Vegas 15 MP4 rendering

[click_one]

I've been tasked w/ editing some video of a recital which comes from some large 50MBps AVCHD files.
In previous years, I've had some issues w/ editing this file format and had to try many workarounds.
We ended up using WinFF to encode AVCHD files -> High quality MP4, and then edited this.
This worked pretty good and looked great.

This year, I'm using Vegas 15 to edit the AVCHD files directly and have a question about the rendering.
There are so many options in Vegas that I'm not sure which format to choose (Sony AVC/MVC, Magix AVC/AAC MP4, etc. )
I'd like to render the files as MP4 as we previously did, and I'd like to get the quality as close to that provided by WinFF as possible.

What would be the best format to select in order to do this?

Many thanks,

[TreeTops]

I use MP4 and am very happy with the results. That's a good format to upload to Youtube to also.

[_Al_]

The best is outputting thes ame parameters for output as input is and high bitrate. If your video is interlaced so make sure you output it as interlaced not progressive. Or the other way. For HD video you can set about 20000000bitrate (20milion =~ 20kbps), use VBR 2pass average.

There is always some bitrate that it makes no sense to get higher than that, because visual difference are negligible and you'd only bloat your video size. So it is up to you to end up on certain bitrate and use that one.

If video is sport and action, camcorder is hand held you might need more bitrate as oppose you'd record a theater play with camcorder on tripod. 10 000 000 might be sufficient. So bitrate is also video dependent. That is why you do not have people jumping on your question. Vegas uses 2pass average VBR encoding only, not quality encoding, where you set quality and encoder sets bitrate taking video content into account.

Those templates could be changed, but you can select Magix AVC/AAC MP4, make sure profile is High.

[johnmeyer]

You'll need to render some test clips and see for yourself.

I've used Vegas Pro for almost twenty years. I haven't upgraded since Magix bought it, so I don't know anything about their h.264 encoder. Given that there were already Sony and Mainconcept h.264 options, I don't know why they added a third one. The Mainconcept version was strictly for low bit rate. The Sony had various options so you could create AVCHD or MP4 and various other flavors.

So, do a test, at the same bitrate, for both the Sony and the Magix version. I would choose two clips: one with lots and lots of detail, and the other with a lot of motion. Play both test clips on a big screen and loop them. Then, put both back into Vegas, and use the Track controls to move them so you are looking at half of each clip, at the same time, in split screen. Go through frame-by-frame and see what sort of artifacts you see. You could even do this with three tracks, and include the original. Another way to do the A/B/C comparison is to forget trying to do the split screen and instead just use the track mute controls to switch between them. This has the advantage that, as you rock back and forth, artifacts that are in one version but not the other will appear to jump out at you, calling attention to themselves.

I do this last step often enough that I wrote some Vegas macros that will take care of muting and un-muting channels. One trick I discovered is that I have a "mute" button on my keyboard that is supposed to be for muting audio, but if a track header has focus, it also works to mute and un-mute that track.