Aye... thanks for the quick response!

Everything with my computer monitor; I just have a regular flat panel display. I previewed the dvd on several different players/monitors, to the same results. It is definitely a problem occurring during the render, as all the footage is fine up until that point.

In Vegas, do an EXTERNAL preview to an external monitor. I think you'll see that the colors are off. You can't go by the computer screen to accurately determine what the final result will be on a TV. Get it right on an external monitor preview and the render should be fine.

You know, that would be an awesome solution…

If I had an external monitor.


Okay… this is my fault (I am obviously not very adept at communicating), so please bear with me.

It isn’t a color problem perse, nor a minor correction quibble … The blacks are overpowering… the image is irrevocably altered to a degree that affects detail… and this is clearly a result of the mpeg rendering, as evidenced by the very large dissention between the source material, renderings on other formats, and the final product... all present on the same monitor.

I was kind of hoping that this was a common problem, and would be resolved by a simple “click this setting”… but I guess not. Sigh.

Well, I did some research into this and it seems that all the DVD/HDD Recorders I investigated that have DV-IN are only able to accept input from a camera and not directly from a PC's DV-OUT signal. Shame.

Despite that, I went ahead and bought a Lite-On LVW-5045 HDD+DVD Recorder in the January sales. It has DV-IN and a 160gb HDD and for regular TV recording I am, so far, impressed ( I read many mixed reviews of this machine, but for the price I thought it was worth a gamble).

Back to the original issue, ie printing from Vegas direct to the recorder, can anyone give me any idea of what sort of degradation I'd see if I was to take the DV-OUT signal from the pc and run it through a Hollywood DV-Bridge (ie to convert it to analogue) and into the composite ins on the recorder?

Thanks.

Ian . . .

mine doesn't work with the source files rendering into DV Proxy via gearshift.

Ian,

I have a DVD/HDD recorder (Toshiba XS32), but I've never tried to do a Print to Tape (PTT) from the timeline to it.

A few comments/opinions:

1. What you are wanting to do it seems is keep a DVD (only) as the archive of your edited work. That's OK, but if you ever want to re-edit, convert it to another format, etc, you would be better off with PTT copy in DV format. Editing MPEG2 directly doesn't work so well in Vegas.

2. Do you have a DVD writer on your PC? If so, why not use that to create your DVD? You could either author a DVD, or if this is just for archiving, simply encode a MPEG file and write it as a data file to a DVD. This does take longer though, which maybe is why you are looking at the DVD/HDD recorder.

3. You could try doing a PTT to your camcorder without a tape in it, and the camcorder connected to the DVD/HDD recorder.

Just some thoughts. They way I work is - if it is something I have edited in Vegas, then I always print a master back to DV tape as well as create a DVD from the PC. Where I use the DVD/HDD recorder is when I want a quick solution and don't need any fancy edits - for this the DVD/HDD recorder is great. I go from the DV tape straight to the DVD/HDD recorder, do some simple edits, and burn a DVD in minutes.

Mark

I just saw your post in the other thread. I’m going to respond there since you gave more information about the problem in that thread.

~jr

Gfx card doesn't affect rendering - but does it affect Preview?
 

See above. :)

Hi Mark, thanks for the comments.

In response:

1. Absolutely, although I was thinking mainly of those projects that I consider unlikely to need further work, say those that I haven't reviewed for a couple of years. I would, of course, still have the original DV tapes and the original veg files so if I really did need to go back and re-work something I could do that with relative ease. Aside from the quality reduction, I wasn't aware that editing mpeg2 is problematic in Vegas.

2. Certainly do! And that's what I'm doing now. I was hoping to free up the PC from such duties in cases where I may need to burn, say, three or four copies of the same project. Of course I can always burn one copy on the PC, copy it to the HDD recorder, then burn off further DVD's from there. But that introduces a further step, which I was trying to avoid. You're quite right with your suggestion, though. I was really trying to see how I could fit this piece of kit into my workflow.

3. Indeed, although that would imply analogue out of the cam into the HDD recorder. That was really my line of reasoning when I mentioned passing the signal through the DV Bridge (ie not using the cam at all). If I could keep it out of the analogue domain and solely digital that would obviously be more desirable but it looks like that isn't possible at the moment. Never mind, eh?!

The editing functions on the 5045 are basic to say the least - limited to splitting and merging. Fine for taking out advert breaks or topping and tailing some footage destined for a simple DVD but cumbersome for anything else. Having said that, I think the technology is great and I'm already looking forward to seeing where it developes in the future (like PC integration!!).

Cheers.

Ian . . .

Well I don't have any experience with PC's or Vegas, but I use a DVD recorder all the time with a firewire connection to my Mac and FCP. It works just fine. I have been manually controlling the recorder (push the record button), never tried to let the computer do it although that might work.

You have raised the various limitations related to this WRT to archiving your work, but I find the DVD recorder very handy when I just want to copy footage that doesn't need any fancy menus. And I get very good quality when recording in HQ mode (1 hour per disk).

I don't see any reason why this wouldn't work under Vegas as well as under FCP.

Hi Boyd,

I suspect it may be a restriction of the DVD/HDD recorder I have (LiteOn 5045) in that I can't do what you can! I've tried recording manually but to no avail. Vegas seems to want to take control. Period.

I've posted a message up on a forum for LiteOn users and maybe something will turn up there.

Cheers!

Ian . . .

What's your output going to be? DVD? If so, you *may* be better off working in a Widescreen project (once you crop, it will stretch to fill at default settings) and rendering out as a Widescreen DVD. Then, the DVD player will still display it correctly on 4:3 TVs (assuming it's set that way; most are by default), and it will aslo be a true anamorphic DVD for widescreen TVs and will display correctly on those, too.

maybe I was unclear. That was an actual question. Does video card affect preview quality in any way (choppiness, etc)?

No it does not.

animation files to DVD
 

I've been asked by our animation department to burn completed student projects to DVD for a showing. If they did the anims at standard NTSC rate, this wouldn't be a problem but they prefer to do their work at 24 fps (possibly widescreen too).
I know about importing frames as sequences but where do I go from there?
Is it just a case of setting the Vegas (6.0C BTW) properties to the film rate of 24.000 Film (as opposed to 23.97 IVTC) and then rendering that out?
I'm also assuming that the "Allow pulldown removal when opening 24p DV" option in Preferences should be disabled as this is a true 24p project.
Any other gotchas I should be aware of?
Thanks.

Mike