You can try and modify a MPEG-2 BluRay template. On the System tab of the template unselect "Save as separate elementary streams" and go back to the Audio tab. That should give you a MPEG-2 file with audio.

OldSmoke, thanks, tried that. Vegas will render out a file but the upload site will not recognize the file as being the correct type. This is for Charter, so if anyone knows the secret, cheers to ya.

These are new specs. Old specs were simple enough.

From what I can tell 9.8 Mbps is the top encode for MPEG 2. Gonne be hard to create a mpeg2 that is higher than the allowed spec.

Mountainman, why are you doing this? A high bit rate Mpeg file is only useful and applicable if it comes out of the camera head. There is no reason to re-encode video at such a high bit rate - would only produce a value-less inflated file. Mpeg2 codec in what container?

You have not told us the whole story - where is your output going?

Well, that's not entirely true. A higher bitrate will always produce a higher quality file, even when the bitrate is far above the original. Encoding at 20Mbps will produce a better result than encoding at 9.8Mbps. Note that both will be worse than the original, but the 20Mbps will be less worse than the 9.8Mbps.

Yeah this ain't my idea. These are new specs for Charter cable. Your right it seems silly. But they didn't ask me! j

Yes all Mpeg2 compression is lossy - what you are trying to do Mountainman is meet broadcast spec - which means what they are expecting is that you have a high-end source quality video that will be lightly compressed by Mpeg2 codec and still have much higher quality than what you are seeing at your NLE timeline at this time.

""

MPEG-2 and H.264 are two entirely unrelated formats, not the same thing.

They need to tell you whether they are asking for MPEG-2 Part 2, or MPEG-4 Part 10 (H.264), or either, and we'll take it from there.

MXF is one MPEG-2 container in Vegas that handles SD at higher bit rates.
AVCHD and MP4 are two high-bit rate H.264 wrappers in Vegas.
You won't be putting mpeg-2 layer I audio with h.264/avc.
Again, not the same thing.

Of course, SD source encoded to those bitrates is insane overkill.
;?)

To get higher quality birates you need to change the output type in the custom mpeg1/2 settings to mpeg 1/2. Won't go higher then 15,000,000 for cbr though.

I thought in older versions of Vegas (4/6/8?) you could render out pretty bitrates. I know it will accept any legal resolution as output (IE 1920x1080, for example).

This custom template created from the MPEG 2 Blu-ray template meets the spirit of the requirement without regard to the why of the matter.

Here's where you put it:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Sony\Render Templates\mpeg2-mc\ATSC 20 mbps.sft2 (Hint: Set Folder Options to show hidden files.)

You may want to look at the details such as field order and all the other variables.

It produced this result from an old SD DV tape capture:

General
ID : 1 (0x1)
Complete name : C:\Users\John\Desktop\Test File.m2t
Format : MPEG-TS
File size : 812 MiB
Duration : 3mn 39s
Start time : UTC 2014-03-02 19:15:01
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 31.0 Mbps

Video
ID : 17 (0x11)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@High
Format settings, BVOP : Yes
Format settings, Matrix : Default
Format settings, GOP : M=3, N=15
Codec ID : 2
Duration : 3mn 39s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 29.3 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 30.0 Mbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Bottom Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 2.831
Time code of first frame : 00:00:00:00
Time code source : Group of pictures header
Stream size : 766 MiB (94%)

Audio
ID : 20 (0x14)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 2
Codec ID : 3
Duration : 3mn 39s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 5.02 MiB (1%)

Thanks John. That renders out a great looking file. Fits requirements with one exception. Their upload system will not recognize a m2t file. only files with extensions of mpg. avi, mpg2, mov, mp4. f4v.

So still searching. I've sent an email to their tech dept. Waiting to see what comes back

Thanks again.

John M.

Got it (I think) Just renamed the file mpg and their system was able to see it. Thanks John.

Glad you're making progress.

Mountainman,
I've produced and uploaded many 15mbs (highest mpeg2 program stream Vegas 7 would render) SD spots to Time Warner/Charter servers with very good on air results in the Los Angeles broadcast zones.
Remember, they "FLIP" or re-encode your SD spot to 3.75mbs anyway. That's right: 3.75mbs! Maybe they require higher bitrates now because they use the larger file for the HD stream.
The good news: they don't mess with the black levels or chroma levels when compressing the spot for their broadcast servers.
If you are up rezzing your SD spot to an HD file before upload, then 20mbs may be prudent.
However: I've seen my 15mbs spots up rezzed by Time Warner for the HD stream and they look really great on a 50" HD set.
Try and contact the compressionist at your Charter facility to get details on the best submission parameters for your area. The comressionist can be your best friend and well worth a good bottle of wine come holiday time.

