Yes. .

I add subtitles sometimes in V5 because my kids speak Chinese, which the granparents don't understand. It works fine but it is very labor intensive.

You will have to play around a bit to see how long to leave the subtitles on. Also, be careful to keep them on the viewable area of the screen. You can use the templates on the preview to make sure they stay in the viewable area. Finally, you may want to use bold and change the size of the font to make them more watchable.

What I meant by the following:

"is generally not a good idea to use such a highly compressed inter frame compression algorithm for editing."

Was that it is better to edit in the original format if you still have it.

Since you only have the MPEG file it should NOT matter in what you edit. The
quality will be the same since the source is that lossy compressed MPEG file.
No way around that. The only reason you may want to convert it to AVI is
to speed up the editing process.

However, Vegas can transform that MPEG into AVI as well, but I suspect you
tried that and got the same problem.

What you have not told us is what settings you are using:

1. what are the project settings when exporting to AVI or WMV?

2. what are the EXACT (including advanced!!) EXPORT settings when exporting to AVI or WMV?

How large is the MPEG-2 file and what did you use to create it?

You say in the latest post:

" Converting MPEG to WMV does create resolution loss and stuttering "

I'm confused. Is this with Windows Media Encoder (as you said in the first
post) or is this with Vegas, or both?

Thanks. It just doesn't make sense to have both cluttering up my internal bays. I used the extra space for an enhanced IDE hard drive.

Okay, say for some crazy reason I created a file in Vegas 6.0b, but now what to open that project in Vegas 5.0a..... can this be done?


Thanks for the help!!

Basically, NO. There is no "save as Vegas 5" option and it's not backward compatible. You could render the timeline and the place that render on the Vegas 5 timeline.

Hi gang,

I just finished a dance recital DVD and I put together a nice little menu.

A quick synopsis for you. The main menu is a pic (.tga) of the front of the theater. I have a button on the street part of the menu pic that highlights for someone who wants to watch the kids show up for the recital in a limo. The limo "button" links to a quick clip that is identical to the menu but has a limo screeching onto screen, stopping and then zooming off the screen. It then goes to the actual limo video.

My question. Is there anyway to set up the menu so that there is no short (about 1.5 second) blank screen between the menu screen and the clip of the limo zooming onto and off of the menu screen?

Thanks for any assistance you can provide.

sincerely,


ian

The only way would be to add the video of the second menu to the actual beginnin of the limo video. In other words, the limo video would INCLUDE the transition. Otherwise, the delay time you are seeing will happen and can vary from player to player. The delay is actually a player issue.

I'm still getting used to encoding. I am wondering is there any way to set Constraint Flags for MPEG-1 in Sony vegas. Is it automatically set at 1?

Thanks

Thanks Glen. Yeah I created a bus and assigned one track that was blown out to that bus.

I want to upgrade, but just so i don't confuse myself with "a lot" of new things.

i have pretty much mastered "vegas movie studio + DVD"

what will the next best software be....

thanks

Vegas 6+DVD

Everything you learned is still there. However, there is soooo much more available in the full version. You can find a comparison chart between movie studio and Vegas 6 on the Sony site. Take a look at my newsletters to see some of the things Vegas can do (link under my name).

p.s. scripts are WONDERFUL and can speed up many of the processes you had to manually do before. Vegas has scripting - movie studio doesn't.

Hello. I have around 8 hours of HDV material. I have a P4 3,2 but still is slow. Is there any way that i could edit the whole video in DV and then renaming the files to go directly to the HDV original files?
How could i do this in vegas?

thanks!

Absolutely. Just render the files to DV, do your editing, and then replace them when you're done. In fact, Spot has a tool to make the process even easier called Gear Shift.

I have a couple of strange things that happen from time to time with Vegas 5 and I'm hoping they're just pilot error so that there are solutions.

One is that sometimes when I select all my tracks and Insert Time, no time is inserted. On other occasions it is. What setting or switch might be causing no time to be inserted?

