Sony Vegas in-project video quality issues

A few months ago my Sony Vegas 8 had an issue with video quality inside the project, which also passes on to the rendered video. I've started making videos again after not doing so these few months and the problem still persists. Would anyone know what is causing this and how to solve the issue? I've not had this problem before with the footage or the program on either of my computers but at the same time as this problem appeared padlocks began appearing on my project files.

I've uploaded an image of what the video continually flickers into when viewed in the timeline, trimmer and when rendered. The whole video isn't like this but it is halfway through needed scenes which is why I cannot simply edit it out.



I've already consulted Dr. Google, but no luck there so I'm asking here since I know a lot of us use/have used this program.

 

If you go into File -> Properties, try revising some of your settings (in particular, the ones on the Video tab). I've never had the problem but that seems like it could be a culprit.

 

I've had a fiddle with all the settings my laptop supports and it's worse off in all the others.

 

Have you changed your rendering settings lately?

 

No. I hadn't changed them before the problem began but I have tried different ones after the problem appeared but it appears to be happening during the trimmer instead of rendering.

 

Have you tried reinstalling Vegas?

 

I haven't yet. I wanted to see if there was another cause before trying that.

 

Is the video file that you're editing with encoded with DivX or Xvid?

 

I'm not quite sure, I have a feeling it might be Xvid.

 

I'm pretty sure that's where the problem lies. You see, video files compressed with a lossy codec like Xvid, Divx or any of their variants usually throw some data away when they're being compressed to make the filesize smaller. The codecs are ideal for the final render when everything is done and ready but horrible for editing because Vegas, or any other editing program, usually needs some of that lost data or you get the problem you're having right now. Plus working with video files that are compressed with Xvid and then rendering them out again with Xvid leads to more data lost, meaning a drop in quality.

To resolve this, it's best to re-compress the video file with a lossless codec, which as the name implies, means that after compressing the video, and then decompressing it, you wind up with the exact same data as you put in. The downside to using lossless compression is that the resulting file, while perfect for editing, is very huge in filesize, like in GBs >>. If you have a lot of hard drive space or an external hard drive though, this shouldn't really be a problem though. Now I've never compressed an .avi encoded with Xvid with a lossless codec before; I usually use .mkv because they have better quality. Does the site you use to get your Kamen Rider subs encode their subs into any other formats like .mp4 or .mkv for example?

EDIT: But if they don't, you'll need VirtualDub and UTVideo. Extract the former into a folder and install the latter. After installing UTVideo, open up VirtualDub. You should be able to open your video file by File > Open Video File. Two video screens should open in the program and if you scrub the handle at the bottom, you can look through your video. If everything looks okay to you, go over to Video>Compression. Now there should be 4 versions of UTVideo in the window that just opened. You'll only be needing to use one which is UT Video Codec YUV420. By pressing Configure while having the codec that you want to encode with selected, you can choose whether to optimize the video that you're about to encode for decoding speed or compression. Choosing the former makes the video load faster in Vegas while choosing the latter makes the video have a slightly smaller filesize. Pick whichever works best for you. Press OK to get out of the compression window. After that you should go back to the Video tab on the toolbar, but this time, you'll just be clicking on Fast Recompress which will change how the program will compress the video. After that you can take out the audio if you want to. You can do that by going to Audio>No Audio. In the end, just go File>Save as Avi. Specify where you want to put the video and press Save. It should start compressing after that. Tell me if the resulting file still has the same problem in Vegas.
/technobabble :B

 

They do avi, mp4 and mkv but I can't manage to get mkv files to work in Sony Vegas without the quality disappearing completely and I'm not a fan of mp4. Can a lossless codec make mkv files work with vegas without the loss of any quality (since the mkv files are in HD)?

 

Vegas doesn't support .mkv so you'll have to convert the file into a lossless avi which Vegas does support. No worries, there won't be a drop in quality. I'm assuming that you have the necessary codecs to play an .mkv file on your computer. If not, the Community Combined Codec Pack is the best codec pack that I know of. It supports most, if not all, of the video formats in use today.

Now VirtualDub doesn't support the .mkv format. To get around this, you'll be using a little program called Avisynth along with AvsPmod. AviSynth isn't a program in the way you may usually think of programs. You don't run an .exe and use some graphical interface to change settings or anything - that's not the way AviSynth works. AviSynth is a video processing machine that works in the background. It's a trickster that makes video editing/playback software think that it is reading a video file when in reality the footage is being generated frame by frame to your design thanks to Avisynth.

All you do is write a simple text file with some commands on it and you give this file to a Video Editing program(like VirtualDub for example) to read. When the Video Program looks at the file it doesn't see the commands you wrote, it sees video. The video the program sees is what you described in your simple file. AvsPmod will be helping you make these little scripts.

AvsPmod is like a souped-up text editor specifically designed for making AviSynth scripts. It has a ton of great features like syntax highlighting, autocomplete, integrated video preview, a tabbed interface for easily comparing different scripts, and so many other features that I really can't even get into them all here. Even if you don't understand what all of that means, just rest assured, it makes creating AviSynth scripts VERY easy and fast. But enough talk, let's jump right into it. It sounds complicated but trust me, it's not that hard.

Install Avisynth and extract the zip containing AvsPmod into a folder. You can make the folder anywhere. Personally I put mine on my desktop for easier access. After installing Avisynth, open up AvsPmod and you should get what looks like a simple text editor. The first thing you're gonna do is make simple command:

DirectShowSource("")

Now this command won't do anything unless you put the path to the video file in between the parenthesis. Something like this:

DirectShowSource("C:\Users\Not putting my real name here\Desktop\Puella Magi\Puella Magi 8.mkv")

Just replace the line that I put down with the path of your video file. To find the path to the video, just open the folder that the video file is in and click on the address bar at the top of the window. Copy and paste that in between the parenthesis. Afterwards, you just need to put in the name of the video file. Make sure you put file format at the end of the file's name. You're using an .mkv file so the script will end with ".mkv". To see if the script works, press F5 and you'll get a preview of the video.

Now since the video is most likely HD, the resolution is gonna be 1280x720. If that's too big for you, you just have to use a simple command to lower the resolution to something more reasonable like 848x480(Standard Widescreen). In the end, I've always found it best to work with this size since it makes the file smaller. Just add an extra line to the script:

DirectShowSource("C:\Users\Still not putting my real name here\Desktop\Puella Magi\Puella Magi 8.mkv")
Spline36Resize(848,480)

Pressing F5 again will show you that the frame size has lowered. And that's it! All you have to do now is save the script by going to "File > Save script as...". After saving the script, open it up in VirtualDub and follow the steps that I posted previously.

If you need me to clear anything up, just ask.

 

EDIT: Okay. I got it working and it's done the job. Thanks, you've both solved my problem and helped me to use mkvs for Vegas.

I'll close this now since it's resolved.