I don't have any details other than I've heard it will work well in this situation. I have not personally seen the tool.

I find using Ultra by Serious Magic can handle some of the most demanding keying situations. Many different adjustments are available that help deal with spill. It's a GREAT keying tool.

http://www.seriousmagic.com

Only full color is in the images in the color plates. The rest of the book is b/w.
INSTANT VEGAS is a shortcut tips/tricks book on basics, compositing, mixing in Vegas. More project oriented than in-depth oriented.

Try a bold version of a san serif font. Arial is good. Add a drop shadow and maybe an outline depending on the background color.

Maybe get some new fonts. http://dafont.com/en/

Dennis Vogel

My sister asked me to create a DVD of a variety show type of performance that she hired a professional videographer to tape for her. Anyway, when the videographer gave me the tapes she mentioned that the audio was being recorded directly into her Sony PD150 from the soundboard but was being "clipped". So she said she also recorded it with another mic (camera mounted)on the same tape.

I captured the video. When I drag a scene into Vegas (I'm using 4) there is one video track and one audio track. However, the audio track is split in two horizontally down the middle displaying 2 seperate audio waveforms. I just do this as a hobby and have never encoutered this before. Is there a way to seperate the two audio waveforms so that I can choose the one that sounds best? Can you do that in Vegas?

Copy the audio to another track. Then right-click each one, choose "Channels" and then pick "right" on one and "left" on the other.

But rememebr to do a single left-click on each of the property panels on the left hand side of the track to seperate them. If you don't , Edward's tip won't work to the fullest capacity is the tracks will emulate each other :)

Gang,
if you aren't registered for the FREE SONY SOFTWARE SHOWCASE EVENT in NYC for tomorrow, (june 8) GET REGISTERED NOW!
Due to security reasons, the 550 Madison avenue building will NOT allow anyone into the showcase unless they are pre-registered.
We will be turning off registration at 11:00 p.m. EST
http://www.vasst.com/registration/?sony to get registered.

Anyone using it- any feedback?

http://store.yahoo.com/redgiantsoftware/vegasbullet.html

Edward,
Just a thought...but have you thought of adding "match output aspect" script to your PBS wizard for Neon. I realize there are stand alone scripts for this...at least for Vegas 4...but I haven't seen the scripts updated for 5. I just finished a bunch of work with photos and forgot to originally open the project in Vegas 4 to take advantage of the aspect script. This is not a biggie...but would be a nice addition to the wizards...

Awesome, thanks guys.

Glen, it comes free with Vegas 5, when you register you get an additional 5 "looks." It's not the full Bullet Suite. The product you can buy for 199 is more of the same stuff, just a buncha presets, I think there are 35 more when you buy it for 199.00 No control though.

Yes I had thought of that. However, I didn't want to add someone else's code to my program. I guess I should ask the original author if it is OK to include in the program.

You can still use the Vegas 4 version in Vegas 5 (I do all the time). Just locate the line that reads:

import SonicFoundry.Vegas;

and change it to read:

import Sony.Vegas;

After this change, it should run fine in Vegas 5.

Thanks Edward for the tip!

Is it included on the Vegas 5 CD or a separate CD? I checked and it doesn't look like I got Magic Bullet with Vegas 5.

<<<-- Originally posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle : there are 35 more when you buy it for 199.00 No control though. -->>>

Spot, on the site it says it includes the "Look Suite" which...

"The Look Controls component is the most powerful aspect of Magic Bullet for Editors, with 26 different controls you can start from scratch to customize your own video Looks or tweak the included presets to create the mood you desire."

Not that I'm actually suggesting this as a matter of practice, but you can edit the looks that exist currently by placing their files in a text editor and making changes.

It's a nice bullet feature (hah), and to my mind little else -- the MB presets are very easy to replicate with Zenote's Glow, a mild s-curve, and the 3-wheel color corrector in Vegas.

The major difference being render times -- rendering Glow/curves/cc takes about one fifth the time that MB takes to render.

I've been matching MB presets and then saving my own as FX packages in Vegas. For example, here's a comparison between my "filmic" and MB's:

See if you can spot which is which... (http://ideaspora.net/mbvszenote)

- jim

Pretty darn nice if I do say so myself. Yeah- render times is the main reason I stay away from Magic Bullet. There's NO reason why rendering should take that long- it's not de-interlacing it!

