For now I'm planning on using GearShift 1.5 and converting the m2t files on my 3Mhz P4. However, I really wish that the built-in Vegas 6c video capture tool had the scene detection capabilities for HDV. Bringing in a huge HDV file is not only unappealing, but hard to use from an editing perspective (others seem to agree: http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=420732) Does anyone know if/when Sony will add Scene Detection for the Vegas HDV video capture tool? I'm not interested in purchasing Cineform just for this capability either - it's equal to the Vegas 6 upgrade cost.

The other thing I really miss is the 'dropped frames' counter that also was in the DV capture tool. With just a glance, I could tell if the tape fully loaded. As far as I can tell, the only way to know this now is in the midst of editing.

I was wondering that too. I don't understand why Sony did that. It's like I'll buy a brandnew car with all the bells and whisltes but doesn't come with tires.

I believe this belongs in the other Vegas forum, the "What Happens In Vegas... (HDV)"

http://dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=102

Can the kennelmaster redirect me perhaps?

I had the same problem and found that when it is rendered or prerendered it looks better.
Mike

moved to HDV.

Hey Guys and Gals,
I do alot of shooting with a JVC HD10u. It is not my dream camera by no means, but it shoots nice images. I capture the footage into my PC with Connect HD. Then that program automatically converts that footage to manageable AVI's to edit in vegas 6. I use this only because I have found that Vegas 6's capture ingredient does not suite my PC or it is just not ready. I have a P4 3.2 and 1 gig of ram. I use two drives yada yada for capturing and editing. After I load the files into Vegas 6 should I use the hdv 1280 X 720 in 30p if I am just going to burn this to dvd? Doesn't dvd compress everything to MPeg2 anyway? If was going to maintain the file and send it to a broadcast station, what tape would I have to roll that out to?

If you're delivering to broadcast for HD delivery, you'd have to deliver on HDCAM or D5HD, depending on what they ask for. Some will also accept delivery on a hard drive if they have a media server.
Connect HD is likely the best way for you to work, and I'd be editing the CineForm files. Use the 1280 x 720 30p template, you'll be happy with it.

I was trying to edit (in vegas 6) a wedding we shot and my partner captured via his mac in FCP but the audio is out of sync in vegas. They play fine when viewed in the quicktime player. I even thought maybe it was just a preview problem but even after I render it out to mpeg it is out of sync the same.

Anyone have any clue or suggestions as to what to do to fix this? Granted I'm getting pretty proficient in FCP but I would rather be able to edit at my house on my machine vs at his place on his G4.

What format did they capture to in FCP? If it's DV in a Quicktime, then you're only out of sync due to processor speed in Vegas. It's pretty tough to make DV go out of sync. You might try:
1. recapture using same names, so you can use his EDL from FCP,
2. rename his .mov files as .avi

I'm sure I'm doing something very simple wrong, but here it goes:

When I "Selectively Pre-Render Video" (say a 30 second video clip), it only creates 10 second segments. Is that normal? How do I get it to do the Whole thing?

--Dale, using Vegas 6

A good friend of mine is interested in the Dell laptop, Inspiron 6000.... 512MB of RAM... 60GB hard drive... 1.6GHz. His plan is to do some editing with Vegas here and there... nothing big or fancy. He's ordering it straight from Dell, so he can add on or change what he needs.

I'm too ignorant to tell him exactly what he needs and he doesn't want to shell out 1200 bucks for a laptop that won't support the software. Vegas users... chime in. What would make it work well?

It will do the "whole thing" - just in 10 second increments (12 seconds for PAL users). More precisely, most pre-render files will be 300 frames. You'll notice it does the same thing on a print to tape. For example, if you have a 15 second title, it will render 10 seconds in one file and 5 seconds in another file.

If you want to do the whole section as ONE file, you might try the "Render to New Track" option. Be aware that you'll have to watch out on the audio, though, or you might end up with DOUBLE.

The Curves option really did the trick. I was hoping I would find something.

bill

I have an old Dell that is a P3 600mhz with 128m of RAM and a 10gig system drive. I've used an 80gig FWHDD for capture and working the project(s) and for rendering and Vegas worked just fine. A bit slow (to say the least) but I was able to do everything I needed to on road trips with that setup, so anything faster and with more RAM will be OK

Don

There is something I want to add to this matter.

