Is there any way to export UNCOMPRESSED video back to tape? I own the DVX-100 and the "NTSC DV" codec Vegas provides is really effecting the quality of my images - espcially when viewed on a television. The uncompressed video on my computer monitor looks much sharper than the "compressed" version that I print to tape and view on my flatscreen TV. I shoot and edit in 24p advanced mode.

Thanks! Please help me out, this is urgent, I need to deliever this video!

-Matt

You can't do that (if mastering to DV tape).

Why don't you try fixing why your footage looks bad? It might just be a format conversion messing everything up (NTSC vs PAL, 720X486 vs 720X480) or that your signal chain from deck to TV isn't very sharp.

To Print To Tape, Vegas must convert the signal to DV. However, the footage you are capturing from the DVX will be in DV format already.

Have you read the Vegas 24p whitepaper?

Just for a test, can you borrow his camera and try capturing his tapes from there?

Well you see, he already did capture all his tapes but for some reason his captured files crash Windows media player on mine and his computer, so he asked me to try and capture the tapes with my camera.

So it really has to be something with the tape.

But also remember I can capture these tapes no problem with DVIO.

Do the files crash Vegas? What if you re-rendered from Vegas?

The files don't crash vegas and I can render to DV-AVI and play them back fine.

Very weird.

I guess it isn't a really big deal, just very weird.

Hello all,

so far I have made several DVD's in Architect, that have been menu based.. and it works quite well.. But hoping for nice upgrade in Architect 2.0
anyway one thing I have not done, is burn a DVD with the single video file option.. Instead of burning a DVD for the sake of it.. I am asking those that have used this option..When you put the DVD in a TV setop type DVd player.. does it just launch into video?/ is there a menu with a single icon??/ what happens on a DVD player in a computer?? Do you need to use mycomputer , look at DVD drive and double click on the filename?/ or does it launch itself??

thanks in advance

mike

one thing I would like to see in Architects new version, is when you click on a menu , it would be nice to have a small audi file paly, amybe a sound effect and even a small transition type video clip to launch you into the selected piece.. not sure what this is offically called in DVD Authoring jargon.. but have seen it on commercial DVD's..

When making a "Single Movie" DVD, you insert the DVD into the player, the movie will automatically start (with NO menus of any sort) and play to the end and stop.

I'm looking for ideas on how to create a "dreamy
effect". What I need this for is a situation
where the person is thinking back to something
that went on previously, so I need this effect to
show that the events being thought about
are not really happening; they're just a
flashback. I've thought about maybe using
a soft black border, or maybe a soft blur, or
both. Maybe a glow effect? I'm looking for other (better) options.
Anyone have any ideas?

Hi all,

Can you render out Targa, Tiff, BMP, JPEG ect sequences out of Vegas?

Thank you..


-- Ooops, just downloaded the demo and just found it! Yes, it can it seems..

You can:
Put a mask over the video, using a large cookie cutter circle or oval. Apply quite a bit of feathering to this.
Then apply a slight spherize filter to the video beneath the mask. apply a tiny amount of blur, and slightly desaturate the colors.
If you want to get even more creative, find a little footage of water, use the displacement map to make the video image 'wavy' while the dream is taking place. Between the wavy, the blur, and the diffused cookie cutter mask, it will convey the concept well.
There are myriad ways of doing this, but thought I'd throw one of them out there.

You can save a series of PNG or JPG using a script. You can also frameserve to another program such as VirtualDub which should let you do some other formats as well.

i have a problem with my preferance menu and prehaps other issues i have yet to find in vegas 4.0e prehaps some of you can help me out.

my preferance menu apears to be too small (width wise) and i cant seem to resize it. for example if selecting the video tab the part that says "prefered video capture aplication....then it list the location yet i cant change it because the right hand side where the clickable buton should be is cut off. again it's as if the preferance window needs to be resized to the right about 3 inches but i cant resize it at all.

if there is anyway to fix this someone please help. there are a lot of setting i cant seem to change because of this problem.

ADDED: i just checked project properties tab and it seems to be the same case. the pop-up is a set size and i cant change it or scroll down. this one cuts off right in the middle of the "Free storage space" i can only see half the letters and nothing below it.

this is a strage problem, i just started working with vegas and hadn't noticed the problem until i purchased Douglas spotted eagle's workshop book (excellent book btw) and i needed to change a setting.

*crosses fingers* hopes someone has a solution.

somethings must be set up wrong somewhere in your system.
your original tapes were shot using dvx100 .. the data is then transferred to your hard drive. the IMAGE can't get any better. if you then render out a uncompressed avi or QT it is NOT going to be any better then the original... infact just to view a uncompressed video in Vegas to see the quality of uncompressed you would need to have preview set to BEST full and that takes up alot of CPU ... if you then go out to NTSC Vegas must convert the uncompressed back into a compressed dv file ( use BEST FULL in Vegas preview) .

are you just comparing your dv tape on the NTSC TV to your uncompressed clip on your computer screen ? perhaps your computer display is sharper then your NTSC ? is the NTSC TV set up to SMPTE color bars ? is your computer monitor set to bars ?
how does the rendered NTSC DV clip look on your computer monitor when you compare it to the uncompressed clip ?

in Vegas do you have ignore 3rd party codec's checked .. by any chance have you ever had any pinnacle NLE's on your computer?

when you render in Vegas do you have rendering quality set to good or BEST ? set it to BEST ..

i see you shoot & edit in 24pA .. when you render to NTSC DV which pull down are you using ? 2:3 or 2:3:3:3 ?

