Renders to MPEG-2 elementary stream repeat frames

corug7 wrote on 11/21/2015, 8:48 AM
I have always had fantastic results with the Mainconcept MPEG-2 encoder in Vegas, but this last project has left me baffled. I finished my project, which used HDV 1080i and AVCHD 60p footage, in Vegas 10 and rendered to MPEG-2, and the resulting file was loaded with dropped/redundant frames, especially during dissolves and high motion. I then rendered to IMX 50 and did not see redundant frames, so I dropped that file on a new timeline and rendered to MPEG-2, and got redundant frames again!

To make matters more interesting, I tried rendering the timeline from another computer with Vegas 12 and THAT render had redundant frames. I then rendered the timeline to a 1080i MXF (which caused a memory leak and shut down my computer), and the resulting file, which I was able to rescue, did not have redundant frames, but rendering it to MPEG-2 for DVD did show redundant frames.

My solution was to bring the MXF file into a friend's MacBook and render from Compressor. Obviously this is not an ideal solution, and I lost two days of my life trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Any ideas on what could be causing the issue? Many thanks!

Corey

Comments

Former user wrote on 11/21/2015, 9:37 AM
Are you rendering to a standard definition MPEG for DVD?

I have had my best luck by downrezzing first to a lossless file (usually uncompressed AVI) and then rendering that to MPEG. In my experience, trying to downrez video and compress it at the same time has introduced weird anomalies.
wwaag wrote on 11/21/2015, 9:59 AM
Unless you have a problem with a mismatch of project and render settings, IMHO, it's just the encoder. Personally, I've never liked Mainconcept. Even in the early days of DVD only, I found CCE Basic to provide much better quality. With Vegas, I've been using Procoder, but it is no longer available. Some time ago, I did a comparison between Procoder and MC renders and found the same thing you reported during simple crossfades. If you need to stay with MPEG-2, I'd suggest you try TMPGEnc's Mastering Works 6. You can frameserve from Vegas so no render to an intermediate is necessary. It also supports Quicksync for MPEG-2 as well as AVC, although I've never used it.

wwaag

AKA the HappyOtter at https://tools4vegas.com/. System 1: Intel i7-8700k with HD 630 graphics plus an Nvidia RTX4070 graphics card. System 2: Intel i7-3770k with HD 4000 graphics plus an AMD RX550 graphics card. System 3: Laptop. Dell Inspiron Plus 16. Intel i7-11800H, Intel Graphics. Current cameras include Panasonic FZ2500, GoPro Hero11 and Hero8 Black plus a myriad of smartPhone, pocket cameras, video cameras and film cameras going back to the original Nikon S.

dxdy wrote on 11/21/2015, 12:19 PM
+1 TMPGENC 6 via frameserver.
dxdy wrote on 11/21/2015, 12:38 PM
Are you using SVP 10?

If you have GPU turned on, try turning it off. It could be that an update has changed your video card driver version, and now your MC render is acting up. If the problem goes away, you know have a start on solving the problem.

I have been using MC mpg2 "forever" without this issue (SVP 7 thru 13).
john_dennis wrote on 11/21/2015, 3:19 PM
This scenario matches your sources and experience well. I remember the bug. I don't remember the fix.
corug7 wrote on 11/21/2015, 10:47 PM
Thanks for the replies, everyone. John, the link you provided sure seems similar to what I am seeing.