The other is that sometimes when I'm trying to do a fade in or out at the end of a clip, the fade tool is just not available at the edge of the clip, even when I zoom in and pull the 2 clips apart. Most of the time it is available, just occasionally it isn't no matter what I do.

Any clues?

Thanks.

The other is that sometimes when I'm trying to do a fade in or out at the end of a clip, the fade tool is just not available at the edge of the clip, even when I zoom in and pull the 2 clips apart. Most of the time it is available, just occasionally it isn't no matter what I do.

In this case, I would say the two clips are "just slightly" overlapped. Resize the clip to the left (i.e. make it smaller and then bring it back to the clip on the right). It should fade properly then.

As for the insert time, I've not seen that happen but, then again, I almost never use that function.

I found a tutorial for media pro showing a way to mask using a difference composite though for the life of me I can't figure out a way to do the same thing in Vegas. Here is the link to the tutorial

http://www.hiddenphantom.com/Tutorials/MSPDiffMatt/MSPDiffMatt.htm

Anyone know how to do this in Vegas?

or you could try Chrominator which does all this and more such as garbage mattes and rotoscoping..

masks like this only work with static backgrounds, so any moving camera work wont work with this.


chrominator works in a similar manner, however instead of using one particular colour as a key, you can set it to read a series of colours which are the keys. It also allows fo variable gamma settings so you can literally hrow on a green cloth and it will make sure that any green elements (irrespective of their luminance)are considered keys..

i dont know why more compositing tools dont use this method, but there u have it..

That can be done to an extent in vegas already using its chroma key functions. Theoretically this could be done on an extremely complex background (a non studio situation for example) so long as lighting conditions do not change at all (I think that's part of my problem right now).

The problem I am getting right now is after doing a difference composite I'm not left with an abosolutely solid difference between the subject and the background (resulting from the subject having some of the colors of the background). I tried to render the difference footage, then black and white, and then threshold....but the threshold function seems to generate a ton of noise. I can't seem to find a way to get good contrast between the subject and background....is this perhaps not a problem that can be solved in post?

EDIT: Actually reading over my last post I realize I answered my own question. It is possible, but you still need to prepare in advance with a background that contrasts the subject eliminating the need to threshold too far (though testing in photoshop, photoshop managed to do it on a still without so many errors). It's easier to just chroma key in that case (though perhaps this may yield better quality for dv).

Click on the track headers. One of the compositing modes is DIFFERENCE. Check it out.

But how do i replace them?
overwrtiting them wont owrk since te offline will be in avi and the real footage will be m2t

There's always the right-click - replace option in the media pool but the easiest option would probably be to use Gear Shift by Spot.

Yes I realize that lol....its the fact that it does Differance sort of reverse what I expected it to. It kind of left the subject almost the same color, and just blacked out the background...but that was due to the subject having some of the same colors as the background.

It actually does work the way I said - Create a Differance composite, render, black and white then threshold - then set that track as a mask on the original footage...I just wasn't using enough of a color contrasting background in comparision to my subject. With that considered...I think my results were quite good...better than chroma key. I recommend people who are chroma keying and getting that infamous "halo" try it out. I noticed where their is even slight color contrast between the subject and background I get an amazingly clean and sharp line around the subject.

Thanks. And what is gear shift and where do i get it?

http://www.vasst.com/search.aspx?text=gearshift

Change to a 1.0 pixel aspect and render out at 864x480. You'll get what you want.


/*
I always do 720*1.2 rather than the full pixel aspect (1.2xxxx or something) - 1) it looks right, and 2) it's a better number (evenly divisible by 16) when putting the source file into an mpeg2 encoder) - 880 (next even divisible #) looks wider than it should at a 1:1 pixel aspect.

$.02
*/

but I can't figure it out.


If you've got audio in just the left channel (right channel being empty), how can you clone it to be in both?