25P progressive video (PAL) is nothing more than 25 frames per second, each consisting of 2 interlaced fields. Both interlaced fields have the SAME sampled image from the ccd's used as a source, this image is 1 moment in time. One of the two fields shows the even lines of this image, the other fields the other lines. That's why progressive video can be recorded on VHS tapes, mini-dv tapes (DVX100, XL2) and normal dvd's. During playback on normal tv your eyes notices a different cadans compared to non-progressive video (that uses 50 different images in time per second, where progressive uses 25). It both plays as interlaced video, but it's source is different. Just like a normal feature film played back on tv from cable, VHS or dvd.

Creating progressive video from 'interlaced'= normal video in Vegas is tricky. Because the software somehow has to go back to 25 images per second, where the source is originally 50. And combining 2 fields gives problems with movements, so it somehow has to interpolate the combined image and filling all lines with texture. And then this new image has to be written back to 2 fields, with the even and odd lines in the one or another.
This interpolation gives the troubles you see. Not the fact that you do a playback on an interlaced tv.

I do have a progressive scan playback from my dvd to a progressive scan Loewe tv, using component cables. This gives great results with my progressive video of the DVX100, editing as progressive video in Vegas and rendered to a progressive video dvd with DVD-A. But the same video/dvd also plays back greatly on a normal interlaced CRT tv. The progressive mode unleashes a quality I had never seen before with my camera and MPEG2 rendering.

Working with progressive video has the same aspects as with a real film camera. Fast movements gives motion problems (stroboscope), so you have to do slow pannings, or you have to follow a subject moving through the environment (like actors entering a building and walking to the stairs or something). The eye of the viewer is trained to look at the subject and does not register the motion problems in the background.

Hi everybody,

I just finished a short film, edited with Vegas 6 and created a dvd with DVDA3. In DVDA I added two different subtitle tracks, that can be chosen from the menu by the viewer. I imported the subtitles each from a txt file a translater gave me and it was just a matter of syncing them on the timeline with the video, which was a lot of work but DVDA is fairly handy with it. All is fine now.

I want to share a internetcopy of our movie on the internet (MOV or WMV format), but I want to add the English subtitles from DVDA to it. Is there any way that I can insert them into the Vegas file, using the export subtitles option in DVDA3? So far no luck. I don't want to spend another evening syncing all the dialog lines to the actual audio again....

Thanks for any help or suggestion!

A good friend of mine is interested in the Dell laptop, Inspiron 6000.... 512MB of RAM... 60GB hard drive... 1.6GHz. His plan is to do some editing with Vegas here and there... nothing big or fancy. He's ordering it straight from Dell, so he can add on or change what he needs.

I'm too ignorant to tell him exactly what he needs and he doesn't want to shell out 1200 bucks for a laptop that won't support the software. Vegas users... chime in. What would make it work well?

Ah... We are dealing with HD/HDV and Vegas here.

If you are indeed wondering if your good friend will be able to work with HDV on such a laptop... he'll be wanting to throw it through the nearest window after a few sessions of working with HDV stuff, unless he has the patience of a Saint that is!!

If you know he's using DV... then maybe it'll do just fine, no doubt slower than the new laptops that are now out and about, but useable.

If your friend is using HDV, then he might need to consider a 16:9 screened P-IV of at least 2.8Ghz with a 7,200rpm Hard Disk 80Gig minimum.

Bottom line: HDV needs more grunt, DV he can take a punt...

Steve is correct in that faster/bigger is better, but at the same time, a DV Proxy or CineForm intermediary in the newest/latest versions will edit HDV very nicely on a 3.4 system or faster. Faster drives are definitely helpful

Just to clarify a bit -

The 'selectively' part of 'selectively pre-render' means that it is on;y going to render the parts that need rendering, not any unchanged parts of the DV avi file.

So, for example, if you have two video events that you do not apply filters to or otherwise change, that are overlapped for a one-second transition, the selective pre-render will only render the transition.

Gary

I'd wager the rent money that no HD is involved, just straight DV. I didn't see that I posted this in the HD section until it was too late. D'oh!

Thanks for the responses... I'll pass them along!

I've seen Vegas work with that version of the Tascam unit. Very neat.

The faders adjust the volume on each audio track. The buttons can mute the track or arm it to record. Feedback seems to be instantaneous.

A good friend of mine is interested in the Dell laptop, Inspiron 6000.... 512MB of RAM... 60GB hard drive... 1.6GHz. His plan is to do some editing with Vegas here and there... nothing big or fancy. He's ordering it straight from Dell, so he can add on or change what he needs.

I'm too ignorant to tell him exactly what he needs and he doesn't want to shell out 1200 bucks for a laptop that won't support the software. Vegas users... chime in. What would make it work well?

I'm guessing that this is a Centrino (Pentium M processor) system, in which case the 1.6 processor speed as efficient as a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz system so processor speed wise he's probably going to be fine.

