All depends on the goal for your rendering of those files.
If it cannot read the Avi codec it has no sense to render to Windows Avi and so on.
So you must look or experiment with small examples what those TV's can play.
And if those old codecs can be played, render with a codec and rendertemplate that can do "smartrendering".

@Gary-Vrckovnik You probably already have the best quality captured .avi file, assuming you used say the firewire capture method. I'd leave as is as DOT suggested, and as jv suggested, if your device won’t play the .avi then do a good quality conversion to .mp4, then let the TV do the upscaling, thats what I did, but keep the .avi, you never know what the future will bring.

I will archive the avi files for sure. But saving some disk space for my Plex server would be ideal. Can you recommend a high quality mp4 render template / settings for me to use?
 

Thanks again

I've got a couple hundred hours of family video, captured from MiniDV and Digital8/Hi8 tapes

Let's stop there for a minute and identify the files.

I assume they are non-Microsoft DV25, but need to be sure for leveling guidance.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-to-post-mediainfo-and-vegas-pro-file-properties--104561/

Hope this is what you are asking for Musicvid … thanks for your help.

General
Complete name                            : J:\Home Videos\26 Mar 2000 - 12 July 2000\Tape Capture Video - Clip 004.avi
Format                                   : AVI
Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave
Commercial name                          : DV
Format profile                           : OpenDML
File size                                : 25.9 GiB
Duration                                 : 2 h 3 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Constant
Overall bit rate                         : 29.9 Mb/s
TAPE                                     : Tape Capture Video
TCOD                                     : 1671863860333
TCDO                                     : 1746238160333
VMAJ                                     : 4
VMIN                                     : 0
STAT                                     : 222900 0 3.426922 1
DTIM                                     : 0 0Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : DV
Codec ID                                 : dvsd
Codec ID/Hint                            : Sony
Duration                                 : 2 h 3 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 24.4 Mb/s
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Original frame rate                      : 29.970 (29970/1000) FPS
Standard                                 : NTSC
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:1:1
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan order                               : Bottom Field First
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 2.357
Stream size                              : 24.9 GiB (96%)Audio
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Codec ID                                 : 1
Duration                                 : 2 h 3 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 024 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 32.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 908 MiB (3%)
Alignment                                : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration                     : 267  ms (8.00 video frames)
Interleave, preload duration             : 266  ms

We need one more piece of information, your internet upload speed.That will limit the speed at which your remote viewers can transfer files.

John,

My upload speed is 10 Mbps. I'm less concerned about remote viewer file transfer times though as they can always download and watch things post download vs in real-time (although I believe Plex will buffer things for the end viewer if transfer rates are too slow).

Gary, I suggest you start here:

Project Properties

Custom Render Template based on Magix AVC Internet

Oh! One more thing?

If your videos need a little cleaning you might try Happy Otter Scripts and use the denoise and deinterlace tools.

https://tools4vegas.com/

John - a huge thank your video and sample project properties!!! I tried it tonight and it's a great help.

No doubt the file size is affected by the bit rate settings (max and avg bps) … Do you think that higher values than 12M and 8M as you suggested would make much of an impact on the video quality overall? Or would I just be increasing file size for no significant gain considering the source material of MiniDV tapes?

Thanks also for the Happy Otter link - some way cool stuff there … man there's a lot to learn!!!

@Gary-Vrckovnik

Doubling the bit rate will get you this improvement in video quality:

I can't tell you if the video quality difference is worth the storage and network difference.

My opinion is:

• You won't be able to support real time streaming to remote devices over the Internet.
• All your family members will have to buy external storage solutions for their smart devices.
• Jan Ozer will probably tell you that you are well into diminishing returns.

Keep in mind that your original 4:3 video has a pixel aspect ratio of 0,9091 and that the rendertemplate of John has a pixel aspect ratio of 1,000. Means the output aspect ratio is a little distorted. To avoid this change the project resolution height to 540 instead of 480 and render with Voukoder "Use project settings" rendertemplate.

Another point is, as your TV is perfect in upscaling, it is also perfect in deinterlacing. To keep original movement smoothness and picture quality I would never not let Vegas deinterlace, even as the new smart deinterlace does a better job.

