Rendering HD?

Spectralis wrote on 8/14/2015, 12:16 AM
I really like the quality and size of Sony's HD MFX files but it's rarely compatible with any media players. What is an alternative, highly compatible and good quality HD format to use? There are so many different file formats in Vegas Pro 13 to render to that I still get confused about which one to use. I'm rendering a 24fps HD animation and want to play it using an HD media player that's connected via HDMI to a WXGA projector. I'm trying to get the best quality possible. Any advice appreciated.

Comments

john_dennis wrote on 8/14/2015, 1:11 AM
I render elementary streams using the Mainconcept AVC/MVC Blu-ray 25 mbps template, Dolby Pro AC3 and/or LPCM. I combine the elementary streams to .m2ts using tsMuxer. These files play on all my TV sets, my Blu-ray players and they stream from Windows Media Player using DLNA. (WMP won't stream LPCM so I usually mux AC3 as the first audio track if I include LPCM. Sometimes I want uncompressed audio in spite of the fact that I can no longer hear.)

I use Handbrake for youtube uploads and have experimented with extremely high bit rates but I generally feel that at high bit rates all the AVC encoders do an acceptable job.

I may be the only person in the known universe that doesn't favor MP4, but for a long time I've used Blu-ray players as my DLNA rendering devices and they certainly know how to handle the correct video and audio codecs in an .m2ts wrapper.
balazer wrote on 8/14/2015, 2:48 AM
XAVC S. That's h.264 video and PCM audio in an .MP4 file, at 50 Mbps. (for 1080p) Fast and reliable one-pass rendering. Easily played.
musicvid10 wrote on 8/14/2015, 6:18 AM
Program streams (mp4) play better on software players than Transport streams (ts, m2ts, m2t, etc.). Lower overhead means fewer glitches.

Hardware players should handle either, assuming compatible formats.

wwaag wrote on 8/14/2015, 10:27 AM
+1 XAVC S. Good intermediate. Plays well.

AKA the HappyOtter at https://tools4vegas.com/. System 1: Intel i7-8700k with HD 630 graphics plus an Nvidia RTX4070 graphics card. System 2: Intel i7-3770k with HD 4000 graphics plus an AMD RX550 graphics card. System 3: Laptop. Dell Inspiron Plus 16. Intel i7-11800H, Intel Graphics. Current cameras include Panasonic FZ2500, GoPro Hero11 and Hero8 Black plus a myriad of smartPhone, pocket cameras, video cameras and film cameras going back to the original Nikon S.

john_dennis wrote on 8/15/2015, 2:10 PM
"[I]I'm rendering a 24fps HD animation and want to play it using an HD media player that's connected via HDMI to a WXGA projector. I'm trying to get the best quality possible.[/I]"

As the stated objective was to play using an HD media player, I ran some tests on the XAVC-S rendered output. Neither of my Sony Blu-ray players (BDP-X58, BDP-S790 ) are able to play it from a USB drive or streamed from Windows Media Player 12. My TV (XBR-49X850C, ) makes a gallant attempt but is inconsistent.

I had high hopes for XAVC-S since much of my equipment is manufactured by Sony and I'm currently salivating over the RX10ii camera which uses the codec ([I]Correction: container[/I]). My current camera records to MOV and none of my devices play the video from the camera card. This is a big annoyance when my wife wants to see what I shot and I tell her I have to do some rendering.

