be seen directly from a file or disc on a television or computer, do you add your approach to the rendering process?

By the way, that jazzythedog tutorial was inspiring, lets me know there is a lot going on out there to grasp.

"all makes sense, so do you use your approach in all of your videos, since the issue is the Vegas preview?"

Yes, with one qualifier. Levels compensation either at the preview or at the render is necessary if one will be rendering to YUV codecs. This includes mpeg-2, mp4, some avi and quictime, but not wmv. You have to know if you are rendering YUV or RGB, the latter obviously needs no correction from an RGB preview in Vegas. If in doubt, all you have to do is download our dual range HD grayscale, render and upload, and compare the results. The washy look in the preview after applying the Studio RGB filter is normal, see the video tutorial. The output will be correct for "most" hardware and software players and media servers.

Welcome to the club. I will look into the other upload service you mentioned, as well.

Yeah, sinking in now, starting to make sense. Our videos are all shot in similar fashion. I will try with the approach and without, compare to your grayscale and see what looks best on Bright Cove.

We are specifically using Bright Cove because of their security. Our training is our intellectual property, and Bright Cove makes it difficult for the average user to download the file. Our files are not for download, they are to be streamed only. During playback Bright Cove detects the internet connection and then provides the appropriate resolution, switching up and down on the fly during playback so that viewer is not constantly annoyed with the start and stop we so often see if the internet connection slows down a bit. Our experience with Bright Cove so far has been good, at least that is what I hear from IT.

For now I know that I do not want to get to the end of rendering a big pile of large files and then realize we should have used the "jazzythedog better approach" because the color and contrast is a bit "off". Now if I can just figure out how to connect QuickTime to Vegas...

When it was free, I used to use Brightcove to distribute my videos, but then they started charging for everyone and it was quite pricey. They provide a Flash-based video player and management tools linked to their CDN. Back then, when it was FLV-based, one big advantage of it was that they could host the file you sent them, without re-encoding, so I used to encode my videos with On2 Flix Pro. So, without checking, it's possible that they still permit mp4 files without reencoding. I am 99% sure that the luminance issues that apply to YouTube/Vimeo/JW Player etc., would apply equally to Brightcove.

For interest's sake, here is a Brighcove-hosted video. Great video and great band!

BTW Barry,
While you're on jazzy's page, check the link to Nick's tutorial for the "Best" method, which is a notch better than mine. If you have people on the payroll dedicated to the task, and they are already conversant in Avisynth, it would be worth investigating and comparing. Nick would be my hero if he wasn't such a kid.
;?)

Nick, in that case, I will expect to apply the jazzy approach from now on, make it part of my habit pattern when we render for Bright Cove. I am rendering M2T files, for no reason other than "HDV 1080-60i (1440x1080, 29.970 fps)" is what showed up in the "Template" cell when I clicked "Match Media Settings", and I thought M2T seemed to be a close match when deciding between the multitude of choices on the "Render as" page. We tried it, the videos looked good, at least to our untrained eyes, so we uploaded them to Bright Cove.

Are you suggesting an MP4 file to improve the quality over M2T? Bandwidth is not an issue, nor is file size, nor render times, etc., we simply want to best quality video within the scope of a Sony HVR-Z5U camera and Vegas Pro.

We are in the process of another round of training videos. I am investing some additional effort to improve the quality, and discussions on this forum led me to jazzy. Understanding "why" can be so much more difficult than understanding "how", and I gladly mooch off of you experts.

Musicvid, our IT is terrific at creating infrastructure, web security, functionality, hosting, other geek stuff, etc., but no one has experience with the creation of videos. That was left up to me because I dabbled in it twenty years ago. I will study Nick's "Best" method, but my guess is that it will make my head explode, again working hard to decipher the lingo, like "Avisynth". I have not yet solved the "Better". I want to zero in on a method, get good at it, and then use it over and over, make it a no-brainer.

I know what you mean about these kids, when I get REALLY stuck, I get help from my neices and nephews. I have learned to put up with the eye rolls.

First I think you need to spend some time with this section of the Brightcove website.

Without reading all that, I suspect your best bet will probably be to deinterlace and encode to mp4 according to the "better" Handbrake method. Send Brightcove 1280x720 at the highish bitrate recommended in the tutorial and let Brightcove encode it out to their various resolutions. Even 1920x1080 might be appropriate, at a higher bitrate.

You might find that the "good" method is good enough for your needs. Between the "good" and "better" methods, you could also try deinterlacing with this free Yadif plugin and rendering to SonyAVC all within Vegas. That's a simple workflow and should be better than just using Vegas' "interpolate fields", but will not be as good as the Handbrake method.

One other thing... If you're passionate about the quality, you should really check the levels of your videos against the video scopes to work out how to conform your levels to 16-235. A simple "Studio RGB to Computer RGB" preset is probably not appropriate for footage from the Sony HVR-Z5U. More than likely it's shooting nominally 16-255, so if you want to retain highlight detail then you want to map 255 down to 235 but leave the blacks where they are. There are a number of ways to do this in Vegas. I typically use a curve like this where the anchors on the lower left are at 16 and on the upper right at 235. You can move the ends one click at a time with the arrow keys on your keyboard. One click is one unit of luminance. Once it's set up as a preset it's very quick to apply to events or even tracks.

"Between the "good" and "better" methods, you could also try deinterlacing with this free Yadif plugin and rendering to SonyAVC all within Vegas."

