Rats. Ok, thanks, Edward. I understand now. Just shows my lack of experience with DVD authoring. Will have to come up with something else to put under it.

To speed up preview, it helps to pre-render sequences to RAM. Obviously, this takes one heckuva a lot of RAM, depending on the length of the preview, the more the better. 512 Megs is too low to get an effective result. I suggest 1 Gig min.

Why is this preview speed so important? I do all editing priort to
any effects work and that plays full frame rate on my system with
simple cutting and cross-fading and every other cutting tool.

Then I move on to effects and color correction work and this might
indeed get things slow downed to 5 fps. But this is not a problem
for me. I don't need to see the timing of shots anymore, just how
it looks. And this I usually want to do on a frame by frame basis
anyway to see if it looks great across the whole shot.

If I really need to judge some section I'm working on I select
that section and render a ram preview (which is fast on just a
scene for example) and I can watch it play at full framerate.

I'm just wondering why that is important to you...

But the faster the (single) processor the faster your preview will be.

<<<-- Originally posted by Bill Ravens : To speed up preview, it helps to pre-render sequences to RAM. Obviously, this takes one heckuva a lot of RAM, depending on the length of the preview, the more the better. 512 Megs is too low to get an effective result. I suggest 1 Gig min. -->>>

512 Mb of RAM are just for the net render CPUS, which won´t need too much to do their job.

Thank you again Ed. I'm heading over to your link now.

well vegas will only allow for one other render module.. not two..

so youll have the project on one machine and have that connected to the other.

these days fo rthe price of tthe celery, a lil it more will get u a p4.2.4 or 2.8 with HT

as for you rmain unit, the more ram (and the faster the ram) the faster your render will be

u could always try Maestro if u have a spare 30 grand .. :)

what im tryin to do is set up a clip action after a button is pressed and before the chapter begins..

still having issues with that after al this time.. lol

Quantity of ram really doesn't make a lot of difference in render time UNLESS you're using a bunch of large images. That's not to say that more ram isn't useful.

The faster the processor and the faster the data paths, the faster the render will be.

With network rendering, Vegas allows the base machine and TWO network renderers so up to three machines can be rendering a single project at the same time (unless you buy more licenses).

<<<-- Originally posted by Peter Jefferson : what im tryin to do is set up a clip action after a button is pressed and before the chapter begins..

still having issues with that after al this time.. lol -->>>

This is very doable in DVDA2. You just need to point your menu button to the intermediary video. Then set the end action of that video clip to the real chapter point.

Hi.

After rendering, I get sporadic spots on the parts of the video that I've processed - color correction, color curves, even fades to black (are these the infamous artifacts?)
Is there a way to avoid/get rid of them? (I want to apply other filters but I'm afraid that's going to degrade the video even more)
(the project was taped at 24p)

Thank You

Glen,
I've had experience with this earlier this year. I've spend hours and hours comparing different tests on a big tv-screen. The way that worked best for me (without motion problems or some shadow-ghosting problems) was the following:
- capture all PAL footage in a DV PAL Vegas project
- make all edits you want
- render the results to a single PAL AVI file, using the Best render quality options
- open a new, empty NTSC DV project and import the rendered PAL file onto the timeline
- check the PAL video on the timeline for it's properties, it has to be PAL
- render to an MPEG2 NTSC file using the Vegas presets (renderquality at Best).
- burn an NTSC dvd using the NTSC MPEG2 file.

Watch out with 25P footage (DVX100). I asked for and got several advices for trying to keep the progressive look towards the NTSC material, but all setting combinaties I tried in Vegas gave problems. In one of the two render steps described above I changed the 25P/progessive into interlaced (lower field). This solved the conversion artifacts (motion/ghosting). The NTSC dvd still has got the progressive look and the quality is fairly good. The only thing I notice that the video is a bitter smoother in it's motion, due to the higher number of frames/second with NTSC.

Anyone notice that the audio sounds sort of hollow, almost mono-like after burning to DVD? This is for Vegas 4 with DVDA 1.

I rendered the project as an NTSC DVD MPEG-2 default template with audio stream. The audio later gets recompressed as AC-3 stereo during the prepare and burn process. When I test the DVD on a DVD player and TV, the audio sounds noticeably less "full" than a commerical DVD or even just regular broadcast TV. I've double checked every setting and made sure I was encoding in stereo, but it still sounds very flat to me. I even tried PCM stereo in one burn. I also realize I'm dealing with TV speakers, but again, broadcast TV sounds much much fuller than the DVD's I've burned.

Is this is a limitation of the software MPEG encoding? Any thoughts?

