I'm rendering a project that is about 1.5 hours long... includes video and some still shots. The video took under 3 hours to render in NTSC format, but i'm reformatting for customers outside of the US and the PAL render is estimated to take over 20 hours. Is this normal??
Thanks all,
matt lewis
www.cystinuria.org

OK I have finished my project and want to normalize the audio tracks, do I
normalize each track individually or at the project level? It is a simple project, a documentary with 3 audio tracks, Voice over, music and ambiant sound. I have checked out a few tutorials in C Cow etc but they don't get too specific. Am waiting for Spot to release his next DVD, but need this info now, and am not audio savvy at all (release, attack??? sounds like somebody is wrestling!) Any help greatly appreciated.

Would anyone be interested in helping me write this? I'm guessing in would look something like "when right arrow is depressed move cursor right 25 frames" Though I'm not sure how to put that in java...

We agree completely! That's why we've put together special bundles with VASST & Sony that include VASST training and trial versions of Ultimate S & Gearshift with any Vegas purchase.

We're also offering a bundle of VASST training & Ultimate S.

We've posted an interview on our site with Douglas Spotted Eagle that talks about Vegas, Ultimate S & HDV. Check it out http://www.videoguys.com/vegas_spot.html

Gary

You'll need two scripts. For example:
MoveCursorRight.js containing these two lines:

import Sony.Vegas;
Vegas.Cursor = Vegas.Cursor + new Timecode("00:00:00:25");


and MoveCursorLeft.js containing these two lines:

import Sony.Vegas;
Vegas.Cursor = Vegas.Cursor - new Timecode("00:00:00:25");


Then you would need to store those two files in the Script Menu folder. Assigning them to the desired keypresses can now be done by going to the Keyboard tab in Options - Preferences.

sorry look in standard vegas forum

Thanks Edward that works beautifully!!!

I guess the original file is NTSC.
so rendering from NTSC to PAL means changing from 60i to 50i.
vegas tries to cut away 10 half frames every second while also changing the resolution from NTSC standard to PAL.
so i guess its natural that it takes more time.

but I can not comment on why it takes so much longer.

I'm not sure of the exact times but if the ntsc render took about 3 hrs. then the pal definitely could take around 20. It should go faster however if you put the rendered ntsc back on the timeline and render it out so that it's a straight convertion rather than applying effects and also doing the conversion. That should knock the time down some.

Ben Lynn

Fred,

Actually there is a bug in that script. (I know it’s hard to believe there is a bug in just one line of code but that’s all it takes) Edward’s code will only work when the timeline is set to Time & Frames or one of the two 29.97 SMTE settings (Drop or Non-Drop). So it only supports 3 or the 14 timeline formats.

In SMTPE 30 (30 fps, Video) it will only move 24 frames. If you are editing in PAL SMPTE EBU (25 fps, Video) the script will actually advance the cursor 29 frames! Set the timeline to SMTE Film Sync (24fps) or SMPTE Film Sync IVTC (23.976) and the script will jump 31 frames!

In fact it will not work at all if the timeline is set to Time, Seconds, Absolute Frames, Measures & Beats, Feet and Frames (16mm or 35mm). And if the timeline is set to Samples it will move only 7 frames each way.

The correct line of code to advance exactly 25 frames regardless of timeline ruler setting is:

Vegas.Cursor += Timecode.FromFrames(25);

Likewise this line will go back 25 frames:

Vegas.Cursor -= Timecode.FromFrames(25);

~jr

Thanks for the catch, John. I'm so SMPTE Drop Frame NTSC centric I don't always check under different settings - especially for the really quick one liners. In fact, there have been many cases where I've had to make adjustments to code to work correctly with other rulers. I debated on using the "+=" method but thought it might be clearer what was actually happening the other way.

i'm surprised that no one has weighed in on this... so i'll bump it to the top :-)

i don't know much about audio, but after a lot of thrashing about i ended up with the waves L2 ultra maximizer(sp ?) plugin... it does things with audio that i have not been able to do with the standard vegas software... but that could be a function of my editing incompetence in vegas, lol.

maybe first look at the levels of all three tracks to see how they compare, perhaps you'll just need to tweak on one or two tracks, instead of all of 'em at once... vegas lets you tweak and monitor every track in solo mode.

voiceover's sometimes need to have the background noise cleaned up, but i would approach that very cautiously... it doesn't take much tweaking to ruin the mix.

as i understand normalizing, it increases the volume of that portion of the audio signal that's low, without pushing the highs over the clipping limit... so normalizing ambient audio may not be a good idea... you would typically not want to normalize at 100% or more, leave at least a tiny bit of headroom under that 100% mark.

presets are your friend... do some serious googling on vegas audio presets, there should be something for voiceovers... also look at the dse website.

