Creating a movie in segments

DAVID-BLOCH wrote on 1/11/2021, 12:27 PM

I have project that would benefit from segments being edited as separate projects, rendered, and then those rendered files being put together into the final movie. My question is: to get the best final quality for a HD Internet stream, should I render those segments as Blu-Ray 1920x1080-60i files, or something else? Or is this a really bad idea, and I just do the whole 1-hour program as one big project?

Comments

Teagan wrote on 1/11/2021, 12:51 PM

I assume you are not talking about putting these separate projects into a Blu ray disc, but rather to one video file. If you are putting together separate projects for a blu ray disc, yes, render them separate with the blu ray presets and you can put them each onto the disc as separate titles in DVD Architect.

If you are talking about just one video file without putting the projects onto a blu ray disc, the 1 hour program would probably be best to be in one big project with either MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4 or MainConcept AVC/AAC. The Sony Blu ray presets do not allow variable bit rate, which could help with file size. Any Internet HD 1080p preset should be fine unless you don't care about file size, then in that case I would suggest CBR constant bit rate in one of the first two codecs.

In video editing you always want to avoid re-rendering videos as that degrades quality significantly. Render once if possible. If you MUST re-render, first render the videos to an uncompressed codec like MAGIX intermediate (pro-res) or Video For Windows 1080 YUV and then to your final delivery codec.

DAVID-BLOCH wrote on 1/11/2021, 2:20 PM

Thanks! I am indeed creating a single 1-hour program, so that sounds like the best advice.

j-v wrote on 1/11/2021, 2:42 PM

If you use the Platinum version I think it is better, without extra rendering, to make many different, numbered vf files.
Don't know, while I did not try that, if the plain version can do it.
Workflow:
1, Open the first vf
2. Than open the second (ore more) vf, select the whole timeline and copy it
3. Open the first again and paste what you copied
4. Open the next copy past into the first and so on.
5. At the end give the project your desired name and render to your desired goal. (during the workflow don't close the first one but after copy/past you can close the others)

DAVID-BLOCH wrote on 1/11/2021, 4:28 PM

I do have V.14 Platinum, so I'll have to give that a try! Great idea.

3POINT wrote on 1/11/2021, 9:57 PM

Copying and pasting timelines works fine when each project has the same order of tracks and no TrackFX or Trackmotion have been used.

Another workflow, I preferred, was to render each project separate to AVC mp4 and join those mp4's to one mp4 with the freetool mp4joiner, which doesn't re-encode.

DAVID-BLOCH wrote on 1/12/2021, 9:41 AM

J-V: AH HAH! I was about to write in here that I never got a PASTE option after copying the items from one timeline into the other.

But then it occurred to me: I had not tried having two copies of Vegas running simultaneously (or if that was even possible.) I doubleclicked my desktop icon, and sure enough a second Vegas window opened. I opened the second file, and EDIT > PASTE exists. Clicked PASTE and the material dropped in!

3POINT: I won't be using anything too fancy for this project, and should be able to keep the tracks the same (and I thank you for the warning).

By the way: "this project" is a Home Tour, a fundraiser for a local nonprofit ( http://progresoapoyo.org ) that is usually a live in-person event; people buy a ticket to view the homes of local residents in our Yucatan,Mexico town. With COVID rampant in Mexico, we are making this a pay-per-view video event instead. Three of the seven houses have been recorded, and I have about 6 weeks to complete the editing. Although I've got hundreds of hours of video editing behind me, most of that is in the days of actual TAPE--even going back to cutting and taping it together. So I am very much in a learning mode.

Thanks again for all the help so far! It's great to see such an active and helpful forum!

Werner_NOR wrote on 1/12/2021, 1:54 PM

I have mvs 16 and 17 platinum and also I am learning Avid, so I have Avid Media Composer First. This Avid version has a limitation on the number of bins and tracks, which vms doesnt have.

But I find that doing a whole project in vms is a bit too much, except for smaller projects.

Since I cannot make multiple sequences in vms, I prefer to make segments in vms and export as an DnxHd file for use in Avid.

Since my vms17 is not able to export to export using `advanced settings` I have to use my vms16. Avid is free and works just fine on my below Vegas requirements computer.

I guess a setup like this can also be seen as an alternative.