I've had a chance to play around with the Heroglyph titling and compositing program which installs nicely as a media generator in Vegas 5. This program is reviewed in latest issue of Vegas tips and Tricks, and I wanted to share some of my experiences. I'm seriously impressed by this program.

It uses a unique way of dealing with text and elements.
No keyframes. Complex advanced titles, compositing and animation without keyframes.

It takes two days to understand it, first day all confusion and almost ready to Add/Remove programs in control panel.On second day it starts to make sense.

1. It's object oriented - here's the idea: Start with the smallest unit - a glyph/letter or an image/movie clip. Apply effects on this level. Now group your letters into words and images/clips into logical containers. Apply effects on this level. All contained objects (see..) are now affected by these effects. They are "children" and "inherith" stuff (position, transparency, perspective...) from the "parent" object. No need to worry about the "children" - just tell the "parent" what to to and they will follow.

2. Program design/logic assumes that *all* objects (a) enter the screen, (b) stay on the screen, (c) exit the screen. Think about scrolling titles, the letters enters, stays/scrolls across, and then leave the screen. So... basically Heroglyph provides ways objects can enter the screen, how to behave when on the screen, and how to exit the screen. And there are a lot of ways objects can enter end exit the screen in the program, hundreds from what I can tell after two days.

On a 10 second clip you then define, say, "enter screen" as 4 seconds, 4 seconds "on screen" and 2 seconds as "exit screen".
If you create a scrolling title effect you can then define for each line line in the credit roll
- "randomly assemble the letters into words when entering the screen" so all letters come flying in randomly and forming words as each credit line enters the screen. (enter screen)
- Scroll smoothly across the screen (stay on screen)
- Fade out when exiting (exit screen)
Does this make sense? It took me two days to understand....

Want an 8x8 picture-in-picture as a page roll to make your corporate audience go "wow"?
Assemble an 8x8 grid of empty graphics placeholders. Group into container. Assign a separate movie clip (you need 64 of them, but some can be stills and some can be solids and some can be transparent.... ) to each graphic placeholder in the grid. Apply "page roll" effect to the container. Great - now you have a page roll of 64 clips playing simultaneously. (might need overnight rendering...)

Image quality superb, manual not very good.
Highly recommended and a lot of fun.

Integrates with vegas timeline - but the video from vegas
is not available to Heroglyph, so you can't see the background your compositing against.

/magnus

Plus, subscribers to the newsletter got a special price.

<<<-- Originally posted by Edward Troxel :
Plus, subscribers to the newsletter got a special price.
-->>>

I didn't know if that was topsecret eyes-only area 51 exclusive information, so I didn't mention it....

Vegas might be resizing using Bicubic resampling... I have no idea if this is correct or not.

If I render out to HD 720p (WMV9 or MPEG-2), will this be lossless?

I think MB processes in 32-bit floating point while Vegas does not.

To check this:
In Vegas add 2 filters which are opposites of each other. i.e. HSL adjust
50% luminance and 200% luminance

you should see horrible banding show up.

Just good incentive to become a subscriber. If anyone wants to know about the special offer, just subscribe within the next few days and mention you would like to know about the offer where you can enter other information.

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.

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

Hey folks;
I have a question for the more experienced Vegas users.
This is my first Vegas project and am wondering when I decide I no longer need/want to use a clip and click the delete icon above the media bin/explorer window, does is really mean delete?
When I look in My Documents, I can't remember which ones I no longer need (and deleted) and therefore can't verify if they are gone from my hd or just gone from media bins.
BTW, I'm still using V4,
Any answer would be appreciated.

When you delete from the media pool, you have the option of only deleting from the media pool or deleting from both the media pool AND the hard drive. It's your choice.

Personally, I always delete from the hard drive using Windows Explorer.

Great presentation! I really enjoyed your overview of the audio tools. And your demonstration of noise reduction was just fantastic. It has made me completely re-think my workflow and my usage of mics.

That was a pretty cool room too, I don't know if you noticed but even the individual seat areas were treated for sound. It was pretty funny to watch you clap your hands to try and get some room tone.