Render the audio to AC3 from VEGAS and use that audio file in DVDA1. Here's what's happening in your procedure:

1) Original audio is compressed to MPEG2
2) MPEG2 audio is decompressed
3) decompressed audio is recompressed to AC3

That's a lot of extra compression. Turn off the audio in the MPEG2 file (which is the default) and render the audio to AC3 direcly in Vegas. Either that, or give DVDA an AVI file instead and let it compress both.

Thanks for the quick reply. I tried giving DVDA an avi just now and I'm still getting a hollow sound compared to broadcast TV audio. The DVD menus background music sounds the same way. Maybe I need to do some audio sweetening in Vegas? Currently the only thing I adjust with in-camera audio or music files is levels. Any thoughts?

first, you need a common basis for comparison between the finished dvd and the raw .wav audio from the .avi... that should be happening with your editing setup, where you should have quality speakers to use.

i would also be looking at the details of the .ac3 that you are encoding... what is the bitrate, what filtering do you have turned on with the .ac3 encoder, etc... don't ever encode anything without knowing exactly what the encoder settings are.

It sounds like the AC3 is being compressed too much. Try the following settings:

* Main audio service: complete main
* audio coding mode: 2/0 (L,R) = simple stereo
* dialog normalization: either -31 dB (this kind of means that you disable it), or -27 dB sometimes (but this may turn out quiet for some players, which use this number for playback); I don't use the settings scheme described in the article from doom9
* dynamic range compression: none

That will basically compress your audio to AC3 without losing too much of the dynamic range (if any).

Hello,

Is there a 1 thousand hertz tone comes with vegas?/ I am in need of one on a tape I ma working on. If can can anyone direct me to where i could find a 1K tone??

Thanks,
Mike Moncrief

You can generate some by printing to tape and capturing that.

Other ways:
Use Sound Forge.
use Audacity, which is open source.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Set Audacity or SF as your default audio editor and you can right click stuff and edit sound files in your audio editor.

Hello,

well thats true.. but i am jumping between systems and various software and was hoping to find a wav file without going to tape.. Hmmm there must be one in with the Vegas software, as it can generate the tone to Print to Tape.. not sure where it is at though..
Mike m

Just use Audacity, use the "generate" tool thinger in there to generate tone, and save the wav file. I think you just need exactly 1s as it can loop flawlessly that way.

Hello,

Ok I downloaded Audacity, and used that,m it did the trick !

Thanks,
Mike M.

Vegas only generates tone upon printing to tape. It's a simple matter to just PTT a few seconds and then turn around and recapture that tape. The captured file can be rendered to WAV and then shared across as many machines as desired.

If you have Sound Forge, it can also generate a variety of tones.

This sounds like compression issues instead of problems with the
effects or rendering itself. What is your final output format when
you see these "issues"?

You should try to put up a picture, that would be the best way to describe your problem. (before and after)

Otherwise be more descriptive as to what these spots look like.

The Scripting Wish List (http://www.jetdv.com/vegas/forum/viewforum.php?f=19) poll will be open for voting through the end of this week, then we will be sending the results to Sony to help in ranking enhancements to scripting for future Vegas releases.

If you haven't voted already, and have things that you would like to see added to the Scripting API, please vote soon.

Randall

On my last pass, why did the "disc space used" msg in the lower right corner turn red once it decided my project is 4.4 gigs? The discs hold 4.7, and it still burns and (from what I can tell) plays fine when I ignore it. Is that just a dummy warning light that you're getting close to capacity?

Marcia

I've recently being making a project in surround and have been using the 'Film' pan type. Strangely though when I come back to the project after reloading (and sometimes while I have been doing some editing) some of the layers change back to the 'constant' pan type on their own!

Has anyone else experienced this?

Another odd thing I have come across the last few days is that I keep getting told by DVDA2 that my DVD+RW (yes re-writable) disc is full in spite of the fact I told DVDA2 to erase the disc and go over any information that was on it!

This has been with two seperate brand new discs and I've never had a problem with anything like this before. Windows itself says that the disc only has 832mb capacity!

Obviously this is a pain as I like to test DVDs on rewritables so that if anything needs changing I don't end up with a room full of drinks coasters and an empty wallet!

Sorry I should mention that I am using Vegas 5b.

A burnable DVD labeled "4.7 Gig" will hold a total of 4.37 Gig. It's a difference between base 10 math and binary math. Computers use 1024 instead of 1000. The 4.7 is based on 1000. When based on 1024, it drops to 4.37.

Naturally, they "label" with the bigger number. That's also part of the reason why a 200Gig drive will only hold around 180 Gig! Part of the lost space is due to the above (the rest is due to formatting information).

