Any plans to introduce a Vegas 7 tutorial?
It’s in the works. ;-)

~jr

Thanks Edward - so it sounds like it's a matter of preference, not an issue of quality loss? And thanks for the tip of adding VEG files to the timeline. I didn't know you could do that.

if my machine is not fast enough... I may have to put together a new machine... keep reading if you like... and help if you can... keeping in mind final goal is Vegas 7 >

I have built two systems, both of which are used for my Vegas6 work. One was built 4 years ago. It was a Dual Athlon MP 1800+ with 512MB PC2100 DDR ram and an 80 GB RAID 0 stripe (7200RPM ATA133s running through a 64bit PCI bus). Then a year ago I bought an Alienware MJ7700 with a P4HT(3Ghz) with 2.5GB of DDR2 RAM and a 160GB ATA100 7200RPM RAID 0 (motherboard raid controller).

Now here is the fun part.... I rendered the same video on both systems at the same time (source stored on the raid partition and rendering to the raid partition) and performance was only ~3% better on the $3000 Alienware when compared to my 3 year old custom dualie.

All this to say that you need to put your money into CPU and RAM because that is the limiting factor. The GPU doesn't matter a bit, other than to provide multi munitor support, which I HIGHLY suggest.

You MUST go either new new pentium Core 2 Duo (just can't beat that performance) or quad Zeon / Opteron. Get a $150-200 GPU and put the rest of the mony into the CPU.

As far as RAM, it obviously has to be fast, but I have NEVER has a single instance of Vegas use more than 1GB of ram. I usually operate with at least 512MB of unallocated free physical RAM. Part of this is due to a programming decision by MS where the OS automatically reserves 1/2 of all physical RAM for the OS & kernel, leaving the remainder for running applications.

As far as a RAID goes, you may notice the need for a RAID, but if it is going to cost you more than ~$300 to put in the RAID, I would suggest a 2nd render computer. Yep. Vegas comes with 3 licenses (as far as I know this is tru for v7) so make use of it! Get a moderate 2nd system that is bare bones.... Core 2 Duo, 1GB ram (or less) 100GB HD to store your sorce and a gigabit ethernet card in each system (or get an nForce chipset because they should come with Gigabit onboard). Put down $50 for a small 5 port gigabit switch and use remote desktop between the two (WinXP Pro only of course, not home).

You can either set up a render on one, and then keep working on the other, or do the true network rendering where your master pushes out the render jobs to the 2nd computer. Then you are still free to edit while the slave system renders your test footage.

Note that due to licensing issues with the MPEG2 codec, if you use the true network rendering feature (where you select "render to network" then multi threaded support will NOT be used on the 2nd system. BUT if you just copy the source over the gig network and copy the project file, you WILL be able to make use of the multithread rendering for MPEG2.

Above all, like my title mentions, keep your work flow in mind. If you usually are at good stopping points every once and a while, then a 2nd render system might not be a bad idea. Get a 2nd monitor so you can stretch that time line over the entire 1st display, and put all your preview, sound levels, and other tools on the 2nd display.

Hope this helps some.

jason

...so it sounds like it's a matter of preference, not an issue of quality loss? ...

That's right. A tool like Vegas offers many ways to acheive a particular result, which is great for those who do a lot of editing. You have tools to optimize your workflow for a particular task.

Time is money and workflow is king, if you're getting paid for your work.

Yeah, they were both 24p...but not sure if one was 24pA or not.... I wonder if 24pA records in 2332....

James, Sony has a white paper titled "24p and Panasonic AG-DVX100 and AJ-SDX900 in Vegas and DVD Architect" that you might be interested in reading. You can find it at http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/download/step2.asp?DID=511

Mike

Sorry for all these questions on one posting but it seems to be the most efficient way of doing this. In advance, I thank you for your help.

Question 1: I have downloaded Vegas 7b. It works fine except when I first open up the program. A window appears stating to

"Please Wait. Opening Media Library Default".

This goes on for a few minutes and finally a window opens up states that

"The media library default could be opened".

You can click OK and you are good to go. It is just annoying. I have unloaded and reloaded Vegas and Media Manager twice according to the Sony forum but the problem persists. The uninstall and reinstall was done for Vegas, Media Manager and Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine. I am not married to the Media Manager and can work without it. Any suggestions?

Question 2: This is probably very simple for some of you. When preparing an uncompressed AVI file in DVDA4, is there a big difference in the final quality by moving the video bitrate from 8 to 9.8? i.e. for smaller files such as 15 or 20 minutes videos. Is there any downside to doing this? I do understand that increasing the bitrate increases the mpeg2 size.

