Do a Search "johnmeyer" (you'll find older posts/comments like the one in the blue link from him on this forum and newer ones elsewhere).

@Noggle
You cannot expect the rendered result would look any better than your VHS source. Garbage in – Garbage out.

Also, your source video likely is interlaced and you may deinterlace while rendering. Thus I would recommend to set the Vegas Pro project property "Deinterlace Methode" to "Interpolate Fields".

Then in the render window select "Magix AVC/AAC", start from an internet template and customize it in the way you set the frame size to 786 x 576 (if your source is 4:3), frame rate to 25 fps, field to "None", variable bitrate maximum to 24 Mbit/s, average bitrate to 18 Mbit/s, enconding quality to 7.

There should be no noticeable quality difference to the source video in the end.

Maybe also want to edit it?

First, use a proper project template according to the intended output, 25p or 50i.

I'd use 768x576 resolution with a square PAR.

If you want to keep interlaced, PAL is lower field first.

So, I'd setup my project similar:

And then I'd create a render template similar:

Of course you can tweak the settings. If you think progressive is good as well, you can set up everything as progressive.

@Marco. was quicker. Basically I said the same, I'd just add that for SD bitrate about 3Mbps should be OK. And I like Sony AVC better, but that's just my habit. No ned to stick with it :)

Why are you trying to do this with Vegas?
Vegas has the goal to edit files, for only transferring to another format use another program , like the free Handbrake.

Easy to answer ..... Of course, I use Vegas for editing but, yes, it also renders to other formats. Besides which, each PAL/VHS file will be treated with Vegas clean-up fx both for video and audio. Plus colur adjustment and much more.

I've tried Handbrake and only got truly dreadful results. So far

Do a Search "johnmeyer" (you'll find older posts/comments like the one in the blue link from him on this forum and newer ones elsewhere).

Thanks.

@Noggle
You cannot expect the rendered result would look any better than your VHS source. Garbage in – Garbage out.

Also, your source video likely is interlaced and you may deinterlace while rendering. Thus I would recommend to set the Vegas Pro project property "Deinterlace Methode" to "Interpolate Fields".

Then in the render window select "Magix AVC/AAC", start from an internet template and customize it in the way you set the frame size to 786 x 576 (if your source is 4:3), frame rate to 25 fps, field to "None", variable bitrate maximum to 24 Mbit/s, average bitrate to 18 Mbit/s, enconding quality to 7.

There should be no noticeable quality difference to the source video in the end.

"You cannot expect the rendered result would look any better than your VHS source." - Of course. And I didn't suggest that I wanted to. I would at least like to get at least close to the garbage I'm putting in. So far, it's getting worse.

"Also, your source video likely is interlaced and you may deinterlace while rendering." - I captured these tapes a few years ago but have been overseas and back and am just starting up again. They may already be deinterlaced but I will check.

"Interpolate Fields".- That's what I've used in the past.

"start from an internet template and customize it in the way you set the frame size to 786 x 576 (if your source is 4:3), frame rate to 25 fps, field to "None", variable bitrate maximum to 24 Mbit/s, average bitrate to 18 Mbit/s, enconding quality to 7." - Thanks for all that. It looks like just what I'm after.

I forgot to ask about the main point: As you already captured the VHS tapes to a digital video – What are the properties of your captured clips (you may use the tool MediaInfo to analyse)?

Maybe also want to edit it?

First, use a proper project template according to the intended output, 25p or 50i.

I'd use 768x576 resolution with a square PAR.

If you want to keep interlaced, PAL is lower field first.

So, I'd setup my project similar:

And then I'd create a render template similar:

Of course you can tweak the settings. If you think progressive is good as well, you can set up everything as progressive.

@Marco. was quicker. Basically I said the same, I'd just add that for SD bitrate about 3Mbps should be OK. And I like Sony AVC better, but that's just my habit. No ned to stick with it :)

Thanks for all that. Yes, I will certainly be doing much editing and processing before rendering. Between you and Marco I may have enough to get the job done. It doesn't have to be prefect as it's for family archives only but I would still want to do the best I can.

When I processed my old SD PAL footage I tried a few options and decided to do bob-deinterlace (so 50p at the end) + upscale + optional deshake before editing in Vegas. Used SimpleSlugUpscale avisynth script for this + my own helper script (original example + automatically processed file can be found on the page).

When I processed my old SD PAL footage I tried a few options and decided to do bob-deinterlace (so 50p at the end) + optional upscale before editing in Vegas. Used SimpleSlugUpscale avisynth script for this + my own helper script (original example + processed file can be found on the page).

Thanks. I'll check that out.

Its probably already saved as progressive. When I did my PAL SD editing in Vegas I set the project properties to 720x576, the same as what I had captured. Just sometimes there were pixel aspect ratio issues, but on the whole as best I remember I set it to 1.0296.

