Why does Sony make HD video soooooo annoying?

Birk Binnard wrote on 5/16/2010, 9:55 AM

All I want to do is use my PS3 (which is a Sony device last time I checked) to show HD quality videos rendered from Vegas (which is a Sony product last time I checked.) But does Sony make this easy to do?

Noooooooooooooo!

I've got a 23 min. HD video comprised of shots I did at Machu Picchu. I can show this on my PC when I render it as an AVI file, but the AVI is 5.3 GB in size.

This is too large to fit on a DVD, so I tried putting it on a 16GB SD card. To do this I had to format the card as an NTFS volume because FAT32 volumes have a 4gb file size limit. But PS3's cannot read NTFS volumes because Sony won't pay Microsoft for the license fee.

And yes, I know PS3's can't play AVI files anyway. I could just have easily rendered it as MPG which the PS3 can play.

I tried rendering the video as Blu-Ray output in M2V format and this ended up producing a 4.4GB file which won't quite fit on a DVD either.

My last hope is to try rendering as a Blu-Ray disk ISO and then see if I can extract the video files which I hope will be about 1GB like the VOB files are for DVDs.

I guess all of this is really just a clever marketing ploy to get us to buy Blu-Ray drives and an extra piece of Blu-Ray writing software.

Maybe I'll have to switch to PowerDirector.

Comments

Former user wrote on 5/16/2010, 11:17 AM

What will you gain by using PowerDirector? Have you used it before? Does it do what you want?

Dave T2

Birk Binnard wrote on 5/16/2010, 11:48 AM

I tested both Vegas MS & PowerDirector before deciding that Vegas suited my needs better. But PD will create Blu-Ray output directly whereas with Vegas MS you have to buy the full version of DVD Architect. PD also renders faster because it makes use of the GPU in nVidia & ATI graphics cards.

I've just had Vegas crash twice attempting to render my 23 min. video to a Blu-Ray ISO image. It's really not much use if it can't produce usable output.

All this is most disheartening considering the fact that I have had good success with Vegas MS making multiple shorter HD videos with the M2TS format. These play perfectly on my PS3/HDTV.

Eugenia wrote on 5/16/2010, 2:54 PM

The way to get video on the PS3 is either via WMV or MP4, via the Sony AVC codec. Info here:
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/11/09/exporting-with-vegas-for-vimeo-hd/

However, you might need to apply the 2 GB RAM hack in order to not get these encoders to crash when exporting in HD resolutions, and for so long.

Birk Binnard wrote on 5/16/2010, 3:51 PM

Thanks Eugenia; I would dearly love to use WMV or MP4 but my timeline is 23 min. and I am not aware that either of these 2 formats will produce multiple files less than 4GB in size. The only format I know of that does this is the standard DVD/VOB output which is regrettably not 1920x1080.

The only way I am aware of to get 1920x1080 broken down into less than 4K chunks is to burn a Blu-Ray disk (or disk image in my case since I do not have a physical Blu-Ray burner.)

My Vegas MS 9B crashes consistently attempting to render Blu-Ray output to an ISO image disk file. As I noted before, it runs fine creating M2TS files, but these are larger than 4GB for a 23 min. timeline.

I just got the trial or PowerDirector and am attempting to create Blu-Ray output from it. PD seems like a toy compared to Vegas, but it does render faster and doesn't seem to crash (at least with a short demo project.)

Eugenia wrote on 5/16/2010, 4:07 PM

The only thing that changes the filesize is the bitrate. So you simply use less bitrate than you're used to. For example, for 23 minutes 1920x1080 video, use 12 mbps bitrate. It will fit on the 4 GB limit just fine. In fact, it shouldn't be bigger than 2.2 GBs. And the quality will be just fine at that bitrate. So, just follow my tutorial, and change resolution/bitrate as suggested here.

And if you get crashes, consider the 2 GB memory hack I mentioned earlier, described elsewhere in this forum.

Birk Binnard wrote on 5/16/2010, 5:41 PM

Yes, I understand how bitrate affects file size. However, when I select Main Concept MPEG-2 file type the only templates I get listed for 1920x1080 are 25Mbps. Clearly this is what results in such a large file size.

If I specify Windows Media 11 (WMV) format I get the Custom template button enabled from which I can pick at best 1440x1080 @ some bitrate I specify. I really don't want to de-res my AVCHD video from 1920 down to 1440.

What I'm thinking now is 2 things:

1. Vegas MS really does have a lot of the Vegas Pro functionality missing.

2. An alternative might be to break up my 23 min. video into shorter chapters and use some other piece of Blu-Ray capable authoring software to create a set of disk files that include a front-end menu that hooks all the chapter files together.

I have a copy of MultiAVCHD which apparently does this though I'm not sure how pretty the results are. We'll see......

Thanks again for your help on this.

