Vegas Video discussions from 2005 (Q1Q2)
 

Hi, I am wondering if someone can help me create a script to vertically flip and change to 16:9 ratio on the timeline.

If someone can point me in the right direction... or hold my hand. Thanks!

16x9 in Vegas 5 using PAL XL2, HELP!!
 

hello all, help needed please! Lucky enough to just get a new XL2 and even luckier to be going to Zambia this evening to produce a short doc. Anyway, having big problems with Vegas as it's the first time I've use 16x9 footage with it.

I think these should be my settings for editing with the 16x9 footage, remember I'm using a PAL camera..

Width: 960 Field Order: Lower field first
Height: 576 Pixel Rate: ???????????
Frame Rate 25.000

When I use these settings the footage has lots of jagged lines/ steps. What settings should I use? And when I render?
Very much hope some Vegas users happily editing with PAL 16:9 footage can come to my rescue!

regards
Mark

Mark, I don't have any specific experience with the XL2, but it sounds like you are specifying a non-standard resolution for Vegas. Set your project properties to the PAL DV Widescreen template as the XL2 is recording DV to tape at 720x576 (no matter what the res. of the chips is). If you use the templates you should be pretty right.

BTW depending on the resolution you have the preview window set to you may see jaggies regardless, but these should not be in the rendered file.

When you render, render to:
PAL DV Widescreen (for full res. anamorphic output to tape)
PAL DV (for letterboxed 4:3 output to tape) or
Mpeg2 widescreen (for full res. anamorphic DVD)

Hope this helps.

all you really need to do is set your capturing to widescreen Pal DV

then create a project template with the PAL DV Widescreen.

your pixel aspect ration is whats causing the jaggies, as your PAR is differing from the project PAR

Just back from Africa this morning. Thank you both very much for your help. I have tried as you suggested and it works.

Jeff, I couldn't find the option to capture the source as 'widescreen DV'.

I tried your suggestions Kyle and I think they have solved my problem. But just another quick question Kyle!

If I render it as 'PAL DV Widescreen for full res. anamorphic output to tape, does that mean on a 4:3 screen the it will appear as 'squashed', but once it's played on a widescreen TV, it automatically plays it as wide screen (16:9)?

And if I render it as 'PAL DV (for letterboxed 4:3 output to tape) ', will it always appear letter boxed which ever size screen it is played from?

I am also rendering an MPEG2 version for a power point presentation. I think for powerpoint 16:9 always needs to be letterboxed.

Thank you both very much for taking the time to help.
regards
Mark. (UK)

16 x 9 Crop Mask
 

I was reading another post talking about in-camera 16 X 9 and somebody stated that cropping in post reduces image quality. Did I read that wrong? I thought that cropping in post on Vegas just put black bands on the top and bottom of the 4 x 3 frame and as long as you framed correctly when you shot, you'd be fine.

Does cropping to 16 x 9 using the pan/crop tool in Vegas reduce picture quality?

>Does cropping to 16 x 9 using the pan/crop tool in Vegas reduce picture quality?<

No it doesn't.

However, if you shift the image veritcally within the crop mask, which theorectically should not reduce the quality, you may see a softening of the image.

Gary

No one?

Perhaps i don't understand. Why do you need a script to do this? Can't you just use the track motion or event pan/crop tools to accomplish this?

Yeah I am redoing a project and i have over a hundred cuts, so rather than do each one individually I was hoping i could just run a script, and i figured someone else would probably find themselves in a similar position someday...

When you say shift the image vertically, do you mean "pan and scan" to center the image better between the mask? And if so, why would that soften the image?

Hugh,
Ignoring the fact that you will be recompressing the footage, adding a letterbox mask to 4:3 footage won't degrade the image quality.

What people usually mean when they say not to use masking or letterboxing (in camera or in post) is that it is not as high a resolution as a true anamorphic 16:9 (from a true 16:9 camera, or a 4:3 camera with adaptor).

