AVI increases in size after authoring

[Fairhope]

I captured a VHS tape using VirtualVCR and PICVideo MJPEG set at 18 to my secondary hard drive. The VHS tape was about 90 minutes in length and created an .avi file of 8.6 gigs.

I then opened Sony Vegas Movie Studio 6 and put in two fade transitions where the video was a little messed up from being so old.

From there, I had Sony VMS render the .avi file to my primary hard drive as another .avi. I'm doing this because I want to use Tsunami Video Encoder Express to convert it to an mpg because of its ability to use VBR instead of Sony's CBR. I also think Tsunami's video effects are a little better than Sony's.

Anyway, I let Sony render all night and checked the output this morning. To my surprise, the rendered .avi was 18.4 gigs. I haven't had a chance to completely view the new .avi - however, the small amount I did view appeared choppy during fast scenes. Sony used bottom first interlacing.

So my question, why does an original avi of 8.6 gigs increase in size to 18.4 gigs when only 2 fade transitions were used?

Thanks, Ty

[erayboul]

AVI files can come in all flavors based on the codecs used. I'm not sure what your video was originally encoded with, but the fact that it is now about 18.5 GB tells me that it when it was rendered it became a DV AVI. Those types of AVIs are about 13 GB per hour. You should have no problem feeding that DV AVI into your MPEG-2 encoder.

[Fairhope]

Thanks for the info. Makes sense.

The video is an old concert video which was never released on DVD. I just captured it using a JVC VHS Player connected to my Hauppauge WINTV Go capture card. I used Virtual VCR to do the capturing.

I've heard of DV Avi, but I thought that was only created when you transfer video from a digital camcorder via firewire to your computer.

Thanks again for the information.

[tdan]

Slightly off-topic, but I have successfully installed the DebugMode Vegas frameserver plug-in on Vegas Movie Studio. This would allow you to serve your AVI directly to the encoder without first rendering the AVI.

Dan

[non-linear]

If you're going to go from Vegas and render in Tsunami, I would recommend downloading Debugmode Frameserver. It will allow you to frameserve the Vegas timeline into TMPGEnc without the need to render a huge AVI file (it does create a small .avi file which you then load into your encoder).

[Fairhope]

Wow. This is something new for me. I'll download the app and check it out. Thanks to both of you for the suggestion.

This brings up another question. Let's say I insert the transitions I want and then frameserve the timeline to Tsunami and have it render the video only to an mpeg.

Can I then frameserve the Sony VMS timeline to an application like ffmpeggui to extract an AC3 file for audio?

[non-linear]

I don't know if ffmpeggui will take an avi, but if it does, then it should work (I'd recommend using the "write wav in signpost file" option in Debugmode, so the wav is already written. What you should do though is create the audio as .wav in Tsunami, then take the wav and create your ac3 audio.

[Fairhope]

I'm not sure that Tsunami will write to a .wav file - I think it will only write to a .mp2 file.

Anyway, you and tdan have provided me with a new toy I was not aware of. I'll have all weekend to see what it can do.

Thanks, Ty

[edDV]

Thanks for the info. Makes sense.

The video is an old concert video which was never released on DVD. I just captured it using a JVC VHS Player connected to my Hauppauge WINTV Go capture card. I used Virtual VCR to do the capturing.

I've heard of DV Avi, but I thought that was only created when you transfer video from a digital camcorder via firewire to your computer.

Thanks again for the information.

You probably had your Video Studio project format set to DV. That tells the encoder to convert your MJPEG AVI file to a DV AVI file.

Video Studio 8 has an option to use the PICVideo MJPEG codec for the project format. I don't remember if it was there in VS6.

[non-linear]

I'm not sure that Tsunami will write to a .wav file - I think it will only write to a .mp2 file.

I don't know about your version, but I use TMPGEnc Plus, and it gives the option of writing audio as .wav or .mp2.

[guns1inger]

I use the full blown Vegas 6, and often render out audio as a seperate file for authoring or restoration before authoring. I wouldn't bother trying to frameserve the audio, just render it seperately to WAV.

