Vegas Video discussions from 2004 (Q1Q2)

Edward Troxel · March 16th, 2004, 09:11 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Kevin Kimmell : How about locking tracks down? Is there a way to lock them down or timecode them after synching the audio with video? -->>>

Just group them all together. Then if you move one they'll all move the same.

Kevin Kimmell · March 16th, 2004, 10:07 PM

Thanks. I'm a dolt!

:)

David Ho · March 17th, 2004, 12:34 AM

Is there a noticable difference switching from Good to Best quality when you create a new project?

Tor Salomonsen · March 17th, 2004, 03:24 AM

Best takes longer to render. Also, on some kinds of effects, Best may save you from jitters and artifacts. But normally Good will be best. That's why it's the default.
I can't give you a technical explanation of the difference, although I have seen it somewhere - perhaps even on this forum?

Tor Salomonsen · March 17th, 2004, 03:29 AM

Some fonts are drawn that way, to look wore down etc. If you start with a regular sharp font, I suppose you could experiment with the vegas noise generator, to see if you can achieve the rawishness you seek. There's also the bump map and height map functions to explore.

Rob Lohman · March 17th, 2004, 04:42 AM

A lot of applications can read OpenDML AVI's (or AVI 2.0 or
DirectShow AVI's etc.) now-a-days. Which version of After Effects
did you use? Because I can't imagine it not supporting this
standard in later versions. I'm not surprised PowerPoint isn't
supporting it since it basically isn't doing much with video.

Usually the smaller the application (especially freeware / shareware)
the less likely the change of it supporting OpenDML / AVI 2.

There are numerous tools that can conver between the two AVI
fileformats. Scenalyzer is one of them.
A lot of NLE's have tools for it as well.

Both have the exact same quality. Converting between the two
will also not result in a quality loss.

The only difference is maximum filesize (basically).

Rob Lohman · March 17th, 2004, 05:14 AM

First: you basically cannot get it right. If it looks good on your
monitor it might totally look different on mine. Not even talking
about the difference between LCD / TFT and CRT monitors.

Even most TV's are vastly different from eachother.

Are you saying that when editing / playing back in Vegas the
footage looks different then when you encode it to another
format and then play that back ON THE SAME monitor? It always
looks a little bit different (due to compression). But my experience
is not that it is vastly different on the same monitor.

Basically it all boils down to which codec you are using. The
formats you mention (AVI, WMV & QuickTime) are all CONTAINER
formats. They don't know about compression. The CODEC does
the COmpression / DECompression. So an Intel Indeo codec will
look vastly different than MPEG4, DiVX or DV codec.

Lars Siden · March 17th, 2004, 05:58 AM

Hi guys,

I've posted before about the speed of vegas median filter - and have received some replies like "Vegas has to deal with every singel pixel on all frames, it will be slow, but looks good".

Yesterday I had the oppertunity to test Canopus Procoder v1.5 - WOW is all I can say!

I tested ProCoder with the same AVI file that I used when testing Vegas.

Procoder:

* Median Filter
* De-interlace
* Color correction

Result: 15 fps

Didn't matter if I rendered to AVI or MPEG2 (DVD High quality) - got 15 fps any matter. That is like 7 times faster than Vegas AND the result was as good, or even better.

One thing that is different between vegas and Procoder is that procoder takes full advantage of having a hyperthreaded CPU.

So I say again - The progammers at sony/sonic will have to polish their skills for version 5 of vegas!

Best regards,

Lars Siden

ps. I still do really like VEGAS, but good can be better :-) ds.

Federico Dib · March 17th, 2004, 06:01 AM

I know that one can never get it "right"...
But at least acceptable..
I haven´t yet seen a movie trailer that I had to adjust the brightness.

And Yes.. I can see a difference, high enough to be concerned others will see a very bad image.

Allthough furhter non-scientific investigations seems to point that the last WMP version looks way too dark on my PC.

I wanted to post some screenshots.. but for some reason photoshop goes crazy with the video image on the WMP.

So if it´s mainly a Codec thing.. which one will you reccomend for web export. (both WMV and MOV)... ?

Are those Vegas Presets good enough? or Everyone has to do a lot of tweaking too?

Federico Dib · March 17th, 2004, 06:28 AM

in this thread I posted a new mini-short I´m finishing.
There are two versions... a MOV and WMV..
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=23041

I used the Vegas video for web 512 kbps preset for both MOV and WMV.

And in my PC the MOV looks dull, with not much contrast... but the WMV looks way too dark and high contrasted...

But if I open the same file on Vegas.. it looks better... I think...

