Not sure the version will make a difference. There could be several things going on and it's hard to tell from the description WHICH it might be.

For example, if you are using stills, and they are not the same shape as the output screen, you will get black bars. Even if you zoom in these bars will not go away UNLESS you choose the "Match Output Aspect" option in Pan/Crop.

No, letterboxing is a way to simulate the widescreen look. If you
want a true 16:9 anamorphic DVD (and don't have anamorphic
shot footage either with an adapter or in-camera) you will have
to start a 16:9 project, crop and stretch the footage before output.
This works best if you render your complete project as 4:3 in one
file before doing the following (for Vegas 5):

1. start Vegas and choose a widescreen project, make sure "simulate device aspect ratio" is turned on for the preview (right-click in the preview screen)

2. load your footage (it should look pillar boxed, ie: black bars on the sides instead of top and bottom)

3. go to track motion on the video track (2nd icon from the left) and select "3D Source Alpha" for compositing mode

4. change the Z value till the image in your preview is fully filled (about -150 on my PAL test here)

5. make sure you output with a 16:9 anamorphic preset!

The DVD player will auto letterbox your footage if it is played on
a non widescreen TV (and the DVD player is setup correctly for this!!)

Thanks for the reply. I had a feeling I might have to upgrade, but it's nice to know they made this specific change. Subtitles seem so basic. Does upgrading to 5.0 require purchasing the entire software package again?

Upgrade pricing is available. It appears to be $250 to upgrade from Vegas4+DVDA1 to Vegas5+DVDA2

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/products/showproduct.asp?PID=912&SPID=272

You will find many more changes there as well. I have a full review of the changes in the April 2004 issue of my newsletter. You can also see a comparison chart on the Sony site which compares the two versions.

Question. Sometimes, after I have rendered my project and I want to print to dv tape, the audio will sound like it is slowing down and dragging. Sounds like an old tape recorder with the battery doing dead. If I stop the process and start over it may do alright, or, it will appear in a different place on the project. This generally only happens for a few seconds but, makes it unusable, and I have to start the print phase over. It does not happen when burning a DVD. Oh, I also set the audio to "best" before doing the print to dv tape. Any ideas? Bob

What drive have you specified for your "temporary files"? The audio ALWAYS gets rendered to a W64 file. By default, that will be on drive C - you may not want it there.

Glad you got it figured out. Computers sure can be fussy at times, eh?

It's version 5.0b build 160

The problem happens with both stills and clips that display correctly at other places in the timeline.

Forget what I said about it happening after the clip is there for awhile - I just replaced a problematic clip only to see the same line appear in it's replacement. (I tried this delete and replace technique once before with success.)

In some cases the line goes across the bottom as well forming a sort of box within a box effect.

All clips have are defaulted to "Maintain Aspect Ratio".

thanks

How about a snapshot as to what you are seeing (I'm not picturing what you're describing).?

How about a way to reproduce to see if we can produce the same results?

Or maybe a copy of the VEG file into which we could drop our own media to see if we get similar results?

Thanks, I will give that a go.

Let's say I shoot in CF25 in HDV mode and then capture the footage without downconverting. I could then change the frame rate to 23.976 and then down convert to NTSC DV 24p right?

ROB!

THat did it. Actually, I found it was ok to keep "Minimum Clip Length" checked at 1 second. But what I needed to do was turn "SCENE DETECTION" OFF. I had it "ON" for all the other modes. CF24, it must be off.

Thanks. Now you can effectively capture ALL MODES in the HVR-Z1U with Sony Vegas Capture 5.0. Just make sure Scene Detection is OFF when doing so. (you shouldn't need it for a 'live' capture anyhow. *smile*

- Shannon W. Rawls

Can Vegas5d capture HDV right in the program???


Or is a 3rd party capture tool needed?


thanks!

Greg -- please post that question in our HDV Editing forum. Thanks,

<<<-- Originally posted by Dennis Adams : It's not because it's upper first, it's because it's not DV, and Vegas 5 only does pulldown removal on DV. You can downconvert HDV CineFrame 24 to DV and remove the pulldown if you wish.

///d@
Sony Media Software -->>>

how?

Newbie question..

I read in the help file how to add supersampling. It says go to the video track, right click, and insert a supersampling envelope.

I tried that, but it isn't offered as a choice in the context menu. Neither is Motion Blur. The only choices I get on the video track are Mute, Composite Level, and Fade to color.

So how can I add a motion blur envelope and / or a supersampling envelope? I've yet to see any menu choice that offers either...

Supersampling is added on the Video Bus track. To to View, Video Bus Track, and then you can add the envelope there.

