https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-why-does-my-rendered-video-look-bad-troubleshooting-quality--103361/

and then, importantly,

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-can-i-improve-the-quality-of-my-avc-h-264-renders--104642/

Lovely video by the way. Deserves a lot of bit rate!

Thanks - I did another render last night, set the max bitrate at 50Mbps and average at 28Mbps, turned on two pass and disabled resampling for the clips that showed the pixelation on the water surface, also turned off GPU acceleration. It tool forever to render and the result was a lot better but there was still pixelation on the water surface and at one point on a large rock surface when going up the river.

I'm trying it again now with both bitrates doubled again, turned off resampling for all the clips in the timeline but turned off 2 pass this time. I'll see what happens.

Sure renders slow in any case, I was expecting waaay faster renders with this new i7 6800 six core processor and 8GB AMB graphics card - it is faster than my old Dell i7 with 1GB card, but not in any great orders of magnitude. Right now it's showing about 2 hours for this 7 minute clip.

You might try Vegas2Handbrake (Section 4c in Nick's link). It usually uses the cores at or near 100% and produces equal or better output than the render options in Vegas Pro, particularly at very low bit rates.

I would also suggest unchecking those two "allow source adjust..." checkboxes,  and lower the  "slices" to one.   Just render the problem section to test.

I would also suggest unchecking those two "allow source adjust..." checkboxes

I second that.

Thanks again - I tried a couple of things. First I installed the H264 codec as described in this video, rendered my video as avi with the codec and it worked good, smaller file size, faster rendering and no artifacts.

Then I did the Vegas2Handbrake and it also worked well, but I did notice slight artifacting (pixelizing) on some parts, but perhaps tweaking the handbrake settings more would correct that. The avi file with the H264 was about 1.1 GB for the video after I trimmed it down to 6 minutes, the Vegas2Handbrake was about 875MB

Here is an interesting article that I think Nick Hope brought to the forum quite a while ago. The subject deals with the number of bits required for streaming as a function of the pixel dimensions. It can be used as background for a better understanding of bit rate.

In Handbrake, you could set the target bit rate but given that your first encodes were a little shy of a reasonable number of bits for the pixel dimensions and the detail in the video, it's probably better to learn about the Constant Quality settings. Here is a video that shows the output parameters that Handbrake produces with UHD video given different CQ values.

Note that (if things haven't changed considerably) x264vfw and Vegas2Handbrake are fundamentally using the x264 same codec under the hood and the equivalent settings should have the same effect. They're just wrapping the video in different containers. If you installed the latest versions of both today I'm not sure which would use the more recent version of x264. x264vfw used to use a pretty old version of x264 and was dismissed as a serious option when some of us were intensively testing H.264 codecs a few years ago (there were other issues with it that I don't recall right now). But it may well be a more valid option these days. If it does what you want (e.g. YouTube accepts it) then I see no reason not to use it. It's certainly convenient to render to from Vegas. When I'm back on a real computer I'll take a look at the change history and test out the latest versions of both.

As for bitrate, I just use constant quality and choose a crf value between 18 and 20 for all my YouTube uploads. If you're self-hosting a file or using a service that doesn't re-encode then it's more important not to be excessive with the bit rate and the Ben Waggoner x0.75 guideline in the article John linked to is worth bearing in mind.

AVI container does not support anything but basic b-frames afaik.

That puts x264vfw quite a bit lower on the compression vs quality axis.

OP should try h265 / hevc. Long encoded, I know ...

OP should try h265 / hevc. Long encoded, I know ...

Not supported for YouTube upload last time I checked, about a month ago.

I'll need to do some more experimenting and reading up on the x264 when I get time later. Another issue that came up is when I try to import the rendered avi file to Resolve 12.5 for colour correction the program doesn't see avi files.

I'm not really up to speed on how the various 264 codecs work withing resolve, I was puzzled why the one I installed rendered in the avi option, but it did a good job so I thought I was good to go.

