Wow, sorry for the late reply! I didn't see your reply.
I guess you've figured it out by now, but in case someone else is wondering:

Short answer - yes you are right. If you play the anamorphic 16:9 through any device that is not '16:9 aware', it will look squashed horizontally. Some newer 4:3 TVs have a 16:9 squeeze mode that will letterbox it correctly.

Doing it the other way around isn't usually such a problem. If you play the 4:3 LB video on a widescreen TV in 4:3 mode the screen will letterbox on all 4 sides (not a good look), but pretty much all widescreen TVs have a zoom mode that will play the video fullscreen (albeit not with the resolution the anamorphic would have been.

I believe the best output medium (for me) is DVD. I can shoot anamorphic, make an anamorphic DVD, then play it on my widescreen at full resolution, but if someone plays it on a 4:3 TV, the DVD player will letterbox it correctly (provided they have their DVD player setup correctly).

See the sticky thread in this forum for links to all sort of Vegas
extensions etc.

At this point in time there are no plans for a new season of Lady X,
mainly due to time restrictions on our parts. But who knows what
will happen this year, we haven't abandoned it or anything.

You can also look at this in the positive light: the more exposure
of your work the more change you'll get seen and people might
purchase your services, wether for wedding work or fictional work,
that's what I think. However, you shouldn't encourage it or let it
slide if you find out someone is making large amount of copies
(especially if they are being sold).

If you are offering a product I can imagine you are offering copies
as well? So there is a base price for the manufacturing of the
product and then a price for additional copies (which should cover
the disc costs, nice case and your time etc.) that seems reasonable
(I would try to make my profit with the product in general, not
the copies) so they are not too easily thinking about doing the
copying on their own.

Perhaps a value added service (if you are doing a wedding) is to
send these discs out to everyone as well? (ofcourse you should
be compensated for this and only after the couple has seen the
footage and OK-ed the distribution) In this way they don't have
to bother with this themselves and have more time to enjoy
eachother <g>

I'll see if I can run some tests, time is very short at the moment
though. Please post in the following thread for your notification
problem:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36726

I think some people are using it (with WAX as well). Why do you
want to know?

I've got it, but can't make it work - most likley me.

I'm listenning to this thread .. oh yes .. .

Grazie

Hello all.
Does anyone know how I can attach a Beta SP player to my PC, so I bring footage straight into Vegas.

At the moment I am attachnig my camera to the Beta deck and transferring it to DV, and then firewiring it in from the camera.

This takes extra time and probably a loss of quality.

thanks
Mark

Assuming the camera allows pass-thru, you can skip the recording to tape step. Just hook up the unit to the camera, hook the camera up to the computer, and capture straight to the hard drive through the camera skipping the tape. You need to turn OFF device control for this to work.

Hi Edward
I'll try that thanks. I haven't tried turning off the device control option.
Thanks for the swift reply!
regards
Mark

I am running a dual monitor, 3 ghz P4 with 2056 meg of ram (PC) with every conceivable background program turned off, two 250 gig hard drives for data only and one 160 gig hard drive for programs. So, when I apply a Magic Bullet Movie Look filter on a clip, the playback slows down so much that it looks like it moves one frame per second. With all my memory and space, why is the application of one filter slowing my timeline play so drastically? Did I shut off too many background programs? Did I not shut off enough?

HALP!

I could not get the video morph to work. It seems to be an issue that Sony needs to address.

Using standalone winmorph I can morph a still image, but to morph video it seems you need to use winmorph as a plugin.

I guess that is what wax is for?

Does anybody agree or disagree with this:

http://members.macconnect.com/users/b/ben/widescreen/index.html

It's Magic Bullet. It's a terribly slow plugin - effective but SLOW. You can achieve the same looks manually but it will take some work on your part. You might want to look at the Zenote plugins. They are MUCH faster.

Magic Bullet? yeah right . .. Tried it once, not again until they speed up the process .. nice effects, get busy with creating your own home grown presets and name them and sue them .. lots to experiment with. Apart from anything else you will be in the fortunate business of having created your own!

Go on, get experimenting . .Vegas WONT let you down ..

G

Hey Guys and Gals,

I have recently captured interlaced video of a young lady doing a sign language presentation with white gloves and a black dress. When she moves her hands quickly I see a terrible blur and sometimes horizontal lines. I have experimented Interlace/Progressive Scan modes under Project and clip properties. I have also checked reduce interlace flicker. Can some one please tell me the setting that might result in the smoothiest video.
1. Should I leave the Project property set for interlacing? Should I use blend or interpolate?

2. If checking reducing interlace flicker has to be set, is there anyway to do this projectiwide?

Please help. Thank you!

First question: WHERE are you seeing this?

Second question: WHAT is your final output destination?

I can't believe I missed it

Thanks for the heads up Rob

Phil

PS: As soon as you make a decision for the LadyX let me know cuz am in :)

Why would Sony need to make this work? They didn't make the
program/plugin. Isn't Winmorph supposed to work as a plugin
for Wax instead of Vegas (directly)?

