Hi, I am wondering if someone can help me create a script to vertically flip and change to 16:9 ratio on the timeline.

If someone can point me in the right direction... or hold my hand. Thanks!

hello all, help needed please! Lucky enough to just get a new XL2 and even luckier to be going to Zambia this evening to produce a short doc. Anyway, having big problems with Vegas as it's the first time I've use 16x9 footage with it.

I think these should be my settings for editing with the 16x9 footage, remember I'm using a PAL camera..

Width: 960 Field Order: Lower field first
Height: 576 Pixel Rate: ???????????
Frame Rate 25.000

When I use these settings the footage has lots of jagged lines/ steps. What settings should I use? And when I render?
Very much hope some Vegas users happily editing with PAL 16:9 footage can come to my rescue!

regards
Mark

Mark, I don't have any specific experience with the XL2, but it sounds like you are specifying a non-standard resolution for Vegas. Set your project properties to the PAL DV Widescreen template as the XL2 is recording DV to tape at 720x576 (no matter what the res. of the chips is). If you use the templates you should be pretty right.

BTW depending on the resolution you have the preview window set to you may see jaggies regardless, but these should not be in the rendered file.

When you render, render to:
PAL DV Widescreen (for full res. anamorphic output to tape)
PAL DV (for letterboxed 4:3 output to tape) or
Mpeg2 widescreen (for full res. anamorphic DVD)

Hope this helps.

all you really need to do is set your capturing to widescreen Pal DV

then create a project template with the PAL DV Widescreen.

your pixel aspect ration is whats causing the jaggies, as your PAR is differing from the project PAR

Just back from Africa this morning. Thank you both very much for your help. I have tried as you suggested and it works.

Jeff, I couldn't find the option to capture the source as 'widescreen DV'.

I tried your suggestions Kyle and I think they have solved my problem. But just another quick question Kyle!

If I render it as 'PAL DV Widescreen for full res. anamorphic output to tape, does that mean on a 4:3 screen the it will appear as 'squashed', but once it's played on a widescreen TV, it automatically plays it as wide screen (16:9)?

And if I render it as 'PAL DV (for letterboxed 4:3 output to tape) ', will it always appear letter boxed which ever size screen it is played from?

I am also rendering an MPEG2 version for a power point presentation. I think for powerpoint 16:9 always needs to be letterboxed.

Thank you both very much for taking the time to help.
regards
Mark. (UK)

I was reading another post talking about in-camera 16 X 9 and somebody stated that cropping in post reduces image quality. Did I read that wrong? I thought that cropping in post on Vegas just put black bands on the top and bottom of the 4 x 3 frame and as long as you framed correctly when you shot, you'd be fine.

Does cropping to 16 x 9 using the pan/crop tool in Vegas reduce picture quality?

>Does cropping to 16 x 9 using the pan/crop tool in Vegas reduce picture quality?<

No it doesn't.

However, if you shift the image veritcally within the crop mask, which theorectically should not reduce the quality, you may see a softening of the image.

Gary

No one?

Perhaps i don't understand. Why do you need a script to do this? Can't you just use the track motion or event pan/crop tools to accomplish this?

Yeah I am redoing a project and i have over a hundred cuts, so rather than do each one individually I was hoping i could just run a script, and i figured someone else would probably find themselves in a similar position someday...

When you say shift the image vertically, do you mean "pan and scan" to center the image better between the mask? And if so, why would that soften the image?

Hugh,
Ignoring the fact that you will be recompressing the footage, adding a letterbox mask to 4:3 footage won't degrade the image quality.

What people usually mean when they say not to use masking or letterboxing (in camera or in post) is that it is not as high a resolution as a true anamorphic 16:9 (from a true 16:9 camera, or a 4:3 camera with adaptor).

DV can be one of two aspect ratios - 4:3 or 16:9. Both use the same number of pixels. If you convert 4:3 to 16:9 by masking you are using the same number of pixels, but the few top rows and bottom few rows (1/4 of the picture) are black and contain no real information, whereas with a true 16:9 source all pixels are used for picture information.