One problem with normalizing in Vegas is that it simply takes the loudest point and adjusts everything according to that point. Therefore, if you have a single loud clap or other noise, everything will be normalized on that point. This makes it difficult for multiple clips to be normalized the same. Sound Forge does a much better job at this.

You can also adjust the audio levels manually using a Volume Envelope. The other audio tools in Vegas can be of use as well.

This leads to another question, I have had 3 audio tracks but one of em was softer than the others.What is the best way to get them to sound like the same volume? I used a volume env to do it manually. I'm not an audio guy, thanks!

Right Click on the audio clip you want to increase the levels on. in the menu there is NON REALTIME FX-click on that. If the package isn't open when the page comes up click on "all"-now all of the audio FXs show up. Scroll to "volume" and click on that-you can now raise or lower the overall level of the clip render it as a "take" and make final adjust using an envelope which has more precise control as to where you want to raise or lower the level. Remeber the "volume" tool will raise or lower the overall sound of the clip.
Don

Jay Rose has a nice article about compression:
http://www.dv.com/news/news_item.jhtml?LookupId=/xml/feature/2004/rose0405

For your purposes, using a compressor as a limiter may be helpful. A limiter just takes the peaks that go too high and squashes em down. This can help even out sudden transients (i.e. clicks, pops) that you may not have caught or accounted for. Limiters are good to have as a "safety", and should go in the master output FX chain.
To do this:
Have a very high ratio, like 10:1.
Threshold has to be below what you want the maximum to be. So if you want the maximum to be -0dB, then set the threshold at like -2dB.
Attack should be very very fast, close to 0ms.
Release should be very fast too, although it doesn't matter as much. You can make it the same as attack.

Make-up gain: Use this to put some volume back in, because compression lowers volume without adding gain afterwards.

2- Another useful compressor is "Track Compressor". Use it at the track (i.e. compress narration differently than other things) or master level.
It's generally a good rule to have some compression on the narration to even it out. It's much much faster than doing volume envelopes.
Start with the "3:1 compression starting at -15dB" preset. Depending on how much compression you want, mess with the threshold setting. A volume control elsewhere would change the volume control for that track.

I hope that makes sense. I'm not very good at explaining this.

3- The Waves Ultramaximizer plug-in is ridiculously easy to use, and is very good quality.

Is there any substantive difference between using color curves to crush blacks and increase contrast (like what Ultimate S does with "pushed 16mm" filmlook) and using levels to bring down blacks, and fix the gamma?

Yes.

If you have curvature in color curves, that causes shifts in the colors (i.e. slight changes in hue). You could make the color curves full of straight lines, but it's a PITA to make it do so.

If you want to increase contrast with the Levels filter, it will clip highlights and shadows. Sometimes this looks better, although I think most of the time it's better to use color curves with the s-shaped curves (like the pushed 16mm preset).

2- A downside to the color curves filter is that it will push values out of the legal color range (usually 16-235, but not always). There's a way to make it only do legal colors. Bug me about it if you would like me to post up a .veg with the color curves that do that.

Hey, thanks, Glenn. That's helpful. If I use color curves and it sends the colors out of the legal zone, can I run broadcast colors after it in the chain to bring it back?

And why do you think it's better to use the s-shaped color curve if Levels sometimes looks better? I would like to clip shadows, that's a good thing for film look, I think. Highlights, though, I would like to keep.

I will keep working on this, and look forward to others weighing in.

I have read of the importance of having a light meter. I lived with one during my speed graphic and slr days. just curious, how would one actually use one with a video camera set up. just changing the asa or din is a big difference and our cam corders do not have any such thing. so what good is the light meter??

Also when setting exposure manually I have noticed that going by the appearance in the lcd does not give me what I think I am getting when i put it on a large screen tv, seems a bit more washed out. what is the safewst way to set exposures manually to get them dead on.If I could use a light meter it would help narrow down the probelms.


Gus

Hey, thanks, Glenn. That's helpful. If I use color curves and it sends the colors out of the legal zone, can I run broadcast colors after it in the chain to bring it back?
The broadcast colors filter won't bring it back, it'll just clip illegal colors off. The Smoothness sliders will add smoothness so things gradually roll-off before they clip. Try the filter on the white to black gradient generator, and look on the waveform display of the video scopes.