If the disc actually burned and played fine, the final result must have actually been 4.37 or less. Remember the number there is just an estimate.

Thank goodness for you, Edward. :-) You're right of course, that it's actually much less. Since reading your post I noticed the difference when I went to burn this morning. Hadn't paid attention to that before. Actual size at that point was indeed lower. I reduced the file size anyway. I shortened how long bacground media I'd created played. Out of curiousity, is there a standard "average" for how long people let them go? I can't imagine anyone staring at a menu and debating what to select for longer than 30 seconds. I have it set to 1 min now, but does it even need to be that long?

Marcia

Depends on WHAT you are looping. If you have a 60 second song you want looped, you need to make it 60 seconds. If you have an 8 second video clip that's looping, natrually make it 8 seconds. If you want to try an make sure there is no "gap" in the music/video (i.e. when the looping actually occurs), you'll need to make it longer so that they select an item BEFORE the looping occurs. Of course you could always "timeout" and have it automatically select something after the song plays if they haven't.

Remember that the loop time applies to EVERYTHING on the menu.

I'm learning on the fly here, and doing plenty wrong, so I'm sure this is just something I've messed up, but I just noticed that my text is flickering. What I mean by that is, the text-only buttons/list of Chapters, flickers. It doesn't on the computer screen of course, only when burned and played back on the TV, so obviously there's something I need to change/tweak.

Quick project facts:

* Video is Mini DV shot 24p (24pA with the DVX100)
* Video was exported to DVDA as mpeg 2, 24p
* DVDA background for menus consists of a frame grab/still that's been softly blurred in Photoshop Elements, imported into Vegas 5, layered within Vegas with generated media from Vegas as well as text that was created in Photoshop Elements (beveled, etc.)
* This composited background was rendered out of Vegas with the same specs as the main video... mpeg 2, DVDA 24p

Everything looks great, except for the text-only buttons which rest on top of the media mentioned above. I tried rendering the above composite DVDA NTSC (not 24p), but that made both the background and the title created in Elements look like crap.

Is it possible that it's the font itself? I have somebody waiting for this DVD, and I'm out of time... so many tests and only incremental progress. :-(

Any ideas?

Marcia

There's no "anti-flicker" tools available for the menu similar to the "reduce interlace flicker" option in Vegas. Here's another place where this was discussed: http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=22&MessageID=189824

Basic solution: Use a thicker/larger font.

Jeez, what am I missing. I got a mixing board with mic's etc. with
the main outs going to my sound card, arm an audio track in Vegas and record, works great. Play it back, sounds great,
once I do another recording, the original one is silent?
Open a 'copy' in Sound Forge - nothing is there, open 'the file'
in Sound Forge and it is there?? But I can't get it back into
Vegas. Record a vocal track, listen to it, next pass it's silent?
What am I missing here??? Pulling hair - help!!

I've had a similar problem which I am thinking of including in a separate post (I'll need to take photos of my TV screen - thus the future tense).

The setup in DVD architect:
- 24p DVX100a footage, rendered to DVDA 24p mpeg2 format
- Background image (high-quality photoshop - generated .jpg file) containing the text (typographic effects etc. not achievable in DVDA).

The problem:
- when I import 24p footage in the timeline, burn project to DVD and then view the resulting DVD on my DVD Player/TV, the text in the background image gets "damaged" - looks like some of the horizontal lines are missing.
- it seems that DVDA changes (erratically) the DVD intro screen if 24p footage has been imported into the project.


A simulated demonstration of this effect (photos soon)

Image on left is how the intro screen looks if no 24p footage has been included.

Image on right is how it looks if 24p footage *has* been included.

http://www.instantclassic.org/external/demo2.gif

The problem is visible only on the TV screen after the project has been rendered and burned on a DVD and played in the DVD player.

In DVD architect the screen looks OK.


At first I thought this was the result of DVDA resizing the background image to fit the screen so I tried different versions of the image resized in photoshop (640x480, 720x480 and 654x480 if my memory serves me well) and I also tried different "fitting" modes - letterbox, enlarge to fit etc.

My experiments did not change the end result.

Then what I did was remove the 24p footage and burn a DVD with just the multiple title screens on it.

(by different screens I mean having a title screen with let's say 640x480 image set to "resize to fit" modem then a button to another title screen with same image set to "letterbox" mode etc. all in all 9 screens with 3 fitting modes for the 3 image sizes).

On this one all the screens looked OK.

The only difference between good and bad DVD being the 24p footage, it seems that this is an issue with DVDA architect handling progressive scan DVDs.