I need some help!!!!!

After reading through Douglas Spotted Eagles book on Vegas 4, i still can't get the name of the interview subject to composite over the video like we all see on news shows, etc. I keep getting a black or gray checkerboard screen that simply inserts over the desired clip.

According to the book, I should open insert text media by right clicking. The video event fx window opens. I should then select my font style and size then placement then properties. In properties I am supposed to be able to choose to have the background color transparent but mine is either all black or some variation of the gray checkerboard - with no video underneath.

What am I doing wrong?!?!

It seems like a simple procedure from what DSE describes in his book but mine is not working.

Please help, I would like to be able to id my interview subjects while they are talking on screen not on a seperate screen.

create a track (right click, insert video track)
This should create a new track or time line above all your other media on the board.
on the new track right click click insert text media and then edit your text. Stretch the media for the time frame you want it to be seen overlaying the video you want. Its that easy
If this doesnt help you drop me a line with your # if you like and when I get home I will call you and walk you through it step by step : ) hope that helps : ) good luck..
PS. try the sonic foundry/ sony VEGAS Bulletin board. It is the most helpfull source of info on the internet for any problem you have with Vegas. The people there are very helpfull and responsive

Thanks Scott;

I will try this when I get back in front of my computer and let you know if it works.

And I agree, this is the most useful forum I have found.


Thanks again.

Hey Aaron. Hope that works out for you. What I meant about the best place to find info.. essentialy a virtual handbook for Vegas is the Sony forum website
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/default.asp
it will have alot more info. Hope that helps.. : )

Take a look at my newsletters at http://www.jetdv.com/tts where I discuss this and many other topics.

I have worked this out for DVD, but have the following queries.

1) On a Video Tape, is there a safe zone also?

If you want to see EVERYTHING on DVD you need to shrink the size of the output via pan crop to the safe zone and render that way. Is this the same for Video?

2) Do the users on this forum do this, or merely let the material outside the safe area go unseen?

Cheers,

Andy

1. Yes

2. I just let it go outside.

Vegas will be having a strong presence at the SMPTE show in NYC next week at the Marriott Marquis hotel, Tuesday from 2:30 to (I think) 9:00 p.m.. Check out one of the most professional-oriented events in NYC. Usually a very cool show.
http://www.smpteny.com/smpteny
My understanding is that Vegas will be presented to the FCP users group there like it was in LA.

i do alot of handheld work, so these gaps come in handy.. panning and croppign always requires resampling, which in turn degrades quality.. ive rerendered an avi 4 times and u DO notice degredation...
3 times rendering is the most i can get without noticable loss..

as for shrinkin the vid outut to be in the action safe area, the picture will actually look alot nice if u do this, as the pixels are compressed alil more than usual..

Another way to look at it in lamens terms..
think of it as a 5mp still image.. now u run it standard its 5mp pic.. print it up in its native size (for arguments sake we'll say a3, and its 5mp in pixel and resolution . now the pixels all retain theyre specific size and resolution doesnt change....

now from a3, u wan to print 4x6...
what kind of quality would you get?? Better or worse or the same??
Considerably better actually as your pixels are compacted into a tighter space.. therefore the pixels are physically smaller..

Resolution wont change, only size... BUT pixelation will be almost non existant..
How many pixels are in an image depends on what camera you use.. and resolution is dependant on ur location, and filmin preferences....

FYI Digital Zoom work the exact opposite..

This is truly a timely Post. I'll repeat what I posted over on the Sony site . . but I think I'll need to reduce the whole movie to fit into the safe areas .. here's the issue:-

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Okay, last year I shot and edited a Community Project. All went well, client happy. I got paid.

I saved this to miniDVD tape. Fine. It plays fine. It loads back into V5 fine .. and plays beautifully.

Now I want to make a DVD from it. So I load it into V5 and create a MPEG. This MPEG2 I use in DVDA2. The previous, rock-solid no-problem white on black credit roll produces nasty artifacts and really silly things in the final DVD. I can preview the MPEG2 and I can't see any problem. I've even got "other" credit rolls, albeit light colours and little contrast . . this is silly . . .I can't be thinking this is what it is .. . black and white creates problems? It's a finished movie? I'm only creating an MPEG2 from a capture 28 mins of DV-AVI?"

