Thank you, John, for your quick response.

I do notice that when I play with Bit Rate, the output quality changes. I thought I read somewhere that CPB has to be changed because it is a buffering action, but no rule of thumb was given on how it should be changed when Bit Rate is changed.

Any thoughts on CPB or HSS as it relates to Bit Rate?

Hi

Bitrate does affect the quality of the image - the higher the rate more data is used per second to create the image, hence a more detailed image -  also gives larger video file.

Everything is a compromise for a small file size you lower the bitrate but this also lowers the image quality.

As far as setting the CPB - there are many posts on various forums that say do this or that however the MEP settings are already optimised for the scenario you select eg:

HDTV preset will set up the necessary parameters which are best compromise of quality ie bitrate - high), file size and other options for viewing on HDTV

Whereas for streaming from a website  - ie Flashplayer settings, the bitrates will be lower and other settingsdifferent to cope with the lower data throughput of the Internet.

If you do not see all the presets available ensure you check the Display all option just below the preset dropdown.

HTH

John

Thanks again, John!

So far in my work flow, I choose a MEP preset and then make changes to the Bit Rate. Once again, my problem is that I don't know what to do with HSS, CPB, and others. Just wish that MAGIX would write a manual with some rules.

I have found that I had to increase Bit Rate because the exports I was getting with MEP turn out blocky. The presets I choose with Vegas Pro 12 are perfect. I really want to work with MEP because I like the DVD authoring better than Sony's DVD Architect.

Hi

. . . . Once again, my problem is that I don't know what to do with HSS, CPB, and others. . . . . .

I think you are missing my point - you do not touch these settings without very good reason and an expert knowledge of what the different settings are and how they interact.

Adjusting the Bitrate is fine - however you must consider that when you drop the rate to ridiculously low settings eg 1000 for HD (720p) or Full HD (1080i or 1080p) then you are going to get severe blockiness and changing the HSS, CPB etc are not going to improve this - the bitrate is the main controlling factor.

The lowest optimised bitrate MEP has, that I can find, is for Flash player 720 x 576 H.264 25fps and is optimised at 1640 - this produces an acceptable image at this video viewing size for streaming across the Internet.

Blockiness is an even bigger problem if you try to view low definition video at full screen on a high res monitor or TV, eg viewing a 720 x 576 video at 1920 x 1080 will show blockiness, other than increase the bitrate to the maximum possible to minimise blocking there is nothing you can do about it..

HTH

John EB

John, I've been running experiments where I just change Bit Rate and nothing more. You're right, it's the easiest parameter to change to get a better video and it's better to leave the others alone!

Thanks for your help!

Hi

Very good advice there from John. I have played with many of those settings over dozens of tests and it is difficult in most cases to see any improvements, however if you look through a lot of those templates over many versions of MEP you get the impression that a lot of their defaults seem quite random and not always logical. It is often difficult to just re encode edited camera footage without seeing more degredation from the original than you would expect. One rule of thumb I use in this instance is to analyse the original clip with a tool like Media Info and try to emulate the same settings for bitrate, GOP length and structure, in the encoder advanced settings.

If you really can not find a template that suits your needs then I would set the HSS rate about 20% higher that the set kilobits/sec bitrate and the CPB to slightly more kilobits than that.

I am interested in what you are doing there however as you are talking about the DVD authoring in MEP but your screen shot is Mpeg4. Are you making Bluray AVCHD discs? Are the settings there from a template or have you modified them?

Peter

Hi Peter. Thanks for your suggestions regarding HSS and CPB.

I used a Sony Full Definition camcoder for the last couple of weddings I shot for some friends. The files from the camcorder are .mts, which MEP 2013+, MEP 2105+, and Vegas Pro 12 handle easily. But I noticed that the quality of the rendered .mp4 output files from MEP's presets were far below that of Vegas.

So I did all my effects and rendering using Vegas, but all final product was delivered as DVDs because none of these friends had BluRay players. I found that using MEP's DVD authoring was far easier to use than Vegas'.

I found that if I crank up the Bit Rate in MEP, it's pretty darn close in quality to Vegas' rendered output files.

Hence all my crazy questions regarding HSS, CPB, GOP, etc.

Hi

. . . . . But I noticed that the quality of the rendered .mp4 output files from MEP's presets were far below that of Vegas . . . .

A very useful bit of information that was missing - come to think of it I should have asked why you were looking at the CPB,HSS etc settings 

I presume by this comment you mean the images do not appear as sharp as those created using Vegas.

This was a difference I noticed between an earlier version of MEP and Vegas which I do not use it any more - too restrictive IMHO.  I suspect that Vegas has a higher sharpness setting for rendering than MEP has.

I too use a Sony full HD video cameras, to fix this softness problem I set the projects  Effects, Movie effects settings, Sharpness tab, Sharpeness setting to 65 = you may need to play with this setting to suit your camera.

Blockiness is as we have already discussed related to the Bitrate.

HTH

John EB

Hi iFletcher

I am still puzzled by your need to render an Mpeg4 from MEP. If your final output is to DVD then that step would seem unecessary. The normal procedure would be to edit all your .mts clips in the MEP arranger / timeline, add effects, titles etc, create the DVD menus and chapters in MEP, and burn the DVD in MEP which would render (transcode) all the HD .mts (Mpeg4) material to SD MPEG2 (as is required by the DVD standard) automatically using the MEP standard DVD presets.

If you are rendering an HD MPEG4 from the timeline first, before rendering the SD Mpeg2 DVD then you are adding another generation (encode) with a possible quality loss.

Peter 

@John:

"I presume by this comment you mean the images do not appear as sharp as those created using Vegas."

The video quality was not as good because the output file was more blocky in MEP and almost non existent in Vegas. It wasn't till I really cranked up the Bit Rate that the video improved in MEP. And then all the question about the other parameters came up because I wanted to keep the file size reasonable, but the output quality as high as possible.

@Peter:

I rendered the output file to .mp4 because my friends did their playback most of the time with a high quality monitor and VLC. But sometimes they would do the playback at their friends' and relatives' homes using a DVD player.

But in all this, I never considered the pathway that I was using, i.e.,

    mts -> .mp4 -> MPEG2

was lossy. The DVD looked decent. But I'll need to run some tests to see how bad the lossiness is.