Sony Vegas Pro 8.0c : MP4 trouble

[Jacobus Serpenti]

Dear all,

For quite some time now, I have been editing my HD footage with Sony Vegas Pro. The footage comes from a Sanyo HD1010 camcorder. It is AVC/H.264 for video and AAC for audio. the files have an MP4 extension.
I created a project template, with the Mainconcept codec and so on. The rendering out in Mainconcept MP4 works fine...

Sometimes and I can't figure out why, when or where, Vegas creates an error during rendering and quits. Maybe it has to do with the Sanyo footage (according to insiders it is a proprietary format, not pure AVC/H.264). Isn't there any way to check the project against rendering faults before starting the actual rendering ?

Another trouble, and this is a major one, is this : when the rendered MP4 file is larger than 2GB, it is unplayable, even GSPOT can't figure out what is inside (it reports MPEG 4-AVC, but cannot figure what video and audio codec; whereas on smaller files it can). Others users reported the same problem (on canon HV20 forum). By the way, my PC system uses NTFS disks.

There is a way to come around this trouble : split the projet in smaller bits, render them seperately, and the merge them with AVIDEMUX. but this is ridicioulous, especially from a soft like Vegas.

So any suggestions for both issues ?

Best regards to all and looking forward to your comments

Jacky serpenti
somewhere in Belgium

[minidv2dvd]

i wouldn't blame sony for sanyo's failures. not the best cams out there. cheap yes.

you might try to let avidemux re-write the non-standard mess sanyo creates. first go into avidemux tools/preferences/output and put a checkmark in create OpenDML files. then select copy for both video and audio and .mp4 for type. save it to a different folder with the .mp4 extension. try opening that with vegas.

[Jacobus Serpenti]

Hello to all,

Well my problem is solved . The solution is "heretic" since I use MP4CAM2AVI 2.83 to process the sanyo files. I get AVI containers containing H.264 ffdshow codec, AAC (options : do not re-encode). Not the most elegant solution, but it works very well. Sony Vegas reads them properly and doesn't crash anymore, whatever the footage.

I'm not fond of AVIDEMUX because, when used, Vegas insists on installing Quicktime, which I do not want to use.

Best regards
jacky serpenti

[Xpenguin17]

Containing AAC audio in AVI is a bad idea, it will be out of sync with the video.

[Jacobus Serpenti]

Hello again.

Well I didn't notice any out of sync issues yet, but I'll follow your advice and include LPCM audio in the AVI container instead of AAC. How does that sound ?

Best regards
jacky serpenti

[Xpenguin17]

As long as it's CBR, on a samplerate above 32000 and you don't use SBR, it should be aight.

[Jacobus Serpenti]

OK, thank you very much!! By the way what does SBR stand for ?

[Xpenguin17]

Spectral band replication. It's a feature in HE-AAC to further reduce the bitrate while retaining perceptual quality. The problem is that it confuses AVI and causes playback to go apeshit, so it's better contained in MP4/MKV.