I asked a similar question in this thread: 16:9 and Vegas. Both replies given work well.

You may also want to look at the tools available at http://www.zenote.com. These tools are MUCH faster and can be used to simulate the same looks found in Magic Bullet.

Thanks for the advice guys.

Yeah, I've often recreated similar effects to MB for my own projects in Vegas and used some of the alternatives (before Vegas I used to use Film FX in AE). None of them offer the subtleties the MB (at least the full version) have.

Such a shame that Digital FIlm Tools don't want to make their plugin for Vegas. The email I had back off them when I enquired was, to say the least, not much in favour of the Vegas system!

It's not essential that I use the Magic Bullet looks. It's just nice to have some of the presets there without having to try and recreate them.

Here are a few shots from a community video I did recently with my own combinations of filters (ie no MB done in Vegas 4)

http://www.freewebs.com/fallenangelstest/snap1.jpg
http://www.freewebs.com/fallenangelstest/snap2.jpg
http://www.freewebs.com/fallenangelstest/snap3.jpg

Is Vegas slow on your 1.3 *with* MB applied or without? I had
it running fast enough without on a 433 mhz celeron and a 900
mhz pentium 2. Again I don't know about MB.

Do you have Vegas or not? Otherwise you might try out the demo
on this 3 GHz machine? Or are you just asking what you can
expect when this machine arrives?

Sorry I can't be of any more help.

You can do this easily from within Vegas if you have DiVX (MPEG4)
installed for example:

- Save as type: Video for Windows (*.avi)
- click Custom
- Video tab
- Video format = DiVX / XviD etc.
- click Configure

Hi Rob. Just want to know what to realistically expect from a 3ghz machine.

On my 1.33ghz Ahtlon the Vegas interface itself is fine. But apply even a simple filter and previews can become a pain. I do a lot of community funded videos which involve a lot of very fast shooting with kids in schools and half term workshops in mostly unprepared locations with no lighting setups etc. Because of the wide variety of situations I find myself shooting in with varying lighting conditions I often find myself doing a lot of colour correction due to mixed lighting sources, or just generally having no decent light to begin with.

It's pretty much a case of people expecting miracles from nothing! So my 1.33 is pretty stretched a lot of the time. That coupled with often having many jobs to do, I'm sure you can understand that I want to vastly reduce the rendering times and make running a second version of Vegas at the same time feasible.

Forgot to say in answer to your question that yes, I had Vegas 4 and have recently upgraded to Vegas 5 and DVDA 2. I also realise that some might think that the effects I want to do with regard to community videos is overkill. But I prefer to give all my videos a decent look rather than making them look flat and 'standard'.

Further I will also be working on my second DV feature in the coming months.

I don't have DivX or any other codecs installed, where do I get it from and how do I install it?

Thanks

Vegas rules.

http://www.doom9.org/software.htm#codecs

xvid is a good MPEG-4 codec if your source is clean, but it degrades with noise and shake.

Get DiVX here

I would not go with XviD since it is less distributed than DiVX.

How does MB compare to the median filter? ;)

2- Not sure how a 1.33ghz Athlon (FSB?) compares to a Pentium, but the Pentium should be at least two times faster. A Pentium 3.0C is fairly good bang for the buck considering you can't get much faster with Vegas. You could go with a multiprocessor (a tad faster) or with another NLE or a render farm.

That is no reason not to use it. They both conform to the MPEG-4 standard, and can decode each other's streams.

Beta 2 Now Available
 

Thanks for all of the feedback on Beta 1 of the Veggie Toolkit!

Beta 2 is now available at: http://www.peachrock.com/software/veggie-toolkit.html

I have incorporated many of the suggestions and fixed a few bugs in this release. I am planning a Beta 3 release that will focus on enhancements to Capture Cutter and MultiRender. If you have any suggestions for making these tools better, please let me know.

Thanks,

Randall

SERIOUS video capture problems with Vegas 5!
 

I have just loaded up Vegas 5 to try and capture some video. But I got a message saying that video capture wasn't shut down properly the last time I used is, and a question asking me if I wished to load the project. I have tried answering both yes and no, and each time video capture tries to load and then crashes out.

I have just uninstalled Vegas 5, and then reinstalled it. I still cannot get video capture to load up! It still gives me the same message! Anyone any ideas? I'm desperate!

Try starting just the VidCap program. Using Windows Explorer, go to the Vegas 5 folder and double click on vidcap50.exe. Make sure all background programs are stopped...including virus checkers. CTRL-ALT-DEL to get to task manager, then click the applications tab and make sure nothing is running in the background. If something other than vidcap is running, stop it.