Your footage played on a 4:3 tv won't be much different (probably not even noticable) - it'll be just masking off the top and bottom.
On a widescreen tv though if you zoom to fill the screen, you footage won't look anywhere near as good as true 16:9.

You can do everything on a track at once using Track Motion.

You can do aspect ratio and verical flip at once from track motion? Do tell!

>What people usually mean when they say not to use masking or letterboxing (in camera or in post) is that it is not as high a resolution as a true anamorphic 16:9 <

That may be, but what *I * meant was that if you move the cropped area vertically to reveal a different part of the image, every other increment up or down will produce a softened image.

Try it and see.

Gary

This was done on Vegas 5:

For the vertical flip do the following (everything will be flipped).

1. go to "track motion"

2. give "angle" under "rotation" a value of 180
(make sure "enable rotation" button is pressed)

-OR-

2. right-click in the schematic on the right and
choose "flip vertical"

I couldn't find an easy way with trackmotion to add 16:9 letter-
boxing (it was stretching the picture instead of cropping), but
if you go to my letterbox calculator you can download a mask
for 16:9 from that page. Make a new track above your current
ones and drop the mask in. Get it here:

www.visuar.com/letterbox/calc.htm

1. add the .GIF to a new track ABOVE your other tracks

2. right-click on the GIF in your timeline and go to properties. Go to the media tab and set the pixel aspect ratio to "0,9091 (NTSC DV)" or "1,0926 (PAL DV)" (whichever applies) and OK everything.

3. now change the tracks compositing mode from "source alpha" to "Multiply (Mask)"

And you are done! You can stretch the event to as long as you
need to cover your complete project length. You can also shift
footage up or down underneath these black bars.

Gary,
I was refering only to the addition of a mask and not 'reframing' the shot (Hugh got his response in while I was still writing mine...).

While I haven't actually done what you say (reframing vertically) I agree it would soften the image somewhat.

So then, if I want a pristine image, just shoot 4 x 3 and shut my hole?

If a true 16:9 camera or anamorphic convertor are out of your price range (or not really warranted for your production), you can either crop in camera, crop in post or shoot with a fake anamorphic 16:9 (or just use plain 4:3).

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

This site explains it all pretty well as I recall.

THANKS ROB!!!!

How do I crop in camera? I have the PD 170 and doesn't that use a crappy anamorphic squeeze?

I currently run a p4 3Ghz processor with 1G of ram.
I like to do alot of previews during editing. Will increasing ram to 2G significantly improve the speed of ram renders? On the preferences menu you can alocate as much ram as you need so will doubling the ram halve the speed of ram renders or is it a law of diminishing returns?

Also what is the difference between a pre-render and a ram render? is one faster then the other or do they look different or does one use cpu power and the other just ram?

Why does the pre render disappear after you play with the time line? isnt it prerendered to a temporary file? so why doesnt vegas keep that file for later use if needed?

Shouldn't reduce the speed of them but WILL increase the possible length of them.

Ram Render renders to RAM - Pre-render renders to the hard drive.

If you change something that affects the section of the timeline to which the pre-render applied, the pre-render will be "lost" (technically the file is still on the hard drive). That's why many people prefer the "Render to New Track" option instead.

Thanks Mr Troxel.
I'm slowly working through your dvd guide which I think is very helpful.

I have purchased the academic ver of vegas 5 + DVDA 2. Vegas registered fine DVDA acts as if it registers then say i have 14 or whatever days left. next time same thing anyone have this problem. Should i just call sony?

Call Sony Tech Support and they should be able to walk you through solving this problem.

Calling is best. If you can't get thru you may try re-registering with your firewall/antivirus disabled.

I need more screen real estate in vegas...I'm looking at the plethora of dual display cards out there and frankly I'm a bit overwhelmed by the choices. Would I benefit from buying a high end graphic/video card w/ dual display capibilities...or should I just buy a cheaper dual head card? Do these high end "gamer" graphics cards help out with render times for effects in Vegas? What do I need here?

