Vegas Video discussions from 2006 (Q1Q2)

Chris Barcellos · June 7th, 2006, 11:19 AM

"Will it allow me to capture direct to hard drive? I have been capturing DV direct to hard drive but I want to capture HDV direct to hard drive. No sense in having a HDV cam and capture in DV."

Since DV and HDV have about the same bitrate, you shoulld be able to transfer both. Problem comes in trying to view the video on computer as you are downloading. It requires a lot of processing power for the CPU to capture the stream, and then render the HDV. Premiere Pro solves issue by telling you to look at your camera for preview of what you are downloading.

The 1's and zeros of HDV are not a problem to capture, but it is the interpretation of those in the HDV codec that takes a lot of resources both for playing and editing. Remember HDV, which is a form of mpg2 has to resolve current the current frame using information from prior frames. The CPU and/or video card provide that power, and the older equipment will have difficulty doing the job.

The Cineform intermediate capture formats solve the problem by actually creating independent frames that do not require interpretation from prior frames. This is what .avi files are about. The problem for older equipment is that they take up a lot storage-- about 5 times the HDV space for the same amount of footage.

Glenn Chan · June 7th, 2006, 05:05 PM

Start off with learning the shortcuts... the sticky thread in this forum is pretty comprehensive.

Do check out:
hold CRTL + ALT over an edit
hold ALT over an edit
They enable roll and slip editing.

Glenn Chan · June 7th, 2006, 05:06 PM

The following tutorial on levels might help:
http://www.vasst.com/resource.aspx?i...0-90d2f8de9fc1

Ian Briscoe · June 8th, 2006, 02:14 AM

I have an clip in Vegas that I want to divide into 3 vertical strips - the 2 outermost being black and white and the centre being colour - don't worry it's not going to look like a 1982 Duran Duran video. Techinally it doesn't have to be black and white/colour - it could be other effects - eg the outer part of te picture could be blurred, centre sharp - you get the idea.

I've done it by placing 3 clips stacked above each other and used event pan/crop and it looks OK. But I can't help feeling there must be a better way of doing it using masks and composite things that I haven't really got into yet. I also don't think I could do it in pan/crop if I wanted to soften the edges where the 3 clips meet.

Ian

Ian Briscoe · June 8th, 2006, 02:17 AM

Edward

No, I hadn't got that far - but now I have and yep - you're spot on again - button theme was adopted.

Shame about pixelpops - they got some nice designs - I might persevere and have a go at renaming all the layers. I can't find any 3rd party themes for Vegas - the ones on Sony's webiste are the same as waht comes with DVDA with ery few additions.

Ian

Ian Briscoe · June 8th, 2006, 02:20 AM

I was having problems with Vegas crashing whenever I ran Excalibur - was really frustrating as it was also inconsistent. Through a series of emails and a debug script Ed sent me, we tracked down the problem and I now have a working Excalibur. Great service - and that was just the evaluation version!!!

Cheers Ed

Ian

Ian Briscoe · June 8th, 2006, 02:32 AM

I'n going for the record number of postings in one forum today - the result of newbie-ness and late night working!

I know there's lots of keyboard shortcuts in Vegas and what has focus is very important but I find a couple of niggles - but it may be my lack of knowledge....

Say I drop a long video and audio clip on tracks 1 and 2 - I create track 3 and 4 as another video and audio track. The idea is to go through tracks 1 and 2, find the best bits and move them to track 3 and 4. So I find a bit of track 1/2 I like and split it to create a new clip. Audio and video are grouped together. I click and hold on track 1 and drag it to track3 - but when I release the moise it leaves the audio on track 2 - when I want it on 4. I need to click track 1 and control click track 2 to move them BOTH down to a new track - I guess I haven't grapsed what 'grouping' means?

Also - when I do drag the clips to the new track is there a way of them butting up against existing clips on that track as I find myself constantly moving left/right as I build up my new track and I get further along track 1's timeline which could be 60 minutes long whereas my new track may have only acumulated a few minutes

And finally - after doing a clip move as above - track 1 seems to have focus (the track header is highlighted) which means when I'm ready to split track 1/2 again, I'm hitting the S key and nothing happens - I have to ctrl-shift-a to unselect before splitting.

