If that doesn't work for you, .m4v from Handbrake supports chapters, but not menus

I'm not concerned about the chapters themselves. Each one will be encoded to a file, and each file will become a part of the course on Teachable. My concern is just about getting the best quality in the Wistia player, especially because these are not HD videos. Do you think it's better to use Vegas's mainconcept encoder, or should I frame serve to handbrake? https://wistia.com/doc/export-settings Wistia recommends a minimum bitrate of 5mbps, which is actually higher than the bitrate on the existing DVD!

https://wistia.com/doc/export-settings Wistia recommends a minimum bitrate of 5mbps, which is actually higher than the bitrate on the existing DVD!

It says it supports the MPG format, which is what the DVD files are in. So, why not just use the original MPG files off the DVD and avoid any loss of quality which always happens when you convert from one lossy format to another.

I suppose I could do that, but when the DVDs were produced, the audio and video could have been better enhanced which is why I wanted to drop them onto the timeline to fix levels and such before making them available as streaming videos. The original idea was actually to offer them as downloadable instead of streaming and those 640x480 files looked good after they were edited, but downloadable presented some problems so the decision was made to go with streaming. Streaming is fine, except that the wistia video player on teachable is responsive, so on my monitor, the video gets enlarged to 1000px wide at the biggest. There might be a way with CSS to limit the size of the video player for those SD videos and that would solve the problem so working on that too.

Well, in that case, I’d probably use Vegas to scale the video up to 1440x1080 (or even 2880x2160) and render with Handbrake. While the scaling up will not add any detail, it will be shown at the full size a monitor allows.

Scale up? From SD DVD? Won't that make it terrible and pixelated??

It shouldn’t make it terrible and pixelated. Especially not if scaled using the Lanczos method. It will not add any detail, so it will not look any better, but it should not look any worse, either. And it should compress (in MP4) quite well.

I mean, I regularly watch DVD movies on my computer with its 1080p display and the video player fills the screen and it even does the rescaling in real time, and everything looks perfectly normal. So it should look at least just as good, perhaps even better, if the scaling is done without having to worry about the real time. I don’t have a 4k monitor, so I cannot tell how good or bad it would look at 2160p, but I suspect it would look just as good.

Come to think of it, you don’t even have to do it in Vegas. If I recall correctly, Handbrake can scale it up better than Vegas.

At any rate, I’d just try it on a small sample (so you don’t waste much time) and see how it looks. If it looks good, great. If not, then I would just drop the idea.

So I'd set it to 1280 x 960 (since Teachable recommends 720P videos) in HB to scale up from 640x480, correct? I'll give it a try and see how it looks -thank you

EDIT: I can't change the pixel dimensions in HB. When I change the width and then jump over to the height box, the width changes back to what it was on before. 😩

Well, in that case, I’d probably use Vegas to scale the video up to 1440x1080 (or even 2880x2160) and render with Handbrake.

How do you use Vegas to scale up the video? My project settings are 720x480 for the VOB files on the timeline, and I was going to frame serve to HB.

Set your project properties to your preferred HD output size, and in HB, also set the render target to your preferred HD output size.

Ok I did that, the video still looks interlaced even though I set decomb to default in HB. Do I also need to choose a deinterlacing method in Vegas too?

I rarely use HB..., but I guess you can try it.

HB offers two deinterlacing methods, decomb and Yadif. If you pause the mouse pointer over the choices, it describes them. Plus it offers several presets for them, and several interlace detection methods.

I always shoot progressive, so I do not use any of the deinterlacing methods, but if decomb does not work, I would try Yadif.

You should not need to choose a deinterlacing method in both, Vegas and HB, just one of them. If you do it in Vegas, theoretically Vegas would send progressive frames to HB.

Ok, so in project properties, I selected the HD 720-60p, and I drop my DVD VOB files on the timeline. It creates the black vertical bars on the left and right of the video and that's fine. Question is about the project properties. What should I set Field Order to? Is field order referring to the properties of the events on the timeline, or the output of whatever I render the project to? And does this have any effect since I'm frame serving to HB? And it seems you're saying that I should set deinterlacing method to none, since HB will do it?

EDIT: I notice that when I change the field order to none, the interlacing of the video on the timeline goes away. This is confusing. I don't understand the workflow here.

The help file says "Determines field order of the frames when drawn on the screen. Consult your capture/video output card's documentation for the proper field order for your specific device.

None (progressive scan): Select this option when viewing the video on a computer. This option ignores interlacing."

It creates the black vertical bars on the left and right of the video and that's fine

Right click on the clip > Switches > uncheck Maintain Aspect Ratio

I'm not worried about the black bars. They need to be there for it to be 1280x720

I'm not worried about the black bars. They need to be there for it to be 1280x720

No, they don’t need to be there. You should never assume that everyone has a 16:9 (or any other) ratio monitor. Your video should be trimmed precisely to the size of its content, with no black bars included in the video (except if a portion of the video is smaller that the rest of it). It is the job of the video player to insert the bars if and only if they are called for by the dimensions of the monitor/screen.

If you do include the black bars in the video, it will look like a postage stamp on any monitor that has different aspect ratio than the video. That is, there will be black bars on the left, on the right, on the top and on the bottom, and that looks really bad, especially if you paid to be able to watch the video (as would be the case with Teachable).

Okay, I understand what you are saying. So do you think it's better that I just encode at 640 by 480 and use CSS to limit the size of the video wistia player on Teachable? Otherwise, the SD video gets stretched because of the responsive player and it looks really bad up.

Wait a second, Red Prince, you are the one that suggested that I upscale it in the first place. I can't make it HD without cropping and I don't want to crop it. So what size do you recommend I make the video?

Wait a second, Red Prince, you are the one that suggested that I upscale it in the first place.

I was reacting to what you said:

the video gets enlarged to 1000px wide at the biggest.

I was under the impression you wanted it as big as the monitor can handle, and so I suggested you may upscale it.

That said, I don’t see why you’d have to crop it to upscale it. If you want to upscale from 480 to 720, for example, just set your project dimensions to be 1.5 times taller and 1.5 times wider than the original. No need to crop anything. So, if the original is 640x480, change the project to 960x720.

If, on the other hand, my impression that you did not like the 1000px width limit was a misunderstanding, than I would just keep it 640x480. You need to try these things and see what works best, and then go with that. Ideally, the player should stretch it to the full height of the monitor and keep the 4:3 dimensions.

Since the VOB files (what I have on my Vegas timeline) are 720x480, would I set the project dimensions upscaled from that size, or from 640x480? That's the part I'm confused about. Once I know that, then I can do some tests to see what the output looks like.

The VOB files are 720x480 but theirs are not square pixels, i.e., their pixel aspect ratio (PAR) is not 1:1. That allows encoders to create both standard 4:3 videos and wide-screen videos by simply using one of two different PARs. So, for a 4:3 DVD video, you would set the project dimensions as if upscaling from 640x480.

If I decide to use uprez by Boris, shown here in this video:

https://library.creativecow.net/video_page.php?author_folder=rofrano_john&article_folder=BCC-Uprez

Would I still be entering 640x480 for the source width and height? Or would I use the actual 720x480? Same question goes for the PAR?