What are the specs for the transfer itself? You have completed them and are now looking to edit down the files in Vegas?

IMHO, the best render settings are to keep as close to the original capture format as you can. If you captured these as SD (720x480 or equivalent), then there is no good reason to uprez to 4k. Your TV can do that better while playing back. Software will only add unnecessary baggage to it. The current standard seems to be MPEG-4. ProRes is a good format if you have Vegas 18. Also, if at all possible, keep the original capture so as tech changes you can access these files and render to the latest greatest codecs/formats.

Yes, i am currently using Vegas 18 at the moment. As i am not a 'power' user of vegas my eyes always go crossed when i open the render dialogue and there seem to be hundreds of choices.

Last few videos i rendered after getting V18 i just used the default setting...what ever that is. I just want to make sure i get a quality render thats faithful to the Hi8 source and i am not adding extra size to the final file by choosing the wrong setting.

What are the specs for the transfer itself? You have completed them and are now looking to edit down the files in Vegas?

Roger,

Excellent question and if my answer sounds like i dont know what i am talking about....its because i dont.

Its an analog Hi8 tape going out into VirtualDub capture. From there i move it to my Win10 machine for the editing.

Is there a standard size that Hi8 analog machines output?

I find it's best in cases like this to render as close as possible to your captured format. Since you didn't provide any specs on yours, I'm going to stab at a guess and say it's an SD 480i .avi file.

You can get all the information you need on your captured file by using this free tool:

https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo

"... put on the cloud for future family generations."

Assumptions:

• People in future generations will play the videos from their mobile or handheld devices.
• People in the future generations will download and play the videos on their TV.
• Keep all the deinterlacing and rendering inside of Vegas Pro.

Here is where I would START considering I have an AMD GPU.

Project Properties 4:3

Render Settings

Some on the forum will soon announce that I have TFS and will suggest all kinds of esoteric methodologies (many of which I have done), but this is my KISS proposal.

"... put on the cloud for future family generations."

Assumptions:

• People in future generations will play the videos from their mobile or handheld devices.
• People in the future generations will download and play the videos on their TV.
• Keep all the deinterlacing and rendering inside of Vegas Pro.

Here is where I would START considering I have an AMD GPU.

Project Properties 4:3

Render Settings

Some on the forum will soon announce that I have TFS and will suggest all kinds of esoteric methodologies (many of which I have done), but this is my KISS proposal.

Now THAT is a detailed answer! Love it! Thanks!

As for 'future generations'...well, until Vegas renders in 3D holograms or in a way that puts the videos directly into your brain....the cloud is all i got :-)

 

Here is where I would START considering I have an AMD GPU.

 

How does one find out if they have an AMD GPU?

I believe my current graphics card is an Asus Nvidia GTX650. I'd have to pop the lid to confirm.

I assume if i dont have an AMD GPU then chose the same selection without the AMD prefix?

"Some on the forum will soon announce that I have TFS and will suggest all kinds of esoteric methodologies (many of which I have done), but this is my KISS proposal."

It all depends on what you want to achieve. If all you want to do is some cuts editing, add a few titles, etc. John's KISS proposal is probably the way to go. If you're happy with the result, that's all that matters.

Here are a couple examples that make use of "esoteric methodologies" that I have used in the past since I like to combine both video and stills in the same production. While video seems OK at original resolution, photos look dreadful, so I have chosen to bob de-interlace and uprez to 720 which seems a reasonable compromise.

Here's an example of some Hi8 footage from the mid 90's.

https://vimeo.com/414645512

And an example of some DV footage from 2004 with some stills animation.

For the YT example, make sure that you select 720 60P.

"Some on the forum will soon announce that I have TFS and will suggest all kinds of esoteric methodologies (many of which I have done), but this is my KISS proposal."

It all depends on what you want to achieve. If all you want to do is some cuts editing, add a few titles, etc. John's KISS proposal is probably the way to go. If you're happy with the result, that's all that matters.

Here are a couple examples that make use of "esoteric methodologies" that I have used in the past since I like to combine both video and stills in the same production. While video seems OK at original resolution, photos look dreadful, so I have chosen to bob de-interlace and uprez to 720 which seems a reasonable compromise.

Here's an example of some Hi8 footage from the mid 90's.

https://vimeo.com/414645512

And an example of some DV footage from 2004 with some stills animation.

For the YT example, make sure that you select 720 60P.

 

Very nice! I love the creative touches at the end too! Right now i am doing just a simple Transfer, hack out the boring bits and rendering. Not adding any fancy titles for the family videos.

I have been transferring some of my old band videos and adding graphics. The video was shot in a dark location and i had to get aggressive with the denoise plug in (Neat Video Denoiser). Sharing this just to show how 'fancy' i get with titles. This is the limit of my expertise. Simple, but does the trick. That 'thing' i am playing is called a Chapman Stick (10 stringed Bass/Guitar). It looks like a 2x4 with strings! HA!

Wayne's point about using higher pixel dimensions if one wants to include stills is right on. Here is one of my DV captures that I did in 720p60.

Nothing is going to polish the original 1988 recording. I was never really into video in the VHS days, but we did time-shift broadcast TV.

"How does one find out if they have an AMD GPU?"

The available GPU assisted render templates will be presented (or not) in the Render As dialog box.

I should add that the reason for bob deinterlacing (frame doubling) to 60P is that, if you keep the same frame rate (30P), you're losing half of the temporal information which is OK if you're filming rocks or mountains that don't move. Since people usually move, your quality will be significantly degraded.

Another workaround is to smart render (=lossless) the edited project with the same codec as it was captured (DV-AVI). Then feed Handbrake with this DV-AVI and let Handbrake do the converting and deinterlacing.

While Handbrake does a good job of rendering progressive footage due to use of the x264 encoder, it's not very good at deinterlacing using either its Decomb or Yadif options. Here's a demo of some original dv footage with the two Handbrake options plus QTGMC, a fairly high quality de-interlacer. The differences are most pronounced in the lower right. Sorry for the annoying audio.

My experience is only that Handbrake does a better job in deinterlacing than Vegas.

@3POINT

You're probably right in that regard, although the Yadif plugin is available and can be applied as a MediaFx in Vegas. Fortunately, the requirement for high quality deinterlacing is getting less and less, except for those doing restoration work with low resolution footage. For FHD source material, it doesn't make that much difference.

@3POINT

For FHD source material, it doesn't make that much difference.

Deinterlacing FHD (1080i50 or 1080i60) with normal Vegas deinterlacing options (Blend and interpolate) to 1080p25 or 1080p30 make it quite worse. The only good result I get with Vegas is to render 1080i50 to 1080p50 (or 1080i60 to 1080p60) with following settings:

@3POINT

Thanks. That's good to know. I must admit that I haven't tried the Smart option--only the Blend or Interpolate options that have been around since day 1.