But it's still a great piece of software!

Ian

Graham Bernard · June 8th, 2006, 02:42 AM

Welcome to the Vegas Community!

I use Trimmer to scrub and plop stuff on to the T/L. This way I'm not confusing myself with what I've already got up there! And yes of course I do do much editing ON the T/L, but for a first draft, getting stuff together, I use Trimmer. Plop/open events in trimmer and "scrub" t0 the bit I want and then a simple drag or COPY and Paste does it.

You SHOULD be able to get some BUTT resistance when you slide an event to the end of another already T/L event? What version and release of Vegas are you using? Some previous incarnations/builds had a "butting2 issue. Make sure you DO have Quantize to Frame "ON".

Others will jump in with there thoughts ..

Good to meet you here . .I'm just up the M4 in Wembley!!!

Also . . have you tried this Forum .. lodsa Pals here too!

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/for...=460742&Page=0

.. and yes, this is one helluva product!!

Grazie

Ian Briscoe · June 8th, 2006, 02:59 AM

Hi Graham

When I got a reply so quickly I figured it must be have been from a UK user - all our US friends are in bed!

Of course - the trimmer - I haven't even looked at that yet!

On the bit about butting up to existsing clips - yes there is "resistance" but what I meant was that when I move the clip to a new teack it automatically butts up againjst whats already on there further to the left of where I currently am on the original track. But if I use the trimmer that pretty much eliminates the problem.

Yeah I've been to that site, there's a also a Vegas forum on a UK site.

Thanx for the welcome!!!!

Ian

Gian Pablo Villamil · June 8th, 2006, 03:44 AM

Great!

Out of curiosity, what was the nature of the solution?

I ask because I am having sporadic crashing problems with Vegas. Not with Excalibur, but with the Veggie Toolkit.

Ian Briscoe · June 8th, 2006, 03:57 AM

When I ran Excalibur, more often than not, I would get the "vegas6.exe has encountered an error and needs to close - report to Mircorsoft, etc" message - but frustratingly Excalibur would then open behind the error message - but of course closed when Vegas closed. Ed immediately suspected plug-ins. He sent me a script which basically displayed the name of each plug in encountered - but I guess it must have "interrogated" that plug in in the same way Excalibur does.

I got the same crash message with this script every time it encountered Magic Bullet Editor. I think this was installed as part of Vegas 6. As soon as i uninstalled MB, Exclaibur worked perfect.

Please note that I am not saying there is any issue at all with MB; just that in this particular instance unistalling it allows Excalibur to work and I need Excalibur more than I ned MB. I'm upgrading computer soon so will be reinstalling all software - I'm sure everything will work fine together then.

Ian

Edward Troxel · June 8th, 2006, 07:29 AM

Ian, to move both video and audio, simply select BOTH. Click on one, Ctrl-click the other, and now both will move together.

Edward Troxel · June 8th, 2006, 07:36 AM

Is it one continuous clip over the entire width of the screen? (i.e. there's ONE image on the screen but only the middle stripe is in color)

If yes, you could use masking.

Track 1: White Generated media set where the white is a middle stripe - Track composite mode set to "Multiply (Mask)"
Track 2: Video clip (which will show the color) - Track set as a child to track 1
Track 3: Video clip with an effect added to make it black and white (either the Black and White effect or one of the color correction effects bringing down the saturation.)

This will give you a stripe of color between two stripes of black and white.

Ian Briscoe · June 8th, 2006, 08:07 AM

Hi Edward

Yeah - but I thought the idea of 'grouping' was that they would move together - ie - you jove one and other moves?

Ian

Edward Troxel · June 8th, 2006, 08:11 AM

Left/Right - yes
Up/Down - no

In other words - grouped they will stay in sync.

