Render questions

Galeng wrote on 9/20/2005, 8:32 AM

Hi all,

I've got a couple more questions regarding rendering. I film dog agility trials for our local agility club and put the finished clips on an authored DVD. I use a GL2 and sometimes a single CCD Canon Optura.

The AVIs on the Vegas timeline look fine. After trimming, each clip is only about 1 minute long. I then render each one to an mpeg2 file in Vegas 5. Last night I did about 8 of these one minute clips. As a test I did not add anything special to the clips except a .5 sec fade in and fade out. No text or anything else. I have no problems with the associated sound of each clip so won't talk about that.

For the render setting, I use the mainconcept encoder, set to best quality, with CBR set at 8,000. I put those clips in DVD Workshop and I can tell it is not doing anything to the clips as it completes the DVD authoring really quickly. Also authored using DVDA3 with the same results.

But the results aren't that great. If a handler and dog are not in motion then it's ok. But when they are running the course there is a certain amount of pixelation around them and shows up very clearly if you pause the play back.

So, do I need to shoot different?
Maybe faster shutter speed to begin with?
Render different?
VBR?
2 pass?
Let DVD Workshop or DVDA do the conversion?

Thanks for your suggestions.

Galen

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 9/20/2005, 9:03 AM

First, don't set to best, use Good.
Second, work with VBR, even though CBR shouldn't be causing the pixelation.
Third, render to the DVDA stream, and use THAT in DVD Workshop or Architect. Render the accompanying AC3

DON'T let Workshop encode anything. It's a very weak encoder, even though it's Main Concept, there is a lot of pre-processing going on inside Vegas, which is why Vegas is a better encoding tool than say....DVD Architect.

filmy wrote on 9/20/2005, 9:07 AM

Tyr a render with one of the DVD-A presets and if you change anything just click on "two pass". See if that changes your output.

For some reason, and I really do not know why, when I was first playing around with the output the pre-set for "best" somehow looked worse than any of the the DVD-A pre-sets.

One word though - DVDWS may not take the file done with the DVD-A preset. I have not used DVDWS 2 in a while but I know when I was toying with it it had some issues with Vegas rendered MPEG's. I know there have been updates since than as well as updates to vegas - so maybe it doesn't matter anymore.

EDIT - Yeah, Spot posted the same time I was. What he said too.

rs170a wrote on 9/20/2005, 9:15 AM

In addition to the suggestions from DSE & filmy, I'd experiment with a faster shutter speed. Drawbacks here are that 1) you need more light for the same iris opening (fairly easy if you're shooting outdoors) and 2) because of the higher speed, you may miss a portion of the action. The resulting clarity should make up for it though. For example, I did some shooting at the Detroit Gran Prix a number of years ago. Scenes shot at normal shutter speed were extremely blurry as expected. When I cranked it up to 1/2000, I could count the tire treads :-)

Mike

Galeng wrote on 9/20/2005, 10:06 AM

Thanks for your suggestions. I will try doing some rendering this evening to see if I can get better results.

I'll also try filming at higher shutter speeds out on the practice field. Hopefully, I can get these clips to look the way they should.

Thanks again.

Galen