And why do you think it's better to use the s-shaped color curve if Levels sometimes looks better? I would like to clip shadows, that's a good thing for film look, I think. Highlights, though, I would like to keep.
For the film look, I don't think you want to be clipping shadows or highlights at all. Instead, making the color curves s-shaped to boost contrast without clipping image detail (highlights and shadows get compressed instead).

I think color curves looks better most of the time.

2- Things get kind of tricky when you consider that DV cameras will record superwhites (values above digital white level). You typically want to bring this down into legal range, which increases your exposure latitude in a way.

I'll try to upload a veg when I'm not busy.

Thank you all for that very useful info, I now have a starting point, and will definetly use that the compressor as a limiter, rather than normalizing the whole deal, since there is very few really loud noises and only in one track.

Users of UltimateS may be interested in my earlier post at:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=51396

NEVER trust the LCD of ANY camera to give you proper exposure or true color. Every one will be different depending on make and mfg of camera AND how the LCD is set. I have used a light meter to get an overall brightness of a setup and differences in key and fill lighting but it is not very practical on most of my stuff which is run and gun, so the best suggestion is learn to use the ZEBRAS properly. The ZEBRAS will help you more with exposures than any light meter. One thing I have always done with the LCDs on all of my cameras is to try to adjust the brightness down to the level of the room, in other words if I'm in a venue where its pretty dark, I turn down the brightness of the LCD so it more closely approximates the room, instead of turning it up so I can see better. When I shoot with my full sized camera, its ZEBRAS with a nice black and white viewfinder AND proper WHITE BALANCE. I'll use the LCD for framing reference only when I'm on a tripod.
HTHs
Don B

If it's looking washed-out that's also likely the classic black-level alteration that often occurs when going from Japanese camcorders to US PC's.

When I first started working with DV I ran into the baffling phenomena of why did my DVDs look washed-out compared to what I'd seen in my LCD or PC (PC screens show video darker than calibrated monitors or TVs do). So I went online and found that this was a very common cause of hair-tearing so I researched and found out what was going on and what to do about it.

Basically it comes about because of the different standards in black levels that US equipment and Japanese equipment have. US equipment calls for a black level of +7.5 while Japanese equipment (and DV) calls for a level of 0. Every time you go from 0 to +7.5 things get lighter, washed-out and can look over-exposed.

Black levels can get altered going out of a Japanese camcorder into a US computer, and again when being encoded for DVD and then Japanese DVD players change it yet again (they add +7.5) and you can get quite a mess.

There is a very good article on this at:

http://www.signvideo.com/dv-black-levels-dvd-authoring-mpeg-2-part-1.htm

There is also an excellent 5 minute Flash video that explains (and shows) black level stuff problems.

http://pro.jvc.com/pro/attributes/prodv/clips/blacksetup/demo.html

The bottom line is you film something, edit it, get it looking exactly how you want and then find it looking washed out and/or over-exposed when played back from a DVD player on a correctly set TV or a calibrated monitor.

Fortunately the solution is simple. The Vegas Color Corrector includes a preset called "Studio RGB to Computer RGB" which restores washed-out black levels. I also highly recommend monitoring your Vegas timeline via firewire on an external calibrated monitor so you can see the black levels more accurately.

HTH,

Tony

If you have a track with a very few loud noises, it's usually better to isolate those points, split the events and lower the volume of each of those loud noises manually and then set the level of the overall track to where you want it in relation to the rest of the tracks.

Compressors are very good for adding presence and clarity by putting everything to an average level but they also raise the volume of the lower levels so they can bring up noise and cause a pumping effect if there are big differences between the loud and quiet sounds.

Limiters only affect the high volume sounds and if they are too high in relation to the rest of the track then it will sound squashed and unnatural at those points.

Glenn's suggested settings are very good but will work better if you've manually tamed any large peaks beforehand. This is a trick used in the audio world to enable one to use compressors and limiters and still have them sound natural.

Tony

"I also highly recommend monitoring your Vegas timeline via firewire on an external calibrated monitor so you can see the black levels more accurately."

.. oh yes . . oh yes . . .

Tony: The "Studio RGB to Computer RGB" is for converting from 16-235 space (blacks at 16, whites at 235) to 0-255 (blacks previously at 16 now end up at 0, whites previously at 235 end up at 255). It's not the appropriate filter for handling the 0 / 7.5IRE setup issue.

Here's my explanation of the whole issue, and I hope it doesn't confuse you.

Analog levels:
Standard analog black level for non-Japan NTSC is 7.5IRE. For Japan it's 0 IRE.
Standard white level is at 100IRE for both Japan and non-Japan NTSC.

