How to do HD MPEG-2 1920 1080i and no recompressi

ritsmer wrote on 7/19/2010, 11:56 PM

For some time my camera recorded in 1440x1080 50i and I could deshake (+ some general colour correction) all the clips of a day during the night to Vegas HDV ( 1440x1080 50i ).
Now this format is easily editable and good for preview at full speed -and for the final renders Vegas does it extremely fast and without recompressing - because my delivery format is HDV too - and so saves the quality loss of another de/encompression

Now I want to change from HDV to full HD 1920x1080 50i - and have done several experiments as how to persuade Vegas to do the same as above - but just with full HD.

I have not found a way yet. MPEG-2 rendering seems rather picky as to what combination of Profile, Level etx it will accept. Mostly it just claims that "An error occorred while creating the media file.." and stops there.
But at least I can render to full HD now - and have saved the template - but Vegas simply refuses to render it's own output without recompressing even if the conditions on pages 335++ in the manual seem to be Ok.

Is it possible to render to full HD -without recompressing- using MPEG-2 - or should I use another format (which must be a general accepted format that i.e. PS3, modern televisions with built-in media players etc can play)?

Comments

PeterDuke wrote on 7/20/2010, 1:22 AM

"Now I want to change from HDV to full HD 1920x1080 50i "

Are you changing cameras?

Normally HDV is 1440x1080 MPEG2 and tape based, while 1920x1080 is usually AVCHD, which is MPEG4 coding in an MPEG2 container (*.m2ts) and is hard disk or flash memory based.

What coding does your 1920x1080 video use?

ritsmer wrote on 7/20/2010, 6:24 AM

Yes, a camera change to SONY CX550 VE which records in AVCHD 1920x1080 50i high profile - as far as I can read the manual - and MediaInfo says 16.2 Mbps at 25.000 fps AVC (High@L4) (CABAC / 2 Ref Frames)

However I do not think that it is possible to render from/to this format directly without recompressing - and this is also not the problem.
What I need is a Vegas format that gives full HD and which I can render to after New Deshaker - and which then, after final editing, can be rendered to that same format without recompressing.

@Peter: BTW: thank you for the 64 bit New Deshaker installation guide. Works well here too.

PeterDuke wrote on 7/20/2010, 5:38 PM

So you are looking for an MPEG2 full HD setting to use as an intermediary. I have to pass on that.

Some people use MXF and others use Cineform as intermediaries. Have you considered them?

ritsmer wrote on 7/20/2010, 11:24 PM

Yes, you are right.

I have no problem editing full HD AVCHD directly from the camera on my Mac Pro 2 x Xeons quad - so I do not need intermediaries.

My wish is that I only have to de/encompress the video one single time - in order to avoid noise etc. from more consecutive de/encodings.
This is needed because of my many handheld/in motion takes - and my wish is that the output from the New Deshaker could be the same full HD format that I use for final delivery. Because then I would need only one de/encompression because the de/encompression to/from uncompressed AVI to/from the deshaker does not count.

I think I have to pass also - and I have submitted a proposal to SCS that future Vegas versions will include a full HD MPEG-2 template (with No Recompression capability) just as they have a HDV template today.

PeterDuke wrote on 7/21/2010, 6:29 PM

Using the Main Concept MPEG-2 coder and the Blu-ray 1920x1080-50i, 25Mbps template, you can produce a HD MPEG-2 video with Vegas, but apparently you can't load it back into Vegas!

Strange.