Well if you incorporate computer generated elements (like titles) then technically you can benefit from uncompressed. But then you need to export to a format then benefits from uncompressed and the quality difference isn't much.

Thank you Edward...even png! Might be vegas for me soon!

If you are new to Vegas I'm wondering why you are trying the
3.0 version instead of the 4.0 version?

I'm afraid you'll really need to contact Tech Support on this one. I've never heard or seen it happen.

The only *possible* solution I can think of: are you using large fonts? If yes, try using a standard font instead.

Are you perhaps running with some off font size? Or perhaps have
the default font size set to LARGE or EXTRA LARGE instead of
NORMAL? You can check this out by right-clicking on an empty
space on your desktop and then select properties. This will get
you in to the display properties screen. Font size can be found
under the Appearance tab.

i was doing some research on this last night and trying verious things to try and fix it, i realized that prehaps the problem isn't vegas at all.

i started checking other programs on my computer and seen the problem elsewhere. some pop-up menus will not have a scroll bar and cannot be resized.

so it has to be something wrong with windows or a program i installed recently changed a setting or messed something up in the registry.

im happy it isn't vegas, but i can tell this isn't goig to be an eazy thing to fix.

i'll keep you guys updated.

Which OS are you running? Try installing the latest service pack
again. If that doesn't help you might need to install the OS from
scratch...

You got a System Restore option?

I've often had to use this just to "get-back" to a set up I liked . . this would have been the result of loading a programme that was going South . . quickly too ...

System Restore? / . . gotta be worth a Punt ..

Grazie

These are good suggestions. Especially if you want to use the effect several times in the same video. The altered form will immediately identify the sequence and link it to the previous installment.
However, a cruder and simpler method could be to treat the sequence as a PIP (picture in picture). Start it as small as you can on the person's forehead (you may have to fade it in over a few frames to make it look like it's zooming from infinity) and zoom it rather quickly out to cover the entire frame.
Alternative: crossfade to the sequence via a short ultrafast pan.

You see, you are talking about two things: Dreaming and thinking back. Spot's suggestions creates the air of someone dreaming, falling asleep, or under the influence of a drug. But thinking back usually creates crystal sharp images (or as happens with me sometimes: total blackness). So you need a signal saying you are shifting the "present" time. But you need not make the entire sequence any different from the "other present" time. Mechanical things have been used to achieve this: clocks spinning backwards, leves falling off a calendar etc.
Sounds, too, could be used for this.

Edit: Just occurred to me: The leaves falling off the calendar would have to be reversed to make sense. But that would send a very obvious signal - perhaps too obvious?

I don´t know if you have allready shot the scenes...
But one method I like is just simply going black and white or very desaturated (maybe a little blur) and also add an opposite camera movement style than the "real time".
For example, if you have a very smooth pans, travellings, steady shots on your "real time".. on the dream-flashback go for a handheld effect...

I think it´s more subtle.. but of course the degree of subtleness will depend on whatever you need for your story.

Hello, I just got Vegas 4.0 and using it. I overall like the product, but there are some things I've tried looking over and over but can't figure it out! Now, what I do normally is just drag the whole clip onto the timeline, then edit there by deleting the clips I don't want and then dragging them next to each other. If I want a transition, I just drag it over and it should auto-crossfade, but my question is, whenever I delete any clips and then I zoom into that the end/beginning of that clip, there will be a blue curvy line and you can set the "fade offset". Now I messed around and made the fade offset at different times and different lengths, then replayed the footage, I saw no difference. What does this fade offset do? It seems to be automatic and not doing anything. I can make it longer too by extending the blue line and different shapes...

I'm a little confused about the whole color correction. I tried messing around but I get lost every time I do this. How do I get that color correction diagram to appear? Each time I drag like the Video FX "Color Corrector" to the whole piece, I get the color corrector screen, but sometimes I get the color corrector diagram options with the two circles where you can set gamma, brightness, saturation, etc.... also on the timeline, what are the bluish tick marks that appear on the corners of every clip? I got them after messing around with the color corrector and now I can't get rid of it!

a co worker had 3.0 and I wanted to se if I could in fact edit video on this computer if so I would buy 4.0

Thanks

Vince

YES ! titles ... forgot about them - and color text especially benifits from uncompressed clips and then rendering to the formats you need..

if i'm using alot of color text titles i'll render out the final project r to a intermediate format ( QT- using microcosms codec ( cost $) 4:4:4 , if short project then uncompressed avi) then from that i'll render out a ntsc DV avi for tape, a mpeg 2 for DVD and WMV 9 etc i have found that the color titles hold up much better for DVD rendering from the uncompressed clip VS rendering the mpeg from the dv.avi. it is not as big of difference on white text but red/blue etc it makes a big difference.