I haven't looked at other hardware Media players since I bought a first generation Western Digital Media Player. Anybody want one?
John_Cline wrote on 8/15/2015, 3:27 PM
John, XAVC-S is a container not a codec, it uses h.264 video encoding. Regarding your current camera that records to MOV, it is possible that if you simply change the extension to .MP4, it will play in your media players without rendering.
wwaag wrote on 8/15/2015, 3:49 PM
John,

I stream XAVC-S 1080 60P to my Blu-ray Player (BDP BX-510-2013 model) without any problem. I have an older BDP-S590, probably the same year as your S790, that will not play 1080 60P MP4 files. The BX-510 also provides chapter support for MKV which I really like. Another potential problem is the use of Windows Media Player as your streamer. For one thing, it does not recognize MKV files. I use something called TwonkyServer--weird name but it works well.

wwaag

AKA the HappyOtter at https://tools4vegas.com/. System 1: Intel i7-8700k with HD 630 graphics plus an Nvidia RTX4070 graphics card. System 2: Intel i7-3770k with HD 4000 graphics plus an AMD RX550 graphics card. System 3: Laptop. Dell Inspiron Plus 16. Intel i7-11800H, Intel Graphics. Current cameras include Panasonic FZ2500, GoPro Hero11 and Hero8 Black plus a myriad of smartPhone, pocket cameras, video cameras and film cameras going back to the original Nikon S.

john_dennis wrote on 8/15/2015, 8:47 PM
"[I]...XAVC-S is a container not a codec...[/I]"

I'll put a dollar in the Brain Fart Jar.

"[I]... if you simply change the extension to .MP4, it will play in your media players without rendering.[/I]"

I changed the extension of a MOV to MP4 and it worked on the Sony BDP-S790 Blu-ray player but not the TV. The BDP BX58 played the renamed MOV video but stumbled on the PCM audio.

@wwaag

I've tried other DLNA server applications but, to date, I've been too lazy to deal with another application since AVC and AC3 in an .m2ts wrapper has always seemed to work in my situation. In the long run we're all dead, but the ones of us that remain experience changes in tastes and preferences. To paraphrase John Maynard Keynes.
balazer wrote on 8/16/2015, 2:37 PM
XAVC S is neither a container nor a codec. It's a video and audio format specification. It specifies the video encoding, the audio encoding, and the container format.

Sorry you had trouble playing XAVC S. It is fairly widely supported, but the bit rate is high and not all hardware players can handle such a high bit rate. Also some players might be expecting AAC audio instead of PCM, which is less common in MP4 files.

You might try Sony AVC at 10-20 Mbps.
john_dennis wrote on 8/16/2015, 4:13 PM
I'm not convinced that the high bit rate is the only issue. Both the Blu-ray players play a high bit rate AVC-PCM combination like the following with no problems. The TV plays video but no audio. All files from local disk.

Bit Rate Graph Here

ID : 1 (0x1)
Complete name : C:\Users\John\Desktop\Mainconcept 50mbps.m2ts
Format : BDAV
Format/Info : Blu-ray Video
File size : 726 MiB
Duration : 1mn 57s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 51.9 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 35.5 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L5.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=3, N=15
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 1mn 57s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 48.3 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 50.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.972
Stream size : 676 MiB (93%)
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : PCM
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Format settings, Sign : Signed
Muxing mode : Blu-ray
Codec ID : 128
Duration : 1mn 57s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 21.5 MiB (3%)
Language : English

"[I]You might try Sony AVC at 10-20 Mbps.[/I]"

I don't currently want or need to lower the bit rate. Just consider it one of my extravagances. The thing that I find disturbing is that I have a Sony XBR 4K TV that is about a year old and I'm having trouble playing a recent video file specification from Sony. This is in spite of how much I would like for the situation to be different.
astar wrote on 8/16/2015, 5:33 PM
VLC player in either 32-bit or 64-bit versions will playback .mxf files. VLC will not playback HDCAM.

"Sony RAW Viewer" conversion utility and free download plays HDCAM with GPU playback and full color space support. The player also has an amazing RGB parade, that allows crosshair selection, and determination of out of range levels. Render to HDCAM SR or SR-lite in 32bit-color mode, assuming your animation is rendered as image sequence with 10-16-bit color files like EXR, TIF, DPX.

Vegas can always be used as the player.

Of course there are the new Catalyst apps that will playback .MXF files.

Then just Duplicate your display to the HDMI, and change the windows sound output to HDMI.

You should be set.