I've recently revised my procedure here to a system that has higher hard disk (size) requirements, but yields absolutely stunning vid quality results, thought I'd share it here:
1) Render out of Moviestorm at 1920x1080, using the Custom option, and using the tab where you can render to a series of PNG images. It's best to (ahead of time) create a folder specifically to hold these images rather than have them dumped into a folder which contains other things. Moviestorm will automatically number the individual frames (PNG images) in sequential order.
2) Launch VirtualDub -
www.virtualdub.org - and then open the first PNG image in the series created above. Be sure the checkbox for "automatically open linked segments" is checked. This will load all the images, in order.
3) In VirtualDub, under the Video menu, choose Full Processing. Under Compression, choose the
HuffYUV codec. Under the Audio menu, choose "No Audio." Save As AVI... voila, you have a lossless AVI file (large, but significantly smaller than Uncompressed). Once this file is created, you can safely delete all those PNG images used to create it.
4) IF YOU NEED THE AUDIO FROM MOVIESTORM... Back to Moviestorm, render out a second copy of the movie at low resolution, using the default output type. (If you use Vegas, you'll have to take an extra step to extract the audio from this file - I've found it's easiest to just open the AVI file in
Goldwave and save as WAV.) If for some reason you didn't need Moviestorm's audio, you can skip this entire step 4.
5) Bring the HuffYUV footage (with the audio from step 4, if applicable) into Vegas, edit / post produce as needed, and render out uncompressed AVI at 1280x720. This sizing down from the original footage size seems to really smooth out some hard edges (a common effect when video is downsized at quality settings) while still preserving a clean image.
6) I then take that AVI file, open it in QuickTime Pro, and render out as a QuickTime .MOV file; 3000-4000kbps video data rate, automatic keyframes, H.264 codec, 160kbps AAC audio. I got these specs from Vimeo's HD FAQ, tweaked them a bit to my liking.
http://www.vimeo.com.../hd#hd_encodingThat file from step 3 is what I upload to Moviestorm, Vimeo, and YouTube alike. I do use that same uncompressed master to render to other formats, including FLV (Flash Video) and DivX AVI, the latter at very similar settings to the QuickTime file. DivX actually looks a tad better than QuickTime, but has slightly larger file size and also doesn't seem to upload/encode at the same quality.
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This takes a little bit longer than my former method, however the improvement in quality is stellar, and is well worth the time for your productions when quality is a must.
I've got two short films I'll be releasing very soon which used this procedure, and I think you'll be able to see the difference especially in places like Vimeo where the film is watched in HD.
Hi, Overman. I buy a new monitor and now I can render vedios at 1920x1080. So I come back to try your rendering process and settings.
I used to use Adobe Premiere, I found that Premiere can import PNG images as still image sequence, so I didn't use VirtualDub. Now I got a Vegas on my PC, I find Vegas can do this, too.
and then edit / post produce as needed, and render out uncompressed AVI at 1280x720 ?
Is there any good reason for these? Thanks.
