Okay... here's what I've gotten so far...

http://externalis.com/yurple/Effect.wmv

You can see what I'm trying to do. I've changed where I fade into and out of this effected clip. While it's decent, what I'm looking for is a way to kind of ease into the effect. I'm thinking that I might need to make several copies of the region that I originally cut and apply the same effects at varying levels and then crossfade between them.

Is there a simpler way to "ease" into an effect that I have set?

Also, anyone want to be brutally honest about my use of the effects?

Thanks,
Kevin

The effect looks "eased in" just fine (preety cool BTW).
The easiest way to do what I think you are asking is to simply have one event without the effect and one with, and dissolve between them.

Gary

<<<-- Originally posted by Gary Kleiner : The effect looks "eased in" just fine (preety cool BTW).
The easiest way to do what I think you are asking is to simply have one event without the effect and one with, and dissolve between them.-->>>


Okay... well that is what I did here. I guess tweaking the effect is all that's left for now.

Thanks!

Were you previewing on an external monitor (or the camera's screen) and listening to the computer? The computer is delayed to an external monitor on capture. That could account for the difference.

MPEG-4 and Vegas
 

I want to make some low-res MP4 clips of some videos so I can play them on my cell phone. Can Vegas do this?

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : How does that look? -->>>

This looks excellent. Thank you. I think I'll have to play with the resolution sizes a bit, because there are small thin black lines on the sides when I followed your exact measurements -- but this was exactly what I was looking for.

Pretty cool effect. Looks great to me. What effects did you use to create this?

For my WMVs, I just set the pixel sizes in the Custom tab of the WMV 9 template. Save the modified template after you make changes so you can use it again. For 1/2 Widescreen, I set 436X240. For full widescreen, set 872X480. I haven't tried this with MOVs but it should work pretty much the same way.

Certainly, just render the video to HuffYUV and import into VirtualDub and let loose xvid / divx on it. Obviously, all these codecs need to be installed first. I usually render and compress the audio track separately.

I assume you merely mean MPEG-4 video, not the MP4 container.

<<<-- Originally posted by David Jasany : Pretty cool effect. Looks great to me. What effects did you use to create this? -->>>

In order I used:
Cookie Cutter (Oval Side Cut away all but section)
Brightness and Contrast
Color Corrector
Glow
Light Rays

I mainly just fiddled with the Brightness and Light Rays settings to get what I wanted. I also used the feather setting in the cookie cutter without a border to try and give the cutout that seamless look.

-Kevin

Vegas 5 Magic Bullet Looks render times
 

Can anyone here tell me how quickly a video clip with some of the Magic Bullet looks renders on a 3ghz P4 800fsb HT? What kind of performance is there on previews etc? For reference I'm using an old 1.33ghz Athlon!

As some of you may have read from other threads I am still deciding on final components for my new editing system build. I just want to know what I can realistically expect from such a CPU.

I haven't tested it yet, but I've always heard about MB in general
that it is REALLY SLOW. But it delivers great results. To me
rendering time is NOT important since I'll let it do overnight for
the final render or longer if it has to.

I doubt you will find the MB in Vegas speedy... Such things take time!

Thanks.

It's not so much actual render time that I am worried about exclusively, but what it is like to edit with. At the moment with a 1.33ghz machine it is pretty painful just to scroll along the timeline to make sure shots that use such picture adjustments retain clarity.

With the cpu that i mentioned could I expect anywhere near RT performance in the preview window at even a reduced size?

Simon, I'm running Vegas 5 on a 3.0ghz 800mhz FSB, w/ 1032mgs of PC3200 ram and 320 gigs of Serial ATA hard-disc space. Even with all this Magic Bullet is sssslllllowwwww. Sorry to disappoint you. I can say, however, that typical performance is excellent- I can run footage with a single Color Corrector filter run on its in "Best-FULL" mode at full frame rate (w/o prerendering).

There was another user (not sure if it was from DVinfo or the Sony boards) that was recreating all the Magic Bullet effects using the built in video filters in Vegas 5. You can then save them as an effects set and apply them whenever you please...with MUCH better performance. He even posted his results comparing HIS renditions of MB effects created in Vegas- and I'd be darned if I could tell the difference between the two!

Creating a 16:9 mpg1 or WMV
 

I was wondering if I took my native 4:3 footage and added the 16:9 Pan/Crop preset to it how would I go about rendering out a 16:9 MPG1 or WMV. Not a 4:3 clip with black bars but a clip that actually has the dimensions of 16:9. I'm not sure that the MPG1 template has any presets for 16:9, I believe only the MPG2 template does.