Video Quality Being Substantially Bumped Down

[ChiroVette]

Hey folks! I am new here and have a question about Sony Vegas Movie Maker Platinum 10.0 Trial Version:

I am using a Zoom Q3HD to record my band's live performances and breaking down the videos into individual songs to post to Youtube. Anyway, I am noticing a pretty severe drop-off in video quality when Sony Vegas renders the movie. For those of you who know the Zoom Q3HD, it isn't like the videos have "quality" to spare! I am converting to mp4 and basically the video goes from acceptable and barely watchable to horrifying. Is there any way to preserve MORE video quality in the Sony software when rendering? Oh and I am NOT using the pro version of Vegas. Youtube allows me to upload pretty huge files these days. Hell, I have even put entire 90 minute sets of my band on youtube as a private link.

Oh and that's another problem. Obviously Youtube knocks down the quality even more. lol Nothing Sony Vegas can do about that, obviously, but I would like to start out by at least uploading a better quality video to start with.

[Midnight Blue]

Can you tell us your settings. I would guess you may have chosen a low resolution option in Vegas. Make sure the bit-rate and size eg 1920x1080, are the same as your raw footage. I would also try the MainConcept mpeg2 template if you're not having success with the mp4. The only way to really ensure no quality loss at all, is to render it out as an uncompressed .avi but this may not be practical, huge file sizes etc...

[garjobo3]

No wanting to hijack this thread but aware not to keep starting new threads with topics being similar.
Midnight, when you say, send out as an uncompressed avi. file ( assuming easy enough to do this...tick box setting etc ) - I would be more than happy to do anything possible...if it means taking the computer longer to burn the disc etc etc...if the end result is the best quality i can get.

[Midnight Blue]

There is no point making an uncompressed .avi that is destined to be used to make a DVD, as eventually it will become an mpeg2 when it is burnt onto the disk. Creating an mpeg2 file at the best quality possible is the best option for making a DVD.

[ChiroVette]

Can you tell us your settings. I would guess you may have chosen a low resolution option in Vegas. Make sure the bit-rate and size eg 1920x1080, are the same as your raw footage. I would also try the MainConcept mpeg2 template if you're not having success with the mp4. The only way to really ensure no quality loss at all, is to render it out as an uncompressed .avi but this may not be practical, huge file sizes etc...

Hey, thanks for the reply! Okay here are my settings, all of them:

Main Concept AVC/AAC (*.mp4)
Default Template

Audio: 128 Kbps, 44,100 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo, AAC
Video: 29.970 fps, 1920x1080 Upper field first, YUV, 768 Kbps
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.000

I checked in the advanced settings, and I have the frame rate set at 29.70, which I assume is close enough to the 30 fps the Zoom unit is set on.

As for the capture device, I have the Zoom Q3HD set on HD 1080 30 (which is 1080p 30 FPS)

By the way, I assume it doesn't matter what I set the Download Time on, right? I can't even figure out if that does anything when saving to your HD, and assume that it only has some kind of an effect when you are uploading to a site such as Youtube directly? Oh, speaking of which, the software does NOT seem to allow me to upload any videos to youtube from the "Make Movie" screen. The option is there, but when I type in my Youtube name and password, the option to upload to Youtube remains greyed out. Could this have something to do with the trial version?

Also, is there ANY WAY to preserve the 24 bit audio I am recording at? I know people say you cannot hear a difference, and while I agree it is definitely a subtle distinction, I do hear a difference. However, Vegas only seems to allow me to encode/render in 16 bit audio. Someone told me (and I don't know if this is true) that only the pro version allows you to encode in 24 bit.

Again, thanks for the reply!

[Midnight Blue]

The bit rate on the video should be much higher the very minimum should be about 10Mb I usually render my stuff at 25Mb. You should also change the Field order to None (Progressive)
As for the Audio may be you need the Pro version of Vegas to do 24bit, I don't know.

[ChiroVette]

AWESOME! Thank you so much, Midnight Blue! I am going to try to render a small video clip at the bit rate you suggest. I will go with 25MB and let you know how it turns out. My band played last Saturday. FYI, it is a Grateful Dead cover band (I play and sing the Jerry Garcia parts) and hahahaha I basically put the entire first set into one file and the second set into another, and our sets are about 90 minutes long lol. However, it took something like SEVEN hours to render each set, which I assume would go up with that bit rate. Seriously, though, I doubt Youtube would accept the file (assuming the video bit rate at 25 MB would jack the file size up, of course) but that's fine because I prefer to do it song by song anyway. I only uploaded the full sets because I was pissed off at my band because of how we sounded Saturday, so I just made them private links and couldn't be bothered to spend all the time going song by song.

[ChiroVette]

The bit rate on the video should be much higher the very minimum should be about 10Mb I usually render my stuff at 25Mb. You should also change the Field order to None (Progressive)
As for the Audio may be you need the Pro version of Vegas to do 24bit, I don't know.

Okay I wanted to quote this to ask a couple of more questions:

Does it matter if I am using Constant Bit Rate or Variable Bit Rate? As an experiment for now, until someone answer this, I am trying Constant. If Variable, should I check "Two Pass?" Also, the default options don't include 25 MB. The closest is 20,000,000 bps and jump up to 50,000,000. However, I was able to manually type in 25,000,000. Will that be all right? What about the Pixel Aspect Ratio? 1.000 or 1.333?

I changed the Field Order to None (Progressive Scan) as you suggested. My band played a show last night and I am going to try all this on one song first, to see how it turns out.

I was able to change the Sample Rate to 48 KHz, which is good, but what about the audio bit rate? Should I leave it on 128,000 bps?

Thanks again!

[Midnight Blue]

Set the aspect ratio to 1.0. The audio bit rate is fine as you have set it. Some computer sound cards can't even discern the difference after after 96bps. As a rule of thumb there is no point going higher than what ever you recorded at. Variable bit rate with the two pass option can give you a slightly smaller file size, without compromising the quality but I don't think there will be any noticable difference in quality which ever you chose. As with a lot of this sort of thing you sometimes have to do some trial and error to see what works best for the footage you have.

[ChiroVette]

Set the aspect ratio to 1.0. The audio bit rate is fine as you have set it. Some computer sound cards can't even discern the difference after after 96bps. As a rule of thumb there is no point going higher than what ever you recorded at. Variable bit rate with the two pass option can give you a slightly smaller file size, without compromising the quality but I don't think there will be any noticable difference in quality which ever you chose. As with a lot of this sort of thing you sometimes have to do some trial and error to see what works best for the footage you have.

Thanks dude!

That worked very well. Obviously, given the limitations of the Zoom Q3HD, my Youtube videos aren't going to likely get any better than this, but thanks to the advice of you guys, at least this quality is passable!