Hey all,

Just shot an indian music video and I'm running into a major problem in post. My audio from the video is out of sync with the Wav file the client gave me! It seems like the audio from the video is about half a second longer than the wav.

Anyway, I shot in 24p (not 24pa) and I'm editing with vegas 5 on a 24p timeline. The client says the wav file he gave me is the exact one he used to make the CD we used for playback on the video and I know I've dealt with this problem before and I can't remember how I fixed it as its been a long time since I cut anything.

I'm thinking that there is either a setting that I need to change in vegas, or that the client needs to re-render the wav file in a different format (we've already tried WMA and AVI) He's using soundforge 5 and there is no 24p option as far as rendering is concerned, only 24 frames for film. would that help?

I guess I should add that it's not just lagging through firewire, I can see it lagging on the waveform. It starts out in sync and then gradually goes out of sync!

Arggh. help a brother out and I'lll give you credit as post-coordinator or something.

colinmcauliffe@yahoo.com

IS the sample rate the same? CD audio is 44.1k your video is probably 48k. Check the wave file properties and if it is 44.1 just resample in Sound Forge to a 48k file. There is about an 8% error if the sampling is incorrect or over 4 mins an hour!!!

Ron Evans

Sorry about the bad thread title, but i didt know how to summarise my problem in a few words ;)

Ive captured widescreen (not procinema) gs400 footage with Vegas 4. When captured and previewed in the timeline, the footage all looks pretty normal. However, if I go and render it as an avi, or mpeg and view it in any program (i've been using VLC and WMP in particular), the footage is much more saturated, and darker (different gamma?!).

If I put the rendered file back into Vegas, it appears normal again in the preview window. Vegas dispalys the colours as no longer so saturated and it is not so dark.

I used VLC to take a snapshot and I printscreened the Vegas preview window and then compared them. A slight difference is noticable, but for some reason the VLC snapshot is not displaying a proper representation of what I am seeing - when I play back the rendered video in VLC it is MUCH more saturated and darker than what the snapshot appears.

Im SOO confused! Has anyone got any ideas?

Thanks very much

Vegas puts proper digital black level at 16 (RGB) instead of 0. It puts proper digital while level at 235 (RGB) instead of 255.

So yes, those other programs make the video more saturated.

What Vegas is doing is nice because you have a bigger color space to play with and you lose less information on the high end. You gain about 0.3 stops from the superwhites (values above digital white level) and you don't get color saturation errors/clipping from the really bright values.

The other programs are better for presentation.

if video is shorter then make the audio shorter - hold down ctrl key while dragging the end of audio clip shorter to match length of picture .. or make the video longer -just drag clip longer while holding ctrl

you shot at 29.97 ( 24 plus pull down) .. while the CD playback i believe is based on AC 60cyles per second ( these days it could be some other figure but it is not based on video speed) ... for CD to match the video it would need to play back based on 59.94? not sure of exact fraction but 60cycles is not going to match 29.97 ..

Thanks, Gentlemen.

Bizarrely the problem only went away when I rendered out an uncompressed version then re-rendered that using the identical wmv settings that had failed when rendering from the original veg. Client happy. Me happy. Bank manager less unhappy.

Thanks again.

Ian . . .

Hi All,

I'm happily editing away and Vegas 6c. I'd like now to add voice over wavs into the mix. could anyone recommend a setup hardware and software wise to record the voice?? I'd like to be able to plug a relevant microphone into the pc and use the recommended software to record to wav.

Cheers

A good audio interface instead of a typical "blaster-type" soundcard and decent microphone are a must as the first step. Douglas's statement about Vegas being good software for recording is spot on <g>. I recently took the same first steps by purchasing an Echo Audiofire 8 firewire-based 8-channel audio interface and a Rode NT-1a studio condenser mic with shockmount and pop-stopper. Works like a champ with Vegas (or any other software you might choose)! While you're at it get a *good* set of pro-quality closed-back headphones - I use Sony MDR7056 - to wear as you're recording. As soon as possible a good set of monitor speakers for mixing would be in order. For optimum results look to your recording environment - one inexpensive trick is to make-up a desktop "announcing booth" out of foamcore board from the art supply store and acoustic foam.