(mono shotgun)

Right-click - Channels - Pick the appropriate option.

Brilliant, thanks!

That was dead simple.. I was trying to copy/paste everything in the audio editor (sloow).

Thanks, Edward. I'll keep experimenting with the Insert Time.

Here's a shot in the dark about your being unable to make the fade tool available. If you've dropped the gain to less than 100% (pulling down the line from the top of the clip), then keep in mind the cursor won't turn into the fade tool when it is at the upper corner of the end of the clip, but at where the line you pulled down meets the end of the clip.

I installed a new Plextor burner this morning. Every thing was going well. No problem rendering, No problem prepareing, no problem burning. I played it back on my computer, great. I go to play it on my Panasonic deck. Nothing. It says check disk for dirt or scractes. I try three different dvd brands, DVD+R Maxell, Verbatim, HP. All play on the PC but not the deck. Oh, before I installed the Plextor I made three dvd copies on my old burner. They play perfect on both PC and deck. Any ideas? Bob

Thanks Brian, I'm suspecting that when it's happened it's been either what you or Edward suggest or both. I'll check it out next time it happens.

If it makes you feel any better I've had the same thing happen when trying to insert time. Usually it works for me on the second or third try. Don't know why it happens though.

A friend and I are trying to put a 17 second clip on a website so that people can click a link and watch the video. I've never rendered anything except full size and I'm having trouble figuring out how to render a clip that is smaller in size so that people can dowload it quickly. Do you just reduce the frame size under the render options or are there other settings to change? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Using Vegas 5:

I was just having issues with this the other day. Just changing your render size, and even adding compression will probably still leave you with a big file and less than optimal results.

The first thing you want to do when you "Render As" is change the 'save as' drop down box to .mov, .wmv, or .mpg. I personally use .wmv right now but that's just off of a friends recommendation not off of any testing.

Next change the "template" drop down menu. I like to use 256kbps template since its the best compressed template that uses 30fps.

Thanks Dan, it does help to know I'm not the only one :)

I'd also add, you may want to brighten up your video for the web. Video looks darker than normal on computer screens. Here are some basic color correcting examples to see the differences (click here (http://dvdogs.com/articles/autolevels/index.htm)).

I do this a lot for clients, even with movies lasting many minutes and so long as your target viewers have broadband, you should have no real problems.

What screen size are you looking at using - 320x240 or something else? If 320x240, 256k (video and audio combined - 240/16), as Matt mentions, is a good sweet spot for size vs qualty tradeoff (about 2MB's/min).

And yes, .wmv is a good way to go. If you use 160x120, you can halve the bitrate for equivalent quality and if you use 640x480 you'll need to double it. If the movie is to be played on a PC, as on the web, de-interlacing is also recommended.

I get consistently good results using 2-pass unconstrained VBR, 29.97 fps and 1-pass 16-bit CBR 22k audio, 16 or 32kbps, depending on the source.

I should mention that I frameserve out of Vegas to Procoder Express for .wmv conversion so these are Procoder settings but I imagine they have equivalents in Vegas.

Some people have reported problems getting .wmv files encoded in Vegas to stream and have found that encoding the same files in the free Windows Media Encoder instead has solved the problem for them.

Hope this helps.

Tony

Hi, I am new to Vegas. I just bought Vegas 6 and I love it.
I had a question, maybe someone could point me in the right direction.

I have 3 videos, I want all of them to play in the single frame at the same time. I pretty much figured out how to do this. It looks like 3 Picture in Pictures in the frame. Now I come to the part I cant figure out. I want these videos to move across the screen at different intervals.

Ex. The first one moves from right to left at the top of the frame and the second one moves from left to right in the middle of the frame, and the third one moves from right to left at the bottom of the frame.

I am almost positive that this can be done. Does Vegas support this?

