Just rendered my first mpeg2 file for DVD Archit.

DaveOsbun wrote on 7/27/2008, 9:23 AM
Hello everybody! I'm new to the forum and recently purchased Vegas Pro 8 and am loving it! I used to use DPS Velocity many years ago because I worked for them and am just getting back into non-professional editing.

I recently captured on my Sony consumer HD camera some auto racing and rendered it out last night to use in DVD Architect 5 and burn my first DVD. I used the NTSC Widescreen video stream for DVD Architect and set the quality to 'Best'. Also increased the minimum bitrate to 4,300,000 since I only had 20 minutes of footage.

I am quite disappointed with the quality of the video on the DVD. I can easily see compression on playback. Here are a few questions that maybe some of you can assist me with:

My camera was handheld (no tripod), so can this maybe cause the problem (original footage is great quality).
Does the computer 'power' affect mpeg2 output quality (2.8 P4 processor with 2gb RAM).

Are there any other settings I can try with the MainConcept codec? What is everybody else doing?

Thanks in advance for those that respond!
Dave

Comments

baysidebas wrote on 7/27/2008, 9:48 AM
your bitrate is way too low. For a 20 minute video you can safely use the maximum bitrate allowed by the DVD specification. If memory serves me correctly, and I'm sure if it isn't we'll hear from the gallery, you can set it at 10 Mbps.
DaveOsbun wrote on 7/27/2008, 10:23 AM
I have the maximum bitrate set as high as it will go in the dropdown menu. I increased the minimum bitrate from the default setting to the 4k setting. So I have actually increased the default settings on the 'best' dropdown. I've done lots of searching and found that most people set the dropdown to 'best' and leave everything else alone. Is there a way to increase the bitrate higher than the dropdown allows? Here are the custom settings I used for variable bitrate:
Maximum bitrate: 9,800,000
Average bitrate: 6,000,000
Minimum bitrate: 4,200,000
Video Quality slider to best (31).

Should I just set all three to 9,800,000? Should I enable the 'Two Pass' checkbox? Will the difference be dramatic over what settings i'm using now?

baysidebas wrote on 7/27/2008, 11:12 AM
Sorry, this is what happens after a night of Vegas with no sleep. I totally missed the "minimum" part. That should really have no effect on your render.

Computer power will only affect the time it takes to render, should have no effect on the quality.
John_Cline wrote on 7/27/2008, 2:48 PM
Since it's only 20 minutes of material, then you should use CBR (Constant Bit Rate) instead of VBR. About 10.2 MBPS is the absolute maximum data rate for DVD, but this 10.2 MBPS figure is the total for video, audio, subtitle, indexing, everything. Setting it to a max of 9,800,000 might be just a bit high. Set it to 9,000,000 CBR and use 192kbps .AC3 audio.

VBR is only useful if you have more than about 74 minutes of program and you need to reduce the average bit rate in order to fit all the material on the DVD. In almost every case, enabling the "two pass" checkbox will improve quality.

Auto racing footage is difficult to encode (I've done a LOT of it) but using CBR at 9,000,000 should easily get the job done.
DaveOsbun wrote on 7/28/2008, 5:33 AM
I re-rendered using constant bit rate of 9,800,000 and the final did look a lot better. Still not as good as I thought it would be but maybe my expectations are a bit high. Next project is some family stuff (no fast movements), so i'm guessing the final will be much nicer.
John_Cline wrote on 8/1/2008, 12:55 AM
Color banding, pixelated moving objects and general image softness are not typical of the MainConcept MPEG2 codec. Some setting isn't correct. I just encoded a 2+ hour auto racing project with LOTS of fast motion at an average bitrate of just under 5,000,000 bits/sec and it looks amazing decent.
farss wrote on 8/1/2008, 2:54 AM
Never had any problems with the MC encoder. It's not as good as the very best ones however starting with Hollywood grade footage and setup correctly it's pretty good value for money and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference even if you spent a couple of thousand dollars on a top shelf encoder.

Apart from checking all your settings it's also possible to have video that is so difficult to encode that it'll always come out a mess. Having said that I've encoded some really, really bad footage and still not hit your problems. I did have to use some noise reduction but even without that it wasn't exactly falling apart like you're seeing.

After you've encoded the video to mpeg-2 how are you viewing it, maybe it's fine and it's the playback that's the problem.

Bob.