First off, I'd just like to say this isn't yet another "complaining" thread. On the whole, I've been very happy with Vegas since I started using it late last year (w/ VP8). I haven't really encountered any of the bugs people here report, maybe because up 'til now I've been working mainly with SD material and the majority of the glitches seem to be with AVCHD (think I'll avoid this one in favour of HDV, and hopefully AVC-Intra in the future when it's affordable, lol).
Anyway, I have been looking more into starting to edit HD recently, and part of that has been examining how Vegas is as far as encoding content for delivery on Blu-Ray, or just as files/etc.
As far as I can tell, the only real solution in Vegas at the moment for all-around encoding to Blu-Ray is the MainConcept MPEG-2 plug-in. While it does seem to give me good results when I go in and fiddle with the default profiles, I'd really prefer using H.264/AVC; as that seems to be the codec of choice for pretty much all commercial Blu-Ray discs.
I realize the Sony AVC option is there, but it seems limited in the extreme. Although you can create an m2ts file using it, selecting this apparently limits your choice of framerate to 29.970 or 25.000 (what if I wanted 23.976, which I did the last time I tried using it? If you output as an MP4, it seems to be possible, but why can't you have a m2ts with that framerate?... will BD authoring programs accept an MP4 file and wrap in a transport stream themselves?). The MPEG-2 plug-in, at least, has a 24p option in the HD profiles. Admittedly, you seem to be able to get all the options if you go with an *.avc file, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with that type of file. Will DVDA, or Encore accept it? Even then, though, the Sony AVC codec seems to give less-than-stellar results; in fact I think I prefer the MainConcept MPEG-2 HD encodes.
I'd hoped the Mainconcept AVC plug-in would have more options, akin to its MPEG-2 predecessor; however the one included with Vegas is even more limited than the Sony AVC plug-in... lacking even the system tab so you can choose to create a transport stream instead of an *.mp4 file.
And then there's VC-1. I'd still rather use AVC, but I'd also probably choose VC-1 before MPEG-2. The Blu-Ray standard allows for VC-1 encoded material in an m2ts wrapper; yet I don't see this option in Vegas, and I'm not sure why. Correct me if I'm wrong, but VC-1 is essentially just WMV9 Advanced Profile; and Vegas seems to have an excellent implementation of this built-in. It seems to have a full range of framerate choice (or you can type in your own), all the way up to 1920x1080. And the quality seems to be impressive, from the few tests I've done so far.
So why don't we have the option in Vegas to wrap the WMV-encoded video in an m2ts, as the standard allows, to create a Blu-Ray compatible file?
Anyway, hopefully some of you with more experience in working with/encoding HD material in Vegas can point out some things I've missed. But I think I'd be satisfied with VP9 if all they did was remove the bugs people have been complaining about here, and improved our encoding options for HD material on Blu-Ray. We need a more fully-featured AVC plug-in from MainConcept that can create m2ts files, and the WMV9 encoder should be given the ability to do m2ts, as well.
Anyway, I have been looking more into starting to edit HD recently, and part of that has been examining how Vegas is as far as encoding content for delivery on Blu-Ray, or just as files/etc.
As far as I can tell, the only real solution in Vegas at the moment for all-around encoding to Blu-Ray is the MainConcept MPEG-2 plug-in. While it does seem to give me good results when I go in and fiddle with the default profiles, I'd really prefer using H.264/AVC; as that seems to be the codec of choice for pretty much all commercial Blu-Ray discs.
I realize the Sony AVC option is there, but it seems limited in the extreme. Although you can create an m2ts file using it, selecting this apparently limits your choice of framerate to 29.970 or 25.000 (what if I wanted 23.976, which I did the last time I tried using it? If you output as an MP4, it seems to be possible, but why can't you have a m2ts with that framerate?... will BD authoring programs accept an MP4 file and wrap in a transport stream themselves?). The MPEG-2 plug-in, at least, has a 24p option in the HD profiles. Admittedly, you seem to be able to get all the options if you go with an *.avc file, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with that type of file. Will DVDA, or Encore accept it? Even then, though, the Sony AVC codec seems to give less-than-stellar results; in fact I think I prefer the MainConcept MPEG-2 HD encodes.
I'd hoped the Mainconcept AVC plug-in would have more options, akin to its MPEG-2 predecessor; however the one included with Vegas is even more limited than the Sony AVC plug-in... lacking even the system tab so you can choose to create a transport stream instead of an *.mp4 file.
And then there's VC-1. I'd still rather use AVC, but I'd also probably choose VC-1 before MPEG-2. The Blu-Ray standard allows for VC-1 encoded material in an m2ts wrapper; yet I don't see this option in Vegas, and I'm not sure why. Correct me if I'm wrong, but VC-1 is essentially just WMV9 Advanced Profile; and Vegas seems to have an excellent implementation of this built-in. It seems to have a full range of framerate choice (or you can type in your own), all the way up to 1920x1080. And the quality seems to be impressive, from the few tests I've done so far.
So why don't we have the option in Vegas to wrap the WMV-encoded video in an m2ts, as the standard allows, to create a Blu-Ray compatible file?
Anyway, hopefully some of you with more experience in working with/encoding HD material in Vegas can point out some things I've missed. But I think I'd be satisfied with VP9 if all they did was remove the bugs people have been complaining about here, and improved our encoding options for HD material on Blu-Ray. We need a more fully-featured AVC plug-in from MainConcept that can create m2ts files, and the WMV9 encoder should be given the ability to do m2ts, as well.