1. I see this (horizontal lines through hands during fast movement) when I do a selective prerender in avi format and playback at Best on preview monitor.

2. The final destination is onto a DVD.

Check to see if you're mixing aspect ratios.

I've gotten severe shearing/blurring when I've shot 16:9 video and output using a 4:3 template.

supposed to? yes/ Does it? nope Unless someone here has made it go and can enlighten me

1-
If your target format is video DVD (for playback on TVs, not computer monitors):
A- I *highly* recommend you connect a TV to your edit system. A TV will be a lot closer to what your video looks like than what you see on a computer monitor.

Computer --> firewire cable --> camcorder/deck (set to convert DV-->analog) --> A/V cable --> TV/monitor (set it on the right input).

In Vegas, click on the TV icon.

If you've never done this before I highly highly recommend this as you can spot problems like overscan, chroma crawl, interlace flicker, etc. before they occur.

B- Play back your video and watch it on your TV. Does your footage look smooth?

C- If you'd like, you could de-interlace the footage. Watch the results on your TV. It shouldn't make that much of a difference for TV viewers. Motion will not be as smooth, and resolution may be lower depending on your de-interlace method. There may be advantages for people who are watching the DVD on a computer.

The reasons for my question were:

If the source is interlaced, and the destination is interlaced, then you may as well leave it interlaced. If you are looking at interlaced video on the computer monitor, it will NOT look the same as it does on an interlaced TV. The suggestion to preview on an external monitor is a good one and will give you a better representation of what the final result will look like.

Hi all,


So I just rendrered my latest project with divx pro , it is 2:30 and the size comes up to 90 meg...

I've been watching some videos lately from a company that makes the same kind of stuff that I do and they manage to put a 640x480 4:30 in just a 60 meg file using Mpeg.

I've played with all kinds of codecs and so far divx is the one that is really comes out the most beautiful. Is there any trick then , like maybe rendering to a regular uncompressed file and encoding it in Tmpge or any other program. What could these guys have used to get such results.

My project will be web-based so it can't be 90 meg.

Thanks for your time :)

Phil

If it is Web-based, resize it to 320x240 if you want streaming video. You should easily be able to get away with a bit rate of 500kbps. For a 2:30 clip that means 150s x 500 kb/s = 9MB

If you want really want full-frame, aim for 1Mbps - 1.5Mbps. For a 2:30 clip that means 20-30 MB.

"Where did I go wrong?" you ask. You probably did not control the bit rate. Be sure to use two passes since size is of the essence.

Since my sound card has a low-grade mic input, I want to use my camcorder to capture live audio (in other words, not from tape.)

Is it possible to use Vegas to capture only audio so I do not use excessive disk space?

Hi Emre,


Thanks for the answer

So , would it be possible to explain , in a nutshell, that pass thing , can't seem to find any "english" definition

So how low can the bitrate be before one starts to loose quality...

In the example that I use , the guys used mpg , would you suggest the same, if so would you suggest rendering it in mpg or rendreing it raw and encode it in mpg with another program.

Thanks for your time

Oh yes, I would always recommend multi-pass encoding, if time allows it.

With DivX (aka MPEG-4 SP) I shoot for roughly 0.2 bits / (pixel *second) if I want high quality. For low quality, 0.1 bits / (pixel * second). For NTSC DVD resolution you are looking at 1-2 Mbps. Obviously, If you reduce the resolution (recommended practice for Web distribution), you can reduce the bit rate. Ideally you should compress a representative clip of your video to determine the ideal bit rate (aka, "perform a compressibility test".)

There is a new standard called H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC) that is even more efficient than DivX, but the software is still maturing, so I would give them a bit more time before using them.

I can not give you a step-by-step guide to multi-pass encoding in the limited space, so let me refer you to divx.com support (http://www.divx.com/support/guides/guide.php).

Without using the soundcard and staying strictly with firewire you have a couple of options:

1) Capture with Vegas with video, render the audio to a separate file, and delete the original file.

2) Get Scenalyzer Live which can capture audio-only over firewire.

So it is possible, but not with Vegas, it appears.

Is it possible to monitor the audio levels while doing a live recording?

Scenalyzer Live has a rough meter while capturing but I'm not sure how far I'd trust it. You can download it and test as a demo (I think you might get a beep every now and then because it's a demo)

You really need to make sure you're feeding it the proper signal strength to begin with by using your camera audio controls.

Hi Kim,

Have you tried the Debugmode (makers of WinMorph) forums?

http://www.debugmode.com/userforums/viewforum.php?f=2&sid=d269e86411757e08efb3ee7c52e0cba8

There's a good deal of material there that may (or may not) get you started and Satish (the developer) does seem to get back to people on tech problems.

Worth a try? Good luck.