If this file is making a round-trip to Resolve for color correcting before the final render for delivery or local viewing, then keep the file visually or mathmatically lossless. Others will have specific wrapper/codec preferences for types that work well with Resolve, but Magic and UT are mention a lot.

Deep background.

Guess it won't matter much for YT, it's going to pixelate moving water anyway.

That's often been my experience.

You might try Vegas2Handbrake (Section 4c in Nick's link). It usually uses the cores at or near 100% and produces equal or better output than the render options in Vegas Pro, particularly at very low bit rates.

I tried that, went through all the instructions. But when I finally clicked Send2Handbrake, I get an error message, 0x80131600 (message missing).

When I then click on details, it says,

C:\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 14.0\Script Menu\frameserve_scripts\Send2HandBrake.js(19) : Variable 'Timecode' has not been declared
C:\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 14.0\Script Menu\frameserve_scripts\Send2HandBrake.js(52) : Variable 'RenderStatus' has not been declared
 

So, what now? Of course, it might be the script is trying to import Sony.Vegas, which was probably changed in this version (14). Does anybody know to what?

EDIT: Never mind, I noticed the scripting FAQ, so the script is now working, but just running in circles because for some reason it cannot find the frame server.

Read this Vegas Pro 14 related post from Marco. Then Search for Marco's comments on various threads related to the Vegas2Handbrake set of scripts.

Thanks, john_dennis. Unfortunately, I cannot even do the first step he says. I don’t have (and have never had) Vegas 13 (I went straight from 12 to 14), so I cannot copy any config file from 13 to 14.

...I don’t have (and have never had) Vegas 13 (I went straight from 12 to 14), so I cannot copy any config file from 13 to 14.

My C:\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 14.0\Frameserver.x64.fio2007-config file simply contains this:

[FileIO Plug-Ins]
frameserver=C:\Program Files (x86)\DebugMode\FrameServer15\dfscVegasV264Out.dll

I have read on this forum that options can be chosen when installing Frameserver to make it possible to install for VP14 even if you don't have a previous version of Vegas Pro, but I haven't tried that myself.

Thanks, Nick, I already got it to work (and mentioned it in the Frameserver thread). It created the config file in the Vegas directory on its own, so there was no need to copy anything anywhere.

I got it to work after I decided to go through these instructions a second time, meticulously in the exact order listed, plus a thing not mentioned there, but one I saw somewhere searching the web, when it asked me where to install the Vegas DLL, instead of accepting the default, I told it (the Frameserver installer) to install it in the Vegas Pro 14 directory.

I then opened Vegas Pro 14, loaded a project, went to Render As, chose the Frameserver, edited it to use RGB32, then quit it after a while (all that is mentioned in the instructions linked to above). That was when the frameserver created the config file in the Vegas Pro 14 directory.

After that, everything works very nicely. And best of all, it allows me to create mp4 animations in true film-style 24 fps without changing it to the non-film 23.xxx, which all the MP4 codecs included in Vegas do.

Glad you got it working.

And best of all, it allows me to create mp4 animations in true film-style 24 fps without changing it to the non-film 23.xxx, which all the MP4 codecs included in Vegas do.

You can render true 24.000fps AVC/MP4 in both the Sony and MainConcept AVC encoders. I just tried it and verified with MediaInfo.

Well, somehow you can, but no I can’t render true 24 fps with either of them. I tried numerous times. It automatically changes it to 23.xxx and does not allow me to type anything else in. And MediaInfo confirms it.

It is one of the two things about Vegas that annoy me. The other is that despite me having told it numerous times to start new projects with View transform Off (picture 1), the next time I start a new project it forces some ridiculous ACES RRT on me and I have to manually turn it off (picture 2). Every single time! It really annoys me.

Picture 1:

Picture 2:

...It is one of the two things about Vegas that annoy me...

Both strange issues. What build are you using?