Newb Rendering Issues - please help

musmin2415 wrote on 12/17/2013, 10:05 AM
Ok, I'm going to try and keep this short, but I have a HUGE deadline that I need to meet and I'm stressin' just a bit. I finished my project fairly quickly, thinking, "Huh, that was easy! Plenty of time to move on to other things...." Well, then all the issues started when I tried to render it last night. Here are the details:

Project: 2 minute intro vid to a church event we're having. I layered 3 moving backgrounds -- varying the opacity throughout in order to create some nice textures. I used NewBlue's Titler Pro 2.0 (with some 'jitter'/'flicker' fx) to display text sporadically throughout the 2 minute vid.

Project Media: Obviously, the Titler Pro media is original. The 3 moving backgrounds that I downloaded have varying specs, but are all HD (1080x1024). Two of them are .mp4s. And one is an .mov.

Rendering Settings: Trying to render to a 1280x720 .wmv.

Issues: At first when I tried rendering everything, the job would freeze halfway through. Then I re-rendered just the original background media to .wmv format, and that seemed to take care of the lock-ups. However, from then on, as I tweaked the render settings (mainly frame rate) the video itself would be 'glitchy' in places.

Questions:
1.) Are all these issues due to the fact that SVP 12 historically has issues with .mov and .mp4 files?
2.) Do I need to make sure all my project media is in the same format? (.wmv / .mov / etc.)
3.) Do I need to make sure that I render everything to the same frame rate as the original project media?
4.) Does the CBR/VBR mode have anything to do with it?

Thanks for your patience!! By the way, I'm running Windows 7 with 16GB of RAM, and an i7 processor.

Comments

dlion wrote on 12/17/2013, 10:31 AM
please list your system specs in your profile.

i'm guessing you meant 1920x1080 HD. unless you have a spec that says delivery is "wmv only," i'd render to mp4. use the main concept preset, edit to taste.

turn gpu off.

try again.

musmin2415 wrote on 12/17/2013, 11:04 AM
Specs:
Win 7 Pro 64-bit
Intel i7 3770K
16 GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
Interface: Presonus Firestudio Project
AV Software: Sony Vegas Pro 12 (build 770)


Our AV guy says to render to 1280x720 to make sure the file wasn't enormous (also bc our projectors aren't shooting in true HD anyway). And yes, unfortunately it has to be wmv for our software (ezworship) to run it. However, I could always render to an mp4, and then give it to him to convert it to .wmv on his Mac. He does all his work on Mac, but ran out of time on this project, so threw it over to me.

I'll figure out how to turn the gpu off. Thanks! I'll post back with an update this afternoon hopefully.
Steve Mann wrote on 12/17/2013, 9:32 PM
Resolution doesn't effect filesize, only the bitrate.

I think that the last time anyone asked for a WMV file was before my daughter was born. She graduated from college last year.
musmin2415 wrote on 12/18/2013, 9:08 AM
Ok, ok, I get it - we're still a little behind the times in that area. We just don't have the funds to move completely to Mac and Pro Presenter. Anyway....

Thank you for the info on bitrate. I'm a musician, and still very new to the video arena (I'm sure you could tell).

I rendered it last night to an mp4 using the same codec suggested, and it worked without a hitch. (I didn't turn off my GPU - but I'm wondering, why would that even help it?)

Now I just need to figure out how to convert it straight over from an mp4 to a wmv without any loss of quality. Our projectors are digital, shooting in 1280x720, to VERY large screens. Again, for some reason, mp4s, movs, or any Quicktime files tend to crash our software - at worst, or cause some crazy latency in the audio vs video - at best.

I frequent musician forums quite a bit, so I understand how newbs can be looked at. I know these are basic questions that probably aren't even stated correctly in the right context. But if y'all have any insight on my issues, please let me know. Or, I love researching and teaching myself new things, so feel free to post a link that would help me to understand rendering better (bitrate, containers, field order, etc.)

Thanks!
dlion wrote on 12/18/2013, 10:23 AM
ok, so you rendered it to mp4. great.

now, open a new project and drag the mp4 file into it. vegas should ask if you want to set the project properties to that file (the mp4). say yes.

render to wmv.
musmin2415 wrote on 12/19/2013, 10:34 AM
Hey all --
I'm sure this is common knowledge to most that visit here, but just in case there's that one person out there that's a rookie like myself, and who's just having some issues rendering several tracks/layers of video without hang-ups, freeze-ups, or glitches --- here's what I did.... (by the way, I got some great info from John Rofrano on CreativeCow.net)

I was creating a simple 2 minute intro to an event that contained some moving backgrounds and text. To start out, I pulled 3 HD background video loops from some different websites - so all had different properties (i.e. fps, formats - mov & mp4, resolution). The text was really the only OC, and I used Titler Pro 2.0.

I won't go into all the issues I had (as some are detailed above), but to make a long story short, I was dealing with - what I call - "glitches" in the video. Particularly in crossfades where the transitions were not smooth and stuttered in & out. I also then dealt with letterboxes on the final product, even though my render settings were set on 1280x720, and the box was checked to "not letterbox".

After much reading, and help from this forum & CreativeCow, this is the conclusion I came up with. I ask for grace on this, because I'm sure I won't use the correct terminology, nor will my explanation apply 100% of the time. Overall, I found out that it helps TREMENDOUSLY if my Project Properties, Event Properties (in my case, the video loops/layers), and Render Properties all match - maybe not 100%, but as close as possible.

So, I took the original video clips I downloaded online, put them in Vegas, matched the media settings -- which I believe the most important detail is that I kept the FPS THE SAME as it was in the original video clip content -- then rendered them to 1280x720 mp4 clips. (This, by the way, took care of my letterbox issue because it 'stretched' all the content to the right size.)

Once I did that, I put them all back into my main project. The way I see it, what that did is make sure that all the media within my project matched (somewhat) my Project Properties and what would be my Rendering Properties. Again, I wanted my final output to have these main settings --- mp4, 1280x720, 23.976 fps, and 1.0 (square) PAR.

So, then I rendered my project both ways - to an mp4 and wmv - with absolutely no problems. The file size is definitely manageable, and it looks phenomenal on our digital projectors and fairly LARGE screens. I would say that my biggest 'ah-ha' moment was when I started messing with the frame rate (fps).

Anyway, I'm sure there are a some things wrong with my explanation, but honestly, it worked for me! I'm always open to correction and other people's insight - that's how we get better.