Vegas multi-cam MP4 and new audio source video - output advice?

[msimon7]

Hello
I'm making a few concert videos of shows I've attended.
I'm editing/sync'ing in Vegas Pro 13.
The video sources are all 16x9, about 2/3rds are 1080p, other 1/3rd is 720p (with some 480p in there too) - all from YouTube.
I'm also replacing the whole audio track with a new audio source.

The creation is going well and I'm nearing the end to "publish" the video, so my question is about output...
I'm mainly doing this to have loaded up on my HTPC, so I'd want the best quality achievable (but don't need it to be 300GB ).
Also planning to put the final project up on YouTube, but that is secondary.

My question is what is your recommended project settings in Vegas?
Would you go out to AVI and then re-encode back to MP4?

thank for any tips.
Marc

[smrpix]

Match or exceed the specs of your highest quality source.

[msimon7]

Match or exceed the specs of your highest quality source.

Thanks for the reply, I do have my project set at 1080p which matches the largest input source - thank you for the confirmation.

Regarding output format from Vegas:
What would be the suggested output format?
AVI? and then (if needed assuming the file will be gigantic) convert externally to mkv or mp4?
I can try try multiple options, but asking in case those more experienced have suggestions that I may not know of or even as a time saver.
Goal it to have best quality for my HTPC viewing, but also to eventually share via YouTube (secondary goal)

thanks again!!

[smrpix]

What would be the suggested output format?
AVI? and then (if needed assuming the file will be gigantic) convert externally to mkv or mp4?

.avi, .mts, mt2t, .m2ts, .mkv, .mp4, .mov -- are all simply containers that hold different types of audio, video and data codecs and streams. h.264 video streams have been the most popular choice the last few years and can exist in any of the containers named. Do you need subtitles? mkv is pretty good for that, though mp4 and mov can handle them externally as sidecar files.

As to filesize, filesize = bitrate*duration. As a rule of thumb, higher bitrates with the same codec is higher quality -- but there are numerous exceptions. Since your files are starting out as YouTube downloads you don't have stellar quality to begin with. Bad sources often require more bitrate than good sources because the noise makes compression more difficult.

Probably the best thing to do is test out a number of settings on a short, typical excerpt and see what works best for you.

[msimon7]

thanks for info and reply. no subtitles here, but will embed chapters in either the mkv or mp4 version I will keep locally
that is a good idea to test some samples for quality and size...