Ok here is what I have tried doing

1. I un-installed an re-installed Vegas - No luck
2. I re-installed Windows media player - no luck
3. I tried playing the files on my laptop and it crashed media player on my laptop. - so there is definately something wrong with the files.

I did however capture a tape that was recorded in MY camera and everything works fine. So it seems as if there is something wrong with the tapes themselves.
The only thing I can think of that makes these tapes different was that my friend originally captured them using a SONY DSR40 deck. Since they were in that deck, they seem to be a little off for some reason.

Any ideas on why playing the tapes in a deck would effect them?

But like I said the files work fine in Vegas and I am able to render them, so it really isn't a big deal, but I would still like to know why this is happening.

Thanks

Don,

Thanks for the info! I certainly appreciate the time and length of your explanation.

That will certainly work. I'm more partial to the "Master Track" approach. (and now I'm more partial to using Excalibur - certainly speeds up the process)

<<<-- Originally posted by Peter Jefferson : chapter points (or markers from the project/timeline) WILL work in this mode though.. -->>>

Oh, absolutely! You just won't have menu options to directly jump to a specific chapter point (as there IS no menu)

How about locking tracks down? Is there a way to lock them down or timecode them after synching the audio with video?

I am not sure whether this is because of Vegas or solely on my computer's hardware/processing power. Whenever I apply the effects, transitions, text, etc, etc and then play it on the preview window, there seems to be a TINY lag. It gets worse if I enlarge the preview window. I have moderately average specs, P4 2.2GHz w/ 1GB PC2100 DDR RAM & 80GB 7200rpm HD, and it doesn't seem to slow down, it just is a bit choppy. It is noticably more choppy as I enlarge the preview window. Now, my friend says that this is normal because it's just previewing... my question is, will it be this choppy when I do the final product and export it back onto the camcorder's DV tape and then try to view it?

What do you think yourself is happening David? Why do you think
it is slowing down? The answer is really simple. You are adding
stuff to your footage that your computer must calculate / process.
Since you haven't written it out to a new file or did a preview to
RAM it needs to process EACH frame. Now you are probably already
understanding where this lag is coming from.

I'm not going to bother answering your second part of your
question. Why? Because you can fully check that out yourself.
Render the sequence to a new file and play that back. It will
answer your question on whether it will stay choppy. In the
future, please do some research yourself if you can answer the
question yourself (like the last part of this post). Thank you.

Just want to know if anybody was aware that you can drag the .VOB files from a DVD directly onto the Vegas 4.0 timeline and edit as you would any other .avi etc file. This is great for archives etc. Only drawback is that this method doesn't import sound from the DVD (but I usually record it seperately and then synchronise). I'm sure most people know about this, but thougt I would add is just in case.

Yes you can but no audio will be available..

You can however extract the audio as wave by using an application called BeSweet

Also be aware that your editing as an MPEG... not AVI.. so you are working in a lossy format...

This is probably old news to most of you. However, as I was confused by it for some time I suspect there may be one or two others that are suffering the same misunderstanding.

When rendering to a .avi file, in the render as (video settings) dialogue there is a choice for saving as an OpenDML (avi v2) file.

If you plan to import the avi into another application for further work (in my case I tried it with PowerPoint, a demo of After Effects and Particle Illusion) it seems that you should always uncheck this box as some other apps do not understand OpenDML. I don't have an exhaustive list of compliant apps but if someone does, I guess that would be a useful document to post here.

The result is that you will have a file that displays as a window of coloured fuzz - probably not what you intended.

By unchecking the box, the file will display perfectly well.

The downside (according to DSE's excellent Vegas 4 Editing Workshop) is that you cannot render a file greater than 2Gb. It also appears that alpha channels are not saved in the file if the box is unchecked (but I assume this is only an issue if you want to edit the alpha channels later)..

Anyway, from my point of view, discovering this took a long time and caused me much time wasted and annoyance. Hope this tip saves you from the hassle!

You'll also notice, if you look below the preview window, that the framerate drops as well. Yes, things can look funny the more effects you add.

<<<-- Originally posted by Peter Jefferson : Yes you can but no audio will be available.. -->>>

Depends on the audio format of the DVD. If the audio is AC-3 then no audio will be available. If the audio is PCM, it will play the audio fine.

Remember, the VOB file is really an MPEG file and Vegas will use it with the same limitations as other MPEG files.

Alpha channels are only saved if you render uncompressed AND check the alpha channel box anyway.

