i'm gonna be honest....i have no idea what i'm doing when i go to render out to hd...i put up a few other posts...but they aren't getting answers....

...yes..i can't see the h264 specifically...is it just called mp4 in vegas? ...also...i don't see an option of m2t render...is that just mpeg2?

You get .m2t when you render to MPEG2 and choose ATSC.

- You get .m2t when you render to MPEG2 and choose ATSC

i don't see that option anywhere...

could someone please make a chart or list of options with steps for rendering out to hd for various forums (ie for web display, dvd, ...and what i'm looking for...playing off of xbox hard drive..

sorry i keep asking this question everywhere...but i am slow..and i haven't really received a clear answer.....or..atleast one i think is clear....

thanks for your patience

You won't see the M2t extension when you opt to save an HD file in mpeg. You will see the M2T extension referenced in the description of the video format if you go into the properties of the render option. Even when you name your file to save, it appears as though the file name would be named with the mpg extension...it's only after you render the file that you see the filename with the M2t extension.

HD rendering options are very confusion at first...even after having my hd cam for a year, I'm still often confused. If you want to print to tape for HD TV viewing use mpeg. For PC viewing I use wmv.

...i'm starting to find my way around...found the atsc part atleast...

a few more questions....why doesn't mpeg 2 have a template for hdv 1080 24p? everything else is there but the 24p framerate...
..and to render to h264 i render it as a .mov? and find the settings under that? ...and those settings would be..?

my system should be able to handle HDV pretty well..right?

dual 3.2 Xeons, 2GB RAM, SATA drives....

...but my computer is choking! ....i tried to edit with m2t files...didn't work...downloaded gearshift...used ntsc proxies...that was okay.....now i am trying to render my edited m2t files to another m2t......nope...computer doens't like it...crashes everytime.....i was just barely able to make some wmv9 files out of it....

if the images didn't look so dang beautiful...i would give up on hdv right now!

H264 (or 263... for that matter) are rather open codec designations or specs. Encoder brand x is likely going to be significantly different than brand y's encoder & the video may or may not be compatible. Adding confusion, H264 or 263 etc & even cell formats are variations on mpeg4 or mp4, so you might or might not see specifically h264. Q/Time has it's version of mp4 & h264 -- it isn't as compatible with players, but beyond that can't say much because I rarely touch any mov files.

RE: Proxies... I think if you google on it you'll see performance varies depending on your PC. You should also be able to find tips on speeding up your configuration, as well as generally how relatively fast your setup is based on motherboard/chipset used etc. I personally don't consider any sort of crashes normal if you're talking windows stalling or BSDs -- if that's the case might want to look into possible windows &/or hardware problems.

RE: HD templates... In the MC mpg2 custom dialog you can change field order to progressive & fps to 24.

thanks!..that was some good info! I appreciate all of your help as I stumble through this....

...i should have been clearer about the crashes...its only vegas the freezes and crashes..not the actual computer...most of the time the vegas crash brings up an error about vegas not having enough memory....and I have 2GB of it.....do i need more for hdv?

...yeah..my computer is a BOXX..and it was designed by BOXX specifically for editing HDV...of course that was a couple of years ago now...but I just figured it would handle it...oh well....

Check your Dynamic RAM preview setting in your Video preferences tab. If it is high, set it to 128 and see if that frees up more RAM for rendering. Prior to version 7, that setting seemed to remove that much RAM from the total available.

Also, what is your page file set to?

Your machine is plenty powerful for HDV rendering.

- "Check your Dynamic RAM preview setting in your Video preferences tab. If it is high, set it to 128 and see if that frees up more RAM for rendering. Prior to version 7, that setting seemed to remove that much RAM from the total available."

It's already set to 128.


- "Also, what is your page file set to?"

I don't know. How do I find out?

- "Your machine is plenty powerful for HDV rendering."

...sure doesn't feel like it... :o(

"what is your page file set to?"

Start \ Control Panel \ System \ Advanced \ Performance Settings button \ Advanced \ Virtual Memory section.

Total paging file size for all drives: 2046 MB


...what should it be set to? ...and thanks for your help!

Paging file should be 1 to 1.5 times the size of your physical RAM, so that should be fine.

Either the special FX you are using on your footage is extremely slow (Magic Bullet?) or something is very wrong with your system, whether it is two years of build-up (I reinstall XP about every 18 months to clean things out), or a piece of hardware is going bad. Norton AV is something to stay away from also when editing/rendering.

You might try these Tuning Tips.

If that doesn't help, you will need something like Sysoft Sandra to test your system to see if anything is wrong. It is kind of advanced, so you might want to have a tech geek check it out for you.

Edited: You don't have to do everything in the Tuning Tips listed above, it is more of a guideline. The further down the list you go, it seems that they get more obscure. Also, don't mess with the Registry changes unless you know exactly what you are doing.

yeah...the project is loaded with magic bullet...that may be the killer

...thanks for your help..i will check those things out

There you go, Magic Bullet.