All you Sony Vegas Pros - where am I going wrong? Please post your settings here...

[illu]

I searched the forum. I read the posts but I still seem to be doing something wrong. Remembering off the top of my head as I am at work, this is the small test I did before I try to do the whole vid.

I got 3 clips (25mb+25mb+25mb) + 1 music (5mb) mp3, 3.43mins footage in total (80mb total size of the original files all together) into -> sony vegas.
I Rendered as Best xvid, 800x600, 25fps, VF's xvid settings, uncompressed music -> 180mb.
I stuck the 180mb through VirtualDub lame mp3 and it came out at 130mb.

3.43 mins -> 130mb sounds very wrong to me. It should be something like 50mb tops?? (going with 10-15mb per min)

Where am I ballsing up?

The footage is a mix of pre-compressed xvid avi fraps, squished right down and wmv's from gamecam. The quality even on best doesn't seem that good.

Basically I just want to get the clips, stick them on the timeline, add a few effects, then squish it as much as possible, in good quality (as gamecam already makes it a bit naff) and at 800x600.

What settings do you use?

If you have the time, please post your settings for me and all the other budding filmmakers out there :>

Oli - Illu

 

[kivik]

I used similar video compressing settings but when compressing the sound in vdub I used some random codec. Quality turned out decent I guess but file size was small, 188MB for 17 minutes. I would love to know wich settings wich will give a 'perfect' quality, showing screens of configuration/settings windows would be great aswell.

 

[SethNaket]

130mb for 3:43 means your total bitrate is almost 5000kbit/s (think commercial DVDs), so either the xvid compression or the mp3 compression must be set too high. 1500 kbit/s xvid with 200kbit/s mp3 should give you a 45ish mb file.

Render it in vegas without adding sound and see if it still comes out huge. If it does then it's your xvid settings otherwise it's your mp3 settings.

 

[censi]

vf help me get back upto speed.

dont pick best xvid.

pick default xvid, and go into custom. then hit like video tab. then hit configure.

click on the target quantitzer button to turn the bar into a bitrate view. then drag the bar up between 1304 and 1500 (my vid was done at 1305) the higher the bit rate the bigger the file and better the quality

put pixal aspect ratio to one

 

[illu]

130mb for 3:43 means your total bitrate is almost 5000kbit/s (think commercial DVDs), so either the xvid compression or the mp3 compression must be set too high. 1500 kbit/s xvid with 200kbit/s mp3 should give you a 45ish mb file.

Render it in vegas without adding sound and see if it still comes out huge. If it does then it's your xvid settings otherwise it's your mp3 settings.

Yup bitrate was on 5000 :> moved it down to 1500 now and will see what it looks like.

UPDATE: Yup looks good! xvid on 1500 and then did the sound in VirtualDub Lame mp3 and filesize is 43mb

Thanks :>

Oli - Illu

Thanks for the info too Censi Time to start experimenting with Sony Vegas :>

 

[illu]

Oh another quick one, interleave leave it at default?
Interleave every 0.25 seconds it says here.........

Oli - Illu

 

[censi]

yer i think

 

[censi]

search for posts by rure and theres one with real neat editing tips for vegas

 

[SethNaket]

Interleave has something to do with how the file is written (AVI = Audio Video Interleave). I think interleave every 0.25s means it writes 0.25s of video then 0.25s of audio etc etc in the file, but it might be something completely different.

Either way you don't have to touch it.

 

[ceixava]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

everytime someone compresses 1pass video god kills 1000 african babies

use 2-pass

never ever compress raw material, use lossless codecs (huffyuv), yes it takes space but every compression stage you loose lots of quality

edit: and also, always output lossless video in rendering stage, use other tools to compress the final video, these video-edit/postprocess software are generally meant for something else than quick compress of a video you hacked together in 30min, use gordian knot, AutoGK or something similiar for the final pack

 

[illu]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

everytime someone compresses 1pass video god kills 1000 african babies

use 2-pass

never ever compress raw material, use lossless codecs (huffyuv), yes it takes space but every compression stage you loose lots of quality

edit: and also, always output lossless video in rendering stage, use other tools to compress the final video, these video-edit/postprocess software are generally meant for something else than quick compress of a video you hacked together in 30min, use gordian knot, AutoGK or something similiar for the final pack

I'm sorry bud - but I don't understand most of that :> The 2-pass button is for the vid or audio? And where in Sony Vegas is it?

Can you give instructions or pointers for your other suggestions, more details basically as this is all very new to me and it sounds like japanese :>

Oli - Illu

 

[ceixava]

ill write a short tutorial later on 2-pass

 

[SethNaket]

Keep in mind that 2pass is basically just a way to "better" distribute the available bitrate where it's most needed in order to hit a certain average bitrate or filesize. It won't magically increase the actual quality of a certain frame for the same bitrate, it will just be better at finding where it can save some bits in order to use at other places. The longer the video the more you save with 2pass, for your 3:43 clip I can guarantee you don't need to use 2pass to get a good encode at decent size.

That said, 1pass constant bitrate is really bad and should never be used. 1pass with a "Target Quantizer" setting on the other hand can be quite good. It usually creates files that are only slightly larger than a full 2-pass encode for the same quality, at almost half the encoding time. On top of that it's easier to use since you basically only have to find the quantizer that gives you the quality YOU feel happy with and then you can encode every new video you make with the same setting regardless of length or resolutions.

If you want to try it, start off with a quantizer 3 encode. For example the Boys Don't Cry movie recompressed with quant 3 ends up at 360mb instead of the original 434 and looks almost the same (some slight loss from the recompress). If you don't like that quality then lower the quantizer a little. Don't go below 2.0 as that's basically DVD quality (you will get 3-5000 kbit/s files). Quantizer 3.0 seems to be the sweetspot for daoc clips in my opinion.

 

[ceixava]

^true

but im a fan of two pass encoding, CBR is just.. well, CBR

for short videos, who cares, but anything longer than 10min should be properly encoded with a target size in mind, daoc videos contain alot of movement so targets can get high, but results are also good

 

[SethNaket]

A single pass with a target quantizer is not CBR though. It's a Constant Quantizer (CQ, variable bitrate, constant quality, problably other names) pass and it's the same thing that the first pass of a 2pass encode does. The difference is that the 2pass then takes the first CQ pass and either scales the size up or down, by adding lower or higher quantizer frames at the right places, to hit the requested filesize or bitrate.

I used to do only 2pass xvid's cause I thought it was simply "better". Now I only do 1pass CQ, it's much faster and looks the same. I would only do 2pass encodes if I was going to burn something to CD (which I would never do) or DVD. I haven't burned any daoc vids to DVD yet therefore no need for 2pass encodes.

As Doom9 himself said:

"The whole point of 2 pass is to know the size in advance."

If you don't need to know the size in advance you don't need 2pass.

 

[illu]

Thanks for all this great info. I have lots of things to try now at the weekend

Oli - Illu