Vegas Video discussions from 2005 (Q3Q4)

[Edward Troxel]

That's an awful lot of renders if you're wanting to keep the highest quality. Let's skip a few of those renders. How about if you start with your standard DV, edit in DV, and do the final render in DV? You're not gaining any quality by going to uncompressed since you're starting with DV.

[Glenn Chan]

I don't think it I was very clear there.

As far as reliability goes, I believe a single drive would be a little more reliable.
With 2 drives, you'll have more heat and that will slightly increase the chance of the upper drive failing (since heat rises).

As well, it could be that the contents of one drive is useless without the other (which would be implicit in RAID 0). So if one drive fails, all your data becomes useless. In this way you kind of double your risk of losing your data.

You could make an argument for 2 drives- cost and/or performance can be better (in most but not all cases).

2- I wouldn't split audio and video between drives. I would find that harder to manage, since your whole project isn't just in one folder.

3- I'm a fan of bigger hard drives because they are more future-proof. You can use them in your next system. If you have a bunch of small hard drives, that can be more expensive because each drive need room, power, cooling, and hard drive controllers.

4- Your best option may be to look for a rebate deal on a hard drive or two. This is the cheapest option, and will probably still be the cheapest even when you consider what I wrote for 3. 400GB rebate deals may not be that common. You should be able to find a deal on a 250/300GB drive.

In the US, some hot deals sites are:
gotapex.com
bensbargains.net
fatwallet.com
I would check out what people say in the forums, as you can usually get some good info there (i.e. what to do to make sure you get the rebate).
*I live in Canada, so I don't know how good those US sites are.

5- Performance isn't a big deal with DV. It could matter if you render intermediary files a lot (or render out files for 3rd party programs and you can't use Satish' frame server).

[Philippe Gosselin]

Hi all,


Looked through the keyboard preference window but couldn't find what I was looking for which is (if it exist of course) the shortcut to toggle between compositing mode . Having to drop down the list each and every time is WAY too time-consuming, my current project requires a lot of trial and error and such a shorcut would ease the pain .....so to speak :)

I am still running ver.5 by the way


Thanks

[Paul Kali]

I am trying to do an educational video which employs the VH1 tv show "Pop Up Video" technique. For those of you who haven't seen the show, it basically was music videos that have "pop ups" that appear usually at the bottom of the screen giving more information/insight on the video. I have Vegas 5.0, and i have been trying to use the available text options to achieve some similar effects but it looks rather cheesy. Basically it just text overlay and not at all like well pop ups. Is there any possible hints on how i can achieve a more polished , natural pop up look. Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

[Edward Troxel]

I don't know of a way to do what you are wanting. You *can* go through them with a script in Vegas 6.

[Edward Troxel]

Create the "popup" in your graphics program with an alpha channel. Then add that image to the project where needed and put text over the graphic.

Track 1: Text
Track 2: Graphic with Alpha channel
Track 3: Video

[Philippe Gosselin]

Hi Ed ,


Do you have that script on Jetdv forum , I looked but couldn't find it.

Thanks


Phil

PS: btw I meant "compositing" and not "composition" .... just wanted to clear things out . I edited it to avoid any misconception

[Kevin Red]

Anyone know of the most accurate way to do this with 16x9 HDV footage in Vegas? Is there a plugin I can download?

[Edward Troxel]

This simple script should go through all the different modes and let you see each one. Find the one you like and switch it to that one. Assumptions:

1) the cursor is placed somewhere so you can see a proper frame
2) Track ONE is the parent track
3) We are adjusting the Parent Compositing mode

/**
 * This script will go through the various composite modes.
 * 
 * Written By: Edward Troxel
 * Copyright 2004 - JETDV Scripts
 * Modified: 08-08-2005
 **/

import System;
import System.IO;
import System.Windows.Forms;
import Sony.Vegas;


try {
  var track : Track = Vegas.Project.Tracks[0];

  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.SrcAlpha;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Source Alpha");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.SrcAlpha3D;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("3D source alpha");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.Add;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Add");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.Subtract;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Subtract");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.Multiply;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Multiply");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.Cut;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Cut");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.Screen;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Screen");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.Overlay;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Overlay");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.HardLight;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Hard light");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.Dodge;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Dodge");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.Burn;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Burn");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.Darken;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Darken");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.Lighten;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Lighten");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.Difference;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Difference");
  track.ParentCompositeMode = CompositeMode.DifferenceSquared;
  Vegas.UpdateUI();
  MessageBox.Show("Difference Squared");  

} catch (e) {
    MessageBox.Show(e);
}

[Edward Troxel]

Just put a mask on the top track.

[Kevin Red]

Which mask?

And how do I know whats the right size?

[Kevin Red]

I was working on a Vegas project last night and renered the results overnight. When I woke up the render dialouge box was closed but the rendered file did not render any of the changes. Worse yet, all the changes from the timeline were miraculously missing. I was working with a restored.veg file and I did save it. But I can't find it anywhere.
What happend to my project?

[Devin Eskew]

Have you checked the sytem file where your restore files are saved? Sorry I don't have a quick answer, just starting at the top. I've heard many interesting Vegas issues and this sounds similar to some of the "restore" issues I've seen. Usually when the restore is done, I close Vegas and re-open my new save.

[Glenn Chan]

There should be a .bak file where your veg is. DUplicate that .bak file and cchange the extension to .veg

2- In the video preview window, there's a button thats a white+blue rectangle with a circle inside. Make sure it's not clicked/down.

[Philippe Gosselin]

Hi Ed ,


thank you very much for the script , I copied it in a simple notepad text file and save it as a JS file in the "script menu" directory .

When I try to run it in Vegas I get the following error :

********************
Compilation error on line 18:

Objects of type 'Sony.Vegas.Track' do not have such a member


System.ApplicationException: Failed to compile script: 'E:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas 5.0\Script Menu\compositing.js'
at Sony.Vegas.ScriptHost.RunScript()
********************


Since programming is not my cup of tea I will leave it to you :)

Thank you for your time

Phil