Question 3: Is there a good beginners book for basics of HDV? I have been using Vegas for a few years but never with HDV. Mainly a hobbyist looking for something more challenging.

A quick question about a more efficient way to "Match Output Aspect" in Vegas 7 for a batch of jpeg images. Is there a way to do this for many digital images all at once? Is there a technique or a script that helps to accomplish this?

Thanks

In Vegas 6 you can copy the event (image on the timeline) that has the correct setting, then select all the other events, right click and select 'paste event attributes' (from memory that's what it's called, might be slightly different though). This should work in Vegas 7 also.

HTH,
Kyle

Yeah, they were both 24p...but not sure if one was 24pA or not.... I wonder if 24pA records in 2332....Yes, Panasonic's "24pA" uses a 2-3-3-2 pulldown scheme. The regular 24p mode on the camera uses 2-3 pulldown. That's the only difference between the two 24p modes.

As I was saying, there's really no difference (visually speaking) between footage using the two pulldown schemes. 2-3-3-2 pulldown is better for editing on a 24p timeline (or for eventually going to film). 2-3 can be edited in a regular 60i timeline and treated like 60i footage in pretty much every way.

So if you have footage that looks like "regular DV" to you (by that I assume you mean 60i), then it either is 60i, or it's 24p and something about it is tricking your eye, so to speak.

What shutter speeds were you using in each of the two cases you mention?

Answer 1: You can disable the media manager by unchecking a box in Vegas' preferences. The next time you start Vegas, the media manager will be unavailable. Then you can remove the media manager tab from the docking area by going into the view menu and unchecking it there as well. Bingo. No Media Manager.

Answer 2: Higher bitrates will mean higher quality, yes. Many people may not see the difference at all, but a higher bitrate means more image data and therefore inherently means higher quality. There is no downside except for bigger file size.

Answer 3: I don't shoot HDV, so I couldn't really say what a good book would be for sure. Douglas Spotted Eagle's book seems to get pretty high praise, from what I've seen.

You can certainly do it the way Kyle suggested or look for a script called "MatchAspectRatio" (or something like that).
BTW, an excellent collection of scripts for Vegas is at http://s92274348.onlinehome.us/vegas.html

Kyle, remember that only works if all images are the same original size. It's MUCH safer using a script.

Thanks I'll give the scripts a try. I appreciate your help

Hi Jarrod

Thanks for the reply. I have followed the steps you outlined a few times, rebooted etc

"Answer 1: You can disable the media manager by unchecking a box in Vegas' preferences. The next time you start Vegas, the media manager will be unavailable. Then you can remove the media manager tab from the docking area by going into the view menu and unchecking it there as well. Bingo. No Media Manager."

Once the program is running there is no Media Manager but it still tries to load the media default library when I first start Vegas 7. I may have to call Sony tech support.

This is the matchaspect script from the everything.zip collection that Mike pointed you to. http://www.firsttakestudios.com/Matchaspect.js
Just dl and copy it to the Script Menu folder of your Vegas installation. It works perfectly with Vegas 6 and 7.
Ed is right on the nose, as usual, with scripts being the safest (and easiest) way to do it-you should throw the rest of them in there while you're at it, lots of useful and time saving goodies...

I want see what other people do when they want to render multiple videos types from one project.

I have been capturing in HDV 1080 and setting up my project properties as HDV then edit . Once Im done I render to these formats from the same project

1st. m2t for HDV print to tape
2nd. 720x480 mp2 for DVD
3rd. mp4 for ipod
4th either HDWMV or 720MP4 for Blueray-HDdvd down the road. I have tried 1920x1080 mp2 but the render times are huge.

Is this what other people do ? I dont want to have to re edit for each video type.

I have 2 questions
#1 For each format should I change the project settings to match what Im rendering to? I have just left the project settings as HDV.
#2 What are the 2 best formats to render that would be compatible for Blueray ? I plan on getting a PS3 and I want to be able to play my HD videos.

Thanks Joey

I've got my eye on the ProjectMix IO too. I assume you would get some level of compatibility because Vegas supports the Mackie interface but it sure would be nice to hear from someone who has used one with Vegas to be sure. I recently bought the Frontier Designs Tranzport and I did get it to work somewhat with Vegas in Mackie emulation mode but it wasn’t totally functional and some of the buttons performed the wrong function. :(

~jr

I'm in the same boat as you guys, but I did manage to find this video on Youtube that gives a demo of the projectmix and vegas in action. It even shows exactly how to set it up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56kwxKOw-Js

What do you think?