(mental note to myself: take a rest, eyes are red and tired)

Edward Troxel · March 17th, 2004, 08:13 AM

It is generally recommended that you leave the settings on Good. It will render fasters with the same results. However, if you are doing a lot of photo pan/crop and zooming, it is recommended that you change to Best as it uses a better scaling algorithm. Copied from this link is the official Sony answer thanks to Dr. Dropout:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=17411

Different conversion algorithms are used for the different video rendering quality options, (which you choose from
Render as>[format]>custom>project.) You'll have the option of draft, preview, good, best.

Quality: Best
Scaling: bi-cubic/integration
Field Handling: on
Field Rendering: on (setting dependent)
Framerate Resample/IFR: on (switch dependent)

Quality: Good
Scaling: bi-linear
Field Handling: on
Field Rendering: on (setting dependent)
Framerate Resample/IFR: on (switch dependent)

Quality: Preview
Scaling: bi-linear
Field Handling: off
Field Rendering: off
Framerate Resample/IFR: always off

Quality: Draft
Scaling: point sample
Field Handling: off
Field Rendering: off
Framerate Resample/IFR: always off

------------------------------
Scaling:
------------------------------

These methods come into play when conforming sources that differ from the output size. They are also used when
panned, cropped or resized in track motion.

Bi-Cubic/Integration - Best image resizing algorithm available in Vegas. Quality differences will be most noticeable
when using very large stills or stretching small sources.

Bi-linear - Best compromise between speed and quality. This method will produce good results in most cases.

Point Sampling - Fast but produces poor results.

------------------------------
Field Handling:
------------------------------

This refers to the field conformance stage of Vegas's video engine. This includes Interlaced to Progressive
conversion, Interlaced to interlaced output when scaling, motion or geometric Video FX and Transitions are involved.
Skipping this stage can sometimes result in bad artifacts when high motion interlaced sources are used.

---------------------------------
Field Rendering:
---------------------------------

When the output format is interlaced, Vegas will internally render at the field rate (twice the frame rate) to
achieve smooth motion and FX interpolation.

---------------------------------
Frame Rate Resample / IFR (Interlace Flicker Reduction):
---------------------------------

Frame Rate Resample:

This kicks in when speed changes are made through Velocity Envelopes and/or event stretching. In can also be used
when up-converting low frame rate sources. This only kicks in if the resample switch is turned on _and_ quality is
set to good or best.

Interlace Flicker Reduction:

This kicks in if the event switch is turned on and quality is set to good or best. See Vegas' documentation for a
description of this switch.

Vegas will bypass any or all of these potentially expensive processing stages if the resulting output won't be
affected by the process (e.g. no-recompress pass-through, field render bypass when settings don't change and so on
...). Differences in the output between different quality settings may not always be noticeable, but that largely
depends on various attributes of the source media being used. If you want to see some of these differences first
hand, trying using extremely large or small sources or high-motion interlaced shots with extreme pan/crop operations.

Please note that you should never render your final project using anything other than good or best when interlaced
sources are involved unless the project only contains cuts. If preview quality is used, the resulting video will vary
between acceptable to disastrous depending on your project and its media content.

-----------------------------------------

Edward Troxel · March 17th, 2004, 08:17 AM

Most people transfer back and forth between Vegas and AE using Uncompressed AVI. Don't forget you also have an option to Frameserve.

Rob Lohman · March 17th, 2004, 08:18 AM

I'll check those out and get back to you. I have not experience
with WMV, but everybody using QuickTime basically uses a version
of the Sorenson codec. The higher the Sorenson codec number,
the better.

Rob Lohman · March 17th, 2004, 08:47 AM

They basically look the same on my computer. The outdoor scenes
were fine on both movies. The indoor scenes were a bit dark
indeed (but there is some sunlight in my room at the moment).
The WMV does indeed seem to have a bit more contrast, but
has some more muddy colors I think.

Federico Dib · March 17th, 2004, 09:32 AM

There is definetely something wrong with my WMPlayer...

Everyone else seems to say both versions look about the same....

But Mine is just very very dark.. Well... I´ll check into that or just do Quicktime...

Thanx

March 17th, 2004, 12:34 AM	#828
David Ho Major Player Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 354	Is there a noticable difference switching from Good to Best quality? Is there a noticable difference switching from Good to Best quality when you create a new project? __________________ "Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film."

