Solved Request for Gameplay Capture Rendering Assistance

Hello Derek,

I hope this message finds you well. Thank you in advance for reading my post, and for hosting such a helpful site.

I recently purchased Sony Movie Studio Suite 13, and am having difficulty with determining the correct settings for my rendering needs.

I have captured some gameplay footage that I have edited and am now trying to render. When I preview the footage, it looks great, but every setting I have used to render it causes the resulting output to look pixelated (blocky / grainy). I captured the footage with a program called FRAPS, and had been previously editing with freeware (which was working great, but I wanted to get Movie Studio Suite, knowing that it must have more capabilities once I learn them).

The footage I have is in .avi format. Here are the properties:

General
Name: Input.avi
Folder: C:\Users\Me\Desktop
Type: Video for Windows
Size: 15.62 GB (15,997,480,476 bytes)
Attributes: Archive

Streams
Video: 00:05:15.250, 60.000 fps, 1920x1080x24, Fraps Video Decompressor
Audio: 00:05:15.250, 44,100 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo, Uncompressed

ACID information
ACID chunk: no
Stretch chunk: no
Stretch list: no
Stretch info2: no
Beat markers: no
Detected beats: no

Other metadata
Regions/markers: no
Command markers: no

Media manager
Media tags: no

Plug-In
Name: aviplug.dll
Folder: C:\Program Files\Sony\Movie Studio Platinum 13.0\FileIO Plug-Ins\aviplug
Format: Video for Windows
Version: Version 13.0 (Build 943) 64-bit
Company: Sony Creative Software Inc.

I have changed my power settings in the Control Panel to "High Performance", as per your advice in one of your Tutorials.

When I play the .avi file, the quality is very impressive. I have a NVIDIA 465 card, and 6GB Ram with a decent system, if this information helps. I am trying various changes and testing the results by rendering at different settings, but have had no success with maintaining the quality that I am attempting to preserve. If you (or anyone reading this) can offer any advice, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you for your time, I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Sir Duncan

Hi

Please realize that when you screen capture using .avi in Fraps, you are recording to an un-compressed format.
When you render this to a final format for YouTube, it will never look exactly the same because the file is being compressed into a manageable file size.

I will assume you have watched this tutorial here:
www.moviestudiozen.com/free-tutorials/sony-movie-studio-platinum/516-1080p-video-in-movie-studio-platinum-13
Because your video is recorded at 60fps, you will need to manually change the Frame Rate setting in your Render As / Make Movie Advanced Settings to the same frame rate.

There is a setting you need to change which will reduce the amount of Motion Blur you see in your video.
Right-click all the video segments on your timeline and go to Switches - set to Disable Re-Sample.
Do this for all your projects from now on.
You can also turn on Two Pass rendering, which is also in the Advanced Custom Video settings window, however please note that this will double your rendering times. This setting should improve the quality slightly.
Then re-render the video and remember to manually set the Frame Rate to 60fps and not 30fps.

Regards
Derek.

Hello (G'day?) Derek,

I hope you are doing well. Thank you for your informative reply, I watched the Tutorial that you provided the link for, and indeed have some questions regarding its content. I am presently rendering a video so I will have to watch it again and take some notes before posing my questions. I really appreciate your help and advice, but I am left wondering if I made a mistake in purchasing this software (Sony Movie Studio 13 Platinum). Up until the time of my purchase, I was using some trial versions of some software, and I was having great results. I am somewhat of a dinosaur when it comes to making online purchases, and I like to have hard copies of my software. It was for this reason that I bought this program, as it looked amazing (and I am sure that it is). I am only hoping that it meets my needs.

I am not concerned with uploading my videos, and would rather that the files stayed un-compressed if it meant maintaining the preservation of the source quality. My source files are in .avi format (large files), but their clarity and smoothness are amazing. I have followed your advice, but am wondering if you would mind telling me what you think of the following format for my situation:

Make Movie -> Save it to my Hard Drive -> Advanced Options -> Sony AVC/MVC (In the "Templates" area, I selected "Internet 1920x1080-30p" and then clicked the "Customize Template" button, using the Frame Rate drop down to choose "Double NTSC (59.940)".

That seems to have worked better than other choices I have selected thus far, but is still just a little choppy during fast movement within the video in comparison to the .avi source files. I also noticed that using the above choices does not seem to allow me to then use the "Two Pass" Rendering option that you suggested (unless I am missing something). It may be worth noting that I also followed your advice by "Disabling Re-samples".

I would love to be able to determine with 100% certainty the best format and template that I should be using for my circumstance. I don't mind if the rendering takes a long time, and / or if the video files are large, as long as the quality is preserved.

I do value your time, and thank you again for it. Keep up the amazing work - your Tutorials are great!

Sincerely,

Sir Duncan

Hi again

Please note that no one would ever upload un-compressed video to YouTube or deliver it in any other format that is not compressed to some level.
When you upload a video to YouTube, it is going to be re-compressed even further. It is impossible to maintain 100% of the original quality of any video that is uploaded to a website like YouTube. Ask any video professional and they will tell you the exact same thing.

There is nothing wrong with Movie Studio Platinum. It is using official video codecs and protocols for rendering all your videos.

Only Mainconcept AVC rendering allows for Two Pass rendering.

I have already told you all the information there is to know about rendering video for the Internet, using the special templates that are already optimized for this type of video. Video for the web must be compressed, to keep the file size as small as possible. As I mentioned above, even if you didn't render your video to a web format, YouTube is going to do the exact same thing for you, whether you like it or not.

Alternate Solutions

1. After telling you all the standard stuff above, there is another way you could render your videos.
Try Sony XAVC S HD 1080p long-GOP 59.94
This is a newer pro level Video Codec and encodes to 50MBps.
The file size is going to be a lot bigger than rendering to Mainconcept, so will take a lot longer to upload.

2. There are other techniques that some people use, but they are very complicated and involve advanced levels of knowledge and using another program called Handbrake. If you search on the Sony Creative Software Vegas Pro and/or Vegas Movie Studio Forums , you will find many discussions on this topic. Personally I do not teach this stuff, because I like to keep things as simple as possible. If you are interested in learning about this, you will have to ask for help from other people.

All the best.
Derek.

(Edited) Thank you for your reply...as I mentioned in my post previous to your reply, "I do not care about uploading my videos". I will try your advice and from now on will keep my questions to myself as I can see that you are irritable.

You have mis-interpreted my message if you think I was irritable !
I normally spend a couple of hours every day answering questions for free. This takes a lot of time and energy and I try to give the best answers I can. I have to be direct and too the point so as to not waste my time or yours.

Why would I bother spending time to reply to you if I was pissed off ?

I am sorry, Derek.

Perhaps it was I who was irritable, but I grow tired of living in a world where "As I said..." or, "As I already told you..." is so sommon, as if (making me feel) being told "don't be so stupid...". I appreciate you telling me that this wasn't the case. I am a "Noobie" in the realm of Sony Movie Studio Products, and am feeling like I hope that I didn't waste another 160.00 + on buying the product (after wasting 180.00 + 0n Photoshop Elements when I should have gotten a much cheaper version of CS2). My "Freeware" was doing a better job than the Sony software is currently doing and I know that there must be something that I am missing, as it seems to be an amazing an versatile product.

Please forgive me for any hard feelings. I sincerely do appreciate your work here, and hope that I hear back from you (not to mention that others read this).

Thank you again - I will be sure to let you know how the "Alternative Solutions" work.

Have a happy tokin' day, mate.

Sincerely,

Sir Duncan