What settings do I use on Sony Vegas?

For help and discussion concerning Magix's (formerly Sony's) Movie Studio and Vegas Pro editing software.
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Nunusaur
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What settings do I use on Sony Vegas?

Post by Nunusaur » Wed May 16, 2012 4:42 pm

Hello,

Not really new to editing videos, but I'm barely knowledgable about compressions/encoding/converting. Most I know is that 240p = crappy quality, 720p = fine quality, 1080p = amazing quality. :oops:

I've recently finished editing an AMV on Sony Vegas Pro 11, but I'm feeling confused about the rendering & encoding process. I had downloaded AMVapp last year and had been rendering files as "uncompressed/lossless" .avi's ever since, then using zarx264gui to be able to make the file size smaller and upload it to youtube. I've noticed that youtube still ruins the quality though, whereas I've watched some other editors' AMVs with flawless quality. I reckon I may not be doing something right here...

Here's the info for the video (if it helps) that I have edited to and have already tried rendering with several different settings, to no avail:

Frame width: 1280
Frame height: 720
Data rate: 79486kbps
Total bitrate: 79486kpbs
Frame rate: 23 frames/second


What settings should I use for "Project Properties" & rendering, to obtain the best quality I can once I encode it with zarx264gui and upload it to youtube? Thank you.

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HalOfBorg
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Re: What settings do I use on Sony Vegas?

Post by HalOfBorg » Wed May 16, 2012 5:47 pm

Render the video with a lossless codec like lagarith, the audio 256k MP3. Load those in zarx264gui and set the quantitizer number low, lower = better.
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Nunusaur
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Re: What settings do I use on Sony Vegas?

Post by Nunusaur » Wed May 16, 2012 7:10 pm

HalOfBorg wrote:Render the video with a lossless codec like lagarith, the audio 256k MP3. Load those in zarx264gui and set the quantitizer number low, lower = better.
Would you mind giving me a little step by step guide, please? Here's the settings I'm using in "Project Properties":

Image

I had tried all sorts of settings for "Project Properties", but none seemed to give a decent enough quality when I rendered it. So I just clicked on "Match Media Settings", and clicked on the video that I am editing with. Is there anything that I may have to change?

As for "Render as..."; what render template am I supposed to use? Shall I go with "HD 720-60p YUV" (I'm not sure what the difference is between 60p & 50p) under "Video for windows (*.avi)"? Also, any specific changes I need to make under "Customize Template..." other than picking Lagarith Lossless Codec under "Video Format"? Giving a screenshot of it too, just incase:

Image

And for zarx264gui, how low shall I set the quantitizer to? Is 0 low enough? :oops:

Another question (last one for now!), was I supposed to convert my .mkv file through Virtualdub, to a Lagarith lossless codec before editing it in Sony Vegas? Because the settings I used under "Compression..." in VirtualDub was; "Ut Video Codec YUV420 (ULY0) VCM x86".

May be I'm just making it sound more complicated than it really is. >.< I had always just rendered my vids to a crappy .mp4 quality. This is all new to me, so my apologies if my questions seem too silly/stupid. Thanking you in advance!

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HalOfBorg
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Re: What settings do I use on Sony Vegas?

Post by HalOfBorg » Wed May 16, 2012 8:34 pm

This is the basic setting I use for a lagarith render, all my project settings are set to match this.

[img]http://i648.photobucket.com/albums/uu20 ... gs.jpg[img]

As for zarx, I have been told that 18 is about the perfect number.

Always edit in a lossless format. Convert compressed clips to lossless, use THAT to edit.
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HalOfBorg
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Re: What settings do I use on Sony Vegas?

Post by HalOfBorg » Wed May 16, 2012 8:34 pm

Image
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Nunusaur
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Re: What settings do I use on Sony Vegas?

Post by Nunusaur » Wed May 16, 2012 9:30 pm

HalOfBorg wrote:This is the basic setting I use for a lagarith render, all my project settings are set to match this.

[img]http://i648.photobucket.com/albums/uu20 ... gs.jpg[img]

As for zarx, I have been told that 18 is about the perfect number.

Always edit in a lossless format. Convert compressed clips to lossless, use THAT to edit.
Ahh, thank you! Would you mind me asking what settings do you use for your Project Properties? And when I convert my .mkv files in Virtualdub, to be able to edit them in Sony Vegas - are the settings I'm using correct? Which is (incase I wasn't detailed enough), Video -> Compression... -> Ut Video Codec YUV420 (ULY0) VCM x86, then "Fast recompress". Or am I supposed to go for "Lagarith Lossless codec", then Full processing mode for a better quality?

Once again, thank you for putting up with my nooby questions! ^^

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Cannonaire
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Re: What settings do I use on Sony Vegas?