This IS a good thing for people to check if they are having problems transferring between applications. Another option would be to use Satish's Frameserver software and frameserve from Vegas to the other application. This should also bypass the 2Gig limit (as there really is no file).

Just a thought - is there any way to convert an avi that has been rendered as OpenDML to non-OpenDML (ie without having to re-render the entire .veg project)?

Thinking about it, I suppose that one could put the OpenDML avi on the timeline and render that with"save as OpenDML" unchecked.

Would there be any loss of quality doing it this way do you think?

Interesting to learn about Frameserver. I shall explore!

Hey guys & gals,
I am working on a intro to my documentary. I want to get something that looks "raw" or "hard" (I hate words like that - they sound so Hollywood). Anyway, I know where I can get the fonts I like. The problem I am having is that I am trying to get the flicker and jagged look. I tried the "film" filter in Vegas and that was okay but not the same. Is there somewhere where you can download more filters and or effects?
thanks
Michael

In PAL land, DVDs could also have mp3 sound. I guess that's also ok for Vegas?

Hi folks, after spliting the video using the "S" command in Vegas how do I join the sections back again (not as a transition but a straight cut, edit and join). Sorry if this is a very basic question, but I have not been able to find the answer anywhere else

I really like the fonts over at High fonts http://www.highfonts.com/freetop.asp?f=0 and hopefully they'll have what you're looking for.

I am working on a intro to my documentary.
lol.... (yeah yeah I'm sure you get Michael Moore jokes all the time)

Hi, I don´t know if I should post this on the DVD Web Delivery forum or here... but here I go..

What exactly do I need to correct in order to get accurate color when exporting to web?

So now I explain the question:

When I edit anything in vegas.. the Preview monitor shows an image.... I correct colors based on what I see there.. and on a small TV... And allthoug darker on the PC monitor.. I´m allready getting the hang of it.. and the results for TV playback are very accurate...

But when I render anything to say AVI or WMV, (or any other format).. and playback on WMP or REAL ONE it shows very very dark.. (and let´s not even talk about Qtime)

I know PC monitor is usually darker than a TV, but I find myself doing way too much trial and error when color correcting something that´s destined for web.
Now, to shorten the trial and error times, I want to make sure I´m correcting the right thing.

Is it gamma?, Brightness? contrast?....

Any magic tools? Suggestions?

There is no built-in method for doing so. However, here's a couple of ways it can be accomplished:

1) Delete the section to the right and then drag the left one to fill the area vacated by the right one.

2) Automate the above process using Excalibur (http://www.vegastrainingandtools.com)

There are several third party effects available. Some that quickly come to mind:

Boris (various products including Red)
Zenote (various products based ont the BigFX FilmFX tools)
Pixelan
Satish's tools at debugmode.com

Edward, I have never used Excalibur. I believe that is your product (I may be wrong). How do I obtain it?

Just click on the link on the word "Excalibur" in the previous post. All necessary information is there. In fact, you can download the demo version and try it out (15 runs before it times out).

Edward, I tried the link: http://www.jetdv.com/tts, but could not view the articles. Any sugesstions for successful viewing?

The best way is to right-click the links and choose Save - File As to bring the file to your hard drive. You can then open them any time you want.

They probably WERE opening, you just didn't wait long enough. They are, generally speaking, between 1 and 1.5 megs in size.

Hymnchoir, you also need to edit your account to your real name. This is a requirement on this forum.

<<<-- Originally posted by Kevin Kimmell : How about locking tracks down? Is there a way to lock them down or timecode them after synching the audio with video? -->>>


Just group them all together. Then if you move one they'll all move the same.

Thanks. I'm a dolt!

:)

Is there a noticable difference switching from Good to Best quality when you create a new project?

Best takes longer to render. Also, on some kinds of effects, Best may save you from jitters and artifacts. But normally Good will be best. That's why it's the default.
I can't give you a technical explanation of the difference, although I have seen it somewhere - perhaps even on this forum?

Some fonts are drawn that way, to look wore down etc. If you start with a regular sharp font, I suppose you could experiment with the vegas noise generator, to see if you can achieve the rawishness you seek. There's also the bump map and height map functions to explore.

A lot of applications can read OpenDML AVI's (or AVI 2.0 or
DirectShow AVI's etc.) now-a-days. Which version of After Effects
did you use? Because I can't imagine it not supporting this
standard in later versions. I'm not surprised PowerPoint isn't
supporting it since it basically isn't doing much with video.

