Poor render Quality in Vegas Pro 18 (Sony and other Codecs)

scheidegger wrote on 9/24/2021, 4:13 AM

We are trying to migrate our production environment from Sony Vegas Pro 12 to Vegas Pro 18. We are working with Sony broadcast material in MPEG IMX (SD) and Sony HD422 (HD) format.

We noticed some quality issues when rendering videos in Vegas Pro 18 which we haven't noticed in Vegas Pro 12. To analyze the issue we took a EBU test card, rendered to various codecs and checked the result in Vegas Pro waveform. Here are the results:

Original test card:

MXF MPEG IMX rendered in Vegas 18:

MXF MPEG IMX rendered in Vegas 12:

MXF MPEG IMX rendered 10 times in Vegas 18:

MXF MPEG IMX rendered 10 times in Vegas 12:

In Vegas 18 there blocking / noise is obvious in waveform already after 1 x rendering. When repating the render process 10 times, the problem is also visible in the resulting video image.

Any idea where these problems are coming from? What could we be doing wrong? We noticed similar problems when rendering Sony MXF HD422, Magix AVC Internet HD, Magix AVC Internet HD (NVENC), MPEG PAL DVD Architect... We found no quality issues when rendering AVI or Quicktime DNxHD in Vegas 18.

Further information:

  • We tried disabling GPU processing but found no difference.
  • To avoid rendering without recompression, we added a little black on the very left using cookie cutter FX.
  • Project Settings

    We also tried Quality: Good instead of Best
  • Render Settings: Sony MXF - PAL MPEG IMX 50 default template
  • Essential Information
    • Vegas 18 Build 527
    • Windows 10 Pro 20H2
    • EBU test card created with a Sony PDW-HD1500 XDCAM recorder
    • Delivery destination: Sony XDCAM Disc (MPEG IMX 50 or HD422 720p)

 

Thanks a lot,
Stefan

Comments

alifftudm95 wrote on 9/24/2021, 5:40 AM

Use Voukoder plugin, but audio bug still persist if I was not mistaken.

Super crisp video and magic small file size.

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EricLNZ wrote on 9/24/2021, 6:25 AM

Super crisp video and magic small file size.

Crisper than the original?

Marco. wrote on 9/24/2021, 6:46 AM

@scheidegger
Did you ensure for rendering with VP18 you used "Pixelformat: veralteter 8 Bit (Videobereich)" as shown in your screenshot above?

scheidegger wrote on 9/24/2021, 7:03 AM

Use Voukoder plugin, but audio bug still persist if I was not mistaken.

Super crisp video and magic small file size.


Thank you @alifftudm95, I didn't know Voukoder plug-in. Interesting to get ffmpeg encoding in Vegas Pro! However, I didn't find anything about encoding Sony MPEG IMX oder XDCAM format with Voukoder. Does it support MXF container at all?

 

@scheidegger
Did you ensure for rendering with VP18 you used "Pixelformat: veralteter 8 Bit (Videobereich)" as shown in your screenshot above?

Yes, I did set "veralteter 8 Bit (Videobereich)". If I use 8 Bit full level, the brightness is much too high, but the problem stays the same.

I am wondering if this is a problem of my settings or if it is an issue of Vegas Pro 18. Is anybody experiencing the same issue?
(You can find a JPG of a test card online for testing: https://www.frag-den-neudeck.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/EBU-100-75-HD-Farbbalken.jpg)

Marco. wrote on 9/24/2021, 7:16 AM

I will check with the build-in test chart later.

alifftudm95 wrote on 9/24/2021, 7:46 AM

Super crisp video and magic small file size.

Crisper than the original?

No as in, the output is very clean. VEGAS Pro H264 export can see the blockyness in pixel.

 

Editor and Colorist (Kinda) from Malaysia

MYPOST Member

Laptop

MacBook Pro M4 Max

16 Core CPU and 40 Core GPU

64GB Memory

2TB Internal SSD Storage

Anti-Glare 4K HDR Screen

 

PC DEKSTOP

CPU: Ryzen 9 5900x

GPU: RTX3090 24GB

RAM: 64GB 3200MHZ

MOBO: X570-E

Storage:

C DRIVE NVME M.2 1TB SSD GEN 4

D DRIVE NVME M.2 2TB SSD GEN 4

E DRIVE SATA SSD 2TB

F DRIVE SATA SSD 2TB

G DRIVE HDD 1TB

Monitor: Asus ProArt PA279CV 4K HDR (Bought on 30 August 2023)

Monitor: BenQ PD2700U 4K HDR (RIP on 30 August 2023)

 

 

 

alifftudm95 wrote on 9/24/2021, 7:47 AM

Use Voukoder plugin, but audio bug still persist if I was not mistaken.