You can create a PAL DVD no probs.. Just render as PAL out of vegas and author the DVD with PAL settings..

But with VHS you will need a multi format VCR, one thats capable of recording PAL and im under the impresssion most consumer models in the USA wont do this..

Besides that you might want to check the location you are sending to is "normal PAL".. If im not mistaken, some areas use 60hz refresh rates (30fps) but use PAL colour and/or vice versa, i know for instance Rio has this unusual format..

If its not normal PAL and you are forced to make a guess, i would be more inclined to send NTSC.. From what i have found nearly all PAL countries DVD players and VCR can play NTSC these days..

This is a question for ED.

I'm using Vegas 5.0b and the latest Excalibur as a demo.

I have a 4 camera shoot I'm editing using the multicam. I have scripts for cam 1a, 2a, 3a & 4a as buttons in the toolbar at top of Vegas. I've linked them to 4 buttons on my ShuttlePRO2. It works GREAT!!!! Yes, I'm buying Excalibur, Ed. Right after Christmas.


The only problem is when I press a button for, say, Cam 1 and then continue when I cut to, say Cam 3 it doesn't add a new edit at the new spot on the timeline, instead it replaces that first cut of Cam 1 with Cam 3.

Hmmm. So. What's the problem?

Any ideas?

I'm hoping Ed will be observing and assist me with this.

Thanks.

sincerely,


ian

The problem is that you are not stopping playback at the new positions, adding the camera change, and then restarting playback. What you are describing is perfectly normal for Vegas 5. When running a camera switch, Vegas 5 sends the cursor position where playback was STARTED - not the current cursor position. The same was true for Vegas 6.0 and 6.0a.

If you upgrade to Vegas 6.0b or newer and reinstall Excalibur there, you will then see that live switching works as you are attempting to do. The ability to not stop the playback before running the camera switch was not added in Vegas until version 6.0b.

Hello all,

I've been trying to apply the cuts on the fly by pressing the cam I want and then pressing play to continue playback.

What I've found is it works if I stop the playback first, pick my camera and then start the playback again.

Works fine.

Hmmm. Perhaps I should have checked this before I posted above.

Oh well.

If there's a way to select a cam on the fly (which stops playback) and then press play to continue and eliminating the need to stop and pick a cam I'd like to know.

Thanks again.

sincerely,


ian


***EDIT***

Thanks, Ed!

Yeah, I'll have to upgrade. That's the plan for tax time in March. Until then I'll have to use my little workaround.

Again, Ed. I LOVE EXCALIBUR! It is such a blessing for workflow.

MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all!

ian

I have scripts for cam 1a, 2a, 3a & 4a as buttons in the toolbar at top of Vegas.

Note that the "A" switches place the dissolves AFTER the marker. The "B" switches will place them BEFORE the markers. The "D" switches is the standard "Centered on marker" dissolve.

Ed,

Thanks for the heads up.

Very helpful as always.

sincerely,

ian

So there is not actaully a "problem" then. But how am I supposed to colour correct in Vegas if it will play looking differently?

Also, I posted this message at another forum, and Guy gave me an interesting answer...

http://pana3ccduser.com/showthread.php?t=6241

What do you reckon about this?

Thanks again

A 16:9 anamorphic adapter attached to a HDV camera will give you an aspect ratio of 2.37:1 whilst mainting the full 1080 pixel vertical resolution. The stretched width would then be 2560 pixels wide. Has anyone tried this option? There's a 37mm Century anamorphic adapter that apparently allows full zoom through which I'm sure would work with an A1 or HC1.