Usually the smaller the application (especially freeware / shareware)
the less likely the change of it supporting OpenDML / AVI 2.

There are numerous tools that can conver between the two AVI
fileformats. Scenalyzer (www.scenalyzer.com) is one of them.
A lot of NLE's have tools for it as well.

Both have the exact same quality. Converting between the two
will also not result in a quality loss.

The only difference is maximum filesize (basically).

First: you basically cannot get it right. If it looks good on your
monitor it might totally look different on mine. Not even talking
about the difference between LCD / TFT and CRT monitors.

Even most TV's are vastly different from eachother.

Are you saying that when editing / playing back in Vegas the
footage looks different then when you encode it to another
format and then play that back ON THE SAME monitor? It always
looks a little bit different (due to compression). But my experience
is not that it is vastly different on the same monitor.

Basically it all boils down to which codec you are using. The
formats you mention (AVI, WMV & QuickTime) are all CONTAINER
formats. They don't know about compression. The CODEC does
the COmpression / DECompression. So an Intel Indeo codec will
look vastly different than MPEG4, DiVX or DV codec.

Hi guys,

I've posted before about the speed of vegas median filter - and have received some replies like "Vegas has to deal with every singel pixel on all frames, it will be slow, but looks good".

Yesterday I had the oppertunity to test Canopus Procoder v1.5 - WOW is all I can say!

I tested ProCoder with the same AVI file that I used when testing Vegas.

Procoder:

* Median Filter
* De-interlace
* Color correction

Result: 15 fps

Didn't matter if I rendered to AVI or MPEG2 (DVD High quality) - got 15 fps any matter. That is like 7 times faster than Vegas AND the result was as good, or even better.

One thing that is different between vegas and Procoder is that procoder takes full advantage of having a hyperthreaded CPU.

So I say again - The progammers at sony/sonic will have to polish their skills for version 5 of vegas!

Best regards,

Lars Siden

ps. I still do really like VEGAS, but good can be better :-) ds.

I know that one can never get it "right"...
But at least acceptable..
I haven´t yet seen a movie trailer that I had to adjust the brightness.

And Yes.. I can see a difference, high enough to be concerned others will see a very bad image.

Allthough furhter non-scientific investigations seems to point that the last WMP version looks way too dark on my PC.

I wanted to post some screenshots.. but for some reason photoshop goes crazy with the video image on the WMP.

So if it´s mainly a Codec thing.. which one will you reccomend for web export. (both WMV and MOV)... ?

Are those Vegas Presets good enough? or Everyone has to do a lot of tweaking too?

in this thread I posted a new mini-short I´m finishing.
There are two versions... a MOV and WMV..
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23041

I used the Vegas video for web 512 kbps preset for both MOV and WMV.

And in my PC the MOV looks dull, with not much contrast... but the WMV looks way too dark and high contrasted...

But if I open the same file on Vegas.. it looks better... I think...

(mental note to myself: take a rest, eyes are red and tired)

It is generally recommended that you leave the settings on Good. It will render fasters with the same results. However, if you are doing a lot of photo pan/crop and zooming, it is recommended that you change to Best as it uses a better scaling algorithm. Copied from this link is the official Sony answer thanks to Dr. Dropout:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?threadid=17411


Different conversion algorithms are used for the different video rendering quality options, (which you choose from
Render as>[format]>custom>project.) You'll have the option of draft, preview, good, best.

Quality: Best
Scaling: bi-cubic/integration
Field Handling: on
Field Rendering: on (setting dependent)
Framerate Resample/IFR: on (switch dependent)

Quality: Good
Scaling: bi-linear
Field Handling: on
Field Rendering: on (setting dependent)
Framerate Resample/IFR: on (switch dependent)

Quality: Preview
Scaling: bi-linear
Field Handling: off
Field Rendering: off
Framerate Resample/IFR: always off

Quality: Draft
Scaling: point sample
Field Handling: off
Field Rendering: off
Framerate Resample/IFR: always off

------------------------------
Scaling:
------------------------------

These methods come into play when conforming sources that differ from the output size. They are also used when
panned, cropped or resized in track motion.

Bi-Cubic/Integration - Best image resizing algorithm available in Vegas. Quality differences will be most noticeable
when using very large stills or stretching small sources.

Bi-linear - Best compromise between speed and quality. This method will produce good results in most cases.