Super crisp video and magic small file size.


Thank you @alifftudm95, I didn't know Voukoder plug-in. Interesting to get ffmpeg encoding in Vegas Pro! However, I didn't find anything about encoding Sony MPEG IMX oder XDCAM format with Voukoder. Does it support MXF container at all?

I think it only do ProRes, H264/H265, AVI all of that basic output.

 

Editor and Colorist (Kinda) from Malaysia

MYPOST Member

Laptop

MacBook Pro M4 Max

16 Core CPU and 40 Core GPU

64GB Memory

2TB Internal SSD Storage

Anti-Glare 4K HDR Screen

 

PC DEKSTOP

CPU: Ryzen 9 5900x

GPU: RTX3090 24GB

RAM: 64GB 3200MHZ

MOBO: X570-E

Storage:

C DRIVE NVME M.2 1TB SSD GEN 4

D DRIVE NVME M.2 2TB SSD GEN 4

E DRIVE SATA SSD 2TB

F DRIVE SATA SSD 2TB

G DRIVE HDD 1TB

Monitor: Asus ProArt PA279CV 4K HDR (Bought on 30 August 2023)

Monitor: BenQ PD2700U 4K HDR (RIP on 30 August 2023)

 

 

 

RogerS wrote on 9/24/2021, 7:54 AM

These are the choices I have in Voukoder so no XDCAM or MXF.

Marco. wrote on 9/24/2021, 8:36 AM

I can repro the result when rendering to IMX and XDCAM HD 422 in VP19. But I don't have VP12 available for a comparison.

scheidegger wrote on 9/24/2021, 8:47 AM

I can repro the result when rendering to IMX and XDCAM HD 422 in VP19. But I don't have VP12 available for a comparison.


Thank you very much for testing. Vegas 12 never had such an issue. We have been using Vegas 12 to produce broadcast footage for many years.

Of course IMX and XDCAM do show slight degradation when repeatedly decoding and encoding. But the degradation in Vegas 18/19 is so strong, I would consider it a bug. I'll open a support case then.

RogerS wrote on 10/28/2021, 6:05 AM

@scheidegger Did you hear anything back about this case?

john_dennis wrote on 10/28/2021, 9:53 AM

@scheidegger @RogerS

I did a brief test with Vegas Pro 19-381 this morning and nothing has changed from the original report.

john_dennis wrote on 10/28/2021, 11:02 AM

The last build of Vegas Pro 17 looked good...

wilvan wrote on 10/28/2021, 3:01 PM

@john_dennis : that info should allow the developers for fast(er) trouble shooting and solving since this is a pretty important issue , isn't it ?

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john_dennis wrote on 10/28/2021, 10:22 PM

@wilvan

"... this is a pretty important issue, isn't it ?"

I suspect it is to certain Vegas users who need to use those formats to do their work.

For me, I just hate to see an established process degrade with a version change. It's hard for me to interpret the effects of the disturbance in the waveform on the look of the rendered video. My intuition is that it's not good and over a few generations it's really not good.

scheidegger wrote on 10/29/2021, 2:31 AM

The last build of Vegas Pro 17 looked good...

Thank you very much @john_dennis for this valuable information. I just installed a trial version of Vegas 17 and verified what you said. In Vegas 17 there is no problem with render quality. If I open the Vegas 17 project in Vegas 18 and render with the same settings, the quality is deteriorated. I informed Vegas support about this.

I have been in touch with Vegas support for the past weeks. They are trying to find a solution. The last suggestion from Vegas support was to use the following project settings in order to fix the quality issue:

  • Render Quality: Good
  • Resample Method: Disable Resampling

However, in my tests the render quality did not improve. Can someone else verify if these settings have any influence on quality in Vegas 18 and 19?

I hope they will find a solution to this problem soon. For us this is a major issue and Vegas 18/19 is completely useless under these conditions. I will post here whenever support finds something new.

scheidegger wrote on 11/24/2021, 2:07 AM

Vegas support informed me, that the latest release of Vegas 19 might resolve this issue. I downloaded the trial version of Vegas 19 Build 424. However, I did not see any improvement.

Can anyone try to reproduce with the latest Vegas 19 update?