View Full Version : Vegas Video discussions from 2004 (Q1Q2)


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Edward Troxel
February 22nd, 2004, 09:47 PM
Try this:

Pull the clips in normally in a normal framerate project. Now, right-click each clip, choose Properties, and change the "Undersample Rate".

Will this give you the results you want?

Brian M. Dickman
February 22nd, 2004, 10:00 PM
Sounds like ATI compressed it at something lower than 720x480, which isn't DVD legal/compatible. It's gotta come up to spec.

Jean-Philippe Archibald
February 23rd, 2004, 10:31 AM
Hi,

Yesterday was the second day (on a shedule of 6) of shooting for my next short film. In the preproduction process, we decided to shoot this project with an XL1 in FRAME mode for the "film look".

This day was really great! 16 planned shots in a house with lot of them involving children. They were very cooperatives.

But I made a mistake. The 6 firsts shots were filmed in NORMAL mode instead of FRAME. So I will need to detinterlace it in post.

I never had has to do dinterlacing until now since I always use FRAME mode for narrative work. But the day before this shooting session, I covered a live event in NORMAL mode and I forgot to change this setting back to frame.

What is the best way, preferably using Vegas 4.0, to deinterlace theses 6 clips so that they mixes well with those in FRAME MODE?

Thank you very much!

Yi Fong Yu
February 23rd, 2004, 10:38 AM
yes i was capturing @320x144 or somn like that. now i'm gonna use vegas capture... should work better with DVD Arch

Brad Higerd
February 23rd, 2004, 10:38 AM
Thank you Edward,

I will try it tonight, and post a reply as soon as I know more.

Brad

Edward Troxel
February 23rd, 2004, 11:21 AM
Run it through a converter can capture via firewire. You'll be much happier with the results.

Law Tyler
February 23rd, 2004, 02:50 PM
Sorry if this has been asked before, can't find anything with the search function.

Well, a friend of mine asked if I can make his regular DV footage (I shot) to widescreen DVD.

The way I figure, DV captures 3:2 ratio, normally left and right get chopped a little off, but for widescreen, the top and bottom get chopped a little off instead, and waala, you have widescreen, right?

Well, went into Vegas 4.0, select "new", and then "DV 720x480 widescreen", and use the crop box preset to convert DV footage to widescreen, and render it back out, so far so good.

Bring up DVD Architecture, select "DV 720x480 widescreen", and bring in the new footage. It has a darn big black border all around it. What is the deal?

I burn a short test footage to DVD, play it on PC, and it has a large black border all around it again, wasting real estate.

Anybody know what is going on? How do we eliminate the useless black border?

Rob Lohman
February 23rd, 2004, 04:30 PM
It renders faster when set to progressive? That should be the
case since it is. You should not set it to interlaced since it isn't.
Vegas Effects take interlacing into account, so that's why it should
be set properly for example.

Glen: "fields are doubled" -> that is totally depended on the
camera that does the "progressive" shooting or emulation. A
true progressive camera will not do a field doubling, only the
worst camera's will. The Canon GLx/XL1 range definitely doesn't
do field doubling. It does a special form of blending which is
better than most post algorithms.

Joe Sacher
February 23rd, 2004, 05:05 PM
DV can be either 4:3 or 16:9. If it is 4:3 and you want to convert it to widescreen 16:9, you can do that by adding a black border on the sides or cutting off some of the top or bottom.

Set the project properties to 1.2121 pixel ratio to tell Vegas that you want 16:9 widescreen. Then use the track frame motion or pan and crop to slice the top and bottom off. If you right click in a pan and crop, you can tell Vegas to set it to fit the output format. (Sorry, going by memory here, as I don't have Vegas on this machine.)

Then render out to widescreen MPEG2 or AVI file, depending on if you want to compress in DVDA or not. This should now stay without any extra borders, as long as DVDA thinks it is widescreen.

Law Tyler
February 23rd, 2004, 05:41 PM
Thanks. I got it going.

Turned out I did everything right the first time, except when rendering, I did not select template as "NTSC DV Widescreen", it was "NTSC DV".

Well, now to render one hours worth and take it over to my friend's...

Andre Andreev
February 23rd, 2004, 06:44 PM
I asked a question ( http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21502 ) about masking in vegas and here is the knowledge applied:

http://weeklydv.com/short.php?id=173

I used Vegas to isolate the red and desaturate everything else and then got the footage on a pc with afterfx and had Nelly (the director) animate the desaturation using the paint function.

She also added some color to the desaturated image.

