In the preview window you will see a button that looks like a floppy disk. I believe this is the one you press to save a snapshot.

Excuse my ignorance, but I'm trying to find ways to improve my productivity with Vegas 5.0. I edit narrative features that are shot on the DVX100 and I was wondering if there is anyway to get Real Time effects for things like Color Correction, Dissolves, and using Magic Bullet. I only have a P4 @ 2.8 ghz and 512 megs of ram. Is there a hardware device that can give Real Time processing for such effects in Vegas? Thanks.

That does it - thanks.

Sorry but the answer is no.
If you find yourself doing a lot of the same kinds of things, you can always save them as presets whcih will save some time.
You can add more RAM to your machine and take advantage of the RAM render feature of Vegas for preview purposes.
After doing a complicated (FX) section, you can also do a "render to new track" so that you don't have to keep repeating the render over and over.
Watch out for Magic Bullet as it slows render times by a factor of 10 or more :-(

Im having trouble opening xvid/divx files in vegas so I can cut them. It imports all right, but there is no video stream, its just audio.

Anyone know what could be the trouble?

Just make sure that your preview window is set to "Best/Full" or you won't get the best quality grab.
Another option is to use a script like the Automated Photo Snapshot one for doing this. It's a part of the collection at http://s92274348.onlinehome.us/vegas.html

Mike

Do a search here for "DivX" and/or "XVid" which should point you to the proper codec to install so that Vegas can "see" the video.

Depends on what you mean by "Real Time". You can apply these effects, press "Play", and the timeline will playback in real time WITH those effects applied. However, if it cannot keep up, a couple of things happen:

1) Preview Quality: You can change the level of preview quality. The default "Preview" is a reduced quality version. For a higher quality, bump it up to "Good"

2) Reduced Framerate: If the computer cannot keep up with the effects in real time, it will start dropping frames. This is all system and effect dependent. Naturally, preview set Preview quality will drop fewer frames than one set to Good quality.

One really neat thing you can do is create a selection area and start a looping playback. Now, while the playback is looping, open the Effect window and start adjusting. You'll see the adjustments LIVE as you make them.

There is no hardware device that will help with the above. If you MUST see higher resolution than the above provides, a couple of options are RAM-Rendering and Prerendering.

A- Upgrading your CPU would help, although it is pricey.
Seeing Spot's VAAST demonstration, the dual core dual opteron machine he has (4 cores, about equivalent to 3.2ghz Pentiums each) is fast. *Real performance is less than 4X faster... probably about >2X faster.

If on a budget, you may be able to grab a Dell Inspiron 9100 for cheap and cannibalize your old machine (upgrade to dual core... may be like 40% faster than what you havenow). The base system can be a good deal, check hot deals sites for the US. Upgrades are way overpriced.

B- More RAM means longer RAM previews and more stuff can get buffered into memory while you loop.

C- Try Celluloid or Reelpaks (from VAAST) [i forget the exact name], as they render much faster than Magic Bullet. Some of the looks involve the gradient map, which can create banding in some cases. The workaround is to use the secondary color corrector to add tints instead.

First, I have been lurking for a few days now and let me say this forum
is awesome. I am a super novice user of Vegas but have been playing around with it for < a year now..Used it last winter to edit a motorcycle Stunt DVD and since then I have been trying to get better..

So my question is related to DVD architect. How do I make a DVD so that it plays an intro movie sequence before the main DVD menu comes up ?
We are currently doing another stunt dvd this winter and I would like our animated logo and trailer to play before the menu pops up ??

Cheers and thanks again for all the great tips and advice I have read thru..

Cheers

SC

Set the Intro Video as the "First Play" option and then have it "End Action" to the menu.

Got it...thanks....

Cheers

SC

Set the Intro Video as the "First Play" option and then have it "End Action" to the menu.

How can I record just audio with Vegas? I also have a Canopus ADVC 110 connected to this system. I switched a dip-switch on the bottom of the ADVC but it didn't help.

Via firewire? Use Scenalyzer Live

Via your soundcard? Straight to the timeline!

I shot a series of clips which are no more than 2 seconds long but need to be played in reverse and sped up. There are about 20 of these clips and I was wondering if it's possible to add them all as one onto Track 1 instead of individually so that the envelope edit for time affects every clip on the track, somewhat akin to the "Flatten" feature in Photoshop.

Thanks guys

Add the 20 clips to the timeline and select all of them. Right-click on and choose reverse. While all still selected hit G to group them, then Ctrl/drag the right edge of the last one to the left.

