How to downgrade 1080p video to 480p?

musicvid10 wrote on 4/16/2011, 9:47 AM

1) Vegas does not "think" your video is anything. You tell Vegas what your video is. Search for "match media settings" in the forum or knowledgebase; it is a specific procedure.

2) If you are rendering with the NTSC DV Widescreen template, that is not a good choice (don't go there). If you are starting with an MPEG-2 NTSC Widescreen template or a Sony AVC NTSC Widescreen template, you need to set your rendering quality to Best, make sure the output size is what you want, Field Order to Progressive, and enable audio.

3) You are on to something, but others have gone before. Complete your project in Vegas, render to a lossless intermediate or frameserve, and do the sizing in VDub. You can get started down the path of using external utilities here:
http://www.jazzythedog.com/testing/DNxHD/HD-Guide.aspx

I downloaded your smaller source file and it is 1080 30p, but the bitrate is 48 Mbs. That is ridiculously high, even if you plan to produce bluray.

amendegw wrote on 4/16/2011, 9:50 AM

First, you should set your project properties with the "match media settings". I downloaded your 24MB file & Vegas Recognized it as progressive:

Next, suggest you look at the following thread: Vegas to Youtube, Vimeo, Web -- A New Look

Ha! musicvid... you beat me to the punch. I opened another tab to get he links you posted and found your post. In any case the above image might help Matt_L

...Jerry

NickHope wrote on 4/16/2011, 11:21 AM

Lol @ Jerry, linking straight to that thread. It's that same sadistic streak that gave us the doll video coming out again, right?

Matt, I'm not clear from your post what your intended delivery format is. Is it web, DVD, offline playback on computer...?

Matt L wrote on 4/16/2011, 11:36 AM

<< @ Nick Hope: I'm not clear from your post what your intended delivery format is. Is it web, DVD, offline playback on computer...?>>

My delivery format will be Widescreen 16x9 480p. I have videos that were shot in 1080p from my Canon 5D Mark II, and the videos are for the class of 66,67, & 68 for a school in Alabama. I don't believe all the folks in this class will have blue-ray players in their homes, so I wanted to create a Standard DVD for them.

I also just figured out why my video is flickering on the screen, and looks pixelated. When I resized in Virtual Dub and saved to a .avi file, it also made the file interlaced. This is where I ran into trouble bringing the interlaced file into vegas thinking it was progressive.

I basically need a whole new workflow to work with HD video. I use to use frameserve back in my Vegas 7 days, but now since I'm mainly work with HD 1080p video as my source with Vegas 10, I have to restart from scratch again.

Matt

musicvid10 wrote on 4/16/2011, 11:49 AM

so I wanted to create a Standard DVD

For DVD, you will want to encode to compliant MPEG-2 to avoid recompression. Under no circumstances do you want to give it DV AVI.
The DVD Architect templates in Vegas will do a passable job, but an external encoder will give you more tools to work with. The trick is getting a file that will prepare without recompressing in Architect.

Matt L wrote on 4/16/2011, 12:46 PM

@musicvid:

I currently use Cinema Craft Encoder to encode my videos. I also have the old Procoder 1.5. Could I just render to a uncompressed AVI file, and use Cinema Craft Encoder to encode? I have 4TB of diskspace available.

musicvid10 wrote on 4/16/2011, 1:08 PM

Suggest you try Cineform (paid) or Avid DNxHD (free) as an intermediate. Uncompressed is unnecessary. Remember you will be losing 83% of your video data to downsizing alone. And that's before compressing it to ~6 Mbs for DVD.

Matt L wrote on 4/16/2011, 1:36 PM

@musicvid
<< Suggest you try Cineform (paid) or Avid DNxHD (free) as an intermediate.>>
I currently have NeoScene from Cineform, but when I tried it, the video was still 1080p. Not sure what the purpose is for NeoScene.

<< Uncompressed is unnecessary. Remember you will be losing 83% of your video data to downsizing alone. And that's before compressing it to ~6 Mbs for DVD.>>

My only reason for using Vegas is to add lower thirds, and transitions to these videos. What is best method to get to a DVD format, with the least amount of data lost?

amendegw wrote on 4/16/2011, 2:01 PM

Nick_Hope said: "Lol @ Jerry, linking straight to that thread. It's that same sadistic streak that gave us the doll video coming out again, right?"

Matt_L said: "My delivery format will be Widescreen 16x9 480p. I have videos that were shot in 1080p from my Canon 5D Mark II, and the videos are for the class of 66,67, & 68 for a school in Alabama. I don't believe all the folks in this class will have blue-ray players in their homes, so I wanted to create a Standard DVD for them."Ha! when Matt_L said he wanted to render to 480p, I just assumed he wanted to render for Web Delivery - therefore I referenced the Vegas to Youtube, Vimeo, Web -- A New Look thread. Warning Matt! don't torture yourself with this thread!! [grin]

But, now that I understand Matt_L is interested in SD DVD delivery, maybe I should have referenced the Doll thread? Am I that much of a Sadist? Nah, I think I'll just silently exit this dialog and assure Matt_L he's in very good hands with musicvid & Nick_Hope.