Thanks for your reply Glenn! I am curious how it can be configured to be used for other (video) edit functions.

DSE, have you had any experience with this unit to compare to the Mackie control surface?

Thanks again!


Lance

Lance, I've seen it work, and played with it a bit....no real difference. I mean, a control surface is a control surface...it just depends on what look, feel, and features you want. The Tascam is a great tool, no doubt. I happen to prefer the Mackies, but then again, they gave me a great price on several seconds/Bstock, and so we have 4 of the Mackies.

i have a averatec 4265 with a m1.6 that i use on the road.
it works good with V6 on SD .. HDV ?? not so good ..for HDV i switch to HP AMD 3700 laptop ...

from my experience a M 1.6 doesn't come close to a PIV 3.2 when editing video or using combustion .. it might be as fast using word or other software that doesn't require alot of CPU power but M's just can't handle massive CPU consumption

What they are:
If you just do a s-shaped gamma curve in Vegas, that can actually push colors below and above digital black levels, causing clipping and loss of image detail in highlights and shadows. That isn't film-like at all. To get things right, you need to get color curves with points at digital black and white level.

Download them off of:
http://www.glennchan.info/Proofs/dvinfo/color-curves.veg

You can read the text if you want. But if you're lazy, open up the first and last clips and save those as presets.

2- Note: You should be using the Sony DV codec (this is the default in Vegas5 and V6), and targetting DV or MPEG2 via DVD architect.
If you are targetting other formats, it may be "computer RGB" color space and these curves are kinda inappropriate. Apply the color corrector filter with "convert studio RGB to computer RGB" or the levels filter.

Enjoy!

I don't really use MBE but was wondering how you'd get proper levels using it. A lot of the time you want to work with studio RGB within Vegas (16-235 instead of 0-255). MBE always pushes values towards 0-255, which is not what you want.

The following would work, but is kind of a waste of rendering time and MBE's floating point processing:
Use the color corrector, "studio RGB to computer RGB" preset
MBE
Use the color corrector, "computer RGB to studio RGB" preset

The downside is the extra rendering and banding you might pickup along the way.

Glenn,

A little over or under won't hurt anyone. Particularly, super-whites up to 110% IRE (255) tend to work just fine. Plus, you're going to run everything through a Broadcast Safe plug-in prior to broadcast, right?

Josh

Im cant seem to find out how to feather edges on video. for example if im matting someone in another shot but the edges are still a little rough cause of a slight light difference, i just wanna fade the video out onto the other layer. Can anyone help me?

Gary,

What's the "Maximum Number of Rendering Threads" I should be using for my machine using Vegas 6? Should I keep it at the default, which is "4" ?

I'm using a Pentium 4 at 3.20 Ghz, hyperthreading, 2GB dual channel DDR SDRAM at 400 Mhz.

--Dale

P.S. I really am learning a lot from your five dvd tutorial. Do you have a learning dvd on Acid 5 or can you suggest one?

Leave it on the default of 4.

If, for some reason, you want it to behave more like Vegas 5, you can reduce it down to 1.

Add a border FX using the "Soft Edge" preset (adjust as needed). At the bottom of the FX box is a timeline with the word "border" to the left. To the left of that word is a small triangle. You'll need to click on that triangle so that the effect will apply to the resized image instead of the entire screen.

thanks a ton, ill try it in a little bit to see how it goes, thanks again.

The broadcast safe filter will just clip off values about 235 (if you use the 7.5IRE setup presets). For DVD, you don't really need to use it other than seeing how your video will look like on DVD players that clip illegal colors (illegal as in not in the 16-235 range; many DVD players do this).

The point is... those curves can help you avoid clipping important image detail.

I'm guessing that this is a Centrino (Pentium M processor) system, in which case the 1.6 processor speed as efficient as a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz system so processor speed wise he's probably going to be fine.I am not seeing this in my testing. I have a Pentium M 1.8Ghz laptop and a Pentium 4 3.0Ghz desktop and the VASST render test takes almost twice as long on the Pentium M 1.8 when compared with the Pentium 4 3.0. So a PM 1.6 is no where near a P4 3.2! I would definitely avoid Pentium M’s for video work and get a laptop that has a real Pentium 4 or AMD.

Here is what I observed using the original VASST render test on the PC’s I have used Vegas on:

Pentium 4 1.7Ghz = 3:21
Pentium M 1.8Ghz = 2:48 (33 seconds faster than P4 1.7)
Pentium 4 3.0Ghz = 1:35 (73 seconds faster than Pentium M 1.8)

So while the Pentium M 1.8 is faster than a P4 1.7, it is not even close to a P4 3.0

~jr

For example.

