I think too many worry too much about the topic. Vegas comes with a very good encoder... actually several. You don't need an external one, you don't need to fiddle with the settings, nothing. Its like first studying how an internal combustion engine works... before you drive. You can, but why would you? It won't help your driving one bit.

Vegas can make editing much easier, and with its collection of filters and special features you can do some amazing things. Spending the time learning what to do and how to do with regards to improving the look and sound of your videos will more than offset any advantage trying to tweak a little more out of projects by fooling around with different encoders and/or settings.

daveT2,
where do I get an encoder? I read here in this forum about people using some cinematic or someother names from some extrnal encoders.

My first question is "does V4 have a built in encoder" I assume it does being that
I can import an AVI and render it in a mpg (1 or 2).

Auggy

This forum is just loaded with many hours of very useful reading. The MPEG2 encoder used by Vegas is made by a company called MainConcept. There are many other MPEG2 encoders, but get your feet wet with the Vegas one first.

Encoding is necessry because raw video is just enormous, consuming as much as 30MB every second. Clever encoding throws away information that humans don't really see anyway, and compresses further using clever math. The result is a video stream that can create a very close approximation of the original stream but at just 1MB/sec.

riredale,
Thats a great start to my question of understanding it. Thank you!
I think not having a good graphics monitor makes rendering a bit hard. I am using a
NEC 19" lcd screen I just got. I love it for reading but perhaps its not too good for
graphics.

Auggy

Your monitor actually has nothing to do with the rendering process. Although if you have a crappy video card your playback won't be too good - but the monitor is not in the equation as far as rendering/encoding goes.

FWIW, last topic first, as posted by kameronj, your monitor has nothing to do with what happens to your video in your PC. On the other hand, it can be misleading, because your display will differ quite a bit from your TVs -> set up an external monitor in Vegas and you should be OK I think.

RE: encoding... Your PC (as most) cannot play, handle easily, or store video in it's native, uncompressed state. Encoding the video compresses it so that you're not dealing with 30 tif files or similar a second.

Generally encoding can get complex when you're going to one of the streaming codecs or mpg1/2, but usually only if you're going for really optimal results. It's actually a separate field of sorts with folks making their living doing nothing else - but on the other hand, streaming broadcasts on the web are usually handled automatically so you really can get quite good results without worrying about the black art part so-to-speak.

You'll read a lot of tips & stuff, and as your craft improves you'll use some, try others, and generally get comfortable with the amount of effort you want to expend per proj.

One place to do some reading as an introdcution is a site full of information:

go to DVDRHelp.com and check out the topics FAQ etc...you'll get the idea of what its all about...

But as Billyboy very rightly says IMO, the Mainconcept encoder (particularly for MPEG2 = dvd) is very good and will make your life much easier than worry about external ones...Unless you are going for massive DVD distribution...The videos of my daughter look spectacular - done within Vegas from start to finish...ok, ok not exactly a professional experience but works for me!!!

Regards,
Paul

so does a DVD burner make a world of difference also?
Right now Im using VCD and they look CRAPPY!

Auggy

One other thing: The DVD spec says that the data rate coming off a DVD can't be more than about 10Mb/sec. If you do the math this means a DVD-R blank can hold about an hour's worth at this data rate. Most encoders can produce excellent quality at this data rate, including the MainConcept encoder used in Vegas.

The only time you need to start "finessing" your encoding techniques is when you want to get a lot more than an hour on a single DVD. For example, you can put two hours of video on a DVD, but the artifacts (blockyness, mosquito noise on edges) will be obvious unless you do some extra steps and perhaps use a more exotic encoder.