Wow. Handbrake (free) does a better job than VP 23 at downscaling

KDJack wrote on 3/15/2026, 1:47 AM

I'm really shocked that, Handbrake (free) does a better job at downscaling a UWQHD (3440x1440p) to HD (1920x1080p) than Vegas Pro 23, which I paid for. It also includes H.264 and H.265(NVENC) encoders so you get the performance (if you have an NVIDIA card);

Handbrake handles the scaling by default and ensures it fills as much as the screen as possible without the user having to modify any of the default settings. VP 23's "Event Pan/Crop" appears to do none this - either I had to decrease the size of the entire frame, or have it fill as much as possible and the frame cropped on both sides.

It's really, really telling regarding the quality of VP. I mean, I think we need to drop the "Pro" from it and just call it "Vegas Video Editor". Maybe cut the price again because when a free app outperforms the paid one, we've lost the battle and maybe even the war.

Comments

RogerS wrote on 3/15/2026, 1:55 AM

What do you mean by better?

3POINT wrote on 3/15/2026, 2:18 AM

@KDJack Make sure you set in Preferences-Editing: When adding your 3440x1440 (probably screengrab) to a 1920x1080 Timeline project setting, to automatically crop and fill the entire 16:9 frame.

KDJack wrote on 3/15/2026, 2:59 AM

@3POINT Thanks for the reply but that setting does absolutely nothing. By default, it'll try to use the "AI Auto Reframe" to convert the 3440x1440p down to HD, but again, it butchers the frame. I then tried alt directions that instruct you to set the project settings to 1920x1080 then again, using that "Event Pan/Crop" but the only option is to shrink the entire frame. It's just incredible - Handbrake has been around for over 20yrs and it handles downscaling better than an app created in 2025...

3POINT wrote on 3/15/2026, 3:05 AM

@KDJack What do yo exactly want? 3440x1440 has an AR of 2.38 1920x1080 has an AR of 1.77. When both AR should match you should than set the project to 1920x806. Otherwise you get a 1920x1080 frame with black borders.

Last changed by 3POINT on 3/15/2026, 3:07 AM, changed a total of 1 times.

3POINT, Theo Houben, Vegasuser since version 5 and co-founder and moderator of the Dutch Vegasforum https://vegasvideoforum.nl/index.php

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KDJack wrote on 3/15/2026, 3:20 AM

@3POINT What I want is a video that looks acceptable with minimal hoops to go through. HandBrake does the AR conversion gracefully without the user needing to configure/calculate anything - and it's free. That's the worst part. A free program is more effective and user friendly than a paid, expensive one.

Do you have some sort of tool that calculate that res or are you doing it manually through experience?

3POINT wrote on 3/15/2026, 3:54 AM

Again, what do you exactly want since 3440×1440 has a different AR as 1920x1080 you can only fit a 3440x1440 frame in a 1920x1080 by shrinking, you get black borders or by cropping, you will miss information. Handbrake is a convertor for movies from DVD, blu-ray etc with different AR. The output from Handbrake is not 1920x1080.

Captain_Scarlet wrote on 3/15/2026, 3:57 AM

Vegas has been around since 1999

Handbrake is an open source dedicated video transcoder (Which itself is more of a glorified front end for FFmpeg). If all you want to do is transcode video, then Vegas is not the correct tool for you.

KDJack wrote on 3/15/2026, 4:17 AM

Ok @3POINT- perhaps you don't know what handbrake does- one thing it does really good is render video in whatever format/resolution you want, not just HD; and it does so w/minimal fuss for the user. It handles cropping and scaling, upscaling/downscaling very gracefully and knows to properly convert the resolution to fill the viewport as much as possible without cropping off the image. VP 23 doesn't do that so well..

3POINT wrote on 3/15/2026, 4:24 AM

As @Captain_Scarlet better explained Handbrake is an Transcoder, VegasPro is a Pro videoeditor which uses standardized video resolutions.

EricLNZ wrote on 3/15/2026, 4:40 AM

@KDJack What is Handbrake doing to your image? Is it distorting it vertically to fit 1920x1080?

3POINT wrote on 3/15/2026, 4:45 AM

No Handbrake, can change the vertical resolution to 806 to get a 1920x806 frame instead of a 1920x1080 frame with black borders.