Using the paint tool, or should I say, the PAIN tool was very time consuming. After creating 40-50 corrections, the application slowed down to a crawl.

Is there something else you are using for painting over video? I don't think I'd use afterfx again.

Is there a way/plugin for Vegas which provides such functionality?

I know corel painter allows opening an AVI and then painting over each frame -- I tried it but it could not open the 24p AVI file produced by Vegas.

Maybe I should export the footage as TGA...

Thanks!

Edward Troxel
February 23rd, 2004, 08:11 PM
You could export each frame as an individual picture and then individually modify each one in the paint program. However, that would be a LOT of work.

Have you looked at Boris Red? The current version integrates directly with the Vegas timeline.

Andy Shrimpton
February 23rd, 2004, 09:13 PM
Hi All.

I'm fairly new to DV, but am at the stage where I can capture, edit (Using Roxio VideoWave 5 Power Edition) and burn DVDs.

I have very quickly realised the limitations of the Roxio software, it's obviously an entry level program.

What I want to do is capture Bands playing live with the DV Camera, while capturing the sound on Mini Disc, then sync them up later (Amongst other things).

So my questios are these:

1/. Why would I get Vegas over say, Pinnacle?

2/. Where can I load down a demo of Vegas?

3/. How accurate can I get syncing up Audio and Video with Vegas?

4/. What does the program cost approx?

Video Wave is very hit and miss.

I have a Celeron 2.6 processor, 1 gig of Ram, and heaps of hard drive. I'm determined to get a quality product, and am prepared to put the time in to get to know the program so it will do what I want it to.

Any suggestions, advice etc. will be gladly welcomed.

Cheers,

Andy

Insert pithy saying here ------>

Edward Troxel
February 23rd, 2004, 10:37 PM
1/. Why would I get Vegas over say, Pinnacle?
I've heard many complaints of buggy programs from Pinnacle. Vegas has programmers that believe in stability first. If you do a search, you can find many comparisons between Vegas and other NLE's.

2/. Where can I load down a demo of Vegas?

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/download/step2.asp?DID=447

3/. How accurate can I get syncing up Audio and Video with Vegas?

Vegas has the most audio options of any NLE and is accurate to the sample level. (Vegas 1.0 was an audio mixer - video was added in Vegas 2.0)

4/. What does the program cost approx?

At Videoguys, it's $500 for Vegas and $700 for Vegas+DVD but they have ScreenBlast Acid, Vision Series 1, and Douglas Spotted Eagle's training DVDs included.

Andy Shrimpton
February 23rd, 2004, 10:57 PM
Hi Edward. Thanks for the prompt response.

Where are Videoguys? I'm on Oz, I assume they'll send it O.S. And the price is in U.S Dollars?

I have read on this forum that Vegas is a bit different, and harder to get used to, but once you try it you'll never go back.

I'll load down the demo and give it a whirl!

Thanks again

Andy

Rob Lohman
February 24th, 2004, 05:17 AM
I watched the short Andre and it looked great! Good work!

Rob Lohman
February 24th, 2004, 05:33 AM
Videoguys (http://www.videoguys.com/). The price Edward mentioned is in US dollars indeed

Edward Troxel
February 24th, 2004, 09:45 AM
I just used Videoguys as a quick reference to get a price (that was below full retail). Yes, they are in US dollars and you'll have to check with them about shipping to OZ. I know there are places there selling it but don't know their names. One good thing about the Videoguys offer is that it includes the training DVD set by Spot.

For another tool to help a beginner, look specifically at the "Beginner's Corner" sections of my newsletter (http://www.jetdv.com/tts)

Emre Safak
February 24th, 2004, 02:15 PM
If there is a split command, should there not also be a join command? I tried selecting segments and executing "Group>Create New" but this did not seem to have an effect. I want them to behave as a whole when moving or applying effects, without having to make a selection every time.

I am using version 4.0c

Edward Troxel
February 24th, 2004, 03:11 PM
If you group them, and do NOT have "Ignore Event Grouping" turned on, they will, indeed, move together as one. However, the will NOT be made one.

If they are both sequential from the same clip (i.e. you just pressed "S", delete the right one and then extend the left one to fill the space you just created.

OR, you could use the Unsplit Wizard in Excalibur.

Bryan Roberts
February 25th, 2004, 12:01 PM
Hey all. I did a search for shooting day for night but the majority was the route of putting filters on like blues, and stopping down light with ND's. No one really said if doing this in post was a good idea or not. It seems to me that after fooling around with VEGAS's night filter on daylight shots at around 2pm, the results are fairly good but am I missing something? I have a shoot coming up with my DVX100a and the night time shots are going to be in a car.

