Vegas 11 bad render quality

[cd090580]

Hi,

I've made a small vegas project to put some title on my videos. All is fine except on render project (to DV PAL). All is set to "Optimal quality" and progressive in the project settings and in the codec settings but there are ugly artifacts like on the following screenshots:



What can I do to avoid those ugly artifacts (the "stairs" on the red circles" and the "macroblocks" on the blue circles) ? All the images are static ones. No animation except on begin and end of video.

[poisondeathray]

This looks like poor interlaced chroma upsampling

What method did you use to take the screenshots ?

To confirm, did you export PAL DV-AVI ? or MPEG2 PAL DVD ?

Why is your project set to 1920x1080p25 ? What is the final goal ?

[cd090580]

This looks like poor interlaced chroma upsampling

What method did you use to take the screenshots ?

I use PrintScreen to capture the Vegas screen
The other one was done with VirtualDub (export frame as a png file)

To confirm, did you export PAL DV-AVI ? or MPEG2 PAL DVD ?

I use the Export to PAL DV-AVI preset of Vegas

Why is your project set to 1920x1080p25 ? What is the final goal ?

The final target is a standard PAL DVD (I will add these intro screens to my files recorded with my mini dv cam) and encode the whole thing to mpeg-2

[poisondeathray]

File is probably fine

It's vdub doing the upsampling (it's converting to RGB for display)

PAL DV is YUV 4:2:0 (or "YV12") . Vdub's developer doesn't think interlaced YV12 exists (an in some ways he's correct), so it upsamples the data as progressive, instead of interlaced - causing those artifacts

If you force YUY2 output (in vdub => video=>color depth=> 4:2:2 YCbCr (YUY2), or force your DV decoder to output YUY2 (YUV 4:2:2) it will look fine

ie. it's just the preview vdub is giving you that is incorrect . However - if you use vdub and convert to RGB anywhere using vdub, those artifacts will persist. ie. You can only use "direct stream copy" in vdub . If you need to convert to RGB somewhere in your workflow, use avisynth ConvertToRGB(interlaced=true) , and back to YV12 ConvertToYV12(interlaced=true)

[cd090580]

Ok, The artifacts are exactly the same in Media Player. Maybe it's because in the settings I changed the output method to progressive in Vegas ?

I used the following settings in vegas codec:

[poisondeathray]

well my French isn't that good... but I don't think there is a problem with those settings

The 1st screenshot in the 1st post I'm fairly certain is poor interlaced chroma upsampling . It's possible the media player you're using or filters it's using are upsampling in the same way as vdub

if you re-import the exported file back into vegas, what does it look like ?

can you use direct stream copy in vdub, and cut a few frames out of the exported file and upload a sample?

[cd090580]

Here is the full sample

[aedipuss]

using a decent de-interlace the stair stepping isn't too bad. but as the video goes on there seems to be some distortion from the text and it gets worse.

[poisondeathray]

I would avoid using DV as an intermediate. Despite what some people may say, it's terrible IMO. Especially for graphics. Those dark blue macroblocks are artifacts from poor compression. Look at the red text, it's already messed up from compression artifacts. When you go to MPEG2 for DVD it's only going to get worse . I would use something higher quality, at least visually lossless (like cineform), or true lossless (like lagarith) , or frameserve out of vegas with debugmode

The other issue (the horizontal lines, or "notched chroma" artifacts) is most definitely an interlaced chroma upsampling issue. You can eliminate it by using different decoder or upsampling method

[cd090580]

OK, I use the Panasonic DV codec (virtualdub told me). And for the pictures, they are all progressive (it's png files).
I will export them as uncompressed avi (20 sec will not be too much in size) and then make the encode (frameserved from virtualdub/avisynth to tmpgenc).

I was never very satisfied of Vegas for the resulting of encode

[budwzr]

You can lay it on Vegas, but to me, it looks like the usual boring problem of resolution mismatch between the source and target.

Once a PNG is improperly sized, it's ruined permanently. Doesn't matter that it's in a lossless or uncompressed file. Something went awry in a very early stage.

The white text does not exhibit the same artifacts as the graphics.



GiGo

[jagabo]

The white text is encoded at 720x576. The colored text (all colors) is encoded at 360x288. And since it's interlaced, the colors are encoded as two 360x144 planes. Hence all the artifacts with color. At least encode progressive when you to to YV12.

[cd090580]

Here is the full Vegas project (and each source image used for this video).

Do you see anything wong in my sources files ?

PS: I can't try the Vegas 12 trial since it's now only 64 bits

[jagabo]

Artwork like that should have been generated with antialiasing. If you have a choice of resizing filters use something like bilinear for such sharp sources. You absolutely will not be able to keep sharp edges between colors when converting to YV12 for PAL DV, MPEG 2 or AVC encoding. And interlacing YV12 will introduce other artifacts even before compression. Then the compression will add even more artifacts.

[cd090580]

Can I just apply a very small blur just to soften the edges ?

[budwzr]

Can I just apply a very small blur just to soften the edges ?

Hahaha, no, the blur is uniform, so you would need so much to cover the jaggies, the result would look worse.

Every element is simple to recreate, why not just start over and do it right? You can make everything right there in Vegas.

Go to "Generated Media", grab a colored square, apply a cookie cutter, copy that track, change the color, resize, repeat and stack as needed, then prerender.

[cd090580]

When I say applying a blur, it's for the source png files, not on the currently rendered file.

[budwzr]

When I say applying a blur, it's for the source png files, not on the currently rendered file.

I just looked, and the source files are no good.

If you want to make high quality work, you can't use stuff googled from the web. It's OK to use that stuff as inspiration though, but it needs to be traced.

You seem to have good style in your project, why not take the time to polish your skills? This can be made in any paint program like Gimp (free). Or InkScape (free).

This one is better, no?

[cd090580]

Ok, I will rebuild them from scratch (Those in my project where extracted from the PDF to TIF, then resized in photoshop with pixel resize).

Do I need to make the png resolution to the nearest size of the target ?? Do resize down in vegas will affect quality ? What resolution is better ? 72 dpi, 300 dpi ?

[budwzr]

Ok, I will rebuild them from scratch (Those in my project where extracted from the PDF to TIF, then resized in photoshop with pixel resize).

PDF are usually 150dpi or less. Always upsample to 300dpi, and do your fine tuning first, before saving.

Secret: Pixel count and physical size are inversely proportional.

[jagabo]

Can I just apply a very small blur just to soften the edges ?

That will work for the rainbow circles since there's no details in the solid color areas.

[cd090580]

Ok, so for a project for target DVD, I can make the circles like 800x800 pixels then resize them in vegas to the size I want ?

[cd090580]

I tried rebuild them from scratch with photoshop, but even is Photoshop the antialias between the blue and red is terrible.

[jagabo]

You're zoomed 600 percent. Of course it looks terrible. Vegas is going to get that image at 100 percent and then downsize it to 50 percent or less. It should look fine.

[cd090580]

Even at 100% I can see that limit between red and blue is not so good

[jagabo]

Even at 100% I can see that limit between red and blue is not so good

That's life. It's going to get even worse when you convert to YV12. As I said earlier, you cannot keep those sharp edges between colors when converting to YV12 and compressing with any high compression codec.

I didn't bother with transparency so ignore the junk around the edges of the objects, but here's what I get using a few of your PNG files, AviSynth, and HcEnc encoding progressive (approximating the layout in your DV AVI):



That boundaries between the colors is about as clean as you're ever going to get with any YV12 codec.