That is all I do for delivery to YouTube plus roll off the higlights using a curve similar to the one you're using.
Technically it seems to me what Barry is delivering to Brightcove is a "master". That should be encoded with the least loss possible so you use the lowest loss encoder at the highest practical bitrate, what happens from there becomes someone elses's problem. All of this assumes bandwidth is not a major constraint.

For me bandwidth is an issue in that YT limits uploads to 2GB and my ISP does limit my total traffic per month. For those reasons I constrain myself to 720p at 6Mbps using the Sony AVC codec. I de-interlace using the YADIF plugin in V10 and with the free script to apply it to all source life is very simple. On top of that I'd wager good money most of my work on YT is watched at 360p anyway :)

Also worth a mention as the OP has some control over the original video is that taking steps to improve the video before editing will yield better results than any amount of futzing around in post, Anyone who doubts that please watch a big budgets movie trailer on YT. Things you can do without $100M to spend.

1) Plenty of light i.e. avoid using gain in the camera. Gain = noise and noise wastes bandwidth.
2) Flat lighting aka low key. Shadows and black is where the signal to noise ratio gets bad even with expensive cameras. If you must have "black" in the frame light so you can crush it in post without it becoming ugly.
3) Shallow but sensible DOF. Having stuff that doesn't have to be seen out of focus helps, less bits needed to encode that part of the frame.
4) Keep the camera locked off. Use a very good tripod. If you need to track movement use expensive dollies. Bumps etc make it hard on the encoder.
5) If your camera can shoot progressive and the content will only be delivered over the web shoot progressive.

In post avoid transitions if at all possible,.

Bob.

Nick,

On our first round of training videos we hooked a Reflecmedia green light ring to a Sony HVR-Z5U, aimed it at the podium with a Reflecmedia screen behind, lit the speaker with typical three point lighting, and started filming.

We dropped out the background using Boris Continuum chroma key in Vegas, we didn't do a great job, but it was acceptable. We filmed in 60i, and all was well. One day just playing around with the camera, actually filming some turkeys in my front yard I tried the progressive setting on the camera. When viewing that footage I noticed a slight "jerkiness", I wondered why, searched this forum, and found a LOT of information, deinterlacing, "good, better, best" "jazzythedog", etc., more than I could even begin to comprehend. BUT, I think I figured out the color curve you posted. I saved it as a preset, and will use it. Thank you for that.

I don't think I have what it takes to tackle the "best" method and as you said, the "better" will work fine. Actually we were pleased with plain old rendering in Vegas and uploading to Bright Cove, but again, in I can make improvements, so much the better. We use the Bright Cove default settings. I will try the Yadif pugin, looks like it might be a simple method and still improve the quality, maybe easier than the jazzy "better" method.

As hopefully a simple question, are you suggesting that the Sony AVCHD 1440x1080-60i, which is a match for my project settings, that after incorporating the Yadif plugin, would be a better quality render than the MainConcept MPEG-2 M2t files I have been using?

One good thing, the client is me, so no one to complain to except myself.

Bob,

Thank you for your list of improvements. Most of them we are using, very bright 3 point lighting, only a few soft shadows, rock solid tripod, nice green screen, no need to add gain on the camera, not sure about the DOF but it has not been an issue.

You are right in that I desire to deliver to Bright Cove simply the best possible file, bandwidth is irrelevant. Over the next six months we will deliver probably about 100 files, many of them over 5 gigs. What I really wish is to be able to have an expert say, "Here, do this". I am beginning to realize it is not that simple.

I can imagine when you do this for a living (which I don't) that it is possible to become obsessed over quality improvements, some of them tiny, but nevertheless real, and the need to carefully monitor time. I "woke up" a few days ago and wondered what happened, 3am and I am fooling around with Vegas Pro? What?

This entire effort to improve the quality reminds me of the time in another house I decided to "redo" the faucets, a simple job. Next thing I remember I had the entire bathroom torn apart, the wife screaming, water spewing everywhere, shower stall in the backyard, tub in the front yard, but hey, after two weeks of no water, I had those brand new faucets in place.

One final question on this (at least for now), when using the "Better" method, (this is what kept me up until 3am), how do you "link" QuickTime with Vegas? Do I need to purchase the Pro version? On the "Render As" screen, I still do not have a "Quicktime 7" option. I need that option to try the "Better" method.

Thanks,

Barry Hull

"One final question on this (at least for now), when using the "Better" method, (this is what kept me up until 3am), how do you "link" QuickTime with Vegas? Do I need to purchase the Pro version? On the "Render As" screen, I still do not have a "Quicktime 7" option. I need that option to try the "Better" method."Allow me to jump in as it's in the middle of the night in Bangkok & Oz.

You do not need the Pro Version of Quicktime. The only reason to add quicktime is to get the "Quicktime (*.mov)" rendering option which you will need in order to install the DNxHD codec.

You can get Quicktime here: Apple Quicktime - Download. Make sure you answer "no" to anything additional the installer wants you to add (particularly iTunes). As I recall, there's an option to "automatically check for updates"; I'd even say "no" to that. Once you make the install, you should see the "Quicktime (*.mov)" as a rendering option. Then you can install the Avid DNxHD codec and go thru the configuration steps listed above.

...Jerry (Jazzy's dad, however "musicvid" is really the father of this project - Nick Hope gets the nod for the "Best" method)