"Do not letterbox" SERIOUS GLITCH

DJPadre wrote on 2/2/2008, 4:07 AM
OK, well ive been working on some web samples for my site and ive encoded all my 4:3 stuff to 4:3 wmv. im happy wiht the results for what they are...
Some of tehsse samples have had filters added, or transition put in place (such as flash or mondrian) as Im not about to get a potential client to sit through an entire piece

In any case, ive been working on more of the latest stuff which is in native 16:9
Now to get this to work in WMV without hassles, you have to encode by making sure that the "do not letterbox" box is UNCHECKED. this will letterbox your 16:9 footage and show it properly as WMV doesnt recognise pixel aspect ratio aside from square 1.0 or HD 1.33
which is pretty stupid if u ask me, but thats MS for you..

Ok, so we uncheck our lil box to make sure our widescreen stuff isnt vertically strecthed right... OK
Now though, IF a transition is used or filter for that matter such as film, the filter will ALSO be visible within this letterbox.
Ie, the balck bars above and below the footage will also carry that transition across to teh next scene.
Now not only dies this take up bandwisth, but its pretty bloody stupid considering there is supposed to be no data in these areas.

So why is vegas allowing this bleedthrough to happen? It happens on ANYTHING you encode if you do not use a physical track layer with a mask

as it stands, i now have to encode the video as letterboxed 16:9, then reimport that file, add a 16:9 mask to hide the bleedthrough then render AGAIN out to WMV this time with the checkbox ticked coz i dont want it to squish anything

STUPID STUPID STUPID

A letter box should be a physical mask which carries NO data. in turn the additional bandwidth theoretically shifts to motion, contrast and luma areas allowing for a cleaner more efficient and accurate encode..

this is ABSOLUTELY ridiculous.

Comments

DJPadre wrote on 2/2/2008, 4:32 AM
heres a quick and dirty solution

create a 4:3 project, import the 16:9 footage. Turn off simulat deivce aspect in preview.

Aadd a 16:9 mask over your footage

render as normal 4:3 ... stupid that you ahve to render twice to hide this glitch
deusx wrote on 2/2/2008, 5:13 AM
That's not a glitch.

Vegas is doing exactly what you are telling it to do when you uncheck do not letterbox. It's using the whole area. It's WMP's fault, not Vegas's, so if you wnat this to play in WMP, you need a workaround because of WMP, not Vegas.

Why are you using WMP anyway. All video today should be either .flv or mp4 and played in flash player. WMP is obsolete for the web.
farss wrote on 2/2/2008, 5:54 AM
Get real, Flash iS TRASH.

If you want something that anyone can view at least WMP will install which is more than I can say about Adobe's Flash player. I've wasted hours trying to get it to install. Adobe have simply given up trying to debug the problem in their installer. You MIGHT get it to instal after hacking the registry, didn't work for me and hardly the thing you'd be recommending to Joe Average when they visit your website.

Actually the odd thing about the Flash player is it DOES install but fails to register, so every time you visit a site with flash you get sent off to Adobe to install the player, which fails because it's already installed.

Even the DivX player installed on the same machine first go.

As for PJ's problem, yes Vegas is doing what you tell it to do. However I've managed to encode WMV as 16:9 no problem. Vegas does make encoding to WMV a bit more messier than it should be and makes the 16:9 PAR option very well hidden. I regularly email 16:9 WMV to clients.

Bob.
Chienworks wrote on 2/2/2008, 7:06 AM
Whenever i encode for the web i always use a PAR of 1.0. If i want to do a 16:9 video i'll choose a frame size like 480x270. That way the players don't have to try to work with a non-square PAR. I've seen several that mess up, including WMP. Going with 1.0 makes them all work fine.
deusx wrote on 2/2/2008, 7:25 AM
>>Get real, Flash iS TRASH.<<

easy, easy now. Apparently there was a problem with the latest instaler, but I managed to install it on line and off line without any trouble. I noticed as you say that it didn't register, or something like that, so I installed it again, and it worked fine. Didn't have to touch the registry.

Despite that, flash is the only serious option. wmp is weak, quicktime is a virus that should be killed off, and neither of these works as well as flash on the opponent's platform. Actually apple faithful would rather blow lucifer that install wmp, and quicktime on windows is and has been sort of a joke for a long time.

Even if they were all perfectly stable , flash still offers a lot more than these two combined.
farss wrote on 2/2/2008, 12:44 PM
I agree with you. Apart from the installer screwup Flash is the best, I just wish Adobe would take the issue more seriously. I'm running Flix Pro on the same PC so all seems to be OK now. Still can't workout how I can email a flv to someone and they can play it though. wmv works just fine in that scenario.

QT is indeed a worm, QT 7.4 is a disaster it , even the Mac guys are screaming. Fortunately I didn't let Apple infect my computers before I read about the problem.

Bob.
Patryk Rebisz wrote on 2/2/2008, 1:41 PM
Flash is teh way to go. Even though farss has some crappy experience, almost evryone will be able to vie your movies seemlessly when u encode to Flash.

