Codec Error...Sony Vegas

[hackedhacker]

Sighs... So lets go.
Vegas Hates MKV.

But sometime I run into problems I can't understand so I hope someone on the Forum can help a newbie out.
Vegas Doesn't Run MKV. Doesn't Run AVI with H264 Codec, nor AVI with XVID codec...
What's the problem?

Vegas simply doesn't work with MKV but that is just a container, and AVI should be accepted IF it have the right codec, I think. Vegas denied both H264 and XVID, Last time I check, I thought Xvid should work for something like Vegas because it is quite old and somewhat common... But am I wrong?

[mirkosp]

Don't use non-intra-only lossy codecs when editing. At least, not directly. They are not thought out for that.

Convert them to lossless codecs such as UT Video or Lagarith or Huffyuv. Or use them through frameserving with avs and fake avi files. The latter option will be much slower than the former and somewhat unreliable if you keep editing the avs file with the NLE open, but otherwise much safer than just loading lossy codecs which aren't made only of keyframes.

As a final explanation, lossy codecs which are fine to use do include intra-only lossy avc (lossless avc is a no go in NLEs), generally with a very high bitrate to retain the quality, and codecs such as MJPEG meant for bait-and-switch usage. However with recent enough hardware and decently sized HDDs, the lossless codecs option is much better, both for quality and speed and easiness.

For any further understanding, please read AbsoluteDestiny & ErMaC's Technical Guides to All Things Audio and Video.

[hackedhacker]

what kind of converter would you prefer? VirtualDub doesn't accept mkv.....

[mirkosp]

When I told you to read AbsoluteDestiny & ErMaC's Technical Guides to All Things Audio and Video, I mean the whole guide. As it explains, you're supposed to make an avisynth script (with ffvideosource as the code) and load that script into virtualdub.

[hackedhacker]

I did. Read everything from interlacing to aspect ratio to the very bottom from the very top. It shows little about asynscript coding. But I got It to convert to UTvideo lossless codec in Mp4 and it seem to load fine in Vegas now. But another concern came up. I have some videos in 16:9 and some in 4:3 and need them to resize somehow without stretching the frame to some shitty looking crap. Tried to force it all to 640X480 the stretch was nasty. I have episodes in 1920x1080. 1080X720 (I think) and 720X480 ish. And trying to get all of em around the same so when edit in Vegas it wont leave black border. Urgehrhfjfhskxb

[mirkosp]

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... atios.html

In this page it teaches how to crop and resize, you can increase the crop values and then resize. For instance, if you wanted a 1280x720 video to get to 640x480, you could do:

Code: Select all

crop(160,0,-160,0)
spline36resize(640,480)

[hackedhacker]

that is one thing to resize to a right aspect ratio of 16:9 or 4:3 but the problem is the quality will be reduced and look shitty after the stretch of pixels, Is there a lossy way but not as bad ? I will try that script out tho. TY

[hackedhacker]

also, which one would you prefer? I will try to resize/crop all of em into either 4:3 or 16:9, Fullscreen vs Widescreen, which one would be better for editting and uploading to youtube? Thanks.

[BasharOfTheAges]

Those are all personal preference questions.

[mirkosp]

The highest quality resizer in avisynth is ResampleHQ, which does gamma-aware resizing. Internally by default it uses spline36, which at least for anime tends to be the best choice at disposal, but this does vary based on source etc.
Generally spline36 is the kernel you want to use though, so basically doing ResampleHQ(width,height) will do.