Vegas 6.0 and MPEG-2

[Kero777]

I'm new very new to this website and somewhat new to Vegas. I use Vegas 6.0 and I am working with .avi files and I have a couple of problems. I want the resulting video to be 720x480, NTSC, and mpeg-2. For some reason when I save it with those settings: the video isn't really 720x480, it comes out 720x540 and the quality is pretty terrible (it's somewhat blurry and the color is drained). Maybe it has something to do with settings of the motion blur type, de-interlace method, and/or field order? I don't have Virtual Dub mod or AviSynth, so could those help? I'm pretty oblivious to those programs right now, but I'm very willing to learn. I have trouble importing .avi files too, but I believe I saw that already as a topic here, so I will check it out first.

Here are the settings for my project:
Template: NTSC DV (720x480, 29.97 fps)
Field Order: Lower Field First
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 0.9091 (NTSC DV)
Width: 720
Height: 480
Frame Rate: 29.970 (NTSC)
Full-resolution rendering quality: Best
Motion Blur Type: Gaussian
De-interlace method: Blend Fields (:?:-Does anyone know what this is/what it does?)

Rendering Settings:
Save as type: Main Concept MPEG-2
Template: Default Template
-Stretch Video To Fill Output Frame Size (Yes)
-Save Project Markers in Media File (Yes) (:?:-Not even sure what this is exactly.)

Could someone please help me out if they have any idea at all? Anything will be appreciated. Thanks so much!

[CrackTheSky]

First of all, don't export your video as MPEG-2. Export it as either Lagarith, HuffYUV, or uncompressed (preferrably Lagarith as it's the same quality as the other two and it takes up less HDD space). Then you're going to want to use TMPGEnc and AviSynth to compress to MPEG-2. There's a pretty nifty guide on how to do all this properly if you search through this guide.

[Kero777]

First of all, don't export your video as MPEG-2. Export it as either Lagarith, HuffYUV, or uncompressed (preferrably Lagarith as it's the same quality as the other two and it takes up less HDD space). Then you're going to want to use TMPGEnc and AviSynth to compress to MPEG-2. There's a pretty nifty guide on how to do all this properly if you search through this guide.

Thank you very much, CrackTheSky! I took a look around there for a bit and I found out there's a LOT more I need to know. Some of the information confused me a lot, but I still have tons of reading to do.

Does anyone think I should 1) set my project settings to the same aspect ratio as the video and resize it in AviSynth/TMPGEbc or 2) render it in the correct aspect ratio in Vegas and then just convert the already re-sized video in the other program? I'm assuming #1, but I'll be starting a new project once I figure all these things out.

Thanks!

[hydrax]

I personally make sure all my sources have the correct aspect ratio before putting them the editing process. Unless it's letter boxed which is another issue. I don't think it really makes a difference when you correct the aspect ratio, just make sure it's before the final encode.

[Kero777]

I personally make sure all my sources have the correct aspect ratio before putting them the editing process. Unless it's letter boxed which is another issue. I don't think it really makes a difference when you correct the aspect ratio, just make sure it's before the final encode.

Thank you, Hydrax! It's not really letterboxed so it should be okay. I think I'm going to download the AMVapp and experiment with the quality and such this weekend with a project. Do you like to do anything else to prepare your footage before you start editing? I heard some people go through a process of "cleaning" their footage before beginning. I'm not quite sure what it means, but I could have misread.

Thanks!

[Krisqo]

Thank you, Hydrax! It's not really letterboxed so it should be okay. I think I'm going to download the AMVapp and experiment with the quality and such this weekend with a project. Do you like to do anything else to prepare your footage before you start editing? I heard some people go through a process of "cleaning" their footage before beginning. I'm not quite sure what it means, but I could have misread.

Thanks!

Cleaning means to use AVISynth to improve the video quality. Since I assume you are making clips, you are going to want to clean your footage before you begin editing. IT's mostly trial and error and can take a little time, but if you stick with it, you can get some pretty nice results

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... tqual.html

This should help you out.

[Kero777]

Cleaning means to use AVISynth to improve the video quality. Since I assume you are making clips, you are going to want to clean your footage before you begin editing. IT's mostly trial and error and can take a little time, but if you stick with it, you can get some pretty nice results

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... tqual.html

This should help you out.

