vegas not rendering correctly

TruckeeVideographer wrote on 8/4/2010, 11:04 AM
I'm new to this forum. My veg projects look great in the preview window. Rendering to avi, mpg, wmv, and mov look unacceptable. Rendered video looks way overexposed, too bright, and milky. The rendered videos do not run smoothly, but look jerky. And some of the video fx like gaussian blur and key framing text looks very bad. I've tried changing the properties and render settings in 50 different ways, to no avail. Customer Email support offered no useful advise. I take great pains to expose footage properly, using correct brightness, contrast etc. I charge clients to post video home tours onvarious websites, so the results have to looks good. What am I doing wrong?

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 8/4/2010, 11:12 AM
Please post your media properties, project properties, and rendering properties.
Also post which player(s) you are viewing your rendered video on.
Please upload a sample of your original video that is not rendering the way you want, to MediaFire or another service.
The video scopes in Vegas Pro are a great way to compare levels between media and render.
If you do not have Vegas Pro, there is a separate forum for Vegas Movie Studio users, where you will get version-specific advice for that software.
TruckeeVideographer wrote on 8/4/2010, 2:04 PM
I've posted 3 short samples at http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=5d00fcwn09ajy

When loaded onto Vegas Pro 9.0e (Build 1146, 64 bit ) as a working veg file, these clips (and all my clips) are exposed correctly with brightness, contrast and saturation that look really good. The videos run smoothly. You can see in these samples that they look pretty bad. Jerky motions and fx are rough.

Media Poperties: Type -mpeg2, at 29.970 fps, progressive, sized at 1920x1080 AVC.

Project Properties:
1920x1080, progressive scan, square pixels (1.000), frame rate at 29.970. Pixel format is 23 bit floating point (video level), compositing gamma at 2.222, rendering quality set to "Good", motion blur on "Gaussian", de-interlace st to "Blend Fields", and the box is checked for "adjust source media to better match project or render settings".

Render Properties: For wmv files I usually choose 512 k or 3 mbs depending on the length of the video to get as close to the 30 MB limit that GoDaddy has for uploading to websites.
Mopde is CBR, Format is "Windows Media Video 9", size is 1280x720, frame rate is 29.970, and I set the smoothness to 90% (I've messed around with setting quite a bit), and rendering quality is set to "Good".

I have not uploaded to Mediafire a non-rendered clip. becasue they are too long. The clips are saved to my hard drive from my camera in mpeg2 format. I am shooting with a Sony HXR-NX5U, set to 30 fps, progressive at 1920x1080

I will learn to use the video scopes in vegas pro 9, per your suggestion. Any help at getting good rendering results would be much appreciated.
Thanx,
Robert
musicvid10 wrote on 8/4/2010, 2:13 PM
"Media Poperties: Type -mpeg2, at 29.970 fps, progressive, sized at 1920x1080 AVC.

Either the camera footage codec is MPEG-2 or it is AVC, not both. But since you said 1920x1080, I suspect it is really AVCHD, since your camera's MPEG-2 mode is SD only. You find the full media properties by right-clicking on the media in Vegas, or by using a third-party utility like MediaInfo.

But I will confirm when I see a clip of your original footage from the camera, which you have not uploaded yet. It is impossible to evaluate it otherwise.
Too long? Shoot a shorter clip. I'm not questioning your shooting levels. But in order to compare, we need to see the actual footage . . .

That being said, both wmv and mov codecs are notorious for flattening the video levels, albeit for different reasons. Not a Vegas issue, and their are better alternatives IMO.

Also, setting a 32-bit project for 8-bit media will affect your levels. If you are resizing your video in the render, the rendering property should be set to Best. Sounds like a combination of overlapping factors.

Also, your rendered bitrates are extremely low, and your MOV file was rendered at 9fps (that's why it's jerky). But we'll tackle the rendering format issues once we have seen your original camera footage, thanks.


john_dennis wrote on 8/4/2010, 5:24 PM
I would try setting the project properties to 8 bit first 'cause it's cheap and easy. I had a similar issue with 32 bit project properties but the output tended to go dark instead of being washed out.

The excrutiatingly long thread:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=718663

Has this camera, Vegas version etc. ever worked or is this fresh start? I asked because you said you are new to the forum. Is the workflow new, also?
TruckeeVideographer wrote on 8/6/2010, 10:00 PM
My camera saves HD video as MPEG-4 AVC / H.264 AVCHD. Rendering in 8 bit did help. Video is still washed out and overly bright. But unrendered MPEG video clips actually look the same (overbright) as the rendered clips look (as posted on MediaFire). So it's probably not the rendering process, but more a matter of colorspace, as you suggest.
I'll do some trial and error work with Bright/Contrast fx, and learn to use the video scope function.
I'm still new at this, and the manual can take one only so far. Thanks much for your help.


john_dennis wrote on 8/9/2010, 1:17 PM
My experience with manuals (SCS manuals included) is they have everything you ever wanted to know about the subject except why you want to know it.
CorTed wrote on 8/9/2010, 3:31 PM
"rendering quality is set to "Good"."

Set this to:

rendering quality set to "Best"

this will give you the quality you want to see.


Ted
Steve Mann wrote on 8/9/2010, 8:25 PM
"... 30 MB limit that GoDaddy has for uploading to websites."

?? huh ??

I FTP files *much* bigger than 30Mb to my hosting account on GoDaddy. I wasn't even aware of any limit, unless it's one of their free accounts.

On your footage: I see lots of compression artifacts. You're trying to squeeze too many bits into too small a pipe. The *first* thing you should do with the AVCHD footage is to transcode it into an uncompressed intermediate. I've used both uncompressed MOV and Cineform AVI for my HDV intermediate files.

Steve Mann