Very occasionally when things got tricky and some source material within the same project had slightly different aspect ratios, captured at different times probably, I found that the one size didn’t fit all i.e. project properties settings. The simplest way out of that was to set/change say one of the source medias properties in project media.

Silly question: How were the files captured? What are their Properties reported by MediaInfo?

Your experience with Handbrake indicates a fundamental workflow problem. Exactly what is "dreadful" about them? Be specific.

I forgot to ask about the main point: As you already captured the VHS tapes to a digital video – What are the properties of your captured clips (you may use the tool MediaInfo to analyse)?

The parameters of my VHS to AVI videos:

Format                                   : AVI
Format/Info                            : Audio Video Interleave
Commercial name                 : DV
Format profile                        : OpenDML
File size                                : 3.13 GiB
Duration                                 : 14 min 42 s
Overall bit rate mode             : Constant
Overall bit rate                       : 30.4 Mb/s
Codec ID                               : dvsd
Codec ID/Hint                        : Sony
Duration                                 : 14 min 42 s
Bit rate mode                         : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 24.4 Mb/s
Encoded bit rate                    : 28.8 Mb/s
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio               : 4:3
Frame rate mode                   : Constant
Frame rate                             : 25.000 FPS
Standard                                : PAL
Color space                           : YUV
Chroma subsampling            : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                              : Interlaced
Scan order                            : Bottom Field First
Compression mode              : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                : 2.357

I know that the format is lossy but that has never bothered me in the past, just that, when rendering to MP4 it gets hepas more lossy. I will also report back when I have tried all the suggestions here.

Silly question: How were the files captured? What are their Properties reported by MediaInfo?

Your experience with Handbrake indicates a fundamental workflow problem. Exactly what is "dreadful" about them? Be specific.

Silly question: How were the files captured? What are their Properties reported by MediaInfo?

Your experience with Handbrake indicates a fundamental workflow problem. Exactly what is "dreadful" about them? Be specific.

 

"How were the files captured?" - No need to know. I'm quite happy with the capture. There were no problems. Also, I'm not expecting 'great things' by starting with VHS. See above remarks on that. It's the rendering that has failed. I did the capture about 5 years ago but after that was then living overseas for a while. I usually run my VHS player through my Canon HV30 video camera and then into a firewire port, capturing with Vegas. The correct camera settings for the HV30 were all carefully adjusted for the procedure. I haven't captured any more tapes since then so the specifics are out-of-sight, out-of-mind now.

What are their Properties reported by MediaInfo? See above report. Nothing unusual there, just a typical PAL AVI file.

"Your experience with Handbrake indicates a fundamental workflow problem" - Of course. I need more experience with it. I came here because Vegas has always been good with in the past with MP4s but not this time.

"Exactly what is "dreadful" about them?" - I used two runs of Potplayer and stopped the original avi (only a minute long demo) and the new MP4 at the same place and then studied the frames. The colours were wrong on the MP4. It was also more hazy and indistinct. Otherwise, I'm not an expert to be able to notice and name all the technical flaws. It just didn't look right so that's why I made the comparisons.

Use the Render Plus tool of Happy Otter Scripts. I always use here in old SD videos files of some clients. Render Plus, among other things, can deinterlace and convert to mp4 without loss of quality and results have always been quite satisfactory.

Download the Beta for free at this link: https://tools4vegas.com/

Good luck as your work!

Without the information requested, my experience is of no use to you. There is no such thing as a "typical PAL AVI file," since AVI may contain any of thousands of codec combinations. The statement, "The colours were wrong on the MP4" is a dead ringer for a mis-captured AVI. But since you already know everything about it, best of luck.

I don't see any difference in quality and color between my captured PAL DVtapes, which is DV-AVI the same format as your captured VHStapes with the aim of your Camera through firewire, when I use following settings (cannot make a screenshot at the moment) for the Magix AVC rendertemplate: framesize: 768x576, profile: main, Framerate: 25 fps, Field Order: Upper Field First, PAR: 1,0, Variable Bitrate, Max 8000 bps, Average 4000 bps.

The project settings are just the one Vegas automatically detects when you import the first PAL DV-AVI clip, 4:3 720x576i50.

I never convert interlaced to progressive when showing on TV, interlaced looks always better on a TV than deinterlaced, in spite of which method is used for deinterlacing. Despite PAL DV-AVI has a bottom field first field order, I use upper field first (that's why I made it bold), which gives a much better result (why?, I cannot explain).

"There is no such thing as a "typical PAL AVI file," - Well, there is to me ..... It's whatever Vegas creates when I download a video from a camera or a tape deck. It was initially a DV file until I eventually bought a better camera.

"AVI may contain any of thousands of codec combinations." - Yep, as does any wrapper.

"But since you already know everything about it" - That's not fair. The fact that that is patently untrue is why I came here for help in the first place.