March 17th, 2004, 04:42 AM	#831
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	A lot of applications can read OpenDML AVI's (or AVI 2.0 or DirectShow AVI's etc.) now-a-days. Which version of After Effects did you use? Because I can't imagine it not supporting this standard in later versions. I'm not surprised PowerPoint isn't supporting it since it basically isn't doing much with video. Usually the smaller the application (especially freeware / shareware) the less likely the change of it supporting OpenDML / AVI 2. There are numerous tools that can conver between the two AVI fileformats. Scenalyzer is one of them. A lot of NLE's have tools for it as well. Both have the exact same quality. Converting between the two will also not result in a quality loss. The only difference is maximum filesize (basically). __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

March 17th, 2004, 05:14 AM	#832
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	First: you basically cannot get it right. If it looks good on your monitor it might totally look different on mine. Not even talking about the difference between LCD / TFT and CRT monitors. Even most TV's are vastly different from eachother. Are you saying that when editing / playing back in Vegas the footage looks different then when you encode it to another format and then play that back ON THE SAME monitor? It always looks a little bit different (due to compression). But my experience is not that it is vastly different on the same monitor. Basically it all boils down to which codec you are using. The formats you mention (AVI, WMV & QuickTime) are all CONTAINER formats. They don't know about compression. The CODEC does the COmpression / DECompression. So an Intel Indeo codec will look vastly different than MPEG4, DiVX or DV codec. __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

March 17th, 2004, 05:58 AM	#833
Lars Siden Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Sweden, Stockholm Posts: 469	Once again, the speed ( or lack of ) of the Median filter Hi guys, I've posted before about the speed of vegas median filter - and have received some replies like "Vegas has to deal with every singel pixel on all frames, it will be slow, but looks good". Yesterday I had the oppertunity to test Canopus Procoder v1.5 - WOW is all I can say! I tested ProCoder with the same AVI file that I used when testing Vegas. Procoder: * Median Filter * De-interlace * Color correction Result: 15 fps Didn't matter if I rendered to AVI or MPEG2 (DVD High quality) - got 15 fps any matter. That is like 7 times faster than Vegas AND the result was as good, or even better. One thing that is different between vegas and Procoder is that procoder takes full advantage of having a hyperthreaded CPU. So I say again - The progammers at sony/sonic will have to polish their skills for version 5 of vegas! Best regards, Lars Siden ps. I still do really like VEGAS, but good can be better :-) ds. __________________ Sony HDR-CX130,Canon 5DMKII,i7 930@4.0, 12gb memory, 3x SSD + 2x1Tb(stripe), Geforce 480, Dual 24", Win 7 x64

March 17th, 2004, 06:01 AM	#834
Federico Dib Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Barcelona Posts: 312	I know that one can never get it "right"... But at least acceptable.. I haven´t yet seen a movie trailer that I had to adjust the brightness. And Yes.. I can see a difference, high enough to be concerned others will see a very bad image. Allthough furhter non-scientific investigations seems to point that the last WMP version looks way too dark on my PC. I wanted to post some screenshots.. but for some reason photoshop goes crazy with the video image on the WMP. So if it´s mainly a Codec thing.. which one will you reccomend for web export. (both WMV and MOV)... ? Are those Vegas Presets good enough? or Everyone has to do a lot of tweaking too? __________________ Messenger Boy : The Thessalonian you're fighting, he's the biggest man I've ever seen. I wouldn't want to fight him. Achilles : That is why no one will remember your name.

March 16th, 2004, 09:11 PM	#826
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	<<<-- Originally posted by Kevin Kimmell : How about locking tracks down? Is there a way to lock them down or timecode them after synching the audio with video? -->>> Just group them all together. Then if you move one they'll all move the same.

March 16th, 2004, 10:07 PM	#827
Kevin Kimmell Major Player Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Akron, OH Posts: 209	Thanks. I'm a dolt! :)

March 17th, 2004, 03:24 AM	#829
Tor Salomonsen Major Player Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Stavanger, Norway Posts: 265	Best takes longer to render. Also, on some kinds of effects, Best may save you from jitters and artifacts. But normally Good will be best. That's why it's the default. I can't give you a technical explanation of the difference, although I have seen it somewhere - perhaps even on this forum?

March 17th, 2004, 03:29 AM	#830
Tor Salomonsen Major Player Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Stavanger, Norway Posts: 265	Some fonts are drawn that way, to look wore down etc. If you start with a regular sharp font, I suppose you could experiment with the vegas noise generator, to see if you can achieve the rawishness you seek. There's also the bump map and height map functions to explore.