I was working on a project and I noticed a few clips where I could see a portion of my matt box in the right corner of the shot. So I figure no problem I'll just crop the clip so I does'nt show.
After viewing the result I decided I wanted to change it but it was late so figured I'd do it the next night.
So the next evening I opened up the project and had at it.

I clicked on the pan/crop button in the event, when it opened I right clicked and hit restore so I could try something diffent but it did not restore.
I tried it many times on the different clips I needed to change but they would not restore.

In desperation I tried a few things with no luck. Untill I hit the effect button on a clip, put a effect on it, then took it off and walla.. The orignal clip un-cropped was back!!
So I changed all the clips this way but when I played it back some off then were changed back to cropped again!!

There was no alcohol involved and I did'nt do anything fancy the night before. Just the usual editing like I've done before.What is going on??

I don't think I turned anything on to cause this in the options list because I did'nt go in there. maybe a tool bar button?? I also tried a re-boot with no luck.
Any help with the one will save me my sanity......
Thanks as usual.
Ron.G

Any way to provide steps to reproduce? I just did some quick testing and could not get that to happen. Of course, I'm not sure I completely followed everything you did.

i.e. start with new project
Add media
etc...

basically I started a new project with the standard 60I default template. Drag and drop from the media pool to the time line then edited the clips of what I wanted using the "split clips" function and deleting the unwanted portions from the time line.
Made some transitions and direct cuts (nothing fancy) and then I did some pan and crops on the clips that needed it.

I clicked on the Pan/crop button for the clip and made my changes. The preview window would update to those crop changes just as it should.
After viewing I decided I did'nt like the out come so I saved the project with the save command (not the save as dialog)
So I could resume the project the next night.

Last night I started up the project to fix the cropping and when I clicked on the Pan and crop button in one of the clips then right clicked in the crop window to bring up the restore menue, then hit restore, I did nothing.

I move the crop box around but the preview window did not update. I tried the sync to curser on and off. Nothing.
Then just for the heck of it I hit the effects icon for the same clip and applied a effect. Then I deleted the effect and the clip was no longer cropped . It was restored like I wanted it in the first place.

Your reading it right, it just does'nt make any sence at all.
I have no idea what is causing this but I'm gonna mess with it again tonight and see if I can figure it out.

Do you still have that VEG file? And could I test that VEG file?

Thanks!!!

Anybody have any info of future Vegas upgrades for faster HDV editing or are they going to rely on the Cineform products? I would like to edit with Vegas but the Cineform product for Premeire Pro seems to be working better for me than their product for Vegas.

Any news?

That fixes it as well indeed, BUT, if you want scene detection then
it may work when you disable the other features..... but a capture
is better than no capture eh <g>

Glad it worked!

As far as I understand it you will need a 3rd party tool to capture
the footage. For more info look around the forum. Hopefully others
will chime in as well.

Greg: didn't I just explain that in my first reply on this thread? It
tells you how to re-interpret the footage. Ofcourse you can also
downsample from HD -> SD (don't forget it is 16:9 anamorphic).

i am creating the soundtrack to a 9 min. animation movie on vegas 5. the movie is not yet complete as far as fine editing and there's still about 5 or 6 shots which have not been fully animated. but there's enough material for me to start working.

i put the video track of the current draft on the project timeline and am adding numerous audio tracks of the different sounds, effects and music which accompany it.

the thing is though, that every week or so, the animator gives me a video file of his latest draft. i replace the former draft in the video track with the new one and then face the task of syncing the audio tracks i have already created to the new video track.

at this stage, most of the movie doesn't change that much, but even a small change in timing will, of course, alter the sync for the rest of the movie from that point onward.

it seems to me that there should be a simple and logical way to add the changes of the video track while keeping the audio tracks in sync. i made a few attempts using the edit-ripple function, grouping and so on, but got into a mess.

can an experienced vegas editor please coach me through the stages he/she thinks is the best and most efficient way to go about doing this?

thanks.

the best you can do is to have markers inserted at the key audio points. then resync the audio clips to the markers.

I'm trying to take a normal dv sized video and shrink it down to fit within a window during a credit roll. It seems like a simple concept.

Is this confusing? I want to end up with a 720x480 video but I need to shrink an existing 720x480 video down to fit within the one I'm creating without losing any of the scene.

I tried creating a 1440x960 project figuring I could work large and then shrink it down upon rendering, but I can't seem to get that to work.

So now I've rendered the first clip out to 360x240 and then started a new project with a credit roll at 720x480. When I try to bring the smaller rendered video track in, it's being resized to the full DV size and I can't seem to effect it in the Pan/Crop window.

What am I missing?

