Rendering To A Managable Size In Sony Vegas Studio Platinum 9

[Adam1972]

Hi again guys and a very Happy New year to you all.

I joined up here recently, and some of you helped me out to get the relevant kit together I needed to compile a high quality video podcast I will be doing soon. I bought a Sony HDR SR11E HD Camcorder and some extras (Rode Stereo mic, Sony 20W light etc) and also Sony Vegas Studio Platinum 9 for editing, which I am getting to grips with in part(!) but am having problems with the final results I need.

Basically I record the video in full 1920 HD on the camcorder in AVCHD (.mts files) to ensure the highest quality of raw file possible, and drop it into Sony Vegas to edit/compile my video along with some other music and text etc. As i render out I have tried a number of different variations and combinations in the settings, to try and have a much smaller file than I start out with, and want to ideally retain most of the high quality in the video. By rendering out as an .mp4 video (required for iTunes video podcast) with the best settings on everything I have my 6 minute video taking up a whopping 700MB - which of course is far too large for this purpose and unmanageable. Even by altering a number of things such as the screen size down to 640x360, the smallest I can get it down to is 450MB - and the quality is noticeably lower, too low for what I want/need.

Going by another video podcast which I am benchmarking mine against, they are averaging 30MB for every 1 minute of video - and keeping a high quality of video and audio in there. For example their 10 minute video is 300MB, and so i am targetting say 180MB for this 6 minute clip with similar results in quality? So my question is, am i being stupid and missing the correct render settings, or do I need to render it out as a full quality .mp4 file first - and then use a separete converting software to do this?

Help please if you can guys! I would appreciate it.
Thanks in advance,
Adam

[Adam1972]

No takers at all?

Does it mean that nobody has used Platinum 9, or that this is a problem that most others have too? I searched the forum for other answers/solutions first but nothing to answer my problem.

I'm hoping someone on here can take a few minutes to help out?
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[RenaultSport]

I'd appreciate knowing this too. I want to reneder to mp4 which seems the most reasonable and what most of the videos I see on Vimeo are rendered to aswell, but the mp4 codec with Sony Vegas Pro only seems to do small resolutions?

[elektrobix]

I use these settings in Sony Vegas Pro (which i gather are the same for studio 9)

Sony AVC - http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/images/sonyavc.png
or
Main Concept - http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/images/mainconcept.png

This gives me a decent quality 1280x720 mp4 file that i can upload to Vimeo. A 2:30 video works out at just over 91mb (roughly 40mb per minute)?

[RenaultSport]

Originally Posted by elektrobix

I use these settings in Sony Vegas Pro (which i gather are the same for studio 9)

Sony AVC - http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/images/sonyavc.png
or
Main Concept - http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/images/mainconcept.png

This gives me a decent quality 1280x720 mp4 file that i can upload to Vimeo. A 2:30 video works out at just over 91mb (roughly 40mb per minute)?

Thanks! I did wonder if you had to mess around with custom settings - I will give this ago later.

[freemonkie]

You should definitely tick the "Two pass" box to reduce final file size and improve quality (2nd screenshot)

Also it's worth reading the article that those screenshots come from:
Eugenia’s Rants and Thoughts » Blog Archive » Exporting with Vegas for Vimeo HD

[Adam1972]

Elektrobix - MANY thanks, I copied the Sony AVC settings you posted exactly and got fantastic high quality results (6 minute file at 225MB) - hopefully some other people can benefit from this too. I rendered a further Sony AVC file out at the 4,000,000 bitrate setting too, and got identical brilliant results at 178MB - matching the target 30MB or less (per minute of video) that I wanted with almost full video quality. I really appreciate the help there, and think the main setting I didn't have was that I had the profile set to "baseline" rather than "main"?

One thing was though, in the Main Concept dropdown option, I was getting the "custom" box greyed out for some reason - meaning that I couldn't go in to follow your second process, which I would also very much like to try to compare at the very least. Am I perhaps missing a codec in my setup, or anyone any other ideas? Anyway, thanks buddy

Adam