[non-linear]

I wouldn't bother trying to frameserve the audio, just render it seperately to WAV.

Debugmode frameserves the audio anyways, the only option in its settings is whether or not to write the wav audio to the avi signpost file first.

[Fairhope]

A quick update on my progress. I tried the frameserving over the weekend. Everything appears to have gone as it should, however the encode time given from Tsunami was approximately 26 hours. I'm sure this is because I was using VBR and two filters on the video.

As my luck would have it, there was about 3 hours left to go in the encode process when Hurricane Katrina decided zap my power for a split second. Everything shut down. But up until that point, it appears all was working well.

I'll start over once Katrina moves on.

I don't have to worry about the outputting of the audio to .wav anymore. To my surprise, Tsunami allows me to output audio to dolby digital 2 channel. So my AC3 is taken care of.

edDV: In VMS 6, I could not find the option to use the PICVideo MJPEG format. Probably only available in the full blown version. I just have to remember to change "lower field first" to "upper field first".

Thanks again for everyone's suggestions and assistance.

Ty

[BJ_M]

it would be under avi -> custom


and you can render to VBR in VMS 6 btw ..

since you would have to buy seperatly the ac3 plug in for Tsunami, i'm surprised you didnt realize that it would work ..

that encode time seems really really slow for 90 minutes .. you should check your settings ...

[tdan]

A quick update on my progress. I tried the frameserving over the weekend. Everything appears to have gone as it should, however the encode time given from Tsunami was approximately 26 hours.

Just remembered this little gotcha with the DebugMode Framserver and Vegas Movie Studio. The TMPGEnc Xpress (similar to Tsunami) was not really able to figure out the true length of the video it was getting. I needed to manually set the end time in the encoder to be the actual end time.

Dan

[Fairhope]

BJ_M: I did not purchase the AC3 plug-in for Tsunami Video Encoder Express. In reveiwing their website, it appears it is included with the application.

I went to the Sony Vegas Movie Studio website and, from what I can gather, VMS 6 does not support VBR. I know you are an avid user of Sony Vegas - so could you direct me on how to get VMS to render using VBR?

As for checking my settings to speed up the encode time with Video Encoder Express - can you direct me to a guide or something? Most all of the guides I've seen deal with TMPGEnc Plus and not Video Encoder Express. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a third party guide for Video Encoder Express.

tdan: Could you tell me where you manually set the end time in TMPGEnc Xpress? Hopefully, I can locate it in Video Encoder Express.

Thanks, Ty

[Fairhope]

And BJ_M:

How long are you going to keep that spider in your signature? It gives me the heebie jeebies.

[non-linear]

Just remembered this little gotcha with the DebugMode Framserver and Vegas Movie Studio. The TMPGEnc Xpress (similar to Tsunami) was not really able to figure out the true length of the video it was getting. I needed to manually set the end time in the encoder to be the actual end time.

That issue has been fixed in the latest version (I actually tested the prerelease of it for the author after posting on the Debugmode forum). The previous versions made programs like TMPGEnc see the audio as being 4 times it's actual length.

[BJ_M]

BJ_M: I did not purchase the AC3 plug-in for Tsunami Video Encoder Express. In reveiwing their website, it appears it is included with the application.

I went to the Sony Vegas Movie Studio website and, from what I can gather, VMS 6 does not support VBR. I know you are an avid user of Sony Vegas - so could you direct me on how to get VMS to render using VBR?

As for checking my settings to speed up the encode time with Video Encoder Express - can you direct me to a guide or something? Most all of the guides I've seen deal with TMPGEnc Plus and not Video Encoder Express. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a third party guide for Video Encoder Express.

tdan: Could you tell me where you manually set the end time in TMPGEnc Xpress? Hopefully, I can locate it in Video Encoder Express.

Thanks, Ty

i thought it did VBR in the latest version ... maybe they want you to buy the pro version of the encoder (it is an option they have) , but try installing the demo of vegas 6 (which replaces some of the components in studio)

[Fairhope]

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a try.

Ty