Hey Guys,

First of all..... I need to say sorry for posting this if it has been beat to hell already. I am just wondering what is the best way (for quality) to capture from my GL2? I have Vegas for editing and I have a Canopus ADVC100 for capturing. Just one question.... I see there is a button on the front of the capture unit that says, "analog" and one that says, "digital". When I use the analog setting, everything comes over fine and I can edit and be on my way. But, when I use the digital setting, it drops frames and causes problems? My PC is very up to date and fast as far as processor and memory. Am I doing something wrong? Should I be using the digial setting? Or is the analog setting ok?

Sorry for the dumb question.....

Thanks in advance !!

JT

Hey Guys,

First of all..... I need to say sorry for posting this if it has been beat to hell already. I am just wondering what is the best way (for quality) to capture from my GL2? I have Vegas for editing and I have a Canopus ADVC100 for capturing. Just one question.... I see there is a button on the front of the capture unit that says, "analog" and one that says, "digital". When I use the analog setting, everything comes over fine and I can edit and be on my way. But, when I use the digital setting, it drops frames and causes problems? My PC is very up to date and fast as far as processor and memory. Am I doing something wrong? Should I be using the digial setting? Or is the analog setting ok?

Sorry for the dumb question.....

Thanks in advance !!

JT

John, since this is a standard definition question, not an HDV question, I'm moving it to the SD Vegas thread.

During capture, you don't need/won't need the Canopus unit at all. The Canon has a firewire output; connect this straight to your computer. Vegas Capture should recognize and control it correclty.

The Canopus box is for capturing analog video to the computer and for acting as an interface between computer and television monitor, converting the computer's digital signal to analog for the television to display.

Always capture using a FireWire cable from your camcorder to your capture device (in this case the Canopus box). Don't capture using analog cables (S-Video or RCA). Using the FireWire cable will give you a straight digital transfer of the footage from your camcorder to your computer, ensuring the best possible quality. There is no way to do an analog transfer via the FireWire cable. When you are capturing via FireWire you should set the ADVC100 to input selector to "Digital In". Try that and see how it works.

If you are still dropping frames, then something else is wrong. In that case I'd suggest defraging your hard drive and making sure it isn’t too full. And giving us the specs of your computer would help. ;-)

John, please don't post in more than one section. This can be rather frustrating for users here who spend the time to answer your question in one place, only to see that another person has already answered it in another section. We all want to help you, but it makes it a lot easier if you post in one place.

Okay? :-)

(Note to moderators: Could you please merge the thread in the "Non-linear DV Editing on the PC" section with this one)

1- The basic issue is the difference between 16-235 and 0-255 colorspace.

There may be gamma differences or the video card's overlay settings at work too, but I don't think so.

2- Both programs are "correct".

Vegas is geared more towards monitoring- seeing all of the information available in the image. It also allows you to bring illegal colors into the legal range. Illegal colors typically get clipped- you can bring them back into the range where they don't get clipped.

VLC and other programs are geared towards presenting material. The images will look proper and better.

You want to target for programs like VLC.

See http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/glennchan/levels_in_sony_vegas_part_one.htm

If you are targetting DVD, aim for 16-235 color space. The playback device will expand that out to fit the display.

If you are targetting windows media or quicktime steaming/internet download, aim for 0-255 color space. Easy way to do that is to apply the color corrector filter, studio RGB to computer RGB preset.

Or you could send the script to a professional Voice Over and just have to plug in the resulting audio file.

So I am about to set up network rendering on my second box and was reading that I cannot use it to render either mpeg2 or ac3 files. My question is, will vegas direct those rendering jobs to my main box and send the other jobs to the second box, or will it try to render them on the second box and then barf because of licensing issues with the second box.

I generally render 5- 10 minute shorts into a couple different .wmv files (higher and lower bitrates), an mpeg2, and and .ac3 (for DVDA). Normally I'll open 3 instances of vegas (with 3 different shorts) and use the batch rendering script and do it, either overnight or while I watch a movie. If I enable network rendering will I still be able to do it that way or will I have to use "non-distributed network rendering" for the mpeg and ac3 jobs.

Also, can I run "non-distributed" and "distributed" network rendering jobs at the same time.