NO reason to buy a high end video card. Lots of people use the Matrox duel head cards without incident.

The gamer cards don't help at all for Vegas.

Get something cheap and quiet (passive heatsink... look at pictures) and with the right outputs (DVI, VGA, etc.) and hopefully with a DVI-VGA adapter if necessary. ATI, Nvidia, and Matrox all make dual monitor cards. I recommend Nvidia since they have better drivers (you can quasi-calibrate your monitor to NTSC bars and tone) and they are cheaper than Matrox if buying new. On eBay, there's lots of old Matrox cards that'll work and those are cheap.

If buying new, go to newegg.com and check out the geforce4 series cards (or the newer but slower performing fx5200 cards).

Those gamer cards don't help with render times at all.

I have the Matrox P650 and it's awesome - passive heat sink, so its really silent, and the dual-monitor support is good. I've never had a problem.

However, if you want a cheaper solution, just get a G550 or 450 if you can find it. Just a word of warning though, you can't play games with these cards (well, you can, but they're not really designed for that).

Dennis

G'day

My son was recently born and I'm looking for creative ideas on editing the footage. Can you help me?

For some reason Vegas 4.0 & 5.0 is having problems with the sound syncing for some of the audio/ video files when they are put on the timeline. The files are simply captured from a Canon GL2, nothing more or less. The clips stay synched up when played in the trimmer, but it loses it's synching once I put the files on the timeline. I have never had this problem before but it starting to happen more often, and what puzzling is not all of my clips have this problem. The clips have not been altered in any way. I have tried moving the clips to different levels on the timeline but the clips still go out of synch.

If anyone can help me with this problem I would appreciate it greatly. Thanks for your time.

How were the files captured? (What program, what method...)

What is the difference between the "good" files and the "bad" files? (Look at their properties in Vegas)

I captured all the footage using Vegas Video. I checked the properties of both the good and the bad files and they are the same.

Did you capture in Vidcap using the "Capture Tape" option which automatically rewinds the tape and then simply captures the whole thing?

Were the bad files always the first clip from each tape?

If yes, try capturing those segments again but starting about 5 seconds in on the tape.

The 3dLE plugin is no longer available. Instead, you need to use WAX which has all the features of 3dLE plus many more. The WAX plugin can be found at http://www.debugmode.com

I love it!!

Well, that is a tough question there Gustavo. Editing (and shooting)
has everything to do with rhythm, composition etc. It's also very
personal. You will create something totally different then another
person and if you like what you make that is fine. Don't forget to
learn and enjoy the experience!

Get a nice rhythm going, don't cut too fast or too slow (ie, leave
it lingering for too long) and when shooting don't move the camera
too fast (often made mistake).

The best way to learn is through experience! Go out, shoot and edit!

I'm getting a disk failure notice on the video drive I defragged yesterday (stopped the de-frag near the end).
The drive is on one leg of my onboard RAID controller as a regular NTFS drive. Error log says bad block. Drive shows up in device mgr. but not in Administrative tools/Storage, so I can't complete the defrag. (I'm using W2k SP4). Clicking on the drive's icon shows it empty (0 items on this drive).
I need to recover the video and DVD files on this thing.
How can I repair the bad block and gain access to the drive?

Thanks for any help.
Ken

I used the capture tape option. This particular clip was near the end of the tape and the clip is in synched for a portion of the clip, but goes out of snych during the middle of the clip then comes back in synch near the end. It stays totally in snych when viewed in the trimmer. Very strange.

You could try Spinrite, which is a program designed to recover data off bad sectors and such.

http://grc.com/spinrite.htm

You need to buy it, but you can refund it for any reason (i.e. it didn't work). I've heard many good things about it, although I haven't had a need for it myself.

