loss of quality when smart rendering?

[SP]

hi there,

just captured an hour of footage straight to mpeg2 dvd compliant video, and now i have edited it on the timeline and wish to smartrender it, will i lose much quality from the final output?

Cheers

[Ron P.]

Hi SP,

You might lose some quality, however that would not be as much of a concern to me as audio/video sync, and smooth playback.

Using Smart Render VS is suppose to only render the changed parts of the video clips, leaving everything else alone. However once you edit the files then they are no longer the same. So VS may re-encode the whole thing.

MPEG compression is fickle. I tried to use a DVD compatible MPEG in a DVD yesterday. The video clip had been just sitting on my computer for a few weeks. However I could not use it, somehow it became corrupt. Trying to play it back once burned, it was very jerky.

Try creating DVD Folders and see if everything went ok. If so then you can use a program like Nero to burn it to disk.

Ron P.

I'm not starting the DV vs MPEG debate

[TDK1044]

As Ron says, Smart Render will only transcode the changes made to a project. However, I would render your completed video file twice; one with Smart Render enabled and one with that feature disabled. If the Smart Render version has created an audio sync offset or corruption problems, then you can burn the other version to DVD. FYI; I capture, edit, render and burn using MPEG2, and my quality is very good even though I never use the Smart Render feature at all as I don't trust it. In my experience, rendering the whole project with SR disabled produces a perfectly fine end result.

[Ken Berry]

And to add to Ron and Terry's careful replies, if you captured directly to mpeg-2 from a digital DV camera, and had the capture settings as high as possible (i.e. bit rate of 8000 kbps), then you will probably have no quality problem in the final product.

There are, however, a lot of people who would say if you are capturing from a DV camera, you should capture in DV format, do your edits in DV format, and only then produce a DVD-compatible mpeg-2 from it for burning.

That is the work flow that I follow with video from such a source, and I have never had a problem with quality or otherwise by following it. However, I acknowledge that some (many?) people can successfully capture and edit direct to mpeg-2. But if you experience any problems, especially along the lines outlined by Vidoman above, such as out of sync audio and video, be prepared to start all over again, and this time capture and edit in DV format.

[jchunter]

SP,
Having captured your video as mpeg2 (DVD-compliant), the best way to preserve the picture quality is to maintain the original encoded properties, by smart-rendering the project to the same Mpeg2 property settings. Be sure to set the video file properties and the burn properties manually, to match those of your capture file, as detailed in the top sticky post.

BTW, transcoding to any other format can't make your video better than the original encoding.

[SP]

thanks alot for your detailed replies, i opted to continue editing in DV then encoding my footage to MPEG2, as i tried the smart render approach and lost a fair amount of quality.