How should I render this?

Randy Brown wrote on 8/30/2008, 2:46 PM

I have 4 mpgs on the timeline (that I pulled off DVDs using VOB2MPG) and get some jaggies when playing but if I simply pre-render to avi they look great. The clips are widescreen and will be viewed on a widescreen TV.
I need to create a looping DVD of them (using DVDA)
My questions are: should I pre-render to avi all before rendering to mpeg AND what setting should I render to.
I ask this maybe dumb question because when I pre-render to widescreen it looks like it squeezes the clip to 4:3.

Thanks for your patience,
Randy

Comments

farss wrote on 8/30/2008, 3:59 PM

"I ask this maybe dumb question because when I pre-render to widescreen it looks like it squeezes the clip to 4:3."

If you prerender using a 16:9 template that shouldn't happen however mpeg-2 pulled off a DVD might not have the flags that Vegas reads. Simple fix, manually change the media in the project media to 16:9.
If after your render Vegas sees it as 4:3 do the same thing. There's NO difference between a 4:3 and a 16:9 file other than the flag(s) that say what the pixel aspect ratio should be.

Bob.

Randy Brown wrote on 8/30/2008, 4:08 PM

Thanks Bob,
I didn't even think about project properties.
So can you tell me how I should render for DVDA to be shown on a 38" plasma TV?
I'll just bet I'm sounding ignorant here but...well...I am when it comes to anything but 4:3 DV.
Thanks again Bob,
Randy

farss wrote on 8/30/2008, 6:25 PM

I'd just bring the VOBs into a 16:9 (Widescreen) Vegas project. Unless you need to do a fair amount of editing not much point prerendering to an intermediate AVI and you're possibly loosing a lot of chroma data unless you use the Sony YUV or Uncompressed codec as your intermediate, moreso in NTSC.

Then encode to the appropriate 16:9 (Widescreen) DVDA template. Adjust the default bitrates as per normal. Also render your audio, PCM if possible. If all this DVDA Encoding bitrate stuff confuses you download a copy of BitCalc.

Then in DVDA use a 16:9 Project. Drop your encoded mpeg-2 file into that, DVDA should pickup the audio file as well, if not add manually. Then set the end action of your video to loop back to the start. Or you might do better with the Single Movie kind of project, really depends how you want the DVD to playout.

One important tip regarding looping DVDs. If your video is short, make it long by repeating the video X times in Vegas so the whole thing is just under 1 hour. This means the DVD players heads only have to fly back once per hour. DVD player will not wear out so quick and the DVD will last longer. For repeating video though something like a HDD base player such as one of the MediaGate units makes more sense. They do SD and HD with a choice of outputs and they'll play WMVs.

Bob.

Randy Brown wrote on 8/31/2008, 6:29 AM

Thanks very much Bob, I think I got it.
One important tip regarding looping DVDs. If your video is short, make it long by repeating the video X times in Vegas so the whole thing is just under 1 hour. This means the DVD players heads only have to fly back once per hour DVD player will not wear out so quick and ....
I never thought of that one. The few times I've done a looping DVD they were only about 10 minutes long and I just added it as background media...hopefully I didn't wear out their DVD player.
Thanks again,
Randy