DV can be one of two aspect ratios - 4:3 or 16:9. Both use the same number of pixels. If you convert 4:3 to 16:9 by masking you are using the same number of pixels, but the few top rows and bottom few rows (1/4 of the picture) are black and contain no real information, whereas with a true 16:9 source all pixels are used for picture information.

Your footage played on a 4:3 tv won't be much different (probably not even noticable) - it'll be just masking off the top and bottom.
On a widescreen tv though if you zoom to fill the screen, you footage won't look anywhere near as good as true 16:9.

You can do everything on a track at once using Track Motion.

You can do aspect ratio and verical flip at once from track motion? Do tell!

>What people usually mean when they say not to use masking or letterboxing (in camera or in post) is that it is not as high a resolution as a true anamorphic 16:9 <

That may be, but what *I * meant was that if you move the cropped area vertically to reveal a different part of the image, every other increment up or down will produce a softened image.

Try it and see.

Gary

This was done on Vegas 5:

For the vertical flip do the following (everything will be flipped).

1. go to "track motion"

2. give "angle" under "rotation" a value of 180
(make sure "enable rotation" button is pressed)

-OR-

2. right-click in the schematic on the right and
choose "flip vertical"

I couldn't find an easy way with trackmotion to add 16:9 letter-
boxing (it was stretching the picture instead of cropping), but
if you go to my letterbox calculator you can download a mask
for 16:9 from that page. Make a new track above your current
ones and drop the mask in. Get it here:

www.visuar.com/letterbox/calc.htm

1. add the .GIF to a new track ABOVE your other tracks

2. right-click on the GIF in your timeline and go to properties. Go to the media tab and set the pixel aspect ratio to "0,9091 (NTSC DV)" or "1,0926 (PAL DV)" (whichever applies) and OK everything.

3. now change the tracks compositing mode from "source alpha" to "Multiply (Mask)"

And you are done! You can stretch the event to as long as you
need to cover your complete project length. You can also shift
footage up or down underneath these black bars.

Gary,
I was refering only to the addition of a mask and not 'reframing' the shot (Hugh got his response in while I was still writing mine...).

While I haven't actually done what you say (reframing vertically) I agree it would soften the image somewhat.

So then, if I want a pristine image, just shoot 4 x 3 and shut my hole?

If a true 16:9 camera or anamorphic convertor are out of your price range (or not really warranted for your production), you can either crop in camera, crop in post or shoot with a fake anamorphic 16:9 (or just use plain 4:3).

http://members.macconnect.com/users/...een/index.html

This site explains it all pretty well as I recall.

THANKS ROB!!!!

How do I crop in camera? I have the PD 170 and doesn't that use a crappy anamorphic squeeze?

dynamic ram preview
 

I currently run a p4 3Ghz processor with 1G of ram.
I like to do alot of previews during editing. Will increasing ram to 2G significantly improve the speed of ram renders? On the preferences menu you can alocate as much ram as you need so will doubling the ram halve the speed of ram renders or is it a law of diminishing returns?

Also what is the difference between a pre-render and a ram render? is one faster then the other or do they look different or does one use cpu power and the other just ram?

Why does the pre render disappear after you play with the time line? isnt it prerendered to a temporary file? so why doesnt vegas keep that file for later use if needed?

Shouldn't reduce the speed of them but WILL increase the possible length of them.

Ram Render renders to RAM - Pre-render renders to the hard drive.

If you change something that affects the section of the timeline to which the pre-render applied, the pre-render will be "lost" (technically the file is still on the hard drive). That's why many people prefer the "Render to New Track" option instead.

Thanks Mr Troxel.
I'm slowly working through your dvd guide which I think is very helpful.

DVDA 2 will not register
 

I have purchased the academic ver of vegas 5 + DVDA 2. Vegas registered fine DVDA acts as if it registers then say i have 14 or whatever days left. next time same thing anyone have this problem. Should i just call sony?