Digital levels:
DV records in Y'CbCr format. Y' is the luma component and the legal range for those values is 16-235.
If you are using the Sony DV codec, 16 on the histogram corresponds to a Y' value of 16. And 235 to 235.
The Microsoft DV codec doesn't do this (which is why the Sony DV codec exists, I believe). The Microsoft codec does 0-255.

When converting from digital to analog, a Y' value of 16 should be converted to 7.5 IRE for non-Japan NTSC. Not all North American equipment does this (most consumer equipment doesn't do this). Most equipment will put a Y' value of 16 at 0 IRE instead, which may not really look all that bad (increased contrast, loss of shadow detail, darker image [but most TVs make dark images look good]). It's bad if you are adjusting your video levels and trying to make things look better.

There is a lot of confusing information on this subject out there, hopefully I'm not adding to the confusion.

2- I believe Japanese camcorders record black at proper digital black level (Y' = 16). I can check this when I go home.

3- Dale:
Chances are, the range of light values in a scene exceed the contrast/exposure range your camera can capture. There's usually some specular reflection that is a lot brighter than everything else. Also, skies on a sunny day are problematic.

I would not use a light meter. In video you can see your results instantly if you drag along a field monitor (a CRT-based one).
Do not use a consumer monitor in this situation. Almost all of them are made to make pictures overly bright, which will make underexposed footage look good. And you're not going to catch that. You could probably calibrate the consumer monitor not to do that, but then they also do things to your picture which you may not know about (i.e. flesh tone correction, noise reduction, edge sharpening/enhancement, hue is probably slightly off).

This gets into tricky issues, because a broadcast-grade monitor is supposed to be the standard and consumer equipment should fall around that standard. But consumer equipment, on average, is overly bright. It doesn't fall around the standards.

A big advantage of a broadcast monitor is that they are easy to calibrate, and you know it won't have picture cheats like flesh tone correction. It's probably better to make things look good on a broadcast monitor than a consumer monitor.

Hi Glenn,

Thanks for the expanded explanation. I've often wondered why the preset was called "Studio RGB to Computer RGB" and have wondered if it was technically (or logically) the right tool.

All I can say is that after extensive testing it is the tool that corrects the black level problems introduced by my particular system/hardware and software line.

If I render using the Vegas Mainconcept or Procoder encoders after using that preset my DVDs come out with perfect black levels. If I don't they're washed-out. If I render using the TMPGEnc encoder I have to also select its CCIR601 expansion preset.

I'm using a calibrated Panasonic broadcast monitor.

Tony

Yeah, I got my terminology a little confused there. I don't want to CLIP my shadows, I want to COMPRESS them.

O.K. So color curves it is.

I'll be looking forward to the .veg.

Thanks Glenn!

We agree completely! That's why we've put together special bundles with VASST & Sony that include VASST training and trial versions of Ultimate S & Gearshift with any Vegas purchase.

We're also offering a bundle of VASST training & Ultimate S.

We've posted an interview on our site with Douglas Spotted Eagle that talks about Vegas, Ultimate S & HDV. Check it out http://www.videoguys.com/vegas_spot.html

Gary

Very nice! I never mind seeing my own work plugged, either . . . :)

Looks like a great deal.

There is a quicker but less-precise method; instead of using a bezier mask on the upper event, you'd use a pre-made cookie cutter. The effect is more or less the same; you're isolating your foreground element and eliminating the background from your upper track, then applying the color-correction to the lower track. Get it in fairly tight, and you may have what you want -- and if you adjust opacity or add edge blur to the upper layer, you can hedge the color-correction in a little bit. It might make for some cool effects, too.

This is a perfect example of a time when what I mention in this thread

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=53385

would come in useful.

Hey Dave:

I purchased my Ultimate S 2.0 with Celluloid this morning!

Has anyone loaded up the Boris FX8 plus-ins yet? I am interested in how well the image stabilzation tool works, since it is not native in Vegas and I can always improve my hand-held stuff.

Hello everyone..need a little help.
I transferred about 6 minutes of video last night to V6. After the capture, a screen indicated that approximately 400 frames were dropped. I'm shooting a Pana AGDVC200 at a shutter speed of 1/100th. Transferred via firewire to a Pentium 4, 2.66 Ghz, 1 gig of ram. Any suggestions or thoughts?
Thanks - David Bird

How large did you have the preview window?
Hard drive defragged?
Separate Hard drive?
Anti-virus turned on?

The Vegas FAQ: http://www.vasst.com/sony/default.aspx has lots of dropped frame suggestions.

