haha, I just put a post up about the exact same thing!

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=892961&Replies=0

Did you try playing back on an older CRT? Mine looked just fine on the CRT and quite lousy on the HD tv.....

There are two camps of thinking about bitrate.
Another thing to try is VBR 2 pass with the Minimum set at 2,000,000.

I encoded mine with 2 pass, and at the template's 6mbps.

I'm still using VP 11 mainly, but I doubt if anything has changed in the encoder implementation in the newer versions.

IMO, single pass VBR has always looked bad out of the MC encoder, and the minimum bitrate on that template is ridiculously low for anything other than simple motion graphics. I usually include ac3 and PCM audio in my DVDs, so I'm using a bitrate calculator all the time. If you can't do at least a 6,000,000 or above at CBR, use a bitrate calculator and get your min and average up as high as possible. And use 2 pass VBR. I think the extra time involved is worth it.

Thanks for the replies. I'll try to bump the bitrate and try the two pass setting. I should clarify I'm editing/encoding in Vegas Pro 10. Have the MainConcept encoders been updated in later versions?

Also, Panasonic says the AVCHD 30p files are actually 60i. Does this influence the field order settings?

I've been told to use 60i, not 30p because it's not "true progressive"

Thanks Mike. It looks slightly better with the higher bit rate and 2 pass, but my Canon DSLR files still look much better as SD DVD than the files from the Pana AG-AC90.

My project is 86 mins long - anyone have a link to a bitrate calculator?

Also - unrelated - how do I insert chapter markers every 5 mins? I thought there was a way to automate that in Vegas Pro 10 or DVDA...

http://dvd-hq.info/bitrate_calculator.php

There have been countless posts and threads on this subject.

Personally, I prefer the way TMPGEnc re-sizes from 1920x1080 to 720x480. I frameserve to it from Vegas Pro 12 (I don't know if the frameserve plugin works with 13, you can always skip the frameserving and just write an intermdiate AVI file. ) While TMGPEnc is not free, it is well worth the investment, in my opinion.

Edit:
TMPGEnc also will oprimize the bit rate for you.

With 2 pass vbr, it is critical to set the MINIMUM bitrate at 2,000,000.
The default of192k will look awful.

Thanks again for the replies. I used dxdy's calculator and came up with these settings: photo

The tests I did with these settings look significantly better.

Unrelated note: anyone have suggestions on how to anti-alias text when using the text media generator in VP10? The edges of my text look crunchy...

"[I] Also - unrelated - how do I insert chapter markers every 5 mins?[/I]"

Download this Notepad text file.

In Vegas, Right + Click on the Cursor Position window at the lower right of the timeline and select Time and Frames.

Select View / Edit Details / Show: Markers | All Fields.

Press the upper - left most lozenge to select all the positions.

Open the 5 Minute Markers.txt file.

Strike Control + A

Strike Control + C

Change focus to Vegas Pro Edit Details panel.

Strike Control + V

You should see markers on the timeline.

You can move information from many different sources directly into the Edit Details panels. You can also create files for various time increments and cut and paste.

You can also use Edit Details to nuke markers, regions, etc.

I think I learned this kind of stuff from johnmeyer.

Your GOP settings are nonstandard. Creates slightly larger files than necessary.
B-frames are the best compression tool we have in MPEG-2.
2 are recommended.

Thanks again for the replies. I'm back to the drawing board. They are still looking really poor. I see a lot of mosaic-ing esp around edges and lines. It's really one of the worst SD DVD I've ever seen.

The scene itself has very little movement (discussion panel with three people sitting and talking for 86 mins.)

So... do I need to transcode my source files first? Is the AVCHD the culprit?

Can you post a screen grab of both the 1080 and the 480i for a frame so we can see? For text titles, the rule has always been to make sure the size of the generated media/title was larger than your project. And I didn't see your answer about whether you are using "Best" in the rendering quality? And my default DVD Arch template says Upper Field First, not lower.

Maybe I've missed it in your previous posts, but what are your project settings? Perhaps post a grab of those.

Just a suggestion for the future. If you can, record in 60p. This will give you the option to convert to 60i and 30p without any losses and you still have 60p which you can convert to 1280x720 60p for BluRay.

[I]Just a suggestion for the future. If you can, record in 60p. This will give you the option to convert to 60i and 30p without any losses and you still have 60p which you can convert to 1280x720 60p for BluRay.[/I]

Thanks for the suggestion. I haven't gotten around to trying out 60p yet on my camera (just got it this week). But that may be a good solution since it is a higher bit rate than any of the other recording options, and AVCHD 2.0

Thanks to everyone who tried to help me with this. I haven't come to this forum a lot in recent years since I wasn't doing much video work. And when I do visit it is often in desperation and/or frustration. You guys are always courteous, understanding and really helpful, so thanks.

Now in terms of a solution, what I did was render an intermediate 720 HQ 35mbps Sony .mxf file from my edited (and graded) AVCHD camera files. The resulting file was only about 20% larger than my original files but it provided a great source for my mpeg2 DVD render. The resulting DVD looked much better than anything I was able to do going directly from the original AVCHD files. And even though I had to render the .mxf file, I didn't need to do a 2 pass render on the .mpeg2 so time-wise it was about the same.

I also plan on delivering a 720p mp4 file to the client for on-line distribution and used the .mxf file as the source for that as well. It too looked much better than the mp4's I was getting going straight from the original camera files. That was not as efficient time-wise however since the mp4 render took about the same amount of time. Still, the quality is what I was hoping for and I'm sure the client will respond positively.

Thanks again for everyone's civil tone and helpful responses. I really appreciate it.

+1 for recording in 60p. convert to 30i is resize>discard field, so will most likely look better than anything else (unless doing 24p>24p)

24Peter, it seems strange that you got better quality after encoding your AVCHD to another format, and then encoding that mxf to DVD. Can anyone explain why he experienced this increase in quality?

I suspect that separating the resizing step from all the work SVP has to do assembling the various tracks, effects, etc., is the explanation. I remember someone posting about this a number of years ago, and that was what led me to try TMPGEnc.

24Peter: when you rendered to mxf, did you render to the same dimensions (i.e., 1920 x 1080)? And then in the second render from mxf to MPG2, that was when you changed sizes?

Perhaps I am all wet, but that is what I remember.

Edited for spelling

dxdy, whether he did the resizing when going from AVCHD to MPEG2 directly, or resized from MXF to MPEG2, he's still using SVP so why would it make any difference where the resize was done if it was done by the same program? You've got me really curious about this TMPGenc program now.. If my troubleshooting doesn't pan out with Vegas, I might just have to try it...