What is your preview settings on? What is the framerate as it plays back? Any effects on the clip/track/project/media?

The playback frame rate is 29.970(NTSC) and the setting in the preview window is "Preview (Auto)." There are no FX plug ins in the track or events.

No. Changing the extension doesn't work. I'm just going to go back and render to quicktime and bring them back into Vegas that way.

Thanks, though. What a pain!

check it on an NTSC monitor or TV hooked up thru your FW connection on the camera. Do not trust the computer screen. I have had this happen on a couple of pieces and it drove me crazy until I checked it on my NTSC monitor and it was fine. For some reason on occassion the computer monitor sees it as soft. No rhyme or reason to it but don't panic. Make sure of what you have before you panic. :-)

Don

Sounds like you need to "end action" from one to the other. However, there WILL be a slight pause between clips when done this way. I always render to a single file for the entire video. Then it will easily play straight through with no pauses.

If it is a "single" file then the DVD plays automatically? What if, I want it to pause and allow the viewer to press return/play key to start the video? How do i do this?

Thanks.

You can have a menu. You can even have chapter selections on the menu. It's just that once the video starts playing, it will play all the way to the end with NO pauses.

Now, you CAN also specify an "out point" so if you needed a menu option to only play one small section of the video, that is also still possible.

Thank you for your response. The thing is, I watched the burned DVD on my tv and it does the same. Remember, it goes in and out of focus, it's not a constant unfocused picture. And it didn't used to look that way, it just started recently, which is what leads me to believe that it's a change of settings that I inadvertently made. Any ideas?

Whatever is causing it is obviously in Vegas. Check the clip and see if the FX button is green and if so what FX you might have used. Without realizing it you might have placed a blur or some other FX on the clip that would cause this to happen. Other than that the only other thing is the clip IS slightly out of focus and you don't see it until its played on something bigger than the computer monitor.

Don

Can you post or e-mail the VEG file? That way we can look directly for anything that might be causing this.

The FX button isn't green, no plug-ins selected, and I see the blurring on the computer monitor as well as on the tv. Also, it's not just a single clip that's doing this, it's every clip from that scene (30fps), original footage and edited timeline, that pulses in-and-out of focus...and it was definitely not like this a couple of weeks ago. So there must be some setting changed. I'm not panicking yet, gentlemen, but I'm getting close.

Does anyone know of a way to condense changes from multiple tracks down to one video and one audio track?

I keep rendering new changes just to simplify my timeline/workspace, and this kills time. Is there any way around it?

I know two things to be true: 1) this question has been touched on many times, but I'm looking for some more specificity, and 2) there is never one answer for every case. But never mind that.

I am about to edit a documentary. All of the material is 16:9 and 60i from a GL2 in Vegas 6. These are the elements that must be worked into the footage:

60i -> 24p
Colour Curves
A little saturation
some Unsharp Mask
Maybe a Magic Bullet film look here and there.

Now. What is the best order to do this stuff in. Do I pick the clips I want, render them without any effects to 24p, then edit it all together, or do I make the movie and apply all the effects, and then render the whole things to 24p. I think some effects look better when they are applied before, and some probably make no difference.

Additionally, and importnatly, some of the clip properties that allow for nice deinterlacing must be set before the render. Vegas 6 has this famously good pulldown. What are the boxes to be checked to make the 60i -> 24p look the best most often.

All right. Let's chew on that for a while.

Thanks all,

DJ

Sure. Use Nested Timelines in Vegas 6. You have a separate project per section and then just add the VEG file to the timeline in your final project.

Yep... For WMV9 HD you need to download the WMV9 codec pack from Microsoft, and no doubt for the AVI you're missing the Cineform CFHD codec. You will probably need to go and get the Cineform ConnectHD demo...

I could explain some other work-arounds, but it'd take quite a while... and getting the correct codecs loaded will be easier for you.

Thanks to all the replies. I've been offline for a few days, but I'll try these solutions.

As for Cineform, I thought it was part of Vegas 6. Is the ConnectHD codec separate?

Thanks!

You lost me at nested. How do I do this?
Thanks

Kevin

Break your video into "scenes" or a little piece at a time. Develop Scene 1 in a Scene 1 project. Develop Scene 2 in a seperate Scene 2 project and so on. When you are done with all the Scenes open a project called All Scenes or something similiar. Import Scene 1.veg, Scene 2.veg and so on. Place the imported veg files into the timeline a bingo you have a nested project.