March 17th, 2004, 06:28 AM	#835
Federico Dib Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Barcelona Posts: 312	in this thread I posted a new mini-short I´m finishing. There are two versions... a MOV and WMV.. http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=23041 I used the Vegas video for web 512 kbps preset for both MOV and WMV. And in my PC the MOV looks dull, with not much contrast... but the WMV looks way too dark and high contrasted... But if I open the same file on Vegas.. it looks better... I think... (mental note to myself: take a rest, eyes are red and tired) __________________ Messenger Boy : The Thessalonian you're fighting, he's the biggest man I've ever seen. I wouldn't want to fight him. Achilles : That is why no one will remember your name.

March 17th, 2004, 08:13 AM	#836
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	It is generally recommended that you leave the settings on Good. It will render fasters with the same results. However, if you are doing a lot of photo pan/crop and zooming, it is recommended that you change to Best as it uses a better scaling algorithm. Copied from this link is the official Sony answer thanks to Dr. Dropout: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=17411 Different conversion algorithms are used for the different video rendering quality options, (which you choose from Render as>[format]>custom>project.) You'll have the option of draft, preview, good, best. Quality: Best Scaling: bi-cubic/integration Field Handling: on Field Rendering: on (setting dependent) Framerate Resample/IFR: on (switch dependent) Quality: Good Scaling: bi-linear Field Handling: on Field Rendering: on (setting dependent) Framerate Resample/IFR: on (switch dependent) Quality: Preview Scaling: bi-linear Field Handling: off Field Rendering: off Framerate Resample/IFR: always off Quality: Draft Scaling: point sample Field Handling: off Field Rendering: off Framerate Resample/IFR: always off ------------------------------ Scaling: ------------------------------ These methods come into play when conforming sources that differ from the output size. They are also used when panned, cropped or resized in track motion. Bi-Cubic/Integration - Best image resizing algorithm available in Vegas. Quality differences will be most noticeable when using very large stills or stretching small sources. Bi-linear - Best compromise between speed and quality. This method will produce good results in most cases. Point Sampling - Fast but produces poor results. ------------------------------ Field Handling: ------------------------------ This refers to the field conformance stage of Vegas's video engine. This includes Interlaced to Progressive conversion, Interlaced to interlaced output when scaling, motion or geometric Video FX and Transitions are involved. Skipping this stage can sometimes result in bad artifacts when high motion interlaced sources are used. --------------------------------- Field Rendering: --------------------------------- When the output format is interlaced, Vegas will internally render at the field rate (twice the frame rate) to achieve smooth motion and FX interpolation. --------------------------------- Frame Rate Resample / IFR (Interlace Flicker Reduction): --------------------------------- Frame Rate Resample: This kicks in when speed changes are made through Velocity Envelopes and/or event stretching. In can also be used when up-converting low frame rate sources. This only kicks in if the resample switch is turned on _and_ quality is set to good or best. Interlace Flicker Reduction: This kicks in if the event switch is turned on and quality is set to good or best. See Vegas' documentation for a description of this switch. Vegas will bypass any or all of these potentially expensive processing stages if the resulting output won't be affected by the process (e.g. no-recompress pass-through, field render bypass when settings don't change and so on ...). Differences in the output between different quality settings may not always be noticeable, but that largely depends on various attributes of the source media being used. If you want to see some of these differences first hand, trying using extremely large or small sources or high-motion interlaced shots with extreme pan/crop operations. Please note that you should never render your final project using anything other than good or best when interlaced sources are involved unless the project only contains cuts. If preview quality is used, the resulting video will vary between acceptable to disastrous depending on your project and its media content. -----------------------------------------

March 17th, 2004, 08:17 AM	#837
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	Most people transfer back and forth between Vegas and AE using Uncompressed AVI. Don't forget you also have an option to Frameserve.

March 17th, 2004, 08:18 AM	#838
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	I'll check those out and get back to you. I have not experience with WMV, but everybody using QuickTime basically uses a version of the Sorenson codec. The higher the Sorenson codec number, the better. __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

March 17th, 2004, 08:47 AM	#839
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	They basically look the same on my computer. The outdoor scenes were fine on both movies. The indoor scenes were a bit dark indeed (but there is some sunlight in my room at the moment). The WMV does indeed seem to have a bit more contrast, but has some more muddy colors I think. __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

March 17th, 2004, 09:32 AM	#840
Federico Dib Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Barcelona Posts: 312	There is definetely something wrong with my WMPlayer... Everyone else seems to say both versions look about the same.... But Mine is just very very dark.. Well... I´ll check into that or just do Quicktime... Thanx __________________ Messenger Boy : The Thessalonian you're fighting, he's the biggest man I've ever seen. I wouldn't want to fight him. Achilles : That is why no one will remember your name.