@Gary-Vrckovnik

Like you, I've got lots of Hi8 and old DV footage. Since most of my family video productions have been a combination of video and stills, my preference has been to uprez to 720 at 60P. The key to uprezzing is de-interlacing which as 3POINT just mentioned isn't the best in Vegas. At the moment, the better de-interlacers are open-source--most notable QTGMC which is included within the HOS package (or you can do it yourself with other open source apps). Here are a couple of examples I did a few years ago long before HOS. The first is some Hi8 footage from the mid 90's rendered to mpeg-2 and the second some DV footage rendered to avc using the Sony codec. The quality of both could be improved quite a bit using x264 encoding. Additionally, uploading to Vimeo or YT doesn't help.

https://vimeo.com/414645512

@wwaag I don't think that 60i video gets benefits from uprez to 720p60, just your stills (probably with animation) will. How do you get 60p from 60i, by framedoubling, separated fields or smart resampling?

For viewing on a TV I always leave resolution, framerate, aspect ratio and field order as original as possible. For streaming or Internet use, it's another story.

@3POINT

The primary benefit of uprezzing is really for stills, the quality of which often exceed UHD. Downrezzing them to 480i or 576i really produces very poor quality in my view. So uprezzing video and downrezzing stills to 720P seemed a reasonable compromise. If all one wants to do is watch their original footage as shot, then keeping it in the original format is the easiest.

De-interlacing, on the other hand, is separate from uprezzing and has significant benefits on its own. Since many, if not most, users want to share their video "online", there is a need to convert to progressive. Unless one uses a bob de-interlacer that effectively doubles the framerate (60i to 60p), you lose half of your temporal resolution. The critical question becomes how the missing fields are estimated for each new frame. Considered by many in the Geek community to be the best available, here's a link to QTGMC for anyone interested. http://avisynth.nl/index.php/QTGMC

It's implementation in HOS is very basic--just supported presets. For anyone really interested in restoration, especially for Hi8 and DV footage, access to its advanced settings can be extremely beneficial. In such cases, use of another HOS tool, AviDub, becomes necessary which enables the user to write and execute his own Avisynth scripts inside of Vegas.

As said before, to view your interlaced SD video on your home TV, my opinion is still to leave resolution, framerate, aspect ratio and field order as original as possible. For online purpose it's a different story.

I appreciate your help and suggestions folks! So much to learn and re-learn from my many years away from this stuff ...

@wwaag … how did you add the faded video to get rid of the black bars on the side of your 4:3? - it looks great!

@3Point … where can I find the Voukoder "Use project settings" render template that you referred to?

I expect that I will be adding some still photos (taken from various digital cameras over the years) in addition to the 8 mm and MiniDV tape footage. Thus any additional suggestions on dealing with both and render templates that would yield good results would be most appreciated.

As @wwaag said, for combining DVfootage with still pictures, you better uprez to 720p. My advice was for watching DVfootage only at your (U)HDTV.

Voukoder is a (free) third party encoder which must be separately installed. The advantage of Voukoder is that it renders according your project settings with high quality, means you don't have to struggle with the render templates in Vegas. The Voukoder "Use project settings" fits them all.

Voukoder and the connector file for Vegas can be found here: https://www.voukoder.org/

After installation you will find Voukoder here:

Thank you 3Point.

Any suggestions on what size I should make my photos before bringing them into Vegas?

@Gary-Vrckovnik

"how did you add the faded video to get rid of the black bars on the side of your 4:3? - it looks great!"

Here's a link to an old thread with an explanation of how that effect is achieved. https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/conversion-of-video-from-4x3-to-16x9--89891/#ca534522

In a nutshell "First duplicate the track. On the lower track, crop to 16:9. Then lighten it (128 to 255). I then do a "freeze frame" for the first frame of each clip. This eliminates the distracting movement on the sides. And finally, I apply a bezier mask to the side bars so that there is a little blur between the main and background image and not a sharp distinct line. Human attention is drawn by movement and sharp edges so that a reduction of these in the sidebars will make it less distracting."

If you would like, I can probably upload a sample project with clips showing how to achieve the effect.