I have a three camera edit, with three associated audio tracks. I deleted one of the audio tracks. What would be the best way in vegas to re-connect the audio.

Any ideas?
I have tried just bringing in the avi and moving the audio to match but it doesn't work very well. I have cut out sections and it doesn't sync up?

Thanks,

Jon

The easiest option is via scripting. For example, if you delete the audio - select the video and Excalibur can bring back the audio. If you delete the video, select the audio and Excalibur can bring back the video. Ultimate S can also return the missing audio for a video event.

To do it manually, you can double-click the event, open it in the trimmer (which will have that section selected) and then return the audio.

This month's issue of eventDV has Jan's final article,
Battle of the Software NLEs, Part 4: Slideshows, Rendering, and Conclusions at
http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?CategoryID=54&ArticleID=10771.

Final scores are as follows:
Premiere Pro - 18
Final Cut Pro - 21.5
Xpress Pro - 14.5
Liquid Edition - 17.5
Vegas - 23.5

There are several comments he made over the course of the series that I'd disagree with him on (such as no batch render capabilities in Vegas 6) but at least he's finally seen the light :-)

Mike

good read. what nle preference did he have before?

I assume it's just DV as I tried renaming it to .avi and it plays but no luck as it is still out of sync... it doesn't "go out of sync" it just IS out of sync in vegas... I render a small part in the middle and it's off. I am working on a 2.4ghz celeron with 1gig of ram. It was captured and edited on a 1ghz G4 and there were NO sync problems what so ever on his system. and playing the 2gig file in media player 6.4 also has no problems all the way to the end.

Just checked and it's out of sync in dvda 3 also :-/

The easiest option is via scripting. For example, if you delete the audio - select the video and Excalibur can bring back the audio. If you delete the video, select the audio and Excalibur can bring back the video. Ultimate S can also return the missing audio for a video event.

To do it manually, you can double-click the event, open it in the trimmer (which will have that section selected) and then return the audio.


Wow, didn't even no it would do that! Thanks I will give it a try.

Thanks

Jon

Im gonna start editing the first rap video pretty soon and in one of the shots, i need to add a shiny star like effect on a certain spot. can i do this in vegas with a plug in or should i use after effects?

Well, I'm a new correspondent for http://rocketboom.com (shameless promotion) and they would prefer to get stuff encoded with 3ivx - although they are very flexible. So I downloaded 3ivx and put it in the video plugin folder. But Vegas doesn't seem to find it. Has anybody had any experience with this program? Do you know where you should unpack it/install it? I'm running Vegas 6.0C and would love to hear anybody else's experience with this.

But on the other hand, if somebody else has a good alternative for encoding Quicktime, I'd be glad to hear about that. I understand that AVID Express does a good job ( and I guess it's free) but frankly I'm not in the mood to learn one more NLE system.

Thanks for the advice!
Milt

Dale,

Glad you are finding my videos useful.

If you want to be working on your computer while you are rendering, you can get better performance by reducing the threads. Otherwise leave it at 4.

The only Acid training video I know of is the one from VASST for Acid 4 with Rudy Sarzo.

Gary

Rendering times. The native of the HDV footage is 1080i off the fx1. For rendering if I use the 720p template would it a faster render than 1080i???

go grab particle illusion and dont look back.

SE is going for under a hundred bux

Slightly disrelated question - when I do a selective pre-render, I get a good playback on my external of how the final video will look but if I do a Dynamic RAM preview it comes out jerky and nothing like it should (I have 1GB RAM and have set the Dynamic RAM amount to 800MB). Is this jerky performance usual and if so, what's the value of the Dynamic RAM preview?

Thanks everyone; and Gary: I just this morning discovered "The Sony Seminar Series: ACID Pro 5" dvd training disks.

Thanks again--


Dale

Faster? No. Think about it: Going from 1080i to 1080i is a straight re-encode. Going to 720p requires a resize, deinterlace, and re-encode. The speed of your PC will determine how much longer 720p takes to render but it will definitely be longer than going straight to 1080i from 1080i source because the computer has to do more calculations to make 1080i into 720p.

~jr

Hi Edward,
I tried the nesting, but still had the same problem. I could not copy a whole track with the key frames and all, to another instance of Vegas.
The only thing I managed to do was shift select the motion key frames copy and paste, then do the same with the shadow key frames etc. This obiously takes more time.
Maybe a future Vegas could add the ability to copy a track with all the key frames.(from another instance of Vegas) Would there be a reason for not allowing this?
Mike