Any tips or tricks for keeping the realism factor in there? Should I not attempt this effect in post?

Rob Lohman
February 25th, 2004, 04:10 PM
Bill had some good pointers at the end of this thread (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20434).
Also see this thread (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19178) where I'm linking to a whole
bunch of other threads on the subject. Yes, they are talking
a lot about filters, but also how to record to sell the effect in
post.

I'm suspecting something on Bill's list in the first thread is
probably going "wrong" on your test. Can you post some before
and after pictures? That would help to see where it goes "wrong"

And ofcourse it is always worth trying!

Law Tyler
February 25th, 2004, 04:24 PM
Well, thought I follow-up and let everyone know how it went...

Not so good.

I produced the standard 4:3 DVD some days ago, and it was pretty good, as usual. Even on the widescreen "stretched", it looked good.

But going thru the cropping process, and creating a DVD using DVD Architect via the widescreen mode, the result was OK on regular TV, but real widescreen TV, even a small one (around 30"), it was a bit blurr.

I was optimistic at first, since it looked decent in widescreen mode on my PC DVD player. But I guess the 30" screen has higher demand or something.

Back to wondering whether to get a PDX10...

Rob Lohman
February 25th, 2004, 05:03 PM
Take a look at these threads:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21041
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19671
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14825
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12688

Bryan Roberts
February 25th, 2004, 05:07 PM
Rob - my problem was that the test I ran seemed to go quite well, but I wasn't sure if I was just unaware that my look was in fact too artificial etc. to be pulled off as an actual night time shot.

Here is a few examples, though mine will be shot from inside a car, these are some landscape pics before and after night mode....

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~berobert/Image0.png
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~berobert/Image1.png
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~berobert/Image2.png
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~berobert/Image3.png
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~berobert/Image4.png
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~berobert/Image5.png

I thought these fairly convincing enough, or displayed that with some tweaking a convincing night mood could be set in a car during the day......

Rob Lohman
February 25th, 2004, 05:12 PM
They are looking pretty decent, but I think they might work a bit
better with a blue cast added? Also the sky left in picture 3 is
not really convincing. It looks more like dawn now or something
(if that's the look you want, that's okay, ofcourse).

Bryan Roberts
February 25th, 2004, 05:41 PM
Funny, on my monitor they look very blue. I thought the whole function of the night filter was that it made the picture very dark and heightened the blue? I see what you're saying about the dawn look, it's like the sun is just starting to come up, I guess I'll have to avoid sky shots in the day for night shooting as I've read in many posts.

Stephen Warriner
February 25th, 2004, 07:00 PM
Did you apply color curves, the night preset and tweak the blue channel to your liking?

Tom Kronberg
February 26th, 2004, 04:37 AM
This is probably because I'm using the demo, but I was hoping someone would be kind enough to confirm for me this before I buy and realize I have a problem.
Sony's site about the demo says this

"watermarks both the video and audio of all rendered files
has a two minute maximum for play/record
does not allow batch capturing "

But what I'm seeing is two things: Every five to ten seconds the screen goes black with a red x on it. After that the render will freeze motion for a second. I'm wondering if this is the "watermark" they are euphimistically reffering to?

Also I am using hundreds of stills to render time lapse... I thought I had bad jpegs at first but that's not the case. I'm about to buy Vegas I just want to make sure that's what the problem is, the "watermark", and not a bug of some sort.
So if anyone knows this through experience with the demo, tha would definitely put my mind at ease.
Thanks.



Edit: Found it is indeed the watermark at Sony's Vegas forums.

Rob Lohman
February 26th, 2004, 06:14 AM
It should be the watermark indeed. I've never seen it happen
in the full version myself.

Edward Troxel
February 26th, 2004, 09:05 AM
I'm not sure why the motion would freeze but I'm sure the red X is the watermark.

Edward Troxel
February 26th, 2004, 11:29 AM
Anyone going to the Acid or Surround Sound VASST classes in Atlanta?

VASST Training Tours (http://www.vasst.com/training_tours.htm)

Brad Higerd
February 26th, 2004, 12:20 PM
Sorry to take so long to reply. Undersampling worked great. Thanks again.

Law Tyler
February 26th, 2004, 01:37 PM
Well, I am thinking pretty sound, we are going to have to go widescreen.

HD720-24p maybe? 720x1280 24p, probably look really good on today's widescreen TV.