Any advise will be appreciated - I'll add photos to this post soon, or start a new thread.

note: my DVD player is the Phillips DVP642 and has not shown similar issues with any other DVD.

Regards
-- Andre

Interesting Andre. I'd like to see the screen shots when their ready. Following Edwards advice I tweaked the font, font size, and added bold to it. It still flickers a bit, but for a screener copy of my movie, it'll do for now. Not something I'd let go for any kind of professional release, but hey, maybe by the time I get to that point Sony will come up with a solution. ;-)

Marcia

Okay, of all the things I've been up against in the last year, this isn't the most frustrating, still...

...how do I get DVDA to recognize chapters entered in on the remote that start with the same number? 1/11/12/etc. If I hit the number one and then the second number, or both at the same time, it just registers chapter 1 and immediately goes to that one. What's the trick? I can't find anything helpful in the manual or on the Sony website. (sigh) And I was so close...

Marcia

Ladies, gentlemen,

Has anyone ever made a - commercial - DVD using Macromedia or CSS [Content Scrambling System]? I expect a potential customer will ask me about copy protecting his film in the nearby future, and I'd like to understand the process of getting a film scrambled, as well as the costs involved.

Thanks a million in advance,

Barend Jasper

This has been discussed before you might want to do a search. It is only cost effective in large quantities in most cases. Get some costs from some DVD replicators in your area and prepare a quote for your client.

this type of DVD can only be authored with a program like Encore, Maestro and afew others..

Truely protected DVD can ONLY be burned on DVD Authoring Media, <Very differen to yoru standard DVD-r>
(if u want to have a copywritten/protcted master. These require a different burner to your stocky Pioneer or whatever youre using..

Another alternative is DLT master tapes, send those off and have the duplicating company do the encode, and mark the glass master with CSS data for mass production.

Macrovision is a licensed product, and costs a fortune.
forget it..

These days though, anyone who asked for thisi usually tell them to forget it..

Apps like DVD Shrink allow the removal any copy protection/CSS from the disc and re encode a disc (if u want it to)
in the end if someone wants a copy, they will find a way to get one..

I would think that would be a function of the DVD player itself. Does the remote have a "+10" button to indicate tracks above 10 (i.e. press it once for 1x, twice for 2x... and then press the second digit so track 23 would be: +10 +10 3)

DVDA can make chapter points. The DVD player lets you select them.

Hi:

Will this keyboard also function as a regular keyboard for every day use or for Vegas use only?

http://www.bella-usa.com/detail.aspx?ID=40

Thanks
AP

Yes, essentially it IS a regular keyboard, just with additional colors and printing (and a jog wheel).

Gary

Amazing... I'd tired jumping around within the menus on only one of my DVD players. Since it didn't work on that one, I assumed I hadn't gotten some setting right within DVDA. But you're right, Edward... it was the player. The other two machines in the house went right to the correct chapter.

Thanks again,
Marcia

P.S. Now if I could just find the magic bullet that makes graphics come up with the exact same placement on all my TV sets (of various sizes), instead of centered on one, and off-center on the next... geesh. What a pain.

It's the TV!!! :-)

Yeah, but how do you know which one to trust? That's the real question. What I can't decide is whether or not to just go with the grid on DVDA to decide if it's centered, even when two of three TV's make it look off. On this past burn I adjusted to find a compromise that looks the best on all sets, but it's definitely not dead on in DVDA that way. I suspect it's like trying to make web pages look optimal on the greatest number of computers. There's no sure thing. But I am curious how the big boys decide this stuff for studio releases.

*I* trust DVDA. TVs are ALL going to be different. I trust that DVDA will be correct IF I could see the image on TV without overscan.

Hey all. Well I've noticed that what I see in my preview window in Vegas 4.0e isn't exactly what it exports when I render a file. Example: when I render an AVI and then view it in WMP outside of Vegas, the files have more contrast. I've already checked to make sure my WMP is calibrated to zero enhancements. I do have a track effect of Kodak 5279 applied to the entire project but this is obviously already reflected in my preview window (yes, I made sure I have view effects turned on). Is this normal?

Hey gang, I'll be doing some training at a television station in Dallas next week, staying at the Hilton Garden near Love Field.
If there are any of you in that area that would like to get together for a small dinner gathering, we're gonna get together at 7:30 on Wednesday at the Hilton Garden.
Would love to meet some of you.

Hi everybody...I bought Vegas 1 week ago...looks good...But I have a problem when import music..The counter goes until 99% and at the end tell what there is an error what Vegas don't recognize...But the weird thing is sometimes do the import, and sometimes don't...Any sugestion is welcome...