Thanks for any info.
Marshal Hewit
Las Vegas, NV

you can do it several ways, the easiest of which is to line up 3 tracks, using track motion to squeeze the vid into either vertical or horizontal areas. You can also easily achieve this with masks.
Other methods can be found http://www.vasst.com/search.aspx?text=split

Click on the link below my name and go to the newsletter archives. The first three issues teach how to use Track Motion which will let you achieve exactly what you are wanting to do.

I have an older Plextor but I've never had problems on my Sony DVD player, even when my computer has some trouble recognizing the disc. My bother-in-law, however, had trouble playing some of my DVDs so it may be machine dependent. He ended up viewing them on his PS2. By the way, I usually burn DVD-R discs.

Not a Vegas issue, but I think this is probably the most appropriate forum, since many of us use Vegas with SF. I use SF7, and my "wave hammer" plug-in reverts to demo mode from time to time (in demo mode, you get electronic beeps throughout the processed file).

This is apparently a known issue from Sony, as it's on their knowledge base -- they say to uninstall and then reinstall SF, then re-register the software.

That's fine, and it works for me, but sometimes it takes a couple of cycles of uninstall/reinstall before it comes back. Also, it's a *major* hassle, and I don't understand why it keeps having problems.

It seems like I have to do this every couple of weeks, and it "breaks" randomly -- no changes at all to the computer in the meantime. By now, I've probably uninstalled and reinstalled SF 8 or 10 times. I'm worried that one day it will tell me I've registered the same serial number too many times!

This is extremely frustrating. Has this happened to anyone else? Are there any better solutions out there?

My deck was to old. Went out and got a new $150. deck and they all play back. Wow, I thought it was the burner. Thanks anyway. Bob

I think I would try a more severe step:

1) uninstall ALL Sony programs
2) delete the Sony folder in Program Files
3) If you're adventurous, remove any remaining Registry entries for the Sony products
4) reinstall ALL Sony programs (may want to do Sound Forge after Vegas)

Edward - I may just try that. I have a bunch of Sony stuff on the computer in addition to SF (V5.0, NR2.0, CDA5.2, DVDA2.0, and the version of Acid that comes with V5). Maybe one of them is messing up the Wave Hammer plug-in registration somehow? I can only assume that's why it reverts to demo mode, it suddenly thinks that the registration isn't valid. The weird thing is that it only happens with that plug-in.

In any event, I'm considering upgrading to SF8 at some point. I wonder if it uses the same copy protection scheme? The program itself seems to remain satisfied it is a legal copy, but the Wave Hammer plug-in registration is extremely touchy! I'd much rather use a h/w dongle than put up with this frustration.

Last night, I just got so frustrated reinstalling SF for the umteenth time that I sent a note to Sony support and started this thread. Thanks for letting me vent.

Hi all:

I downloaded the "match aspect ratio" script for my vegas 6b. I followed the instruction on the help section by placing the script in side c:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas 6.0\Script Menu but I don't have "Script Menu" folder on my computer. For the heck of it, I went a head and create a folder in Vegas 6.0 folder called "Script Menu" and placed the script in there but nothing happen when I scan it.

Why am I missing this folder? Can some one help me find it please

Allan

Are you looking in the "Sony" folder or the "Sony Setup" folder? I can guarantee that the default Sony install includes the "Script Menu" folder inside the "Sony\Vegas 6.0" folder. You don't need to create it manually.

Please rename the Match Aspect script so that it begins with a capital letter. Also, don't be afraid to check out all the other scripts that are available.

Alright. So right now i'm working on a project with a lot of slow motion, and reverse shots. I want the audio to Slow/speed up/reverse with the video. Is there any way to do this in vegas? because i've been searching and cannot find one. Is this something i have to do in a seperate audio editor? I know, from working with Premiere in the past, I had achieved it with that program.
I'm assuming there is no audio velocity evelope in vegas. Oh. Version 4.0
Anyway, Thank you anybody who responds.

-Joe