Jim

Are you using Vegas 6? If yes, you can actually drag a VEG file to the timeline just like you can drag a video clip to the timeline. When you drag the veg file to the timeline, it will be a single video and audio track no matter how many tracks are in the original VEG file. This will give you what you're looking for - collapsing to a single video and audio track.

hey
im trying to add shadows to my text i can do that fine but im having trouble being able to view what i am doing with the shadow of the text on the preview screen. i do remember it being more realtime but its changed and dont know how to change it. in more detail i want to be able to click on the effects timeline where i ad my markers and then see straight away the preview screen jump to that point. can anyone solve it for me.
thanks
michael kristen

Hi gang,

I'm editing and while I'm editing I'm trying to capture the next batch of tapes to expedite matters.

Is there any way I can kill the audio of the tape capture just while I'm editing so I can focus on what I'm cutting?

Thanks.

sincerely,


ian

ps. I love you guys and it's not the booze talking.

You probably changed your preview window to "best". Change it to "preview" and you'll see your changes in real time. This is located in a box right above your preview window. Shadows update in real time but outlines don't. For some reason you have to click on your text in the timeline for an outline to update.

In vidcap, uncheck preview audio under options. As a warning, it may not be advisable to do both at the same time. Not all machines are up to that task so definitely test before doing so.

Are you seeing ANY effects at all in the preview screen? If not, you possibly clicked on the "Split Screen" button (above the preview screen - it's a circle that's half dark and half light).

Thanks Ed,

I'm running a P4 3.2 HT with 1 Gb Ram. I did drop a few frames (about 100) but nothing I can't edit around. The first capture totally screwed up. I had to recapture. It seems to be OK now.

I may just wait until I'm done this show and THEN capture.

Thanks again.

sincerely,


ian

I did drop a few frames (about 100) but nothing I can't edit around.

That's the problem (and about 100 frames too many dropped).

greetings all:

Every once in awhile my camera will record a frame or two of stray pixels of a different color than what's behind them and dispersed randomly throughout the frame. Looks really bad. I guess this is b/c of dirty tape heads or something like that. I'll work on fixing it on the front end.

But, in the meantime I've got to use some footage like this for a wedding video, so my question is this: in Vegas 5, how do I minimize the appearance of these guys while keeping the rest of the frame intact? Is it possible? I know I won't be able to get rid of them entirely, but I'd like to make it less noticeable when the frame goes suddenly blotchy.

Thanks and write back if you need more info on the problem. I'm guessing you guys have seen this before, though.

Excalibur has a "Fix Bad Frame" tool which works by simply duplicating the good frame just before the bad frame and replacing the bad frame with that good frame. You might try doing something of that nature (depending on how many frames in a row are bad).

I've had issues even trying this one out. I just wanted to see if I could do it, and I had many a drop frame! If you don't have the time to do it right, when will you find the time to re-do it? As an istructor once told me!

I wonder if the title for my thread has turned people off to answering it. It seems as if it was a good question. Anybody?

I would pretty much go in the order you listed but render to 24p AFTER appling the effects. Work it like any other Vegas project, pick the clips, apply effects make sure its all as you want it THEN render.


I rarely do any 24p conversion so I can't help you on that.

Don

Thank you very much, I get it now.

ok, I'll give it a try. I've got two bad frames in a row.

"Maybe a Magic Bullet film look here and there."

Only if you want to increase your render time at least 10 fold :-(
Every post I've ever read about it says it's a real render hog.
Celluloid ($25 from the VASST site) is supposed to be far superior - and much quicker as well.

Mike

If you have 1BB2 (where B are the two bad frames), you could try changing that to 1122 and see how it looks.

Hey Guys and Gals,

I am just curious as to how you would go about adding one transition to the entire video. My video is only on one track if that helps. Cheers

cool thanks dudes

Thanks to all the replies. I've been offline for a few days, but I'll try these solutions.

As for Cineform, I thought it was part of Vegas 6. Is the ConnectHD codec separate?

Thanks!