Eugenia wrote on 5/16/2010, 8:17 PM

You are not listening! I explained to you that the best way to get this done is to encode an MP4 or a WMV file, NOT burn a Blu-Ray or AVCHD disk. On the tutorial I linked for you, you have all the information you need to get this done using the Sony AVC codec (NOT the MaincConcept codec, because that's not available for customization on the Platinum Edition of Vegas), or the WMV codec. Following the tutorial for either SonyAVC or WMV as shown there step by step in the screenshots, with JUST these two changes I mentioned to you (1920x1080 resolution, at 12 mbps), it WILL create a COMPATIBLE file that it's good quality, it will be SMALLER than 2.2 GB, and it will play on the PS3. That's how you do it. I own both a PS3 and an XBoX360, so I know how to deal with these devices.

musicvid10 wrote on 5/16/2010, 10:43 PM

You might try Handbrake, which encodes really nice AVC, and has a "Target Size" file rendering option.

The locked MainConcept templates in VMS are part of the reason it is able to be offered at a consumer price point. All of the custom rendering options, bitrate included, are accessible in Vegas Pro.

Birk Binnard wrote on 5/17/2010, 7:30 AM

Ahhhh, I see.....finally. It wasn't that I was not listenting - I was just not seeing! For some reason I missed the link to your screen shots and so I was trying to use the only template I found that offered the WMV format.

I must say it is a somewhat obscure set of tweaks you were able to come up with, but way to go. They do seem to work (as you said).

Regrettably the software crashed - twice - at about 50% rendering. The second time it was while running overnight with nothing else on the system. It's the standard MSVCR80.DLL access violation error that Vegas gets. I have fixed this before so hopefully I'll be able to do it again.

david_f_knight wrote on 5/17/2010, 8:02 AM

You mention you have fixed the crashes during rendering before, so hopefully you'll be able to again. The probable fix, the 2GB RAM hack Eugenia referred to, only needs to be applied once. You haven't stated which operating system you use, but here is a link to the fix for 64-bit versions of Windows. The second message in that thread has links to the fixes for the various 32-bit versions of Windows.

Birk Binnard wrote on 5/17/2010, 8:38 AM

Thanks David - I should have said I am running Win7-64 and I do have the 2GB limit fixes installed.

If I recall correctly the fix has to do with multiple versions of the Visual C++ runtime software being installed. Vegas wants the 2005 version (which I have), but my system also has the 2008 version.

I think the way to fix it is to take out 2008 and re-install 2005. Hopefully this won't break whatever software uses the 2008 version (wish I knew what that was.)

Birk Binnard wrote on 5/17/2010, 8:55 AM

Since I'm running Win7-64 I have taken a slightly different approach: there is both a 32 and 64 bit version of the Visual C++ runtime software. Vegas installs the 32 bit version. So I just installed the 64-bit version and and am running the render again.

My system now has 3 versions of the Visual C++ runtime: 2005, 2008, and 2005 64 bit.

And they said DLL Hell was gone. Hah!

Birk Binnard wrote on 5/17/2010, 11:27 AM

Well darn - the 64 bit version of the C++ runtime did not fix the crash. Looks like I need a Plan B.

Eugenia wrote on 5/17/2010, 12:05 PM

Did you try exporting in WMV instead?

Birk Binnard wrote on 5/17/2010, 12:45 PM

Eugenia:

What I did was

(1) defrag all the input files used in the video. These are a combination of single image JPGs (about 5 MB each), some panorama JPGs (some are up to 140 MB), and AVCHD video files of varying lengths.

(2) installed Visual C++ 2005 32 bit SP1 runtime. I didn't know there was an SP1 version, but there is.

I'm re-rendering now as 1920x1080 WMV per your tutorial. (Is this what you meant by exporting?) Currently @ 23%. Will post results when done.

PS: Have you tried Heavy Rain on your PS3? It is totally awesome.

Eugenia wrote on 5/17/2010, 12:50 PM

Vegas does not like huge images. It crashes, as it leaks memory with them. You should always resize your images to the project size. Resize tool for XP here http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/ImageResizerPowertoySetup.exe
If you're using Vista or Win7, you'd need another tool to do the job in batch.

Birk Binnard wrote on 5/17/2010, 1:34 PM

Interesting point about fixed image size - thanks. I have several tools that resize so I can do this easily.

Here's a peculiar occurrence that just happened: I was checking the render process and it showed 50% (after running for about 100 minutes.) I thought this was OK, but when I looked at the preview window I noticed that it was showing the very beginning of the video. The frame count was in the low 60's and clicking upward as you'd expect. Then about 30 sec. later Vegas crashed with "the reason for the error cannot be determined."

This is really odd because I've been checking on the render the entire time and it was always slowly incrementing up with the preview window counting off frames as expected.

Birk Binnard wrote on 5/19/2010, 1:20 PM

Thanks to Eugenia (again):

I discovered I made a typing (or brain) mistake entering the custom output resolution (I specified 1920 x 1280 instead of 1920 x 1080), but after fixing this I was able to make a WMV format HD video with no problems. The video I made was 13 min. long and consisted of a combination if single image photos (GH1 HD aspect ratio) and several GH1 AVCHD video clips. The resultant video is 1.2GB in size.

As Eugenia noted, my PS3 plays this perfectly on my HDTV. ANd the HD resolution sure looks great.

I haven't forgot about Eugenia's warning that Vegas does not do well with very large still images, and since I have a large number of fairly wide panoramas I will do more experimenting with these. I'd prefer not to have to down-res these images to 1080 pixels high, but doing this might speed up rendering since Vegas would not have to do it for each generated frame. Should be an interesting experiment to run.

Thanks again Eugenia. You rock!