Making your videos HD

[kaxeriny]

Hey, I wanted to ask a question. I've felt like my videos don't look as crisp as they should and I have no idea why. I download HD clips, but they still come up looking fuzzy. Is there a particular converting software I should be using? Or format?
Any advice would be helpful. ^^;

[Drango]

The main questions would be what format are you converting into and are those lossless formats?

If you're converting into MP4, then you need to check the bit rate of your video converter. A larger bit rate will result in a larger file size but there will be a noticeably lower drop in quality the higher you go.

If you are converting into AVI, then you need to use a lossless AVI format like Lagrith or Huffyuv. Again, the file will be huge, but there will be no loss in quality.

And the same goes for rendering out the final file in your video editor.

[kaxeriny]

Thanks for the help!
So, I think the big problem is that I'm having to use WMV files, then. Vegas is just... refusing to recognize AVIs no matter what I do. So, I'll have to mess around and see what I can do.
Thanks a lot for the advice. It helps.

[undercoverism]

wmv files would definitely be the problem. for highest possible quality, you'll want to convert your mkvs to a lossless avi - the best way to do this is with avisynth and virtualdub. i suggest either utvideo or lagarith as your avi codec (you'll probably need to download the codecs). lagarith being the smallest in file size but still large compared to what you're probably used to. and lagarith avis are handled nicely by vegas, opposed to xvid (which technically isn't even "supported" by vegas) for example.

to work with lossless footage you'll probably either need a lot of hd spaces, or to delete your episodes after editing (but keeping the original mkvs), or the most tedious option imo is to clip specific scenes inside of virtualdub to conserve hd space.

[amaterasu]

Another thing, you should check your Vegas render settings. Here's the settings I use