Thanks, I hope I was clear enough. Mark

Hello,

I have a timeline with four synced cameras.

All is well until I get to the last shot of the first act of the program.

The marker shows it should go to camera two but it doesn't appear on the master track. The master tally track has a clip but the master has nothing and so the camera switches to pip 4 cam view. Not what I had planned. I highlight that marker and try to change the camera and the program appears to accept it but still nothing appears.

BTW. The second act is cut and on the master track as well and it's fine.
It's only one small clip but it's frustrating me.

Any ideas?

Vegas 5.0b and latest Excalibur demo which, apart from this, I am loving.

sincerely,


ian

i am a new vegas 6 user. my question is, is it better to use vegas with after effects or i have to use adobe premiere in order to go to after effects?

thanks

Using vegas is fine - there's no quality difference if yu use premiere rather than vegas

" there's no quality difference if yu use premiere rather than vegas"

actually there is, vegas aliasing (or lack of) is far cleaner, not to mention the codecs within vegas pretty much poo on anything (apart from the main concept codec, which is pretty ugly... )

as for AE, the initial response hit it on the head...
be aware that AE renders MUCH slower than Vegas..

teh dvds created in DVDA are al multiregioned unless ur creating a press master

there is NO NEED to change or rerender anything.
Simply ship out the NTSC dvd to PAL land, and note on the cover that as most DVD players automatically switch their settings based on the media in accordance with the playback device..

99% of dvd players do this colour switch on their own without any tweaking...
I do this kind of cross country work all teh time, from asia to the US to the UK all sourced from Aus.. ive never had a problem.
If someone tells me theres "no colour" i tell them to turn their dvd players to "Auto"...

ive only had to do that once in about 25 odd projects.. (and the guy was a dik, so i dont count that.. lol)

Ian, you'd need to e-mail me the VEG file as it was BEFORE running Multi-cam so I can test it out. To get you going quickly, though, just copy the proper camera up to the Master track and then remove the Pan/Crop on that event (which can be done very easily by selecting that event and using the "Reset Pan/Crop" tool in Excalibur). Also, note that my website (http://www.jetdv.com) is where you should really go for tech support for Excalibur.

I want to render my project (4 hours) to fit on two DVD discs. How to split the timeline and after that render the project to get two separate MPEG files, one for first DVD and other for second DVD.
Regards

I want to add some video filters that simulates clouds, rain, baloons or something to my video clip. I can't find such plugin. Help.
Regards.

You can look at the Generated Media in Vegas but you may be better off looking at a particle generation program such as Particle Illusion (http://www.wondertouch.com/).

Realistically, you should have done two renders - 1 for the first half and 1 for the second half. Assuming that you, instead, have one large file, you might look at a program such as Womble that can split an MPEG2 file without re-rendering.

If you haven't rendered yet, just create a selection area over the first half and render that selection area. Now create a selection area over the second half and render that selection area.

Hi!

I recently began using Vegas 6 instead of version 5 of the program. I haven't noticed much differences yet, but the first thing that I discovered, is that when I played back a film in Vegas 6, that I had created in Vegas 5, the video output fx did not move anymore. (I have some film effects (dust, and so on)) In Vegas 5, they move, in Vegas 6, they stay still; not only in the preview window, but also after rendering. What's curious, is that I tested with a new project. I created a credit roll first, then inserted a movie clip. The video fx would move when the credit roll was playing, but when the movie clip began, it froze. (both in the preview window and after rendering)...

Have I missed something here?

Thanks in advance!

Best regards,
Joachim

hehe - well there you go

go here:
http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/
download it - it's free - sometimes I use it to go from vegas to AE if I don't want to render out a big uncompressed avi file

What version of Vegas 6 are you running? If you're not on 6.0c, try upgrading to that.