I'm pretty excited myself.

-chopchop

Hey Jarrod, thx for helping....but I figured it out yesterday. For anyone interested, or who may have a dvx100b, if you're recording in 24p or 24pA and it just looks like regular dv instead of film - try setting the gamma and matirx to cinelike...
It's amazing that this camera can shoot in 24p and still look like regular DV if the gamma and matrix settings arent set.

Well thats my experience anyways...

Keep in mind that 24p is a frame rate, and that as such the only inherent difference between it and "regular DV" is the fact that you're getting 24 full-res images per second as opposed to 60 interlaced images per second. 24p in and of itself doesn't have any effect whatsoever on image qualities other than motion rendering. So it's not really amazing at all that the camera would give you video-like images in 24p mode if all the other settings on the camera are left in neutral positions.

When you said your 24p looked like "regular DV," I assumed you were talking about motion characteristics.

Thanks Vin. I'll give it a shot

I just found out it seems to be a spontanious problem with Vegas 7.0b.

Vegas 6.0a worked fine with all the files I used, including the video only files.

I can't re-install Vegas 6.0a because my hard drive space is only down to about 400-300MB and I can't get a new hard drive.

So I'll guess I'll just wait to see if 7.0c delivers a fix to the bug.

I just found out it seems to be a spontanious problem with Vegas 7.0b.

Vegas 6.0a worked fine with all the files I used, including the video only files.

I can't re-install Vegas 6.0a because my hard drive space is only down to about 400-300MB and I can't get a new hard drive.

So I'll guess I'll just wait to see if 7.0c delivers a fix to the bug.

Not having this issue with 7b, but if your hard drive is so full as to be within 15% of capacity, this alone can generate all sorts of problems.

Is the vegas m2t file quality different (better) in 7 than 6 (when capture)? Or... is the m2t file the same (quality) of version 7 but version 7 is making editing smoother plus lots of other tweaks?

No.
Capture is merely file transfer; Vegas does nothing to your video file on capture, it is a bit for bit copy of what your camera stored.
Vegas 7 has some optimizations that allows for faster processing and access to the CPU, but it bears no relevance to image quality.

Anyone know of a good set of plugins (economical or demo if possible) that will give me different options for white and warm balancing in Vegas?

Dwight

#1 For each format should I change the project settings to match what Im rendering to? I have just left the project settings as HDV.
What you are doing sounds OK. I would keep your project settings at HDV and use the “stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox)” option so that any difference in aspect ratio is compensated for.

#2 What are the 2 best formats to render that would be compatible for Blueray?
From what I’ve read, the Blu-ray spec uses the Microsoft’s VC-1 (VC-9) codec and MPEG-4 AVC High Profile so the two best formats are MP4 and HDWMV. Unfortunately, I don’t know the specifics of the settings to use so that it doesn’t get re-encoded by Blu-ray authoring applications (which don’t even exist yet). It sure is painful out here on the bleeding edge. ;-)

Maybe someone who has a Blu-ray burner can comment?

~jr

Check out the right side of this video see the black moving around. Is this because I have a hood on my GL1? or what is causing this?

http://videos.streetfire.net/video/wm/cae20889-373e-4647-bf37-985e00d2b2f9.htm

Update:

Posted the issue to Sony online customer service/support nine days ago.

Still waiting for a response (after receiving the initial "we've got your inquiry and are getting to it ...).

Hello,

I'm trying to make 16x9 widescreen from 4x3 normal video.

I can add black bars on top and bottom to get letterboxed 16x9, but I want anamorphic 16x9. So I select "Stretch to fill frame = yes" and "Maintain aspect ration = no" (this way you get that squashy image that looks good on widescreen TV's)

Then I render to DVD PAL Widescreen and everything starts to render. The problem however is that I get interlaced lines when I play the resulting Mpeg video. I also get interlaced lines when played on TV...

When I NOT stretch the video to fill frame (letterbox) and render in DVD PAL 4x3 everything's ok... so it seems like the 'stretch to fill frame' is causing trouble...

Am I doing something wrong here or is it just not possible to make 16x9 anamorphic video from 4x3 video while NOT ruining the interlaced video?

/edit
Seems like Premiere Pro 2 is doing a better job... but I can't really believe Vegas 7 can't do something basic like this correctly...

It sounds to me like you're seeing more artifacts with the anamorphic output simply because your cropped video is taking up the entire 720x576 raster... You're basically "zooming in" on your footage and making your pixels (and artifacts) larger and thus more noticeable. Conversely, if you simply drop in some black mattes (hardcoded letterbox), you're not "zooming in"... the portion of the image you're still using isn't getting blown up.

