Somebody Please Help Me

3rdrealmmedia wrote on 9/14/2004, 1:14 AM
I edited a project in Vegas 4.0, I rendered it as a DVD NTSC file in mpeg2 format.
I used a 3rd Party DVD authoring program.
It looks pixelised. It simply does not have that clear DVD quality look to it.

What is the best method to getting a DVD quality production on DVD?

Should I save it as an unrendered AVI file, then bring it to the DVD authoring program (DVDA or other) which will encode it as Mpeg2 anyways?

Please help.

-Mike

Comments

mbryant wrote on 9/14/2004, 5:31 AM
Quality of the DVD encoding will vary depending on the encoder used, and the bitrate used.

The Main Concept encoder Vegas uses is pretty good, so genenrally encoding to mpeg in Vegas would be what I recommend.

How long is the video?

The link below will help calculate the bit rate. Unless the video is less than an hour I suggest using VBR. If you use the DVDA templates, DVDA will not re-encode the video.

Bitrate Calculator

Mark
bStro wrote on 9/14/2004, 7:52 AM
What format was the original source that you brought into Vegas-- AVI, MPEG2, something else? What size was it? What kind of editing did you do -- just cuts, or did you add effects? If the latter, what kind of effects? Was the original file "DVD quality"?

What bitrate did you use when creating the MPEG2 file? Default settings or did you change some? How does the resulting MPEG2 file look before you burn the DVD? Does it look acceptable to you?

Rob
johnmeyer wrote on 9/14/2004, 9:29 AM
Make sure you use the correct MPEG template. Sony inexplicably uses terrible quality settings for the "Default Template." If that is the template you used, you will get bad quality. REALLY BAD quality.

Instead, if you are rendering for DVD Architect, then click on File -> Render As, and choose "MainConcept MPEG-2" for the Save As Type, and "DVD Architect NTSC video stream" for the template (or choose PAL if you are in Europe).

If you change the templates, and use the Custom button, make sure the "Video Quality" slider is all the way to the right (High - 31).

Let us know if this was the cause of the problem.
3rdrealmmedia wrote on 9/14/2004, 12:06 PM
The original source was from DV tape, fire-wired tp my hard drive as AVI files. I can't tell you specific file sizes exactly. The editing style was mostly cuts, fades, and a few transitions.

The original file was DVD Quality, left @ the Main Concept Mpg2 default settings for NTSC DVD. The resulting file looks acceptable to me.

I noticed though though that for some reason I could not customise the Main Concept Mpeg 2 codec. When I click the custom button, it does not function.
3rdrealmmedia wrote on 9/14/2004, 12:12 PM
One thing I noticed is that when I press the "custom" button, it does not function for the Main Concept plugin, but for every other codec, it does function.

Also wouldn't "DVD Architect Video Stream" just be video and not audio?
bStro wrote on 9/14/2004, 1:21 PM
One thing I noticed is that when I press the "custom" button, it does not function for the Main Concept plugin

Read both of jetdv's posts in this thread and see if that helps.

Also wouldn't "DVD Architect Video Stream" just be video and not audio?

Correct. You should then render an audio stream by using the AC3 format / template. If you're using DVD Architect, and gave it an MPEG with both video and audio, it would spend time "ripping" the audio from the video and converting it to AC3, anyhow, so you may as well do that in Vegas ahead of time.

Rob
DGrob wrote on 9/15/2004, 2:34 PM
If you used a 3rd party authoring program, it's possible your file was re-encoded (sort of an mpeg2 of an mpeg2). Nero will do this everytime (at least it has with me). Try rendering a .avi and letting the authoring program do the mpeg. Darryl