Gary

Much abliged

Hello. I am working on a project for a client and they want me to edit some footage they shot in HDV. I have the m2t files, and I have used HDV before as I have an FX1, but I have only converted them to quicktime or AVI's to edit them and not worry about getting them back to mpg/m2t files. But they want me to do this. Is it even possible without Cineform? They also want me to create a log of some sort, how do I do this?

sorry for the noob-esque questions.

thanks
Jamie

Hey there. I know this thread was quite a while ago, but no one suggested a motion blur envelope, which would have accomplished the blurring of light without blurring anything else, and it's built into Vegas. At least, Vegas 6.

Hello. I am working on a project for a client and they want me to edit some footage they shot in HDV. I have the m2t files, and I have used HDV before as I have an FX1, but I have only converted them to quicktime or AVI's to edit them and not worry about getting them back to mpg/m2t files. But they want me to do this. Is it even possible without Cineform? They also want me to create a log of some sort, how do I do this?

sorry for the noob-esque questions.

thanks
Jamie

Usually helps those who would love to offer assistance if you give some idea of what computer platform you're using (Mac/PC) and what editing software (NLE) you currently have.

This answer will be "hit or miss" without such information, but:for PC - if you get the demo version of AspectHD or ConnectHD and your NLE can write to MPEG2 Transport Stream of the same frame rate and bitrate of the HDV stream used, you can then use the Cineform HDLink utility to write back to camera. (tip: m2t is MPEG2 transport stream, so any *.mpg that is MPEG2 TS just needs the three character file type extension changed to .m2t and HDLink can use it... this works in reverse for player apps and NLE's that don't "natively" support HDV)

For Mac, I believe LumiereHD provides much the same functionality...

yeah veags 5 also has this envelope (i think v4 also has it... not sure.. )

anyways, when using this, an idea is to run the glow filter just to boost the lighs a lil bit

Also if you are using a PC with Sony Vegas as an editor, you can buy VASST GearShift (http://www.vasst.com/product.aspx?id=5830e4f9-d99b-4d0b-908d-aa4954c324a3) which will allow you to work with DV Widescreen proxies for editing and then swap in the original M2T files for rendering back to tape or DVD. The best of both worlds.

~jr

If you use for compression only DivX as install DivX codec only - for import XviD you do not need him
If for compression you use XviD install only XviD

I though divx didn't work in Vegas at all? That's what I had always been told. I have the divx codec installed on my machine and it doesn't work.

Dont install 2 codecs - DivX open Xvid files, and XviD open DivX files
You needs instal only ONE of this codecs - codec on you use for COMPRESSON/
Wont experriment? - Problems in DivX files? change 4CC from DivX to XviD and Enjoy :-)

I can't get the Video FX of Vegas 5 to work.
The opacity, pan crop, track motion etc, works, but I can't get any of the fx to work.
I believe that my setting are OK, but something is obviously not.
Ive tried to do the FX on diferent project and on different tracks but it won't work.
I've also restarted my PC and still no luck.
Please help.
Thanks in advance,
Bernard

I interviewed someone but want to get rid of the background. Is there a way to do this.

Thanks, Jason

Why not. Sometimes you may want to encode to Divx and somtimes to xVid. I've never had a problem having both installed at the same time.

Well, a dedicated forum it is... for now at least! Although the day may come where we roll SD and HD into one, we'll keep them separated to begin with. Welcome aboard,

Which Video FX are not working?

I'll ask the obvious -- are you sure you don't have the "split screen view" button toggled on the video preview window? One of the settings is "bypass FX" and it could be easy to miss. Also, make sure you don't have "bypass all" selected on your track or event FX, although that one is a lot harder to miss (a red slash through the FX icon if you've bypassed them).

Agreed - bet it's the "Split Screen" button just above the preview screen.

Depending...

O.K. I don't recommend this. Just so you know. But if the background isn't uniform and sufficiently different from the forground to do some kind of sloppy colour key, then there is a REMOTE and painstaking possibility that you could use Bezier Masking to cut out your subject.

Just my two cents, and again, I would weigh the benefit against the amound of work and how it might end up looking worse anyway.

DJ

You might be able to pull a difference key, but it may not work.

I don't know how to do it in Vegas, sorry.

Jason,

May I ask WHY you want to get rid of the background?

Thanks, Steph

Good question Steph! - I'm listening - G

Smart deinterlace settings used in both Vdub and Vegas:
------------------------------------------------------
frame and field diff
cubic interpolate
motion map denoising
motion thres 5
scene change thres 5


Vdub does a great job.