I hate to say it because it's not what you want to hear, but you're always going to get sub-par results when cropping 4:3-native DV footage to 16:9. There's not a lot of resolution to begin with in the DV format, and you're basically throwing away some of the precious little you have.

To get decent 16:9 anamorphic DV, you need either a camera with native 16:9 chips or an anamorphic lens adapter. If you can afford neither of those right now, then you probably need to either make peace with 4:3 video or make peace with sub-par 16:9.

Sorry if I've rained on your parade. :)

Don't worry, you're not raining on my parade :) But what I'm getting is definitely NOT just some more artifacts because of zooming. When there's no movement, everythings fine, but when there's movement, the image looks terrible (see attachment: interlaced.jpg) The only thing I have to change to fix this, is NOT to do "stretch to fill frame" I just have to make it letterbox, so really depends on wether I use the "stretch to fill frame" option or not.

Adobe premiere Pro 2.0 is not having this problem stretching the video to anamorphic: See interlaced_good.jpg So it can be done correctly! And yes, it's NOT that adobe premiere is de-interlacing. It really outputs interlaced video that looks good ánd smooth. Furthermore I make sure I choose "lower field first and interlaced" when outputting to MPEG2, so it really isn't about setting the wrong field order or something like that....

Vegas video 7 is just doing something wrong with the interlaced lines when stretching to anamorphic 16x9... Nobody else encountered this???

Hi Bram,

For most of my film projects I do a 4:3 to anamorphic 16:9 conversion using Vegas. Including Vegas 7. I only work with 25P PAL footage (from a DVX100 PAL camera), but I'm sure it also works for interlaced PAL video. Follow the steps below:
1. set your project to PAL DV AVI Widescreen in the Project Settings
2. import/capture your 4:3 footage in this project and add it to the timeline
3. For each clip use the Pan/Crop tool to add the 16:9 widescreen frame - the footage in the preview window will look like widescreen without black bars top and below, right?
4. Render the timeline to MPEG2, but do two things: set the Quality to Best (this activates a better calculation method for resized events, and that's happening with the 4:3>16:9 conversion) and choose for the 2-Pass rendering.

This should do the job fine. It works for me very well.

Note: the workflow described above works with Vegas 7. In previous versions of Vegas you have to use the Switch function for each clip on the timeline, where there is some aspect ratio option you have to turn on/off (I can't recall the exact setting, but try it and you'll see the result in the preview window).

Greetings from the Netherlands.

Depends on what you're wanting to change. If you want the timeline on bottom instead of the top, that's a new option in Vegas 7 under Options - Preferences. If you just want to move a window around, just click on the dots going up the left side and drag to whereever you want it to be.Isn't there an undocumented procedure for inverting the layout in 5.0? I used to have it that way but just had to reinstall and was searching for the method again when I found this thread.

you need to get to internal preferences
I think its hold shift when opening preferences.
In there is a timeline on top option.
going from memory here...

frame dock on top is what it's called in v6

That's right, Jim, thanks. Meanwhile I had found the article by Spot:
http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/customizing_Sony_Vegas.htm

Hi Peter,

Thnx for the explanation. Unfortunately, your description doesn't work for 25i. (I tried)

It seems Vegas just stretches the video no matter what, without taking care of the interlaced lines. The jitter I'm getting also looks like bigger interlaced lines, which is totally logical...

It seems I'm now stuck with Adobe Premiere 2, since that one does appear to take care of the interlaced lines while stretching...

I really like Vegas, but it's quite stupid that such an advanced video editting application doesn't seem to be able to resize interlaced video...

Greetings back from the Netherlands!

Well... after reviewing dailies from my short... a few of the scenes (consecutive of course) have a small blob in the picture... obviously my cameraman, didnt clean the lens!! AAaaa...! No returning for re-shoot. It is just a small blob... but in some key scenes... HOW do I fix it? Dont tell me I have to go frame by frame??? If I do... is there a "stamp" type tool (like in Photoshop where you can pick up some material just to the side of the damage and stamp down over it) in Vegas? or... do I have to make a mask for every frame... Oh boy... please let me know the best method...

Hmmm.... tonight I will do some testing myself with 25i footage.

Are you sure Premiere isn't de-interlacing the footage during/before changing the aspect ratio?
And have you checked your converted Vegas footage on a normal tv (as computerscreens often have a problem playback interlaced footage correctly?)

Vegas deinterlaces any footage that's going to see a frame-rate/size conversion for a given render (in "good" or "best" rendering modes). Of course, when it's generating interlaced footage, it interlaces output.