Hope this helps.
Ken

"Of course, SD source encoded to those bitrates is insane overkill."

DV is SD encoded at 25Mbps. Some would say that's too highly compressed!

Local TV station here expects MPEG2 at 15Mbps.

"Yes all Mpeg2 compression is lossy - what you are trying to do Mountainman is meet broadcast spec - which means what they are expecting is that you have a high-end source quality video that will be lightly compressed by Mpeg2 codec and still have much higher quality than what you are seeing at your NLE timeline at this time."

I think you're missing the idea that, while you're never going to get equal output from the input, you can always come closer by using a higher bitrate. 20Mbps output from a 9Mbps source is NOT going to look better than the source, but it will look better than 9Mbps output from the same source. Using a higher output bitrate will give better results than a lower output bitrate, regardless of the source bitrate. The source bitrate doesn't figure into that at all.

Technically bitrates that high aren't overkill, but the feed sent out still looks like crap compared to what it COULD be. The Olympics looked horrible imho. Lots of shows look horrible. Compression blocks evertwhere. I'd hate to have a 1080p TV only to see that.

When I've forced broadcasters to give me detailed specs for high bitrate SD MPEG2 , they have generally wanted 4:2:2 profile, High level MPEG2. Main profile, Main level has a bitrate constraint of 15 Mbps. If you select MPEG (rather than DVD) for output type, then select 4:2:2 profile and High level, you'll be able to output a proper .mpg file at the proper bitrate.

Each MPEG 2 profile and level have resolution and bitrate constraints that Vegas adheres to.

atom12 gets high marks for responding to the OP appropriately. The comments made above that suggest Charter -even over direct cable- is in fact choosing recompressing a broadcast standard to ridiculously low compression rates makes no sense at all.

Either the OP misinterprets what is going on - or it goes to show that Charter operations ARE all over the place in terms of outputting signal. I have seen posts where they -local cable- even pull-off a set-top player with a low encoded bitrate from a DVD. Ugh!

atom12 consistently gets high marks.

I'll just say navigating past any station "reps" directly to a "technician" will usually save you lots of time. TV stations in the past were bad enough, but with the auto-ingest technologies that major cable companies are using now, you'll sometimes be lucky to find a tech who can give you a straight answer to what they actually need. I've had to resort in one instance to "Do you have a pdf manual for your encoder? Please email it to me." I've been given wrong audio specs, wrong field dominance...etc, etc.

I'll add, even when they give you min/max bitrates for MPEG2 encoding, use constant bit rate. You'll get a lot of files rejected if you use VBR.

KPLO, ah the "Flipper". Some producers I know nearly came to blows over that one. They produced great looking spot to have it look like poop on tv.

I used to deliver my sd spots on dv tape, that way they could smash them however they wanted. Things changed, now the tech people live in another state.

Seems like the smart way to do things would be to give me the EXACT spec they are going to use. Re-compress, re-compress, recompress usually ends badly.

I was hoping the flipper was a thing of the past.

Thanks everyone. J M

DV is intraframe compression. There is no comparison or relationship to interframe predictive bitrates (Mpeg-2) whatsoever. It's a moving target.

There is a law of diminishing returns when re-encoding lossy source at higher-than-native bitrates. It's a rather steep dropoff, actually. If one runs PSNR and SSIM comparisons, it is easy to see exactly where the cliff occurs, and the two benchmarks fairly agree on that point. SD source is undoubtedly 8 bit 4:2:0 at ~dvd bitrates.

Re-encoding losses are what they are. Re-encoding at higher chroma subsampling, bit depth, or hyperoptimal bitrates does not improve anything. TANSTAAFL

That all being said, if the station is broadcasting a 15-20 Mbps High Profile MPEG-2 (ATSC) stream for all programming, then there is a lot to be said for source conformity (but not for quality "improvement"). If however, as was suggested, it is being server-encoded a third time to lower bitrates, then the requirements are indeed, insane overkill. They would do better to accept the source as-is.

If the OP could link us to the pages where these requirements are referred to, we might be able to make some sense out of them, and offer better-informed guidance.