Thank you Steve! The file size is now correct. However the file plays back in all my players (WMP, Quicktime, VLC, DivX) as squashed. The 16:9 image is is squashed into 4:3 aspect ratio. It is not playing as widescreen. When I do it uncompressed that file plays normally as widescreen in all the players. Also when I import this rendered file back into the Vegas Pal DV 16:9 project it looks squished as well.

I followed your instructions to the letter and double checked everything. Is there something Im missing?

Sami

PS. Ive done many mpeg2 renders and done a lot of widescreen DVD's that work properly in all the players and when I import those files to this same Pal DV 16:9 project they show properly as 16:9.

PPS. I should mention that when I press configure to change the compression format to progressive and 16:9 the configuration menu and pull down menus are in Finnish langue (my mother language) when everything else is in english. Although I doubt it I thought I should mentnion if there might be something wrong with the compression codec?

It seems to be a peculiarity of Quicktime, even on a Mac, that you need to tell it that the DV file is Widescreen even though when rendered from Vegas you have set all the parameters correctly.

Here's how you do it.
Open the Quicktime movie you've made in the Quicktime Player select the Window menu in the Quicktime Player and then Show Movie Properties. Select the Video track in top box so that it is highlighted. Now select the Visual Settings tab, unselect the Preserve Aspect Ratio box and in the Scaled Size replace 720 x 576 pixels with 1024 x 576 pixels (you'll only need to change the 720 box to 1024).

Press 'Enter' on your keyboard to accept the size change and you should see the movie window change size immediately.

Finally in the File menu select Save to commit the changes to your quicktime movie.

Close the movie once you've checked it and then open it again and it should open in 16x9 widescreen mode.

I'm no epxert with Quicktime but I work on a Mac Pro for editing in Vegas and use quicktime files under Windows and Mac OSX and Widescreen PAL always seems to appear squeezed unless I change it in the player under both operating systems though FCP and Vegas seem to be able to detect and play them correctly.

regards
Stephen Hope
PS I'm definitley no help with menus outside the English language, though my wife does speak and read Greek, and translates it for me when necessary ;-)

Second post of the same response deleted... had a glitch with my connection

Stephen Hope

This worked! Thank you so much Stephen, this is definately something that I would have never ever in my life figured out on my own. THANK YOU!!!

Sami

Oops! One more problem I just noticed. The file looks very badly compressed, it has a lot of that jpeg going on in it. Although the file is 950MB it looks worse then an mp4 file that I rendered that is 20MB.

Any advice on this one?

-edit-
compression setting is at 100% so that should not be the problem.
-edit-

Sami

I have experienced the same problem myself. It seems that Quicktime doesn't always display the video file at the same quality that has been output, even when "Use high quality video when available' has been ticked in the QuickTime Player Preferences.

I imported into a new Vegas PAL Widescreen session an AVI and 2 Quicktime copies, one QT rendered from Vegas and the other created by opening the AVI in QT Player and Exporting a .mov file using Quicktime Pro, of identical sequences from an edit I'm working on at the moment.

In Vegas, once I had set the properties of the QT files to a pixel ratio of 1.4568 and the Field order to Lower Field first (though progressive seemed to work BUT NOT Upper field first) the quality of the files were, to my eye, identical.

In the Quicktime Player however they were variable and often the text titles were quite jagged and looked compressed. Sometimes they looked fine and if I moved the QT Player window on the screen to another position they would revert to a lower quality.... I don't understand why.

All I can say is that the actual files do seem to be correct but that Quicktime doesn't always play them at full quality. Sometimes it does and other times it doesn't and I'm not sure why that situation exists with the DV-PAL files.

Steve

Thanks again Stephen!

I imported the file to Vegas and the funny thing is it looks like the quality is ok but it wont play there as widescreen. The file persistently stays 720x576 and leaves black boxes on each side if I choose Pal DV widescreen project. If I choose 720x576 project and change the pixel aspect ratio to widescreen it does the same.

So in essense in Vegas it wont play widescreen but looks good. In Quictime it will play widescreen but looks awfully compressed.

I tried to set the video setting tick box high quality on in Quicktime but that just made the whole image disappear. It went totally black and nothing was seen.

I am wondering since quictime seems to be a very common file to be used for distribution if I am the only one with these problems? I am afraid to send these to the broadcast company since if they dont work for me why would it work for them. They will think Im totally incompetent if I cant do a simple compression :D

sami

UPDATE:

If I take the rendered file to VLC Media Player and change the aspect ratio to 16:9 it plays back correctly and looks good! So its definately nothing wrong with the file (except that it wont automatically playback as widescreen). I wish I could fix that.

sami

Try this:

Change the frame size to Custom and set it to 1049x576 and the PAR to 1.00. Not the way one would normally like to do things but it seems to come out just fine and there's no 16:9 flag for anything to loose. Might want to render at Best too.

I did notice if using Sorenson that you only get the basic version with Vegas and I think that doesn't support 16:9. The "Player Scalability" is Off under the Configure option.

I used the Animation codec which does seem to produce a large file (591MB for 10 sec) but the aspect ratio came out OK using my trick above. Doing it this way sounds bad but it's done very commonly in HD broadcast so I wouldn't sweat it too much.

Bob.

Excellent Bob! Changing to 1049x557 and PAR to 1 seems to work! Perfect!!

Thanks so much to everyone, feeling a bit more pro now :D

sami

hehe, ok so the above method works when you play it in any players but when taking the 1049x576 file to Vegas it is squished again.

My problem here is that I will upload this file to a server where every sort of tv-station can download and broadcast it. And I have no idea what program they will try to import the file to. Also there is no option to include any instructions to go with the video. So I think safest thing is that it would work in an editing program like Vegas, Avid, FCP etc.

I am currently in talks with the content manager of the server so maybe he will have a solution.

sami

If the end use is for SD television then the 720x576 PAL-DV anamorphic file should be fine.

After all they are used to working with standard definition files in that format, whether AVI, MOV or AVID OMF media. They should have the experience to recognise anamorphic files and adjust them as necessary. I'd be more concerned if the end user was a consumer, less so if they are video professionals... or is that term a non-sequitor like military intelligence ;-}?

I checked the QT .MOV file, 720x576 in Quicktime under Mac OSX and it plays squished, unless I set it to 1024x576, but when imported into FCP formats correctly. It also plays without any 'compression' artifiacts at 1024x576 in the Mac QT player.

Steve

Especially professionals are the ones I do not trust :) I was in Prague premiering my short film and it was screened from a really fancy projector in a big cinema. There was three parts and an epilogue. Right before the epilogue the projector pressed stop on the dvd and continued with other movies. I told my host that the film didnt end yet! To top it off the projector decided to show the end after all the other short films and cause he couldnt use the dvd player to find the right spot on the dvd (cause it was playing other shorts) he used his laptop and screened the epilogue from a windows media player. With no sound! Man, that was horrible. It was one of the biggest film festivals in Czech Republic with 1500 invited guests, a symphony orchestra playing star wars themes in the lobby and 5 rooms for different foods and drinks.

Sami