The simplest way to think of this is to think of input and output fields as frames. Your 50i footage can be thought of as 50 fields per second. When Vegas makes 50i output, it can actually render 50 frames per second (if the processing chain calls for it) and pull the appropriate field data from that frame information.

Also, if you are dropping these files back into Vegas to preview, preview-quality viewing can show some pretty strange scaling artifacts with interlaced footage. We do this for performance. Preview quality is definitely not intended for final output.

... a few of the scenes (consecutive of course) have a small blob in the picture... HOW do I fix it? Dont tell me I have to go frame by frame???...

Carl, you are going to know a whole lot more about track motion by the time you are done with this.

Grab some frames of video to make your stamps with. (if you need guidance on this, look at the second post in this thread http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=48730)

Take them into photoshop or paintshop pro or your favorite image editor and cut out everything but the stamp area. Export as a .png with transparency.

You could also do this within Vegas using cookie cutter on a still that you copy and paste if that's easier than photoshop - either would work fine, I find working with an external still image editor a little easier.

Create a new video track in Vegas, above your existing video track(s). Drop your png into the new track, over the relevant section of video.

The next steps are to open track motion for that track (the icon with two rectangles & an arrow in the track header), and then move the image around until it covers the blob. If the blob is stuck to the lens I guess you don't need to do any motion tracking.

If there are transparency issues, look for the "compositing mode" icon in the track header and make sure it's set to "source alpha".

If you do have to do some tracking, check out Edward Troxel's excellent Vegas Tips newsletters at www.jetdv.com

Take a look at Vol 1 #12 - November 2003
Blurring Faces a la “Cops”. The application is different, but the use of keyframes in track motion is the same.

I am attempting my first Vegas edit and have problem with audio. When I place my clips on the timeline there is an audible click between adjoining clips. I cannot find the way to join two clips seamlessly. I've tried to drag all the clips together from the media pool to the timline but than I get audio compression between each clip. I am stuck.

I'm not sure exactly what the problem here is... can you give us more info?

The clicking part seems really strange. You're talking about two clips of audio that are touching each other, right? And the clips sound fine by themselves?

Can you explain what you mean by getting "audio compression between each clip"?

Peter,

Yes, I checked the footage on an normal TV, but that was the first time I noticed something was very wrong. On my computer, Windows Media Player shows regular interlaced footage very smoothly (just like a TV) and with no weird horizontal lines by the way. It just goes wrong with the by Vegas 7 anamorpically stretched interlaced footage..

Furthermore, those screengrabs are from Media Player and not from the (low quality) Vegas preview window. Also, Premiere Pro 2 isn't de-interlacing. It looks just as smooth and sharp as the original AVI (trust me on this, I know how to recognize de-interlaced footage)

Perhaps it's nog a bug, but it's just a feature Vegas doesn't have?

Have you tried using the primary color corrector that comes with Vegas? It's very powerful and that (plus the secondary color corrector) is what most people use for fixing white balance in Vegas. There's quite a lot of discussion about how to do it on the Sony forum (http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=486651).

If you are looking for a "one click" solution, I don't know that there is any solution (for any NLE) that can get consistently good results. But I know there is an "auto levels" plugin from Mike Crash (http://www.mikecrash.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=13) that is free.

I have three camera feeds from a shoot this weekend. Due to an error on the beginning sync, I have to sync near the end of the feeds. That is the first problem. The second is that one of the cameras starts and stops halfway through, before the sync point.


I split that track and made the second half camera 4 and fround the sync point, calling it s4.

Is there any way to set up a second set of sync points for the first half of that track, I can sync it to one of the other tracks, just not both.

Make sense?

Thanks!

Anyone know of a good set of plugins (economical or demo if possible) that will give me different options for white and warm balancing in Vegas?

Dwight

Before you go out on a limb, DO try Vegas' own Colour Curves "Warm Colours" profile - EXCELLENT! Or you could knock-up your own.

Andrew, I'm in Windsor as well so I've sent you a private email.

Mike

Go ahead and just sync that one clip manually. You can use the 1/3/4/6 keys on the numeric keypad to fine tune the placement left and right.

Zoom in and check for the presence of very short fade out and fade in at the intersection between two clips. That's one thing that causes a click. Vegas will insert such fades when you split a clip in Vegas if the prefs are set that way.

You didn't mention how the clips got created to begin with. But in the event that they are not clips that were split from a single track, then they simply may not match well enough. I've had success with cross-fading such clips by simply dragging the end of one over the beginning of the other slightly.