...Jerry (the Sadist)

JHendrix wrote on 4/16/2011, 2:59 PM

this has nothing to do with rendering but I have been really happy with the DVFilm Epic plugin for 5D - for editing

NickHope wrote on 4/16/2011, 3:25 PM

I would frameserve to CCE using the Debugmode Frameserver. No need for an intermediate. I do it all the time.

There's another thread running on HD>DVD downscaling. You might like to read that. But it's mostly concerned with interlaced HD source, so I'm not sure how much of it is relevant to what you want to do. There are a few links on that thread that point to other forum threads where you might get the answer.

Matt L wrote on 4/17/2011, 9:34 AM

@Nick Hope

<< I would frameserve to CCE using the Debugmode Frameserver. No need for an intermediate. I do it all the time.>>

Since this is my first progressive video using CCE, could you verify if my settings are correct for 480p 16x9, progressive video? I'm still seeing some flickering on certain progressive videos. My widescreen photo montage is fine now, but still having a issue with certain videos.

http://www.lwintegrationtest.com/china/cce_progressive.png

This is what I see in Media Info.. Not quite sure about the Scan Order: Bottom Field first.

General
Complete name : K:\Dvd Projects\Dorothy_Class_Reunion\Saturday\Video\Final\netserved.mpv
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
File size : 1.88 GiB
Duration : 44mn 46s
Overall bit rate : 6 009 Kbps

Video
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@Main
Format settings, BVOP : Yes
Format settings, Matrix : Default
Format settings, GOP : M=2, N=15
Duration : 44mn 46s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 5 765 Kbps
Nominal bit rate : 9 800 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Scan order : Bottom Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.557
Stream size : 1.80 GiB (96%)

NickHope wrote on 4/18/2011, 12:51 AM

CCE settings look fine, although I'm not sure you need "DVD Video Multiangle" unless you specifically need that. It's for a fancy DVD feature isn't it? (that I've never used)

You'll also find CCE is great at CBR 8000, either 1 pass or 2 pass. If your video does not need to be VBR compressed to squeeze onto your DVD then I would just go for that. It's high enough to be almost visually lossless but still leaves enough bandwidth for your audio.

Not quite sure about the Scan Order: Bottom Field first.

You should be able to change that flag by selecting "output top field first stream" in the CCE settings and run a test, but I don't see that it would make a difference to flicker since the source is progressive.

The line "Format settings, GOP : M=2, N=15" in Mediainfo doesn't seem to match your settings in CCE, but I doubt that's a significant issue. For my interlaced output Mediainfo doesn't output a line like regarding the GOP at all.

It sounds like you might need some low-pass filtering and possibly re-interlacing to get over your flickering problem. As of now, I can't confirm that or advise you how you would best do it, as I'm still learning this stuff myself.

NickHope wrote on 4/26/2011, 7:06 AM

I just wanted to update this with 2 things I've discovered today:

1. 2-pass CBR is unnecessary unless you're doing a multi-angle DVD. Just use 1-pass CBR and save time (or 2-pass VBR if you need to reduce file size).

2. If input and output field order is the same then set offset line to 0. If they are different then set it to 1. The GUI is not intuitive in this respect and I just messed up some tests by accidentatlly having it set to 1, which effectively switched the field order.

The English version of the CCE Basic manual doesn't seem to be online anymore. If anyone needs it, send me a PM. It's only 525KB.

johnmeyer wrote on 4/26/2011, 9:05 AM

2-pass CBR is unnecessary unless you're doing a multi-angle DVD.If you are using DVD Architect for the DVD, it is still unnecessarily because you cannot encode MPEG-2 outside of DVD Architect when doing multi-angle: the video MUST be encoded within DVD Architect itself. I don't know if any other DVD authoring tools have this same restriction.

TeetimeNC wrote on 4/27/2011, 9:33 AM

Nick or others - can I frameserve to CCE Basic using Vegas 64 bit and the 64 bit version of Satish's frameserver?

/jerry

NickHope wrote on 4/27/2011, 10:13 AM

Can't confirm as I'm all 32-bit at the moment but I don't see why not.

Matt L wrote on 5/3/2011, 7:06 AM

I just figured out the flicker I'm seeing on some video clips, than others. The ones where I see the flicking is when I have the camera HAND HELD. The other video clips looks Sharp and clean when it's on a tripod. I noticed the difference when watching the tripod video clip, when I slightly moved the position of the camera on my cheap tripod, it's when I saw the flickering for just a moment. I now have to invest in a DSLR tripod to help improve my panning, or a hand held rig or something.

Matt

Laurence wrote on 5/3/2011, 7:21 AM

This is really important:

When you have progressive footage that's flagged as interlaced (your situation), make sure you set the deinterlace method to "none". Otherwise Vegas will unnecessarily split your video into odd and even fields, resize the fields separately, then fold them back together upon resize. This will cut your resolution in half. Set your deinterlace method to none, try the SD resolution mpeg2 render using the DVD Architect templates and it should give you the quality you are looking for.

Laurence wrote on 5/3/2011, 9:25 AM

The flickering on motion is due to the high resolution progressive image erroneously being split into odd and even fields during resize. Setting your deinterlace method to "none" will fix this.