Post by Cannonaire » Thu May 17, 2012 12:20 am

I would like to help you if that is alright. :dino:

Preparing your source for use in Vegas: (You asked about this)
Yes, running the source files through Virtualdub and compressing them with "Ut Video Codec YUV420 (ULY0) VCM x86" is exactly what I do, so it should be fine. If you just opened the MKVs with Vegas, there could be problems, but if you have already finished the video and you do not see any weird quality issues wheny ou preview, then you should be fine when you render. For future reference, it is a bad idea to use lossy footage (everything you find online will be lossy) for editing unless you know what you are doing (using intra-frame compression only, etc.)

Rendering:
What you select for Render and Project Properties depends on the source you used and the frame rate you selected when you started your project.
Question 1: Did you use a single video source? If you used a mix source, you might have a mix of resolutions and even aspect ratios.
First, here's a link to the codec you will most likely want to use when you render from Vegas: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 6&t=109345
That is Lagarith, and it should work for you. Set it to RGB for best results. (I believe Vegas processes everything in RGB, but I could be mistaken.)

When you have your project open in Vegas, click Project -> Properties. What you see in the box that says "Frame rate" is what you want to use. The reason for using this exact value is even if your source had a different frame rate, that number is the rate you used for editing. If you want your render to match what you saw while editing as far as motion and sync go, you should use the same number.

To find the resolution of your source(s), find one of your clips in the "Project Media" area and right click -> Properties. There will be a line that says "Attributes:"; you want to use the resolution you see there for both "Project Properties" and render settings. If you have a mix of different sources and/or effects which rely on things being in specific parts of the frame, it can get a bit more complicated though. Let me know if it is a mix and I can help further.

Encoding/Muxing with Zarx264gui:
It is best to use "Constant Quality" unless you are trying to make it a specific file size. "Quantizer" should be set somewhere around 18-22 depending on what you are encoding. For Quantizer, lower is better quality, with 0 being best quality but highest file size. For most anime, setting "Tune" to animation should be fine, but some anime or AMVs with heavy detail or grain can benefit from the "Grain" setting.

I hope this all helps. Just let us know if you could use more assistance. |:>
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HalOfBorg
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Re: What settings do I use on Sony Vegas?

Post by HalOfBorg » Thu May 17, 2012 5:13 am

Pretty much what I said, just said MUCH better. MUCH better. :)
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Nunusaur
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Re: What settings do I use on Sony Vegas?

Post by Nunusaur » Thu May 17, 2012 2:58 pm

Cannonaire wrote:I would like to help you if that is alright. :dino:

Preparing your source for use in Vegas: (You asked about this)
Yes, running the source files through Virtualdub and compressing them with "Ut Video Codec YUV420 (ULY0) VCM x86" is exactly what I do, so it should be fine. If you just opened the MKVs with Vegas, there could be problems, but if you have already finished the video and you do not see any weird quality issues wheny ou preview, then you should be fine when you render. For future reference, it is a bad idea to use lossy footage (everything you find online will be lossy) for editing unless you know what you are doing (using intra-frame compression only, etc.)

Rendering:
What you select for Render and Project Properties depends on the source you used and the frame rate you selected when you started your project.
Question 1: Did you use a single video source? If you used a mix source, you might have a mix of resolutions and even aspect ratios.
First, here's a link to the codec you will most likely want to use when you render from Vegas: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 6&t=109345
That is Lagarith, and it should work for you. Set it to RGB for best results. (I believe Vegas processes everything in RGB, but I could be mistaken.)

When you have your project open in Vegas, click Project -> Properties. What you see in the box that says "Frame rate" is what you want to use. The reason for using this exact value is even if your source had a different frame rate, that number is the rate you used for editing. If you want your render to match what you saw while editing as far as motion and sync go, you should use the same number.

To find the resolution of your source(s), find one of your clips in the "Project Media" area and right click -> Properties. There will be a line that says "Attributes:"; you want to use the resolution you see there for both "Project Properties" and render settings. If you have a mix of different sources and/or effects which rely on things being in specific parts of the frame, it can get a bit more complicated though. Let me know if it is a mix and I can help further.

Encoding/Muxing with Zarx264gui:
It is best to use "Constant Quality" unless you are trying to make it a specific file size. "Quantizer" should be set somewhere around 18-22 depending on what you are encoding. For Quantizer, lower is better quality, with 0 being best quality but highest file size. For most anime, setting "Tune" to animation should be fine, but some anime or AMVs with heavy detail or grain can benefit from the "Grain" setting.

I hope this all helps. Just let us know if you could use more assistance. |:>
Thank you SO much for taking your time to give me such a detailed information, it was certainly very helpful. Though I'm going to have to try it out first, and see if I understood it right. Currently, I have nearly no space left in my pc so I'm unable to do much (still have to write down the requirements needed to get a new PC to be built so that I can edit better with no lag and have enough space for footage, I do have a 2 TB external hard drive I could work with but I've heard that they're not meant to be kept on for too long). But if I have any more questions (which I'm sure I will do, knowing how complicated these things are to me), I'll definitely let you know. If you wouldn't mind that, that is. Thank you both so much once again for helping out nooby me! ^^

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