Preview window is less than 1/4 of the screen, hard drive has not been defragged...just installed it about 1 month ago. I have a separate 250 gig, 7500 rpm drive specifically installed for video footage...However, now that I think of it, the footage that was captured went to "My Documents" for some reason, which resides on my C: drive....
David Bird

I have an avi on the upper track...it's been chroma keyed...and another track below. Can't see the lower track...I know I'm missing a setting.... ?
David Bird

Hey All,

Hope everyone is having a Happy Halloween.

I've been using Vegas 5 to record audio for the last year or so and it works great. But I can't seem to find a way to record software synths directly into Vegas.

For guitars, vox, foley work, I'm running into an Echo Mona which gets along with Vegas just fine.

For soft syth things, I've got an M-audio midi keystation plugged via USB into the computer running M-audio Keyrig and a few other virtual synth programs.

How do I set Vegas to capture those sounds?

Any help, as always, is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Dan Barnhill

Hello,

I was playing around with the program and I wanted to figure out how to make a title gradually zoom in, but I had a little trouble. Anyone know how to do it?

Thanks alot!

You can use PAN/CROP or TRACK MOTION to accomplish that. Personally I'd use PAN/CROP set up a KEYFRAME on the 1st frame with the image ENLARGED (its contrary to popular belief but by enlaging the pan crop box around the image you are actually reducing the image size.) So if the title is 720X480 and you make it 1440X960 you are making it 1/2 the size.
Set another KEYFRAME at the position on the timeline you want the image to become full size or whatever size you want the title to be and reset the PAN/CROP to that size. DONE!
Its harder to explain than to do but if you play around a bit with the PAN/CROP feature you'll find how amazingly easy it is to do.

Don

You can use PAN/CROP or TRACK MOTION to accomplish that. Personally I'd use PAN/CROP set up a KEYFRAME on the 1st frame with the image ENLARGED (its contrary to popular belief but by enlaging the pan crop box around the image you are actually reducing the image size.) So if the title is 720X480 and you make it 1440X960 you are making it 1/2 the size.
Set another KEYFRAME at the position on the timeline you want the image to become full size or whatever size you want the title to be and reset the PAN/CROP to that size. DONE!
Its harder to explain than to do but if you play around a bit with the PAN/CROP feature you'll find how amazingly easy it is to do.

Don

Only my first post and already I'm loving this forum! Thanks alot!

Should I use one or the other? I have been using the Default template should I use the other template i.e. “DVDA NTSC video stream” when rendering for use in DVDA2. Don’t know if one better than the other

Thanks

Vince

Vegas 5 / DVDA2

Video stream starts off with better settings. It's a good idea to explore your options in the Custom area such as bitrates, CBR, VBR, etc.

Note that this setting does not include audio, which you would render seperatley.

Gary

Thanks Gary...Hope all is well up at the Fort...

Vince

I don't think Vegas has midi capabilities.
If you are getting into that sort of thing, I'd suggest getting a dedicated music application such as Sonar or Cubase.
I have Sonar which I find great - you can load in your video track so if you're doing sound track stuff, then you can have it all sync'd up

Hi, I recently upgraded to 6.0C and I'm rendering a 30 min. film that I did before - but I'm adding a 15 sec tag at the front.

Here's my issue - I'm taking a 6.2 gb .avi file and adding 15 seconds to it. I have tried it a couple of ways and it's seems to blow up with both.

First - I did default template (uncompressed) and it was rendering away until it ran out of space at 38 Gigs!! I was stunned. So I deleted that, and tried again. I noticed that NTSC SD YUV (what is this anyway?) popped up, so I tried that. It got to 28 minutes ( on a different drive) before it had to quit at 18 gigs.

what gives here? what should I use to get a file that's about the same size as the orginal? I expect that it will end up being about 6.4 gigs or so.

HELP!!

Thanks,
Milt Lee

30 minutes sounds about right for 6.2 Gig. Adding 15 seconds should still leave you close to 6.2Gig. In your case, it sounds like you're now rendering to Uncompressed AVI instead of sticking with DV-AVI. Pick the NTSC-DV (or PAL-DV) preset and you should be back to your original size.

Hello all,

Is it possible to lock a clip on the timeline (in terms of it's position) but to still be able to edit that clip?

My requirement is to have four tracks of video, being different camera angles of the same event, synchronised and then locked off so that they can't be nudged out of synch. I then want to work along the timeline selecting the best track at various points and splitting/cropping the clips as appropriate with the resulting subclips remaining locked in place.

Something tells me that I am only able to lock clips to prevent moving AND editing (that something being the help file) but if anyone has any workarounds I'd love to hear about them.

Cheers.

Ian . . .