Point Sampling - Fast but produces poor results.


------------------------------
Field Handling:
------------------------------

This refers to the field conformance stage of Vegas's video engine. This includes Interlaced to Progressive
conversion, Interlaced to interlaced output when scaling, motion or geometric Video FX and Transitions are involved.
Skipping this stage can sometimes result in bad artifacts when high motion interlaced sources are used.


---------------------------------
Field Rendering:
---------------------------------

When the output format is interlaced, Vegas will internally render at the field rate (twice the frame rate) to
achieve smooth motion and FX interpolation.

---------------------------------
Frame Rate Resample / IFR (Interlace Flicker Reduction):
---------------------------------

Frame Rate Resample:

This kicks in when speed changes are made through Velocity Envelopes and/or event stretching. In can also be used
when up-converting low frame rate sources. This only kicks in if the resample switch is turned on _and_ quality is
set to good or best.

Interlace Flicker Reduction:

This kicks in if the event switch is turned on and quality is set to good or best. See Vegas' documentation for a
description of this switch.

Vegas will bypass any or all of these potentially expensive processing stages if the resulting output won't be
affected by the process (e.g. no-recompress pass-through, field render bypass when settings don't change and so on
...). Differences in the output between different quality settings may not always be noticeable, but that largely
depends on various attributes of the source media being used. If you want to see some of these differences first
hand, trying using extremely large or small sources or high-motion interlaced shots with extreme pan/crop operations.

Please note that you should never render your final project using anything other than good or best when interlaced
sources are involved unless the project only contains cuts. If preview quality is used, the resulting video will vary
between acceptable to disastrous depending on your project and its media content.

-----------------------------------------

Most people transfer back and forth between Vegas and AE using Uncompressed AVI. Don't forget you also have an option to Frameserve.

I'll check those out and get back to you. I have not experience
with WMV, but everybody using QuickTime basically uses a version
of the Sorenson codec. The higher the Sorenson codec number,
the better.

They basically look the same on my computer. The outdoor scenes
were fine on both movies. The indoor scenes were a bit dark
indeed (but there is some sunlight in my room at the moment).
The WMV does indeed seem to have a bit more contrast, but
has some more muddy colors I think.

There is definetely something wrong with my WMPlayer...

Everyone else seems to say both versions look about the same....

But Mine is just very very dark.. Well... I´ll check into that or just do Quicktime...

Thanx

You can always try downloading the latest Windows Media
Player from Microsoft and (re)install that.

Also Free Vegas 5

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Professional/markets/sound/vegas_rebate.html

Sony is pleased to announce a rebate on Vegas® 4.0 and Vegas + DVD video® and audio editing software. Version 5.0 is just around the corner but here is a great opportunity to get started on Vegas 4.0 software and save $50.00. In addition, any users who purchased version 4.0 of Vegas or Vegas + DVD software between March 1, 2004 and April 30, 2004 will be entitled to a free upgrade to version 5.0!


:)

VivaVegas

I dunno I usually agree with Edward but might have to disagree on this one. Especially after seeing visual abnormalities in some mpgs output in "Good".
The thread is here (along with an example mpg):
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22076

*no photo pan/crops, etc...in the mpg I posted...just camera movement (renderd using the MPG VCD template, set at "good"*

You're not disagreeing with me, I'm just stating the standard answer. However, I've seen it to also be true when going from DV-AVI to DV-AVI. When going to other formats, it may very well help to change to Best.

Edward, do you have any idea why I was getting this problem- and how changing it to High or Draft fixed it?! I'm boggled.

Hard to say. I always leave mine on Best unless I'm under such a time restraint that I cannot do so. It's just easier that way. I do a weekly edit on another machine that is always left on good. Just a few titles are added and rendered to DV-AVI.

Is there any way that I can adjust or remove the pause in the "Timed, Scroll Right, on Frosty White" Media Generator?

Or... if somebody can please suggest an alternative method to have scrolling text from left to right, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

Ill take a stab on this one.

There's two ways I can think of:

1. 'S' (Split) the exact frame before titles pause AND 'S' (Split) the exact frame after titles move again. Delete selection in-between Splits and join.

This worked for me perfectly.

2. The other way is most likely the more traditional method and that would be an Event Pan and Crop method.

Good ideas. You can also use track motion to move your titles and graphics.
Love Vegas, lots of ways to do things.
Don

Track Motion! Yes! Thanks Don!