Question about project frame rate in Vegas....

[mjvgiese]

I'm just about to start a kind of large project, involving editing episodes of a TV show on DVD. The frame rate of the show is 23.976, but I'm wondering what frame rate I should set my Vegas project to be? There are several options in Vegas, and I want to be sure I choose the right one before I get a bunch of editing done, and then find out I hit the wrong frame rate, and having to go back and re-do a bunch of stuff.

So, I've opened my ripped DVD episode (which I have converted to DivX) in VirtualDub, and also GSpot, and both programs say the file is 23.976fps. So should I set my project settings in Vegas to 23.976? Or should I use 24fps, or 29.976?

I know this is a really simple question, and that I should know the answer to it already, but frame rates have always kind of stumped me.

I'd appreciate any help

[guns1inger]

If your source is 23.976 then use 23.976

[jagabo]

I've opened my ripped DVD episode (which I have converted to DivX)

Divx isn't a good choice for editing (unless you set the keyframe interval to 1). HuffYUV, DV or MJPEG will work much better.

[mjvgiese]

Thanks so much for the tips! I want to do this the right way, and keep the best quality possible.

I'm going to look into HuffyUV , as mentioned. (Vegas will accept that, right?) Thanks so much for the tip! I appreciate it so so so so much!

[jagabo]

HuffYUV will be your best choice for retaining quality. The files will be rather large though -- about 30 GB/hr.

I thought Vegas had the ability to work with MPG files directly? And a smart renderer which would only rerender when necessary (ie, cut GOPs).

[mjvgiese]

Ok, change of plans. LOL. That 30GB an hour for HuffyUV is a bit more than I can manage, but I did look into the smart render issue, which I actually haven't heard of before (but I like the sound of it from what I've read!). It turns out Vegas doesn't have a smart render, which really stinks, because I'm fairly familiar with the program.

It looks like Ulead MediaStudio and VideoStudio both have smart render, so I'm looking into that at the moment. I think this might be the better way to go, even though I'll have to learn a new program. As I understand it, I can import my .mpg files, and smart render will only render the parts of the video that are edited, so unedited parts aren't processed, leaving the quality untouched, and will output back to mpg. So kind of like a mega version of VideoReDo (at least in my thinking), because Ulead has way more options. Does any of this sound wrong, or do I have it summed up fairly decent? I hope I have the facts right, because everything sounds like it will be great if I've understood everything that I've read correctly.

Thanks again, everytime I get a reply on this thread it opens my eyes to so many options, I end up changing my plans! LOL. But, change is good, right? I'm excited about it!

[edDV]

Just to remind you, for Smartrender to work you need project settings to exactly match the source format for size, bitrate, etc.

[jagabo]

I don't know about the current versions, but older versions of Ulead products' smart rendering isn't very smart. If you made any changes to a file, even cutting of a single frame at the end, the whole video was rerendered.

MPEG encoding uses groups of pictures (called GOPs, typically 15 to 18 frames) to encode. The first frame of the GOP is an entire image, very similar to a JPEG picture, called a keyframe. The rest of the pictures in the group only encode the differences from frame to frame. So a talking head shot with a static background only has the talking head reencoded for the rest of the GOP. This is the major space saving technique of MPEG encoding.

If you cut a GOP in the middle and keep the second half, there is no keyframe anymore. A smart renderer will reencode only the cut GOP, creating a new keyframe at the cut point and maybe recalculating the rest of the GOP. All other GOPs don't need to be changed.

Of course, if you need to perform real changes to the video, like noise reduction, color corrections, etc., the video has to be reencoded.

Womble MPEG Video Wizard or their other tools may be worth looking into. They have real smart rendering.

[mjvgiese]

Hmmmmm.... ok, thanks for the info. I have VideoReDo, and I love it, but what I was hoping for was to be able to do a bit more than just "cut selection", which is about all that type of programs can do.

I don't need any super fancy features, I basically am only doing cuts, but I think I might come upon some parts of my video where I might want to do a bit more than that. For example, I might want to stretch the video a bit in certain parts. Say maybe someone makes a shocking comment, and right in the middle of the comment the video switches from one persons reaction to another persons reaction. I might want to not see the second persons reaction, and just stretch the first persons reaction so it's on the screen the entire time the comment is said. Does that make any sense?

Do you think I should even bother with smart rendering in situations like this, or should I just use the ole' standby of converting to avi, do my cuts/edits, render, and encode back to mpeg for edits like this?

[jagabo]

I don't need any super fancy features, I basically am only doing cuts, but I think I might come upon some parts of my video where I might want to do a bit more than that. For example, I might want to stretch the video a bit in certain parts. Say maybe someone makes a shocking comment, and right in the middle of the comment the video switches from one persons reaction to another persons reaction. I might want to not see the second persons reaction, and just stretch the first persons reaction so it's on the screen the entire time the comment is said. Does that make any sense?

Do you think I should even bother with smart rendering in situations like this, or should I just use the ole' standby of converting to avi, do my cuts/edits, render, and encode back to mpeg for edits like this?

Those are perfect scenarios for smart rendering.