I am struggling with this and am trying to do a simple (seemingly) list of text one line appearing a few seconds after the next. Maybe i can't get my head around it all, I don't know. Any tutorials out there that could help me, I could do it by creating several individual events and just add the next line after copying and pasteing I know, but would like to use the keyframes, that's what they are there for aren't they......
Thanks for any help.

um ... kind of ... but not really
rule of thumb - do it the easy way

keyframes are great if you want to animate the text in some way - for example - expanding and softening the shadow as the text gets bigger to give it a real three dimensional look

but as far as having text appear at different times, I honestly think you're wasting your time doing it with keyframes.
I mean, that's what NLE does - it makes different events appear at different times - video, text, generated media - they are all events

So I would continue with creating different events.

Right on, I'll stick with what I know,
Thanks for that!

You can do this but you need to start at the END. First of all, type in ALL the lines that you want at the end. Now set the ending keyframe. Now go backwards to where the previous keyframe should be and remove the text from last line but DO NOT REMOVE THE LINE - just the text. Continue going backwards and deleting the text off the lines. In the end, you will get lines of text appearing.

So tomorrow, i'm shooting my first music video with the Xl2. I was going to use 16:9 for the video but i have a few clips that are 4:3 and wondering if its possible to use them. What manipulations would i have to make to the clips? Should i just not even use them at all?

thank you very much for your answers

I was using build 84.

Thank you very much! I am at this moment downloading the 6.0c update and while checking the release notes, I found this under 6.0b's video fixes:
"A bug that prevented animation of the Film Effects plug-in has been fixed."

Perfect! Thanks again,

Best regards,
Joachim

You can drop them on the timeline with your widescreen project. Vegas will pillarbox them (black bars left and right). Or, you can pan/crop the 4:3 to 16:9. There is a preset in pan/crop for this.

Hello There:


I will be picking up Sony 6.0 + DVD.
I have a Dell 8400 P4 3.2ghz 800 fsb, and four SATA drives of 320gb, 1.2tb total. Can I configure my system to boot off of one drive and have all video and audio reading and writing off three drives as raid stripe 0? Will Sony Vegas allow that?

Thanks in advance for any pointers

ty

I wonder if it is a good idea to frameserver with Debugframeserver Vegas project to TMPGEnc for encoding or render with native (Main Concept) Vegas renderer . I prefere TMPGEnc because here I can see what size will be created MPEG file, if it's too large to fit on a DVD disc I will be decrease bitrate. Here in Vegas using native encoder I can't see the project size, I have to use bitrate calculator and that is not good idea for me.
To use frameserver for encoding it means longer time for render or I'm wrong?
Regards.

Vegas would not have a problem with that . It's more a matter of having a raid controller and proper hardware configuration.

Gary

I usually work my video projects with scene selected events( for example captured video about 2 Hrs contains about 40 scene selected events). I put them into timeline, selecting all events ant applaying transitions to first two events (then automatically applay to all events).My problem appears when I want to manual split some event on timeline in two point (start and end , about 30 Sec length) and change it's speed (Ctrl + Drag) on the rigt to produce slow motion or splitting the whole time line in two parts and put third extern video clip between two of them.In that case I have to select the right part of timeline with selection edit tool to link and lock all events with transition, drag the selected timeline events to the right, put extern video clip between,or drag events to right for slow motion, selecting right part of event again and drag the events back to the left side to link all three video events on the time line.If the video clip is longer then 1 hour it takes me long and boring time draging the video events from selected point to the right side and back again..Maybe I can do it with some easyest way, for example to lock whole events line, then spliting to desired point and draging without using selection edit tool.Probably you know what I mean.
Regards.

How many tracks are we talking about? If you're only dealing with a single audio/video track combination, you might try right-clicking the event and choosing "Select Events to End" which will select everything right of that event. Then you can easily move it over.

You might also want to take a look at ripple editing. With it, the right side should just ripple into place when you resize the event.

The only reason I would go to TMPGenc is if I was getting a better quality encode there. Otherwise, I would just stick with Vegas and use the bitrate calculator. However, if you ARE going to TMPGenc, using the frameserver is a good way to do it.

What's the problem with using the bitrate calculators? If you'd prefer a chart, you can find one in Vol 1 #7 of my newsletters.