picture quality

Lee Sony vegas wrote on 11/2/2010, 3:22 PM

Hi everyone please could someone help please.I am watching my edited movies via my pc which is connected to my sony hd ready tv with a hdmi cable.I find the rendered project having some picture quality loss than the origanal clips i have imported from my hdv camera.I have tryed rendering to mv2,sony avc avi and also saving the template as 1080 -60, 1080-50, 1080-24, I have changed the render settings to best, but there seems to be quality loss.Also when rendered with sony avc i get a small dolby digital logo appear in my media player at the bottom left hand screen, how come this does not appear in any other setting?a few questions here can any body help please. I used to use pinnacle studio by the way. many thanks

Comments

Eugenia wrote on 11/2/2010, 3:41 PM

IF:
1. Your camera is HDV (tape)
2. You used the RIGHT project properties (use the little "match" icon in the Project Properties dialog to auto-complete for you the right project properties if you don't know how to do this yourself manually)
3. You didn't use any plugins or pan/crop/track-motion that alter the look of the video
4. You didn't slow/fast motioned the video

then, you could export in the "main concept mpeg2" codec from the "Render As" menu, by selecting the RIGHT template. For example, if your camera is an NTSC one, you select 1080/60i, otherwise, if it's PAL you use 1080/50i.

When you do this, the edited video will be exported without any quality loss whatsoever, you will see a screen while encoding reading "no recompression required". This would be the original quality, but as I said, the four steps above must be fulfilled before this happens.

If you still see problems on your TV, it's either because your camera's footage is simply as bad, or because the PC player you use drops quality for some reason before it exports to VGA/DVI/HDMI. But it won't be because the actual footage lost any quality during recompression.

Lee Sony vegas wrote on 11/3/2010, 2:32 AM

Hi Eugene,
Thanks for the reply I have a sony hd camera that records onto memorie stick,thanks i will give your options ago

Eugenia wrote on 11/3/2010, 3:45 AM

Then this is not an HDV camera as you wrote in your first comment. It's possibly an AVCHD camera. You can try the way I described above, but what you need is AVCHD no-reencoding support, not sure Vegas supports that. Otherwise, there will be some visual loss. Not huge though, if you export properly.

Lee Sony vegas wrote on 11/3/2010, 6:51 AM

Hi Eugenia,
yes i have a sony avchd camera.what do you mean by exporting properly?I got sony vegas because i thought it would be compatable with avchd files ,so i am seeing a slight picture loss due to the rendering?
Do you mean by exporting properly is this still using the same templates 1080-50 pal as im in england.

Eugenia wrote on 11/3/2010, 1:17 PM

Vegas supports AVCHD editing, but it won't smart-render it as it does for HDV. So yes, you will lose slight quality when you export. But you should not be feeling bad about this, because this is how it always is. When you re-export, 99% of the times, you lose quality. It's to be expected. Only DV AVI and HDV have a workaround as mentioned in my first comment.

Lee Sony vegas wrote on 11/9/2010, 12:09 AM

Hi Eugenia,
I tryed the media player you reccomended and that did not work. so i tryed the software that come with my camera its sony pmv this player works perfectly.Im a bit confused why windows meda player plays my movies choppy??? Oh well at least it works.I have had a bad time starting out with vegas as i get very choppy playback on the editing line i now you can render out to mv2 mainconcept mpeg2 and that plays in the time line but when i edit this to my main movie i lose picture quality, and im not sure why my pc wont do this in the first place. Many thanks for your hel, much appractated.

Eugenia wrote on 11/15/2010, 7:00 AM

>I tryed the media player you reccomended

I don't recall recommending you any media player in this thread. :)

>why windows meda player plays my movies choppy???

Because the underlying decoder it's using is not well optimized.

>as i get very choppy playback on the editing line

Follow my hints and tips on my blog for faster vegas playback. But ultimately, for AVCHD, you need a modern PC.

>i now you can render out to mv2 mainconcept mpeg2

Not a good idea. You're losing quality transcoding to that format just so you can edit. Cineform is a much better solution for intermediate codec editing.

>but when i edit this to my main movie i lose picture quality

This is normal, but it shouldn't be too noticeable if you give your export enough bitrate.

> im not sure why my pc wont do this in the first place

There are a lot of things that the "PC won't do". Ultimately, it's a matter of resources making AVCHD smart-render too like HDV. :-)