Thanks,
Kevin

Is there a setting that affects the speed of the mouse in Vegas 5? I have my Windows mouse set pretty fast, so I don't have to physically move the mouse very much across two monitors. But as soon as I click on Vegas and have it in focus, my mouse is so slow. I have to move the mouse 8 - 10 inches just to move it halfway across the timeline. As soon as I bring another application into focus, or even Explorer, my mouse is back to it's zippy self. But with Vegas on top and in focus, it's making my arm tired ;) Thanks.

Sorry... I figured this out and tried to delete this thread.

Basically, it sounds like you simply need a way of selecting all audio events after the cursor to move them slightly left or right. Is this true?

If that's what you need, you can use the Select Events tool in Tsunami which has the ability to select in a variety of different methods.

Out of curiosity, what kind of mouse?

Hopefully your solution was to use regular project settings (you didn't need to change anything there) and then use Track Motion to adjust the size and position of the PIP.

If you click the link under my name and read the first three issues of the newsletter, I discuss doing PIPs in full detail.

That's what did it for me... I went back to the printouts of the newsletters that I had read for other things and saw the PIP discussions.

:)

I'm a dope and impatient when my project's ALMOST done.

Thanks again Edward!

You need a cape or something.

-Kevin

I have bought many songs from the iTunes music store but when I want to use them for little video projects, it does not allow me to use them. Is there any way around this? Thanks.

MITCH

Just a cheapy Dell mouse. Two buttons and a wheel. Nothing fancy.

My friend had the exact same thing happen in Vegas. Can't recall exactly, but I think it had something to do with his video card settings.
Something about slowing mouse acceleration or lowering to 50% during games or video acceleration? and for some reason his mouse thought Vegas was a game application.

Jeff, you're the man, didn't even think about looking there (doh!). Under mouse properties in the control panel, there is a box checked for "Disable Acceleration in Games." Unchecking this did the trick. Thanks!

i'm just looking for clarification: there's no way to do this in Vegas right? no workaround, plug-in, script, etc.? I know that video editors don't cut to samples traditionally, but i figured that it might be implemented somehow in a video editor built by a sound company.

I don't really see why this feature hasn't made it into NLE's by now. what do you guys think?

Ah yes... I remember that now too. Because Vegas uses the DirectX components, some apps think it's a game. Glad you found the solution.

Yes, Vegas can work with audio down to the Sample. You'll need to turn off "Quantize to frames" to get to the subframe level.

that's sweet. AVID doesn't even do that, right?

thanks!!

oh yeah and now that i can do that, what's the point of mixing with a seperate program (I was using adobe audition). actually i can think of a few reasons but am curious what others think.

There ARE a few reasons to use dedicated audio programs. For one example, the Sound Forge Normalize is much more powerful than the Vegas Normalize. However, Vegas can handle a LOT all on it's own.

Step back in time and you'll see that Vegas 1.0 was a Multi-Track audio editing program. Vegas 2.0 added Video components!

is this possible? I think i remember a thread about this before, but can't find it, sorry.

If a method doesnt exist I guess i could just apply a speed, render the clip (making the speed change permanent), import it and then apply a new speed.. but does a quicker way exist?

.thanks

Not to start a war or anything, but everywhere I turn, I see reasons why I am glad I am a "PC Guy" and not a "MAC Guy".

btw, I own a G3 iMac DV 400 with OSX and FCP3.

But Vegas....nothing can touch it in my opinon.

My wife just bought a 40GB iPod (cause it was cute and her friends have one). I like it too. However, I told her "Don't you dare put that iTunes stuff on your Vaio baby! Figure out a way to sync it with your windows media player that you are used to." Low and behold, she found a plug in to make it work. So sorry, I can't help you with iTunes. Had you been on Windows Media Player, you wouldn't be having this issue. *smile*

- ShannonRawls.com

Two options:

1) Render it out, add it back to the timeline again, and speed it up again.

2) Use Time Bandit - part of the Veggie Toolkit.

<<<-- Originally posted by Mitch Buss : I have bought many songs from the iTunes music store but when I want to use them for little video projects, it does not allow me to use them. Is there any way around this? Thanks.

MITCH -->>>

A quick and dirty way is burn the song on CD and then reimport the song back in.

<<<-- Originally posted by John C. Chu :
A quick and dirty way is burn the song on CD and then reimport the song back in. -->>>

Good idea John. And not that dirty actually. it still maintains a very high bitrate and quality.

Problem solved.

- Shannon W. Rawls

Sorry Chris, if this is in the wrong forum....

Instead of shooting in CF25, wouldn't a better option be to shoot interlaced, and run a 24fps conversion in Vegas?

For HDV, after capturing with the Cineform codec, run either Edward's 24fps script or Ultimate S/Celluloid, and won't the output be of a higher quality that the CF25?

Or is the issue one of interlace artifacts?

In the alternative, why would CF25 be better than Sony's CF24 mode?

Brian