Actually, this quote from Satish last year may just sum it up :

Winmorph does not work with Vegas 5. Sony is thinking of reviewing the plugin SDK for Vegas so i am waiting for that to happen.. Meanwhile please try with Vegas 4. Or if you got Wax plugin for Vegas 5 to work, you can use WinMorph from inside Wax as a plugin.

Excuse me if this is in the wrong forum, but when using Magic Bullet Looks with Vegas, does it make a difference, in terms of rendering time, as to whether or not one uses a P4 or an AMD chip? I've read that MB is optimized for P4s, but does this mean that AMD chips will render MB slower then P4s? Thanks.

Magic Bullet is slow no matter what chip you put it on.

Edward is being kind,, painfully slow is more like it.

It might actually be faster on AMD64 CPUs as they are generally faster at floating point calculations. Magic Bullet does its processing with 16-bit floating point calculations. This is just theoretical however, and the difference should maybe be around 50% which means Magic Bullet is still really slow. I also don't have an AMD64 CPU to play with so I have no way of verifying what I said was true.

For everything else video-related, it seems Pentium processors are generally faster than AMD64.

Hi Emre,


Well I finally got something out of it.

Ended up rendering it raw and converting it to mpg via tmpge.

27meg for a 2:46 file in 352x240.... not bad.

One question though , you suggested a bitrate of 500 and this is how I set tmpge to but it turns out to be 240 ??? I look back at my settings and it is indeed 500.

would it be 240 by pass (because I put 2) , doesn't add up but this is the only logical answer that comes to mind.

thanks for your help

Phil

Hi all,

Well here it is , thanks to hours of effort , invaluable help from numerous people here who so generously helped me the final version of my latest project is here.

Hopefully I am not posting in the wrong spot.

just click on the following link to download :

http://s7.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3R2BCJODJJ6BI3KNOHE850R0K1

Of course if I post that here I am expecting some reviews and/or criticism. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT BE COMPLAICENT !!!! ( hope I wrote that right)

Bash into my wall as much as you like , I want to improve and learn and if I get hit by a feather I will not go far.

Keep in mind though that this is probably my 5th project , by far the most complex. I learn everything on my own , shooting , editing (that's with some help from you guys ;) etc...

Thanks a million

Phil

PS: the project is in french so ...

It looks llike you have a lot of the main concepts well in hand.

The footage is a bit distracting because of the (evidently) poor low-light capabilities of the camera. It can probably be made to look better with tweaks such as using color curves and the median filter.

Overal, my main comment is.....Man, I have to get out more! :-)

divX and windows media should both be able to produce a better compressed file than MPEG1/MPEG2 from TMPGENC. Windows Media is probably the best choice as it won't put spyware on your computer like divX does (you can google for removing GAIN, which is bundled with divX I think), is free, and provides arguably better encodes (depending on input material). You can download Windows Media Encoder for free.

assuming yoru betaSP deck has component output, u can get urself a decklink box and connec tit that way. another option is to go for a DAC2 component to firewire adapter.

I use this all the time for broadcast work..

If only vegas supported DVCPro 25 and 50... :(

hello Peter, thanks for taking the time to reply.

The DAC 2 component to firewire adaptor sounds very interesting!

Can I attach my Beta sp player (or any other source) to it, and inport it into my pc via my firewire lead. And can you output the same way, through the firewire - into the DAC 2 component- to beta sp?

If you could perhaps give me some more details of your DAC2 component, model and make etc I'll see where I may be able to get one in the UK.

thank again

best wishes
Mark

One thing I agree with Gary on is that you seem to have a grasp on the main concepts pretty good.

However, I'm wondering if the 'apparent low light' capabilities seems to be more operator error; next time try exposing for the highlights. It appears you opened up the iris to a level where you could 'see'; as if forcing the exposure. Also consider looking into seeing if your monitor is calibrated properly.

Enetertaining video!

Here is couple projects idone in Vegas 5.
First is more-less playing in Vegas with filters, second was pure fun.
If you have any quetions, I will be happy to answer.

http://www.amkafilms.com/homework.mov
http://www.amkafilms.com/ads.mov

Is there a demo Magic Bullet I could try? I have an A64, I could see how slow it is

There's a demo version of Magic Bullet on their website.

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/magic.html

And yes, it's slow.

hi Glen,


well I am gonna need a serious Divx 101 course then HIHIHI.

I've played with that thing for a couple of hours yesterday and all it could come up with was a 100 meg file for 5000 frames !!! Could you believe that.

I download the windows media encoder and will fiddle around with for sure.

Do you know by any chanve some good tutorial for both methods.

Thanks Glenn

Phil

Sorry, I don't know good tutorials. In either program, you want to configure the program so that the bitrate is low. The formula Emre gave should be fairly good. Otherwise you can even calculate the bitrate you want.

yeah dude thats EXACTLY waht it does..

i use this to capture from a DVCPro Deck, do what i need to do as an avi (not the best way to edit dvcpro.. but im still waiting on dvcPro support in Vegas.. ) then export back to tape through the DAC2
Very easy to set up and abotu $800 aud