If your hard drive isn't spinning up:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6255-5029761.html

Or the best thing to do is to send your drive to a pro data recovery service, but that's really expensive! (several hundred dollars)

I had success with restorer2000 (http://www.restorer2000.com/). There's a free demo that you can try. You'll be able to see what can be restored, although it won't let you restore anything until you pony up.

i am editing an animation film on vegas 5.
for some reason when i render a sequence to avi (pal dv) the image quality is much poorer compared to the exact same sequence rendered to mpeg. this doesn't seem logical, for i know that .avi is supposed to be better quality than mpeg. what is wrong?
the preview in vegas looks fine. but somehow rendering to .avi makes fine lines look wavey and motion is far smooth.

work method:
the drawings and animation were created on flash. i then exported from flash as jpeg sequences (12 frams/sec). in vegas i import the jpeg sequences and edit them.

thanks.

" for i know that .avi is supposed to be better quality than mpeg. "

This is 100% incorrect. AVI (like QuickTime .MOV for example) is
A CONTAINER format! This means that it has no way on its own
to encode content into any form (except uncompressed, which
just stores it as is).

A container format needs a CODEC (encoder / decoder) to encode
(and decode on playback) your content into a stream. This stream
is put inside the AVI (in this case) container which other computers
know how to handle (but still need that codec).

So when you exported to a PAL DV AVI the codec you are using
is the DV (Mainconcept or Microsoft) codec. I could even encode
MPEG into AVI (DiVX/XviD is MPEG-4 for example). Just so all of
this is clear to you.

There are two things of immediate concern to the story you've
written:

1. 12 frames per second

2. jpeg sequences

JPEG is a LOSSY (like DV or MPEG) compression that tosses out
information you cannot (easily) see, but depending on the JPEG
compression level this can be seen. It would be far better to
export to an uncompressed or lossless compressed format like:

Windows bitmap (.BMP), TIFF (.TIF) or TARGA (.TGA) files

12 frames per second exported as 25 frames per second will not
look smooth indeed, since it will be interpolated. I assume you
want to interpret this 12 fps footage AS 25 fps instead of converting
it to that.

A few questions:

1. what are your exact project settings in Vegas?

2. what are your exact settings of the imported flash/jpeg footage? (right-click on an event on the timeline and choose properties)

3. did you change any settings in the DV PAL templat or not?

If you didn't change anything under 3 then your output settings
will have been set to INTERLACED (your project settings may also
be set to this which is NOT what you want!) which is incorrect. It
should be set to progressive.

These are a couple of things to start with...

thanks for your answer rob. i'll check the project settings and so on, as you suggest and get back to you on this. thanks.

i'll also check to see if i can use a different format to export other than jpeg.

all said, i still am not clear on why the vegas preview looks better than the rendered product when rendering to PAL DV uncompressed (did not change any of the default settings).

thanks again.
adi

Hi all,


I am in need of inspiration right now , if any of you know where I could find on the web promotionnal video's made by you or others.

Something that has great intro's/outro's

These should have been done with vegas because I kinda rant out of idea's for them when doing them in vegas

If this is not the case please specify with which program it was done with

Thanks a bunch

Phil

One thing that is different is that the preview is not interlaced
(probably) and your output is. Also it might not be able to actually
interpolate the 12 to 25 fps in realtime so that might in this case
give it a better appearance as well.

rob, here are the details you requested...

1. vegas project settings:

frame: 720X576
pixel axpect ratio: 1.000 square
frame rate: 12
full-resolution rendering quality: best
motion blur type: gaussian
deinterlace method: blend fields

2. media properties:

switches marked:
loop
smart resample

playback rate: 1.000
undersample rate: 1.000

3. no changes were made to the PAL DV template

i'm not quite sure what you meant when you wrote that you assume that i wish to interpet 12 fps as 25 fps instead of converting it to that.

also, i thought i might mention that loss in quality is especially noticable during "camera motion" which was created with vegas crop and pan.

thanks!!

PAL-DV *IS* 25fps (not 12)

If you wish to output to TV, it will need to be 25fps and the TV will be interlaced.