render settings

randib wrote on 12/21/2004, 12:52 PM

have tried so many different settings in render, not sure what is best ? all basic here with no additional software, just movie studio4.0 and dvd 2.0. what are the best settings and file types to achieve the best picture quality with vegas movie studio 4.0a ? like ntsc standard or ntsc dv ? what about the advanced render buttons? cant find any info on these as far as what these settings may or may not do ? any help would be great. thanks randi.

Comments

gogiants wrote on 12/21/2004, 1:26 PM

The answer, of course, is it depends!

I'm guessing that this post is related to your effort to get rid of the jitters in your stills. If you're just trying to follow the suggestion in that thread, I'm guessing you'll want to get to the make movie wizard, choose Advanced Render, then choose "Custom" then go to the video tab (on the bottom). For "Field order" choose None (progressive scan). What's not clear to me is if this will make a difference on a TV that is not progressive scan itself. Most DVD players are progressive scan, but my understanding is the TV has to support it as well. (Most newer TVs do.)

If your question is more general then covering all the options would be a long discussion. My personal experience is that if you focus on using a "workflow" that does not force any re-encoding then the other settings will likely not make a huge difference, with the possible exception of bit rate in your final DVD creation.

Where did you see "NTSC standard" vs. "NTSC DV"? I didn't see it in the choices for MPEG-2 or for AVI, but maybe I missed something!

randib wrote on 12/21/2004, 3:24 PM

thanks for all your help gogiants, i do value your opinion. for now i gave up on the stills. had to push this through in time for x-mas. looked into virtualdub, but seems to complex for a beginner. just trying to get best video quality for dvd on tv's. seemed like i rendered once as an avi but then dvd errored and said did not support such file, i would click send to dvd and it would error. since then i rendered in main concept mpeg2, seemed to loose a lot of quality this way.. the ntsc-standard,dv,cropped,widescreen,video cd, settings are in (file-project properties-general-template drop down box). this might be where i goof it all up, just do not know ?? what about "codepro" software, not positive on the correct name. claims to take video files and convert to many different formats, similar to what audacity can do with audio files. like maybe turning an avi into mpeg4 to work in movie studio. sony says mpeg4 will work if you have a driver that supports it. wouldn't the picture be far superior to mpeg2 ? just guessing here ?

gogiants wrote on 12/21/2004, 9:01 PM

The key thing to remember if your ultimate target is DVD is that, by definition, DVD will be MPEG-2. DVD players are basically just MPEG-2 decoders when you get down to it! So, MPEG-4 won't be of any use if your target is DVD; in fact, going to MPEG-4, then editing, then going to DVD would likely produce a big mess.

So, you'll want to do all of your editing in a format that is good for editing, namely AVI whenever possible. Render all of your transitions, effects and other products of editing to AVI as well.

When it comes time to create your DVD, take your finished AVI and use the "File -> Optimize DVD" to set the bitrate as high as you can while still fitting everything on one DVD.

Programs like Codepro (or whatever it's called) will simply do the same sort of re-coding that Movie Studio would do. Most mere mortals won't notice any difference in quality versus what you'd see with Movie Studio.

For what it's worth, tne thing I did notice is that "NTSC Standard" is 720x486, whereas NTSC DV is 720x480, which matches the MPEG-2 template for DVD. So, it seems to make sense to use "NTSC DV" whenever possible.

All of which brings us back to this: You mentioned your "DVD errored" when trying to use an AVI file. Was the AVI file produced by Movie Studio? What program gave you the error (DVD Arch Studio, a DVD burner program, something else?)

randib wrote on 12/22/2004, 5:29 AM

thanks again gogiants !! will stick with mpeg-2 and avi render settings using ntsc-dv template. will be starting new movie soon. excited about getting started. my error came up in dvd arc., and yes rendered in movie studio. i tried so many different settings to improve my picture quality, probably just goofed my settings when i sent avi to dvd arc. will try again after the holidays. love this forum-learned more here than any book or manual i have seen. keep up the great suggestions, we are listening ...you guys ROCK !!