But Vegas (6b) produces much worse results, thick interlace lines. Maybe there's something I'm overlooking in Vegas?


Thanks!

Have you tried the "Smart Deinterlace" plugin found here?: http://mikecrash.wz.cz/vegas/vegas.htm

I downloaded Vasst Gearshift to have a try. Quite nice to edit the avi file.

But when I try to convert one hour m2t file into avi file (NTSC widescreen), I ran out of harddisk space. It took 55GB to convet 8 minutes m2t video to avi format. I don't have enough disk space for one hour footage. Did I do it wrong?

...It took 55GB to convet 8 minutes m2t video to avi format. ...Did I do it wrong?Something is definitely wrong. Are you sure you were only making the NTSC Widescreen proxy? This DV proxy is only 13GB/hr so 8 minutes would only take about 1.7GB.

What I bet happened is that you also have an intermediate codec selected in the 4:2:2 YUV section (the second dropdown). These files can be quite large. Make sure the second dropdown says (None). This way only the DV proxy is created.

If this is the case, you can recover by deleting the 4:2:2 AVI files that GearShift created that don’t have "GSProxy-" in front of the name (keeping the GSProxy-xxx.avi ones because these are the NTSC Widescreen proxies). As long as the GSProxy files and M2T files are in the same directory, everything should work fine.

~jr

When you use Smart Deinterlace (Crash's) in Vegas, remember to set deinterlace to NONE and fields to PROGRESSIVE in project settings, then use the FX plugin to do the delace in the events/tracks/timeline -- otherwise, it won't do what you want.

Ed, that's the one I'm using with Vegas, maybe I'm using an older version. I will download it again. I have a feeling the plugin may not have been ported perfectly to Vegas and so it yields different results, I could be wrong.

Bill, I did that, but maybe I'll try it again.

Perhaps it has something to do with how Vdub saves the deinterlaced files to uncompressed, while the files are saved compressed in Vegas? I don't think so though.

Thanks, guys!

Hey guys,

I been using my Sony DSR-11 to capture video. Lately ive been shooting a lot with a DVX100. I'm having problems exporting back out to the DSR-11 at 24P. It just won't let me do it. Is this a problem with the deck itself or a setting in Vegas. It seems to import fine at 24p. I've already upgraded to 6.0C. No change.

Thanks,

Greg

I'm trying to render an mov file with the Avid codec so I can pass my video to my partner who edits in Avid. I've done this before but it's no longer working. I have the Avid codec on my computer in the System32 folder and then when I "render as", I choose "Quick Time.mov" and then I should be able to choose a video format of Avid DV - but it's not showing up. Any ideas?

Thanks.

I am having a problem and was wondering if anyone could make some suggestions.

Preview (using Canopus ADVC with a monitor) while editing has been black and white when it should have been color - but not consistently. Sometimes the monitor would show color. I thought this was just a preview issue.

I tried "PRINT VIDEO TO TAPE" to a VCR to see if the problem was real - and the video tape also has the problem - jumpy picture - mostly black and white, really poor quality and jumpy audio. I rendered the project to a single AVI before attempting to do this - is that my problem? I copied the AVI to another PC and viewed it with Windows Media Player and it plays in all color - audio sounds good, but the images still jump (especially the jpeg images that are part of the project).

Just send your Avid partner a quicktime file. He will import that into avid, and can cut it there.

there is an option in the vegas preferences to ignore 3rd party codecs.
Make sure that hasn't changed.

....ok... I had a look in vegas....
drop down menu "options"
"preferences"
under the general tab you'll see a list "general preferences"
uncheck "ignore thrid party dv codecs"
it's about half way down the list

if it's not that, then I'm lost

Man, I was sure it was that preferences option because "Ignore 3rd party codecs" was checked. But it didn't work. This is so strange because I used to get the Avid DV choice in the drop down. Thanks for the advice though. I'll have to see if he can just use the quicktime file.

Jeff, the Avid option doesn't show up in the "template" window under the "Save as type" box. To get it, you select mov and then go "Custom - Video - Video format - Avid ***.
Apologies if you've already tried this.

Mike

Some things to check:

1) DIP switches on ADVC are correct (i.e. PAL vs NTSC)
2) maybe try a different firewire cable
3) Make sure any unnecessary programs aren't running on the PC
4) Try turning OFF "Networking" on the firewire connection

Mike,

Yes, I'm going to custom / video and looking for Avid DV. Thanks though.

Jeff