(Vegas has setting for up to HD1080-24p, 1080x1920)

But then in the DVD Architecture side, it only have 480x720 30fps, the standard DV in widescreen. What gives?

Surely the modern widescreen TV can display more than 480x720? Why.. my DV converted to widescreen looked bad, hence it must at least take 720x1280 to use it, and perhaps even up to 1080x1920.

I guess we need a 2nd version of the Architecture to burn better widescreen DVD.

OK, ok, I need to go dig around and read up...

Edward Troxel
February 26th, 2004, 01:56 PM
Good to hear. I thought that would help in your situation.

Edward Troxel
February 26th, 2004, 01:58 PM
Let us know what you discover!

Bob Benkosky
February 26th, 2004, 04:23 PM
The funny thing is, that Boris is kinda like after effects, but Vegas is nothing like premier at all.

Boris is powerful so when you apply an effect to Vegas, Vegas sometimes cannot preview that section in real-time, especially if it's really complicated. You can watch it in Boris, slowly, like in After Effects, but yea, it's cool to work with Boris. You always have to manually set the length of how long you want the effect to go on for, which is dumb. It should be as long as the clip you are applying it to but it doesn't exactly integrate into Vegas how the Vegas plug-ins do. You launch Boris, then when you have your desired effect you close down Boris and hit save as you exit. Then it's setting is imported into Vegas. Took me awhile just to figure that out.

Emre Safak
February 26th, 2004, 04:42 PM
Thanks for the help, gentlemen.

Peter Moore
February 26th, 2004, 04:50 PM
You're confusing 720x480 (DVD resolution), with 1280x720 (HDTV resolution). DVD Architect can't by definition support more than 720x480.

Edward, are you being facetious? :)

Magnus Helander
February 26th, 2004, 05:43 PM
The Matrox parhelia 128 card can make any of the three possible displays "primary". I've spent three days (and nights) to find out that on my system changing "primary display" from the default to another display (using properties/settings/advanced/"Make this display primary") will freeze vegas randomly at program launch.

Vegas shows up in the task manager as a process utilizing 50% CPU, but will not launch beyond the splash screen.

Can anyone with a parhelia card reproduce this? No fear - changing the default display back to "primary" will resolve the problem, and you can kill the vegas40.exe process from the task manager.

/magnus

Paul Jason
February 26th, 2004, 08:31 PM
I am trying to fade between two different video tracks. I can simulate what I want to do by pulling down and pushing up the opacity line while the video is playing on the top track. How do I get this to do the fade where I want when I want?

Don Bloom
February 26th, 2004, 10:05 PM
Paul,
You can "pull the corners" of the clips or events on the tracks to adjust the opacity of the events so they will fade in and/or out.
Don

Edward Troxel
February 26th, 2004, 10:22 PM
Naturally, it's easiest if you put them both on the same track and then overlap them. However, it they MUST be on different tracks, just fade out the ending one while fading in the beginning one. As Don said, just move the mouse to the upper outer corner (beginning or ending depending on which clip) until you get the quarter moon icon. Then click and drag toward the center of the clip.

Gary Kleiner
February 26th, 2004, 11:23 PM
Actually you should fade out the topmost media and don't worry about fading in on the lower one.

Gary

Tor Salomonsen
February 27th, 2004, 01:44 AM
If you want to resume the upper track i.e. letting the other track just fade in and out again, you can split the upper track. (Select the event, place the cursor and hit the key s. You may want to click "Ignore event grouping" before you do that. Otherwise you'll split all video and audio events currently grouped with the one you're fading.) To get the new edges exactly where you want your fades to end/begin, just click-drag them.

John Gaspain
February 27th, 2004, 05:58 AM
This is probably the simplest question to ever hit the board, but im baffled.


I want to do a transition from black&white footage to color footage smoothly over the time line.

Any help?


Thanks,

John

John Gaspain
February 27th, 2004, 06:01 AM
Yup Peter is right, movie DVD's are not HD.

Or you could however save the footage as a data DVD and do it that way, You could watch it on a PC.

Tor Salomonsen
February 27th, 2004, 06:31 AM
One simple way to do it would be to have the media on two tracks - one colour, one B&W above, then fade the upper down to reveal the lower.

Tor Salomonsen
February 27th, 2004, 06:35 AM
However (having finally bothered to check it out) the simplest is to use the keyframes in the B&W FX.

John Gaspain
February 27th, 2004, 06:49 AM
Thanks Tor,

Ill have to try these out, The keyframes is something im ignorant to as well, so I guess ive got some studying to do!