If you are dragging the color correction FX to the event multiple times, you will have multiple instances of the FX added to that media. To get the effects screens back, you either need to go to the end of the clip and click on the FX button or right click the clip and choose the proper option. You can then work with the original FX instead of adding more.

When you overlap clips, you automatically create a dissolve. When you delete a clip, the remaining clip still has that dissolve (which is now a fade). The "fade offset" is the length of the fade. Making the fade offset longer will cause the fade to last longer. Making the fade offset shorter will cause the fade to last a shorter period of time.

When you play the timeline you should see the period of time in which the dissolve occurs change as you change the offset. However, you will not see this until you actually play the timeline.

I messed around it with some more and I found out that if you don't overlap the two clips, then nothing happens even if you change the fade offset. Only after you overlap the fade offset will go into effect and then the length of the crossfade will change, right?

What are the light bluish and dark bluish tickmarks on the corners, do you know? What's the difference of them?

& I still can't get back the color correction screen with the Video Output FX, I can only seem to click the effects and drag into the tiny boxes of the clips.

It's also the length of a fade. The dissolve length is changed by changing the amount of overlap. A FADE length is changed by changing the amount of "fade offset".

Ok, but it doesn't fade if you don't overlap right?

Right-click the clip and choose "Media FX". That will bring back the chain of effects added to that clip and allow you to edit them.

Can you post a picture of the blue marks so we can understand exactly which marks you are referring to? All of my clips seem to have small blue triangles in the two upper corners when there is no fade or dissolve.

Not automatically. The fade offset is how you manually set the fade.

I'm very confused at the moment, but I managed to post a pic. Now I have two questions, for some reason whenever I click the Media FX/Video FX, all I get is this with no options. In the help, I see you can edit lots of stuff, but all I get is this. This blank timeline thingy applies to all the effects I try to edit also! Like the text media generator, I can't edit it! It just gives me that.

Also, you were right, they aren't tick marks, but the triangles, and for some reason some are dark and some are light blue.

http://server6.uploadit.org/files/ShadowAcid-image.jpg

You can also check out the demo 4.0 by going to the Sony site (http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com)

I mean, my fade offset doesn't do anything if I don't overlap it the two clips.

I think I fixed the problem. I had to drag the window outside to an external window to show ALL the options... but why is this?

Could it be that I am editing in 800x600x32 resolution? Should I switch to a higher resolution?

Hi,

I'm starting to get my feet wet with Vegas 4 and am going to be editing live music and interviews that will have two audio tracks and a minimum of 2 video tracks. I've got a couple of questions.

First, once I time synch the separate tracks up, is there a way to lock each track down so accidental moves can't happen at a later date? Or can I push a Vegas based timecode to all the tracks so that resynching isn't an issue later?

Next, how do most people deal with the separate video clips? Should I mainly be cutting all tracks at the point that I'm going to crossfade and swap the video tracks, or should I cut the clips and adjust the opacity of the one that needs to be faded out?

How will the different methods effect cross fades? It seems to me that I will need to cut and move the tracks if I want cross fades to work properly, but then crossfades that I want to lead to 50/50 (or other ratio) opacity shots for solo-type effects then become confused.

These questions make sense to me but if it's not clear I apologize. I'm starting to really like much of what I'm seeing in Vegas and I believe it's making me reconsider my decision to switch to MAC for Final Cut.

Any help/comments/pointers appreciated,

Kevin

Take a look at the article in my newsletter that discusses editing multi-camera projects. http://www.jetdv.com/tts

No. 800x600 should be fine. However, it MAY have been sized too small to see the entire contents (which is why your solution may have worked)

It better create a fade in or a fade out. Can you elaborate on "doesn't do anything"?

Well, as I continue to learn more about Vegas and mess around a bit more, I found out what I was doing wrong... I kept changing the fade offset of the AUDIO portion, so what I meant was if you change the fade offset of the audio track, it does nothing. Now, my other question is, I have found out that GAIN and FADE OFFSET on the audio track is the same... what is gain exactly? I was dragging it around and noticed that it lowered the volume on as you kept dragging it to the right.

You know, I've been wrestling with how to *begin* the
the flashback (i.e. how to transission to it). Maybe a
crossfade. I also considered having the real time
running simultaneously, but just very faintly in the
background, but wonder if that may seem too
"busy".
I appreceiate your thoughts.

Actually it DOES do something. If fades in or out the audio. However, the volumes and length of fade may be such that you're simply not hearing the difference. Make a three or four second fade out on the audio and you should easily hear it. Also, you might want to try changing the fade type (right click it, choose fade type, and pick one of the other options.)

Fade offset will only affect the ends of the clip. Gain will affect the clip overall (the entire clip). You can also add a volume envelope that will let you make multiple adjustments over time.

You also have the track which will affect all clips on that one track.

Have you read my newsletters? http://www.jetdv.com/tts

I did... and thanks much. I'm using the Composite envelope without cuts method right now.

-Kevin

chapter points (or markers from the project/timeline) WILL work in this mode though..