June 7th, 2006, 11:19 AM	#1831
Chris Barcellos Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Elk Grove CA Posts: 6,838	"Will it allow me to capture direct to hard drive? I have been capturing DV direct to hard drive but I want to capture HDV direct to hard drive. No sense in having a HDV cam and capture in DV." Since DV and HDV have about the same bitrate, you shoulld be able to transfer both. Problem comes in trying to view the video on computer as you are downloading. It requires a lot of processing power for the CPU to capture the stream, and then render the HDV. Premiere Pro solves issue by telling you to look at your camera for preview of what you are downloading. The 1's and zeros of HDV are not a problem to capture, but it is the interpretation of those in the HDV codec that takes a lot of resources both for playing and editing. Remember HDV, which is a form of mpg2 has to resolve current the current frame using information from prior frames. The CPU and/or video card provide that power, and the older equipment will have difficulty doing the job. The Cineform intermediate capture formats solve the problem by actually creating independent frames that do not require interpretation from prior frames. This is what .avi files are about. The problem for older equipment is that they take up a lot storage-- about 5 times the HDV space for the same amount of footage. __________________ Chris J. Barcellos

June 8th, 2006, 02:14 AM	#1834
Ian Briscoe Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: Southport - UK Posts: 208	Better way of doing this effect? I have an clip in Vegas that I want to divide into 3 vertical strips - the 2 outermost being black and white and the centre being colour - don't worry it's not going to look like a 1982 Duran Duran video. Techinally it doesn't have to be black and white/colour - it could be other effects - eg the outer part of te picture could be blurred, centre sharp - you get the idea. I've done it by placing 3 clips stacked above each other and used event pan/crop and it looks OK. But I can't help feeling there must be a better way of doing it using masks and composite things that I haven't really got into yet. I also don't think I could do it in pan/crop if I wanted to soften the edges where the 3 clips meet. Ian

June 8th, 2006, 02:20 AM	#1836
Ian Briscoe Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: Southport - UK Posts: 208	Big thanx to Mr Troxel I was having problems with Vegas crashing whenever I ran Excalibur - was really frustrating as it was also inconsistent. Through a series of emails and a debug script Ed sent me, we tracked down the problem and I now have a working Excalibur. Great service - and that was just the evaluation version!!! Cheers Ed Ian

June 8th, 2006, 02:32 AM	#1837
Ian Briscoe Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: Southport - UK Posts: 208	Selecting things in Vegas I'n going for the record number of postings in one forum today - the result of newbie-ness and late night working! I know there's lots of keyboard shortcuts in Vegas and what has focus is very important but I find a couple of niggles - but it may be my lack of knowledge.... Say I drop a long video and audio clip on tracks 1 and 2 - I create track 3 and 4 as another video and audio track. The idea is to go through tracks 1 and 2, find the best bits and move them to track 3 and 4. So I find a bit of track 1/2 I like and split it to create a new clip. Audio and video are grouped together. I click and hold on track 1 and drag it to track3 - but when I release the moise it leaves the audio on track 2 - when I want it on 4. I need to click track 1 and control click track 2 to move them BOTH down to a new track - I guess I haven't grapsed what 'grouping' means? Also - when I do drag the clips to the new track is there a way of them butting up against existing clips on that track as I find myself constantly moving left/right as I build up my new track and I get further along track 1's timeline which could be 60 minutes long whereas my new track may have only acumulated a few minutes And finally - after doing a clip move as above - track 1 seems to have focus (the track header is highlighted) which means when I'm ready to split track 1/2 again, I'm hitting the S key and nothing happens - I have to ctrl-shift-a to unselect before splitting. But it's still a great piece of software! Ian

June 8th, 2006, 07:29 AM	#1842
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	Ian, to move both video and audio, simply select BOTH. Click on one, Ctrl-click the other, and now both will move together. __________________ Edward Troxel [SCVU] JETDV Scripts/Scripting Tutorials/Excalibur/Montage Magic/Newsletters

June 7th, 2006, 05:05 PM	#1832
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	Start off with learning the shortcuts... the sticky thread in this forum is pretty comprehensive. Do check out: hold CRTL + ALT over an edit hold ALT over an edit They enable roll and slip editing.