+++++++++++++++++++++

OKAY, the troublesome Credit roll is just on the edge of the right Safe Area. Once past this bit the video plays flawlessly & faultlessly.

Here's the thing! - Why why why when I still have stuff outside the safe area does the DVD play well? Why is it only on this black and white text rolling text? After all - surely - this rolling text is no longer rolling text IT IS JUST a piece of movie? It has come from a miniDV .. . it gets MPEGed within V5 . .. gets imported into DVDA2 . . plays well in preview . .It just produces these artifacts, when rendered/burnt to DVD .. and JUST on this rolling credit ..

I'm gonna do the total reduction in "size" thing to have ALL within the safe areas and see what happens. I really can't/wont believe that this IS the problem .. it just doesn't sit correctly with what I know now about video ..

Any ideas?

TIA,

From a perplexed,

Grazie

mate ur getting mixed up...

teh artefacts ur seeing are teh bitrates ur using.. ur proll using VBR at startin at about 8000 and droping down to 192..

try to render the mpg with a constant of 6000 to 8000 the duration WILL fit onto one dvd with these settings..

what ur experiencing has NOTHING to do with action safe areas..
unless ur titles are being chopped and unviewable...

action safe doesnt affect resolution or pixels the manner in which u describe (artefcat on titles), but from the sounds of it you using default settings within VEgas to produce a DVD which COULD be upped in bitrate due to the short duration..

Your titles look distorted due to the low bitrate of the default Variable preset your using.

Spot, thanks for letting us know.

I happen to be passing through NYC next week so I may well attend. Do you (or anyone else) know if these are seminar style presentations from manufacturers or just an exhibition.

Thanks . . . Ian . . .

" mate ur getting mixed up... " - most likely!

"teh artefacts ur seeing are teh bitrates ur using.. ur proll using VBR at startin at about 8000 and droping down to 192.. " So, would it be that the processing has to deal with this "Variable Bit rates" and things start to go silly?

"try to render the mpg with a constant of 6000 to 8000 the duration WILL fit onto one dvd with these settings.. " YES I will .. thank you!

"what ur experiencing has NOTHING to do with action safe areas.. unless ur titles are being chopped and unviewable... " . . Yes I agree that it couldn't be, but I'm still learning, I as needing some more knowledgable individual to come across - as you have. And YES the text was very very close to the edge if nor over the Safe Area. How would this make a difference?

"action safe doesnt affect resolution or pixels the manner in which u describe (artefcat on titles), but from the sounds of it you using default settings within VEgas to produce a DVD which COULD be upped in bitrate due to the short duration.. " I tink you have the nub of it here . . So, I choose the bitrate appropriate for the duration available to be PUT on a single DVD platter - arrgghh! Got it!

"Your titles look distorted due to the low bitrate of the default Variable preset your using "

Tell me why this happens? Can't be anything else other than the "amount" of contrast - black then white then black then white from the scrolling text - that creates such a demanding need for a "higher" bitrate AND that it is sustained by forcing this from the outset by electing CBR .. is that it? I suppose it is too much to ask for that this MPEG process to be able to demand CBR when it needs it and VBR where it doesn't matter .. see my point here? . .Is there such a mechanism?

Look Peter, thank you .. You've cleared up some major misunderstandings for me.

If you have the time, please try and answer my further points above?

TIA

Grazie

My client has asked for a number of videos I have created for them (mixed animated/live action business to business 'messages') to be made available in a format that will make them easily emailable.

They are very much into the concept of viral marketing and at a trade show in the UK this week (where the videos were shown) many visitors requested copies.

My question, therefore, is could someone give me an indication as to what might be the best format, ie a combination of low file size against quality of video/audio. Also, which format would be recommended for maximum user-compatibility?

The videos are each around 5 mins long and file sizes are roughly 1 gig as AVI.

I could play around with the formats myself to experiment, but I thought I could ask the question of someone who has already gone through the experience.

I was hoping to get them down to around 2mb. Of greatest importance is audio quality - I believe people will forgive poor pictures but will soon give up if the audio is dire.

All suggestions or pointers to other resources much appreciated.