The CFHD codec should be (from what I understand) loaded by Vegas 6. However, I seem to remember having seen a reference to the fact that the Cineform CFHD support shipped with Vegas 6 doesn't give the same level of functionality as ConnectHD.

When you select AVI as the 'Render As' format, have you selected 'HDV 1080 intermediate' from the drop-down list? You do need to make sure you've got the correct 'Template' loaded.

It also pays to click the 'Custom' button to check exactly what's going to be done by the default settings of the selected format.

For WMV9 you'll very definitely need to check the 'Custom' settings if you want to extract the best results...

Select every event, drag the desired transition to one of the overlaps. They should now ALL have that one transition.

Now there's something I didn't realize Vegas could do. Thanks, Edward!

How do i butt together 2 events to make the scene change smooth?

And i am not talking about placing a transition between the 2 events. I just want to butt together 2 events and the viewer will not even notice that there were 2 video clips put together.

I know I am not doing it right because my video scene change always has this appearance of someone closing and opening his eyes to change scenes. I don't know how else to explain it. All I can say is: the scene change is not smooth not like the others I have seen.

Hello people!
I stopped in to read a little and remembered how kool it would be to speed up some rendering time with networked computers. Has anyone done this here? I have two pc's networked with vegas 6b on them. Do I need a gig of speed to push that or is the standard 100mb card enough?

sincerely.
John Lorince

Unless you want to re-join a scene that you had split previously, there's no way the viewer is NOT going to notice a change.
Having said that, what you can try is changing the out point of scene 1 and/or the in point of scene 2 one frame at a time until you're happy with it.
Make sure you do a decent preview (I go back at least 5 sec. before the change and then hit play) of it each time before you make your final decision.
This is probably a holdover from my analog (tape to tape editing) days when 5 sec. pre-rolls were the norm and you had a chance to see how it looked before you commited to it.

Mike

Does anyone know how to get a realistic handwritten word or words as a text overlay to my video in Vegas 5?

I have some pretty descent handwritten fonts, but I want a word to look like it is being handwritten from one side of the screen to the other.

Am I thinking beyond Vegas?

Vegas does this easily with Bezier Masking

It's really project dependent. Some projects benefit more than others in this regard. Naturally the network speed WILL make some difference but, once again, would really be project dependent. Best to just do some testing to see what benefits you might gain.

The Vegas 6 sample projects on the sony vegas website has an example.

It's the editing project sample... the boston commercial.

The Vegas 6 sample projects on the sony vegas website has an example.

It's the editing project sample... the boston commercial.
Was that done with Bezier Masking?

Yes. Well I'm almost sure it is anyways. ..

Hi gang,

I have my main menu and then submenues (sp?) set up.

The submenus (sp?) are all the same. Four pictures, each of which represents a dance (chapter). I have nine of these submenus.

Along the bottom I have the submenus listed ie: 1 to 4 5 to 8 etc

However, no matter which chapter I'm in when you hit the menu button during a dance or switch between submenus the appropriate menu displays but the "1 to 4" link is the one that's highlighted every time no matter which submenu I'm in.

Is there a way to set it up so that when I open a submenu (or return to it) that submenu's link at the bottom of the screen is also highlighted?

Just wondering. I've gone through the menu options and I haven't seen anything.

Thanks for listening.

sincerely,


ian

In the sub-menu, click on the "Return" button. On the right side in the "Button Properties" section, in the "Action" sub-section, look for the entry: Destination Button. Change this from "Default" to the entry you want chosen when returning from that menu.

When you say it is like you "open and close your eyes," if you mean that the video gets dark when it makes the cut, then you have either set your in and out points incorrectly or introduced a fade in / fade out at the start and end points. Zoom all the way in to the end of the clip -- there should not be an "arc" indicating a fade out, and the little triangle in the upper corner should be dark blue, not light blue. If there is an "arc" there, drag it back to the end of the clip so you aren't fading out. Also make sure you have "quantize to frames" set, so you are not accidentally hard cutting somewhere other than an exact frame point.

On the other hand, if by "open and close your eyes" you mean the cut is more jarring to watch than the hard cuts you see in television and movies, then I am guessing it's the audio. You want the audio to be smooth between the two clips. If the two clips use different audio, you want to smoothly transition the audio between the two even though the video cut is abrupt.