June 7th, 2006, 05:06 PM	#1833
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	The following tutorial on levels might help: http://www.vasst.com/resource.aspx?i...0-90d2f8de9fc1

June 8th, 2006, 02:17 AM	#1835
Ian Briscoe Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: Southport - UK Posts: 208	Edward No, I hadn't got that far - but now I have and yep - you're spot on again - button theme was adopted. Shame about pixelpops - they got some nice designs - I might persevere and have a go at renaming all the layers. I can't find any 3rd party themes for Vegas - the ones on Sony's webiste are the same as waht comes with DVDA with ery few additions. Ian

June 8th, 2006, 02:42 AM	#1838
Graham Bernard Old Boot Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: London UK Posts: 3,633	Welcome to the Vegas Community! I use Trimmer to scrub and plop stuff on to the T/L. This way I'm not confusing myself with what I've already got up there! And yes of course I do do much editing ON the T/L, but for a first draft, getting stuff together, I use Trimmer. Plop/open events in trimmer and "scrub" t0 the bit I want and then a simple drag or COPY and Paste does it. You SHOULD be able to get some BUTT resistance when you slide an event to the end of another already T/L event? What version and release of Vegas are you using? Some previous incarnations/builds had a "butting2 issue. Make sure you DO have Quantize to Frame "ON". Others will jump in with there thoughts .. Good to meet you here . .I'm just up the M4 in Wembley!!! Also . . have you tried this Forum .. lodsa Pals here too! http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/for...=460742&Page=0 .. and yes, this is one helluva product!! Grazie

June 8th, 2006, 02:59 AM	#1839
Ian Briscoe Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: Southport - UK Posts: 208	Hi Graham When I got a reply so quickly I figured it must be have been from a UK user - all our US friends are in bed! Of course - the trimmer - I haven't even looked at that yet! On the bit about butting up to existsing clips - yes there is "resistance" but what I meant was that when I move the clip to a new teack it automatically butts up againjst whats already on there further to the left of where I currently am on the original track. But if I use the trimmer that pretty much eliminates the problem. Yeah I've been to that site, there's a also a Vegas forum on a UK site. Thanx for the welcome!!!! Ian

June 8th, 2006, 03:44 AM	#1840
Gian Pablo Villamil Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: New York, NY Posts: 138	Great! Out of curiosity, what was the nature of the solution? I ask because I am having sporadic crashing problems with Vegas. Not with Excalibur, but with the Veggie Toolkit.

June 8th, 2006, 03:57 AM	#1841
Ian Briscoe Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: Southport - UK Posts: 208	When I ran Excalibur, more often than not, I would get the "vegas6.exe has encountered an error and needs to close - report to Mircorsoft, etc" message - but frustratingly Excalibur would then open behind the error message - but of course closed when Vegas closed. Ed immediately suspected plug-ins. He sent me a script which basically displayed the name of each plug in encountered - but I guess it must have "interrogated" that plug in in the same way Excalibur does. I got the same crash message with this script every time it encountered Magic Bullet Editor. I think this was installed as part of Vegas 6. As soon as i uninstalled MB, Exclaibur worked perfect. Please note that I am not saying there is any issue at all with MB; just that in this particular instance unistalling it allows Excalibur to work and I need Excalibur more than I ned MB. I'm upgrading computer soon so will be reinstalling all software - I'm sure everything will work fine together then. Ian

June 8th, 2006, 07:36 AM	#1843
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	Is it one continuous clip over the entire width of the screen? (i.e. there's ONE image on the screen but only the middle stripe is in color) If yes, you could use masking. Track 1: White Generated media set where the white is a middle stripe - Track composite mode set to "Multiply (Mask)" Track 2: Video clip (which will show the color) - Track set as a child to track 1 Track 3: Video clip with an effect added to make it black and white (either the Black and White effect or one of the color correction effects bringing down the saturation.) This will give you a stripe of color between two stripes of black and white. __________________ Edward Troxel [SCVU] JETDV Scripts/Scripting Tutorials/Excalibur/Montage Magic/Newsletters

June 8th, 2006, 08:07 AM	#1844
Ian Briscoe Major Player Join Date: May 2005 Location: Southport - UK Posts: 208	Hi Edward Yeah - but I thought the idea of 'grouping' was that they would move together - ie - you jove one and other moves? Ian

June 8th, 2006, 08:11 AM	#1845
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	Left/Right - yes Up/Down - no In other words - grouped they will stay in sync. __________________ Edward Troxel [SCVU] JETDV Scripts/Scripting Tutorials/Excalibur/Montage Magic/Newsletters