There is a resaon why youtube exploded -- they realised all those silly plugins are crap and went with something that alsot everyone has installed on their computer (flash player).
DJPadre wrote on 2/2/2008, 3:58 PM
"Get real, Flash iS TRASH"

Thanks, couldnt have said it better myself. In regard to quality after looking at 2 different encodes using the same bitrates (one falsh one WMV) the flash DID retal a lil more colour, but had some serious blocking.
With tweaking Studio to computer RGB levels, i did get WMV to saturate colour to match, so colour is now not an issue.
With motion, the tweakability of WMV allows me to refine the necode to suite the piece. I cant complain.
It also allows me to encode using 5.1 surround sound, and to me this is important as well.

Flash woul dhave been nice, but not only are the file sizes too big for streaming on my server, but comparing the 2 in quality just doesnt cut it im afraid.
Ive doen extensive tests with a variety of encoders and encode settings

Next up, as for being 'obsolete" i really dont think so.
Im creating a hybrid DVD/DVDRom with HD content one the same disc.
This works fine for what i want to do

In turn im encoding HD content in WMV for PC and PS3 playback> its the only HD (VC-1)format that will work with all HD DVD, X360, PS3 and BD machines (apparently) (Im really only worried about PC, X360, PS3 and BD)

Flash is good if i was content with blocky albeit it full motion, but for the detail im trying to convey, flash just wont do it im afraid
Patryk Rebisz wrote on 2/2/2008, 4:13 PM
Dude, the quality is only a small aspect of the game. THe number of people who can actually see all those hours of work you put into is another HUGE factor -- and in this category Flash beat everything out there.

DJPadre wrote on 2/2/2008, 4:46 PM
i dont doubt that, but to me i sell my work based on quality, not quantity

as for the do not letterbox issue, it IS an issue with ANYTHING you encode to, NOT jsut WMV... its a vegas issue whereby the letterbox itself only affects physical assets within the edit, in turn, transitions and filters "bleed through" and this shouldnt happen regardless of how you encode it
riredale wrote on 2/2/2008, 4:56 PM
I don't know what you guys are experiencing, but wmv was a disaster for me and the website I maintain. Many people complained that the videos wouldn't play, so we switched to flv. What a contrast. Almost everyone had flash already installed, and those that needed an update got it automatically. The videos now play fine on all platforms.
farss wrote on 2/2/2008, 6:35 PM
Let me get this straight.

You're using 16:9 in a 4:3 project?

The letterboxing control in the final render is kind of irrelevant.
What happens is Vegas puts the 16:9 inside the 4:3 frame and treats the result as the event video, so yeah, the transiitions treat the black bars top and bottom as part of the image when it calcs the FXs and transitions. Unfortunately that seems like correct behavior to me.

Still don't get why you don't keep the whole thing 16:9 and encode to 16:9 WMV.

Bob.
MarkWWW wrote on 2/3/2008, 5:45 AM
> can't workout how I can email a flv to someone and they can play it though

I'm mystified by the adulation that Flash video is receiving, particularly by those who claim it is easier to use than either WMV or (spit) Quicktime. The two principal operations (1. put it on a webpage to play there, and 2. play the file as a standalone item) you want to perform with a video file once you've remdered it are both vastly more diffcult with Flash than with any of the main alternatives.

Embedding it on a webpage is too involved to go into here, but fortunately there is a reasonable, free, solution to the second problem. There is a very nice standalone FLV player here. Include it along with your flv file and the recipient should be able to view it just fine.

Mark
farss wrote on 2/3/2008, 12:21 PM
Thanks Mark,
that player will come in handy. The issue arose because my client's client wanted a bundle of video encoded in flash to load onto their servers. I gave my client the files but he obviously couldn't play them to check them before he forwarded them on to his client.

Bob.
DJPadre wrote on 2/3/2008, 9:23 PM
to sort out the 16:9 issue ive encoded USING letterbox, BUT also having the PAR set to HD

it was the only thing i could do without having to re-encode to 4:3

as for flash, agreed that it would be nice to have, but there are a couple of things to consider

1) i dont want the site to be hammered by bandwidth issues (ie streaming)
If people want to see the work, they can downlaod it. If they want to see it again, they just rewatch it as opposed to wasting my bandwidth.

2) Most mac users can watch WMV without a problem

3) WMV is much smaller than FLV. The same file at the same bitrate is about 2 to 3 mb in size dfference

4) Colour is not an issue if you know how to encode to studio vs computer RGB standards

5) Motion IS better on FLV, but, for the most part, these differnces are marginal

For what i need, WMV9 works ok.
Also, I can encode this same file to WMV9 at 15mbps and include its as a data file on my SD DVD, so ive got the best of both worlds on the one disc...
Chienworks wrote on 2/4/2008, 3:48 AM
Try using a PAR of 1.0 and choose a frame size that uses square pixels. WMP has issues interpreting non-square PARs correctly.