Vegas 14 and Debugmode Frameserver Audio Question (Vegas2HandBrake)

Hoaxx wrote on 2/7/2017, 12:28 AM

I followed the instructions on this board to send clips directly to Handbrake over Debugmode Frameserver. I LOVE the workflow, but I do have some concerns about the audio.

As far as I was able to observe and also read in regards to older versions, audio settings higher than 44100Hz and 16bit aren't supported by this method? i.e. if I have a 24bit/48kHz source in Vegas and set both Vegas and Handbrake according to that, what I'll get is a downscale to 16bit/44.1kHz by Frameserver and an upsacale by Handbrake back to 48kHz (16bit I guess). Is that still the case, with no workarounds?

Therefore I guess everything should be kept at 16bit / 44.1kHz?

How much of a quality degradation does that introduce, if at all? Especially considering the intended platform is Youtube (which probably downscales to those settings in any case, but I don't know how it is handled with WebM/Opus).

So, If I'm uploading to Youtube (btw. sound is a vital part of my videos though) and my sources are 24bit / 48kHz, should I avoid the frameserver workflow or is it a non issue in real world terms?

Comments

dxdy wrote on 2/7/2017, 8:36 AM

We know that Frameserve always passes 44.1 audio. When I really want tip top sound in a Handbrake render, I only render the video via Handbrake, render the audio separately, and MUX them together with either TSMuxer or AvidEMux.

Jam_One wrote on 2/7/2017, 9:43 AM

So... Let's beg Magix to add their own built-in frame server in the future updates of VP? ⚠️

Dear Magix creative team!
Would you please consider including a frame server to Vegas Pro?!
The one which would favor the complete set of project settings (incl. audio sampling frequency & quantization).
Possibly with the option to choose among AVI or MOV as format for the signpost file.

🎩 Yours truly!

___________________________________

P.S.:
A number of years ago I had a conversation with Mr.Avery Lee - the creator of VirtualDub - and he told me that "Debugmode Frameserver" is based on his VirtualDub's old frameserving module codes.
So, maybe you, the Magix creative team, could just hire Avery Lee to write a new frame server for Vegas Pro.

Marco. wrote on 2/7/2017, 9:50 AM

+++1

Jam_One wrote on 2/7/2017, 9:55 AM

...By the way, that would be the real PROGRESS, more really progressive than re-painting of UI...
- To my mind.

john_dennis wrote on 2/7/2017, 4:12 PM

"A proper frame serving hook in Vegas would make me happier than just about anything else Magix could do as an upgrade. I've been disenchanted with the audio limitation since the app was last rewritten, but since much of my audio is crowd noise, I hold my nose and look the other way for youtube uploads." he said, after spending a fair amount of time proving that he can't hear anything anymore.

NickHope wrote on 2/7/2017, 7:19 PM

So, If I'm uploading to Youtube (btw. sound is a vital part of my videos though) and my sources are 24bit / 48kHz, should I avoid the frameserver workflow or is it a non issue in real world terms?

Personally I'm not happy with it, especially as YouTube are now recommending 48kHz upload, so I now render my audio stream in advance and pass it to MeGUI as a complete 48kHz wav file, only frameserving the video from Vegas. MeGUI does the AVC/AAC encoding and muxing.

So... Let's beg Magix to add their own built-in frame server in the future updates of VP? ⚠️

Hoaxx wrote on 2/8/2017, 5:24 AM

@Nick Hope

Sounds like a lot of steps and additional encoding (or is it quite fast?). Is the output worth it (quality or filesize) compared to, say, rendering AVC/AAC in Vegas and do a re-encoding of only the video in handbrake (audio in AAC passthrough)?

Edit: In regards to MeGui - how do you mux the wav with the mp4 from handbrake? Do you first encode it to aac with MeGUI - and if so, is the output quality any better compared to encoding it with Vegas directly to aac instead of wav?

Hoaxx wrote on 2/8/2017, 3:23 PM

I spent the whole day tinkering with settings to get a decent output via Send2Handbrake and I must regretfully admit defeat. This workflow gives me much worse output than rendering in Vegas in "Sony AVC" in a moderate bitrate and then loading the output in Handbrake for a second pass. I had all kinds of problems with the Frameserver approach and the output at the same filesize/bitrate is just garbage compared to the traditional Vegas+Handbrake workflow (I had strong pixelation/artifacts at the same output bitrate where I achieve a good image using Vegas first and Handbrake second).

Also being able to render the audio directly instead of muxing is a plus, too (I use AAC Passthrough in Handbrake to avoid a second re-encoding).

I'm probably doing something wrong, who knows, but it's not worth the hassle for me.

NickHope wrote on 2/9/2017, 7:33 PM

Sounds like a lot of steps and additional encoding (or is it quite fast?). Is the output worth it (quality or filesize) compared to, say, rendering AVC/AAC in Vegas and do a re-encoding of only the video in handbrake (audio in AAC passthrough)?

Sorry for the slow reply. It's a few steps but not too bad and the encoding goes fast. The output quality is comparable to Handbrake because they're both using x264 so it depends on your settings. Development of MeGUI stopped in late 2015 but you can manually update the plugins including x264 to the latest ones if you want. A couple of days ago I listed all the tools I'm now using at the top of my old tutorial here.

Edit: In regards to MeGui - how do you mux the wav with the mp4 from handbrake? Do you first encode it to aac with MeGUI - and if so, is the output quality any better compared to encoding it with Vegas directly to aac instead of wav?

I do it with the "AutoEncode" feature. I'm using 320kbps CBR Nero AAC which is pretty much lossless and allegedly better than you can do directly in Vegas. There's no Handbrake involved. Just Vegas > Frameserver > AviSynth > MeGUI.

Here's a rather laboured demo (it's early here and I didn't do my amphetamines yet). The "passthrough" AviSynth script I'm using contains just these 2 lines (of course you could do more processing in there if you want):

AviSource("D:\fs.avi")
ConvertToYV12(matrix="PC.709")

The finished 60p file is one frame short (I don't know why) and the audio is very slightly out of sync with the original, but I'm not sure either is perfectly correct on the Vegas timeline.