Thanks a lot! I'm pretty sure I understand it now. I think the quality of my footage is very good, so I probably don't need to clean them. I don't make little clips. I prefer to just use the trimmer for each episode and find just what I need. Hmm, maybe just in case I will try out the cleaning process and see if it's significant improvement and if it is, then I will stick with it. I appreciate it, Krisqo! You are very knowledgeable and helpful.

Does anyone know exactly what field order is and if it improves the quality of your AMVs if you find out what your footage is and save your AMV with the same setting as the footage was? I'm assuming so, but I'm not quite sure what "Field order means." I read up on it some the other night and I'm a little confused.

Thanks, everyone!

[hydrax]

Cleaning means to use AVISynth to improve the video quality. Since I assume you are making clips, you are going to want to clean your footage before you begin editing. IT's mostly trial and error and can take a little time, but if you stick with it, you can get some pretty nice results

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... tqual.html

This should help you out.

Thanks a lot! I'm pretty sure I understand it now. I think the quality of my footage is very good, so I probably don't need to clean them. I don't make little clips. I prefer to just use the trimmer for each episode and find just what I need. Hmm, maybe just in case I will try out the cleaning process and see if it's significant improvement and if it is, then I will stick with it. I appreciate it, Krisqo! You are very knowledgeable and helpful.

Does anyone know exactly what field order is and if it improves the quality of your AMVs if you find out what your footage is and save your AMV with the same setting as the footage was? I'm assuming so, but I'm not quite sure what "Field order means." I read up on it some the other night and I'm a little confused.

Thanks, everyone!

I tend not to make clips so I edit from full lossless episodes. Just make sure they're lossless (lagarith or huffy's), otherwise you will face a lot of 'lag' in your editing software.


Field order is one of those crucial settings. It must be the same as your footage.
Progressive (non-interlaced) has to be set to "None (progressive scan)". Interlaced footage should be the same as your source footage.

[Kero777]

Cleaning means to use AVISynth to improve the video quality. Since I assume you are making clips, you are going to want to clean your footage before you begin editing. IT's mostly trial and error and can take a little time, but if you stick with it, you can get some pretty nice results

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... tqual.html

This should help you out.

Thanks a lot! I'm pretty sure I understand it now. I think the quality of my footage is very good, so I probably don't need to clean them. I don't make little clips. I prefer to just use the trimmer for each episode and find just what I need. Hmm, maybe just in case I will try out the cleaning process and see if it's significant improvement and if it is, then I will stick with it. I appreciate it, Krisqo! You are very knowledgeable and helpful.

Does anyone know exactly what field order is and if it improves the quality of your AMVs if you find out what your footage is and save your AMV with the same setting as the footage was? I'm assuming so, but I'm not quite sure what "Field order means." I read up on it some the other night and I'm a little confused.

Thanks, everyone!

I tend not to make clips so I edit from full lossless episodes. Just make sure they're lossless (lagarith or huffy's), otherwise you will face a lot of 'lag' in your editing software.


Field order is one of those crucial settings. It must be the same as your footage.
Progressive (non-interlaced) has to be set to "None (progressive scan)". Interlaced footage should be the same as your source footage.

Will the saved video lag if the footage was not Lagarith of HufYuv? I know my program definitely does. Maybe that's why. I never noticed a lag in the video though. I didn't know Vegas could support so many huge files (2 GB per episode) being imported. Nice! I must be too used to Movie Maker.

About the field order: Do you know how to find out if the footage is progressive or interlaced? I remember reading about a program that could do it, but the site I got the information from seems to have a lot of broken links right now.

Thank you!

[Scintilla]

About the field order: Do you know how to find out if the footage is progressive or interlaced? I remember reading about a program that could do it, but the site I got the information from seems to have a lot of broken links right now.

If your footage came from a DVD, the easiest way is to analyze the VOBs in DVD2AVI/DGIndex and see what it tells you.

If not, then find a scene with constant motion and look through it frame by frame in, say, VirtualDub(/Mod). If you see some frames with <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... combing</a>, it's interlaced. If not, it's progressive.