Yes, as far as I can tell, the ATI card is doing the rendering. I have a firewire card, but right now don't have a FW capable camcorder, so all video is brought in analog avi.

Since reading your post, I tried capturing as mpeg2 and am noticing the same anomolies.

Suggestions?

If you haven't already try printing a small part of your project (a minute or so) directly to your hard drive so you totally by pass the video card. Use the same project settings. Once it renders, play back through Media Player and see if the artifacts are still present on not.

As you probably suspect using a video out card is at best a crap shoot. Sometimes it works well, other times it doesn't.

Okay... I tried several different things, but nothing I found in the progeam or manul was called print ot hard drive. Printing to tape generated an avi preview file, but it's MPEG 2 that I'm having trouble with. Do you know which CODEC I should substitute ATI's for? Will this even make a difference? Anybody else have any idea's?

Thanks

You're not printing to the the hard drive, you're SAVING a file, just like in any other application!

1. click on file.
2. render as...
3. select file name, file type, template
4. click on save.

When the file is finished rendering, exit Vegas, play with Media Player. See if artifacts are gone.

Using the 'render as' command is what I've been dong from the beginning (see post #1)

>>It seems that no matter what settings I try, I always get artifacts when rendering to MPEG2<<

So while I appreciate the suggestion, I seem to be back where I started.

Well, for my two cents, i might think you're being excessively picky. I just looked at your frame and it looks very good to me. Yes, there are artifacts, but i think they're very minor. What bitrate are you using when you render to MPEG-2? Have you tried using a higher rate?

No offense, but I am certainly not being too picky. My expectations are artifact free, professional level DVD authoring. Businesses and individuals do not pay for video that has digital break-up or pixilization errors. I certainly expect the video I render to mpeg2 to look at least as good as the video I render to mpeg1, which is not the case right now. The files I have renderd to mpeg1 are as good as mpeg1 ever gets, and look fine. Quicktime files are beautiful, avi files are damn close to perfect. But the mpeg2 files, regardless of the bitrate, are inundated with artifacts. If there was a small artifact here and there once in a while, I wouldn't mind so much. However, they are constant and quite distracting. To better illustrate this, I've uploaded a 15 second section of a promotional piece I'm working on. The source for this section is VV generated media, and .psd stills, so the quality of the original is not in question. Be advised this is an 8mb download.

http://www.heritagemultimedia.net/mpeg.htm The link is at the botome of the page, right click on it and 'save target as'

Cheinworks.. after looking at the pic I posted again, I think the artifacts I was illustrating may have looked like they were actually part of the project.. I've posted a better frame.. www.heritagemultimedia.net/artifacts.jpg

MPEG 2 should be better than MPEG1, and artifacts are normally associated with fast motion/panning rather than during stills. If those brown squares are your artifacts, there's definitely something amiss.

So, let's try and find out why ...

What are you using to create MPEG2 clips, and what settings?

What were your original project settings, what was your video source and how did you capture originally?

ArmyVideoPro,

I downloaded your MPEG2 sample and played it in Windows Media Player. I recognized the clip from the Vegas 3 tutorial. I am sure I don't have your trained eye, but I didn't see anything that looked like glaring deficiencies in the MPEG encoding.

In this closup of flowers being buffeted by the wind the background is out of focus and the in-focus foreground has a significant amount of motion blur. Both of those conditions pre-exist before the MPEG2 encoding. The clip looked fine to me.

Certainly nothing comparable to the square pockmarks on the JPEG you posted, which are some of the most bizarre MPEG artifacts I have seen. In your original posting I did presume they were part of the design, but since I could see nothing else in the frame that seemed amiss, I did suspect they might be the artifacts.

Can you post some motion video with artifacts as serious as those in the still? Or am I missing something in your posted MPEG2? Perhaps I should bring it into Vegas and scrub it frame by frame.

-- Seeker --

OK, i see now. I had assumed those squares were intentional. Other than that the only artifacts i could see were around the text and these were indeed minor.

Can you describe your rendering process? You seem to have indicated that you are rendering through the ATI card. Do you mean you're using that card to capture directly to MPEG-2? If so, then what you are seeing is the fault of that card and it's capturing software, not of Vegas.

How exactly are you rendering? What settings, if any, are you changing?

you said you were capturing from an analog source? Ever thought of a analog-digital convertor. I bought the Canopus ADVC-100 and it works WONDERFUL. Plus you go through a firewire cable since its making the signal digital. Just my 2 cents

Good Morning.. and thank you for all your comments and sugestions... I'll try and answer all questions in this post and maybe we can get to the bottom of this...

To answer PeterWrights question... yes, those squares are indeed the artifacts. The frame I posted comes from a short I'm working on. That particualr section consists of a logo which is a PhotoShop file, and a VV generated solid color background. Original settings are NTSC 720 x 480. To get my final files, I highlight the section of the project I want to render, be it 5 seconds or the entire thing, then FILE>Render as> Main Concept MPEG2> pick a template > Save As. I have tried numerous specific settings in the customize section, including maxing out the bitrate, using a pulldown, deinterlacing, and just about anything else you can change, all with the same results.

For Seeker... dude, I'm not sure what exactly it was that you downloaded, or where you downloaded it from, but what you described is certainly not my clip. My clip is about 15 seconds long, and is all original stuff, nothing from the tutorial. It starts with a closeup of a group photo, and pulls put revealing other stills and then a logo spins in.. So if you could double check what you looked at I'd appreciate any feedback. There's no video like you described on my server. The file name is Americorpspromo.mpg

Chienworks - Ya.. those squares are the problem.. the artifacts around the text and such are just there from the lowrez jpg I uploaded.
I am just assuming that my AGP card plays some roll in the rendering process, as it does when playing 3D games and the like. Since the media in this clip is all internally generated by photoshop, the ATI card had no roll in it's aquisition. However, when I do bring in analog footage through the card and capture it as mpeg2, I have the same artifacts.

jag5311 - I've been thinking about a digital converter.. but don't want to invest until I know I have this problem licked.

Thanks again to everyone for your comments and suggestions. Has anyone else viewed the video clip? Am I being too picky?

I've just downloaded your Americorpspromo.mpeg file and played it with WMP9 and I can't see any sign of the "block" artifacts in this video.

If you are seeing the same sort of artifacts in this video as are shown in the still you previously posted then I'm pretty sure the problem is with whatever you are using to play the file, not with Vegas or the Mainconcept encoder at all.

You might like to try playing the file back on another PC (or maybe just a different player from whatever you're using) to prove or disprove this.

Mark

Hey Mark, I've tried every player I have, including WMP9 at home, and had the same issues. However, following your suggestion, I downloaded the file to my office PC and it played great. Thanks for that suggestion.. I doubt I ever would have thought about trying that otherwise, though now it seems an obvious test.

It seems the problem must be my video card or be somewhere else in my system.
But since it plays fine on other systems, I can ignore the playback errors and drive on with my editing.

Thanks again for all the suggestions everyone!!