Thanks . . . Ian . . .

Hi ian, i use sorenson squeeze to make all my files for the internet/email. you may want to consider it. its really great at optimizing the sorenson 3 compressor.

is there a way to delete ONLY media files that are NOT currently being used in a vegas project?
the situation is this:i'm working on project A, which is not finished yet. meanwhile i have to begin project B which is more urgent than A. the problem is that the media files i have been using for project A are taking up most of my hard drive space. BUT, i know for a fact that only a small portion of those files are actually being used at the moment by project A.
so what i want to do is to delete all media files except for those being used at the moment (on the timeline) by project A. this will clear up space for project B. after i finish project B i will then continue with A and capture additional media files again if i have to.

is this possible?

thanks

5 minutes is too long for an e-mail unless you agree with post
stamp size video. What I see companies do more often is just
link to the video and put that up on a webserver. A lot of these
are done in flash today.

You really do not want to go over 500 KB or 1 MB attachment.
A LOT of people are still on dialup and that will even take them
minutes to download. You just cannot get a video into that
amount and still be able to see anything. Especially if it is 5
minutes in length.

In my opinion what your client want is just not doable. Again
I would put the video up on a webserver and just put a link
in the e-mail like : click here to watch the video.

Personally I have a broadband connection at home. But if the
mailing lists I subscribe to would send attachments I would
remove my self from that list.

A medium ground solution would be to embed the video into
the HTML mail and have the file on the server. I'm not sure it
would actually play in the e-mail client or not.

Keep in mind also that more and more people get scared by
virusses and leaks in IE/Outlook (express) and therefor a lot
of them are running anti virus software or other protection
software that usually disallows embedding stuff in e-mail or
they might even have turned of HTML e-mail alltogether.

I'll certainly look at Squeeze and see if that gets me to what I want, thanks Rich.

Rob, I tend to agree with you, however this is purely business to business email and is intended to be emailed internally within an organisation so the assumption has to be that they will be working off an email server. It's aimed at the major players in the retail industry.

I think a 2 to 3mb attachment would be workable and they are comfortable with 160 x 120 size.

Thanks for the rapid replies, gentlemen!

Ian . . .

You can delete all unused footage from the media bin, but I don't
think you can actually delete unused footage from the harddisk.

I thought about that a bit and thought it might be possible to do
in a script, but then I reconsidered.

How would Vegas or a script know WHICH footage belongs TO
the project but is NOT used. Basically it can't. It might be possible
to write a script that lets you select a directory and it will delete
all files (or a selected pattern?) that are in that directory and not
used in the project.

Why not simply do it by hand? I know it is tedious, but it can't
take more than 15 minutes or so. Go to View -> Edit Details
and select Events from the Show dropdown. This will get you a
list of all the events in your project that are used (do a Remove
All Unused Media From Project under the media pool first to be
sure it only contains what you use) including the full file path.

If you only have a couple of events this will probably be easy
enough for you to delete the rest. If you want to print this out
(and this works best if you have Microsoft Excel running) hit the
corner between the word Track and the number 1 (upper most
left corner with no text in it on the sheet) and it will select the
whole sheet. Now hit CTRL+C (copy) and go into Excel or Word
or Notepad etc. and hit paste there.

Now you have the full list in there. If you don't want all of the
fields you can also select just the filenames. This is a bit more
tricky. You can't select the filename column header since it will
change the sorting of the list. You can however select the whole
list. Go to the first empty filename slot at the end of the list and
click with your left mouse button and hold it. Then move up through
the list and thus select the whole list. Now hit CTRL+C and
paste in whatever you want again.

With any of these methods you can then print the list for example
to know which files not to delete.

That's the best I can do...

Done the "Reduce to fit in Frame" thingy - better much better but still "sticky" but less artifacts . .Doing the 8000 CBR as I type .. .

G

Peter that did it . . 8000 CBR beautiful scrolling text on a DVD+RW . . off to play with DVDA2 ansd create a Menu etc etc etc ..

Grazie

Ian,

You could set up the same type of arrangement on a corporate Intranet and just e-mail the links. We do this a lot with things like company standards and ISO 9000 documentations. You could e-mail a link to a file located on the company's internal server.