Macroblock problem when rendering in Sony Vegas

[mltwitz]

I'm splicing avi (divx or xvid) video clips into a HQ mpeg2 (vob) DVD-rips using Sony Vegas and then render to mpeg2 using the Vegas main concept codec (using 640x480 resolution). I noticed that even with very high bitrates the video parts from the avi file shows severe macroblocks that are not visible when I open the file in any video player. The avi file has lower resolution than what I'm rendering to, is that perhaps the cause for this effect? If so, what filters can I use to reduce these effects (I do not want to render to the lower resolution)?

Should I maybe not use the main concept mpeg encoder and render to divx or xvid?

Any other tricks/suggestions are welcome!

[guns1inger]

Not many in Vegas. Avisynth (or even virtualdub) have a much better range of filters for dealing with divx/xvid footage. Vegas is really built for DV, with which it excells.

Playback of Divx/Xvid and other 'web' footage is deceptive. Most graphics cards/drivers have built-in filters to smooth playback and hide many of the artifacts that later show up when encoding.

[jtoolman2000]

OK I know I's asking to be flamed but folks please stop using professional tools such as Vegas, Premiere, Avid and the like to edit Divx and Xvid sources. These are web based formats that even at their best lack in overall quality when compared to the original footage. These tools are meant to edit DV or at least good quality encoded material from analog sources. There are tons of ??? littering this site concerning the editing and convertion of lesser quality material to say DVD and then people are actually surprised when the quality suffers.
HELLO!!

[guns1inger]

Exactly. Tools such as Virtualdub were built for editing Divx/Xvid type footage, and are better suited. You can always frameserve to a good mpeg encoder if you need to.

[Megacan]

but are there tools that have a similar interface? A timeline to add various pieces from more than one file and edit them together? And maybe aplying basic filters and transitions?

[guns1inger]

No. Because people who usually use editor don't use Divx files for source. If, for some reason, they had too, they would filter and repair in virtualdub (or something else appropriate), and save to DV/uncompressed/lossless for incorporating into the project.

[BJ_M]

exactly -- i would always (if having to use a mpeg4 type file) , resize in vdub or avisynth and add macroblock filtering and correct colorspace and save that out as huffyuv

THEN use that file in vegas .... much better results

[Megacan]

I'm using divx source for editing, to make a video clip. So I would have to save the file to uncompressed format right? and the macroblock filter, is it available in virtualdub?

[BJ_M]

you dont have to save it as uncompressed ....

you could save it as dv or huffyuv for example - or even frame serve it to vegas using vfapi

yes -- the macroblock filter can be used in virtualdub ,....

msu have a very good one http://www.compression.ru/video/deblocking/index_en.html

[Megacan]

thanks.

I have low disk space so I'll try frameserving it to premiere.
Thanks for the filter link.

[mltwitz]

It's easy for the "pros" to say to only use DV material when using professional tools like Vegas. First of all the software is expensive enough that the user should expect it to be able to deal even with the "not worthy" web based formats like divx/xvid (and by the way, Sony also claims it can!).

Second, I don't have a choice but work with the formats that are made available to me, and they are indeed divx/xvid, and yes, I want to use Vegas, because it is my software of choice to use for my purposes. So I was hoping to get some constructive feedback, instead I earned dispraise from the "pros" , lovely!

Thanks for the help, but in the meantime I figured it out myself, and I want to follow up with my conclusion, to bring closure to this thread, in case people encounter similar problems.

I tried many different ways with several render settings and at first I was able to minimize macroblocking by rendering directly to divx using bitrates of >=2500 but I noticed colour degradation when rendering to divx. The best solution I actually found was rendering to the custom DVD-A NTSC format, which produced basically flawless quality (but very large filesize) and then encode to xvid or divx using AutoGK and a fixed filesize. That way I was able to reduce the filesize of the original mpeg-file by a factor of 3 without losing too much quality and no traces of macroblocking whatsoever.

[BJ_M]

you said at first you were rendering to mpeg2 from divx, now you are saying almost the opposite ...

the solutions we gave are very good and the proper way to eliminate the issue you FIRST spoke of ....

[guns1inger]

I don't understand why you are getting so angry at us. What we gave you were the facts. The target market for Vegas does not use Divx/Xvid material often, and if they did have to use it, it would be processed and converted to make it acceptable, before being edited in. That is just the way it is. The fact you like to use Vegas is immaterial, as is the cost of the software. Vegas costs what is does because of the features it has for the target audience it seeks.

No-one was having a go at you. Rather, you recieved the information you were after from people who do this more often that you appear to. That is was not what you wanted to hear is not our fault. Neither is our fault that you did not descibe your actual problem accurately - given that the solution you provided does not address the question you actually asked of us.

[mltwitz]

My goal was to produce one file from sevaral divx/xvid/mpeg sources. When I first started rendering to mpeg2 in Vegas, macroblocks occured where there weren't any in the source. Then I tried to render to divx, results had no macroblocks but bad colour. Then I figured out, rendering to mpeg2 using the high bitrate DVDA template produced great results but very large file sizes, too large for my purposes. So I use autoGK for "post-processing" and convert mpeg2 to divx with a fixed file size setting. So in essence, I was not able to do what I needed to directly in Vegas, but using the 2 step approach I can produce small divx files with no macroblocks.