Render to M2T file - how?

Jim H wrote on 10/28/2006, 9:39 PM
So after owning my HC1 for almost a year now, I finally printed one of my short projects to tape and brought my camera upstairs and played the film on my 42" Sony HD Wega. Wow, that was sweet.

I knew the raw video was nice because I played it "once" through the camera at a friends house but never bothered doing it at home because the only real outlet I've used has been either viewing from PC, projecting on a screen from my laptop or dumping (and that's how it looks) to a DVD. All my projects have been created in 1440x1080 HD but I never rendered at anything higher than 800x450 for some reason - probably because the laptop I use to project them stuttered... I digress.

When I attempted to string a bunch of veg files together and print them to tape I discovered how LONG it takes to render one of these bad boys. I aborted the attempt when the clock said "hours" to render verses the "minutes" I'm used to because I needed to use the camera.

Is there a way to render a file to M2T without performing a print to tape and having the camera tied up? The print to tape feature won't work without the camera and I can't find an M2t option on the render menu.

Related, but different question: As I type this I'm rendering one of my projects at 1024x576 to see what that looks like on the PC.. and to see if it will play from my laptop. My annual cross country award dinner is coming up and it would be nice to show off these videos. I'm not sure what the max resolution is on these projectors but I think most of them do 1024x786 so this might work out.

Does anyone else project HD-based videos from PC? What's the best file to use?

Comments

Serena wrote on 10/28/2006, 10:06 PM
Rendering from Vegas you select the mpeg-2 codec for images and ac3 (dolby) for audio (separate rendering operations). These are then loaded into DVDA to prepare and burn the DVD. You make sure you select the appropriate template for image (eg. DVDA NTSC widescreen video stream). Select "do not letterbox" (option to that effect).

If you want higher definition to play from your laptop, you can render to wmv9 and be careful with max bit rate. When you select the w9 codec, check "custom" to check you've got the right options. Audio and image are rendered at same time.
options: Quality VBR (variable bir rate)
High Definition 1440 x 1080
pixel ratio 1.333
quality 100%

Bit Rate: as appropriate.

You can choose other HD formats and 720 will be fine for your purpose and decrease the necessary max bit rate (your laptop might not have the power to do 1080, but render a portion -- render loop only -- to check).
Jim H wrote on 10/28/2006, 10:18 PM
Thanks Serena. I'm OK with rendering to DVD from Vegas but the mpeg resolution sucks. I only mentioned DVD as one of the few options I have, but certainly not the best quality. If I'm going to project from a PC I can render to a much higher resolution right?

So the thrust of this thread is two fold. One, I've discovered that printing my projects back to tape allows me to play my videos at full HD from my camera. A limited option to home viewing for friends and family. I wish to pursue this further...

hence question #1... how do render to the M2T format "offline" and print to camera a bunch of videos from the hard drive.

Questin #2: My other best option for sharing with a larger audience is to play the videos from my laptop through a projector. I've been doing this for a few years now for the high school running teams. For some reason I've landed on this 800x450 file because it's 16/9 and it's better than SD and it plays well from my less powerful laptop and looks good with the projector. But I wonder if there is a better format to use with the computer and a typical projector? As I said, I'm just now rendering at 1024x576 to see how that goes. I believe the projector's max resolution is 1024x768 so this seems to be the best I can do... that is if the file size does choke my laptop.
Serena wrote on 10/28/2006, 10:26 PM
I've been editing my earlier reply, so that might now be a bit more to the point. Unless it's an old projector it will accept 1080i and display at whatever native resolution is installed -- you don't have to match.
Probably it will also play PAL, which is 576i and you can render that. I wouldn't render to less than 720, for otherwise you might as well use PAL.

EDIT: oops! Print to tape: haven't done that, so you need someone else to chime in. Generally not great to use the camera as a player (head wear and all that), but that also depends on how much use your camera gets.
Jim H wrote on 10/28/2006, 11:17 PM
Thanks again Serena your updated reply is right on target. My experiment with 1024x5576 (CBR 2pass) was a failure. It wouldn't even play back smooth on my workstation (Athlon x2 4800) and the quality seemed overly compressed.. (I thought 2 pass was supposed to increase quality yet this render was worse than a one pass at 800x450). I never tried VBR or the HD settings. I'm rendering again at the HD 720 setting using Quality VBR though the bit rate tab was ghosted out and would not allow any changes there for some reason. Could it be VBR is controlled by the software while CBR allows for adjustments? What would be considered a "good" bit rate and what should I target for the laptop?

Your insight into my projector resolution question was helpful... I always wondered about that.
Serena wrote on 10/29/2006, 12:10 AM
A few days agso ForumAdmin chimed in with a useful comment:
"For PAL HD: Start with the "5 Mbps HD 720-25p Video" for computer playback and then tweak to suit _after_ you check a render.

Preset quality setting for the 720-25p template is 90%- your first step might be to crank that to 100 if the quality of the preset isn't quite there for you. Rendering using best quality will help if you are scaling frames from other than 1280x 720 sources (as most people I expect are)

Note that some computers will have a hard time playing back smoothly with bitrates higher than 5Mbs- anything higher typically requires a monster machine."

On the thread

VBR chooses the bitrate to suit, whereas CBR you choose and it's fixed throughout. I render to 1080 (wmv9) and I see bitrates as high as 38MB/s (AMD x2 4800+).

edit: I'm using 25fps.
frazerb wrote on 10/29/2006, 4:35 AM
You can render to an m2t file. One of the mpeg templates will do that. I am not at the editing PC right now, so I can't tell you the exact one, but I think it is labeled HDV. The comment section of the preset will tell you that it produces an file with the m2t extension.

Windows Media Player will play an m2t file. If I recall correctly, the first time it gives a message that it may not be able to play the file, but if you tell it to try, it will play it. You can also set the file associations so that it plays m2t files.

Buddy
MH_Stevens wrote on 10/29/2006, 5:54 AM
Just render to HD1080-60i. It's in the drop-down render menu. When you select a HD render file you will see the file name suffix is .m2t

Michael
JJKizak wrote on 10/29/2006, 5:58 AM
It's HDV 1080i, not HD. HD wuill render to 1920 resolution.
JJK
fldave wrote on 10/29/2006, 6:27 AM
Yes, use the HDV 1080i template for MPEG2. I render them that way, then when I'm ready to print to tape, I use the rendered versions. With the rendering of effects already completed, it goes to tape much quicker.

Also, do not customize any of the HDV 1080i template settings when you do this.