Call Sony Tech Support and they should be able to walk you through solving this problem.

Calling is best. If you can't get thru you may try re-registering with your firewall/antivirus disabled.

Dual Display Card
 

I need more screen real estate in vegas...I'm looking at the plethora of dual display cards out there and frankly I'm a bit overwhelmed by the choices. Would I benefit from buying a high end graphic/video card w/ dual display capibilities...or should I just buy a cheaper dual head card? Do these high end "gamer" graphics cards help out with render times for effects in Vegas? What do I need here?

NO reason to buy a high end video card. Lots of people use the Matrox duel head cards without incident.

The gamer cards don't help at all for Vegas.

Get something cheap and quiet (passive heatsink... look at pictures) and with the right outputs (DVI, VGA, etc.) and hopefully with a DVI-VGA adapter if necessary. ATI, Nvidia, and Matrox all make dual monitor cards. I recommend Nvidia since they have better drivers (you can quasi-calibrate your monitor to NTSC bars and tone) and they are cheaper than Matrox if buying new. On eBay, there's lots of old Matrox cards that'll work and those are cheap.

If buying new, go to newegg.com and check out the geforce4 series cards (or the newer but slower performing fx5200 cards).

Those gamer cards don't help with render times at all.

I have the Matrox P650 and it's awesome - passive heat sink, so its really silent, and the dual-monitor support is good. I've never had a problem.

However, if you want a cheaper solution, just get a G550 or 450 if you can find it. Just a word of warning though, you can't play games with these cards (well, you can, but they're not really designed for that).

Dennis

New baby born editing ideas
 

G'day

My son was recently born and I'm looking for creative ideas on editing the footage. Can you help me?

Sound Sync Problems in Vegas
 

For some reason Vegas 4.0 & 5.0 is having problems with the sound syncing for some of the audio/ video files when they are put on the timeline. The files are simply captured from a Canon GL2, nothing more or less. The clips stay synched up when played in the trimmer, but it loses it's synching once I put the files on the timeline. I have never had this problem before but it starting to happen more often, and what puzzling is not all of my clips have this problem. The clips have not been altered in any way. I have tried moving the clips to different levels on the timeline but the clips still go out of synch.

If anyone can help me with this problem I would appreciate it greatly. Thanks for your time.

How were the files captured? (What program, what method...)

What is the difference between the "good" files and the "bad" files? (Look at their properties in Vegas)

I captured all the footage using Vegas Video. I checked the properties of both the good and the bad files and they are the same.

Did you capture in Vidcap using the "Capture Tape" option which automatically rewinds the tape and then simply captures the whole thing?

Were the bad files always the first clip from each tape?

If yes, try capturing those segments again but starting about 5 seconds in on the tape.

The 3dLE plugin is no longer available. Instead, you need to use WAX which has all the features of 3dLE plus many more. The WAX plugin can be found at http://www.debugmode.com

I love it!!

Well, that is a tough question there Gustavo. Editing (and shooting)
has everything to do with rhythm, composition etc. It's also very
personal. You will create something totally different then another
person and if you like what you make that is fine. Don't forget to
learn and enjoy the experience!

Get a nice rhythm going, don't cut too fast or too slow (ie, leave
it lingering for too long) and when shooting don't move the camera
too fast (often made mistake).

The best way to learn is through experience! Go out, shoot and edit!

Slightly OT: disk failure recovery
 

I'm getting a disk failure notice on the video drive I defragged yesterday (stopped the de-frag near the end).
The drive is on one leg of my onboard RAID controller as a regular NTFS drive. Error log says bad block. Drive shows up in device mgr. but not in Administrative tools/Storage, so I can't complete the defrag. (I'm using W2k SP4). Clicking on the drive's icon shows it empty (0 items on this drive).
I need to recover the video and DVD files on this thing.
How can I repair the bad block and gain access to the drive?

Thanks for any help.
Ken