I have a concert that I'm working on and I'm blending some direct recording with some room from where the camera was... oviously there is a time delay from what I see and what I hear... I have fixed this delay but now Vegas thinks it's out of sync... I regrouped everything and it's fine... I just want to tell Vegas that this is now the "correct" sync so if something is accidentally slipped I will see it.

Or is this a rare occurence and there is no real sollution other than deal with it?

Holy s**t you guys are sure right. I did an extreme stress test with avis instead of wmvs (13 hours worth instead of 4!!) on multiple track layers and it went extremely smoothly and even rendered faster. So yeah. I'm dumb. It all turned out nicely in the end though with wmv->wmv but if it's not made to do this kinda stuff I'm definately going back to avis.

Thanks people. I was scared there for a minute :)

Figure with WMV's you have a lot more algorithms and such going on decompressing them for playback than with a lower more effecient codec such as DV... so it will be faster even when rendering because it's not having to uncompress as much before recompressing. *jargon jargon jargon, blah blah blah* ;)

Not sure what else to call this....bride with flowers walking down a path, bunch of red roses, 1 yellow one in the middle. I want everything black and white, but the yellow rose in color. In Premiere there is a simple preset effect that lets you basically grab a slider and leave only whatever color you want....how do I do this in Vegas 6d? I've searched everywhere and I'm getting these complex create a mask type stuff??

It's called "Color Pass" because you're inhibiting every color excepting one.
You can pass single or multiple colors, the Secondary Color Corrector is awesome for this. Multiple colors require some compositing, but secondary is a single process.
There is a tutorial on color pass at both the VASST site and JetDV's website

Probably stupid question but here it goes.
I have been using vegas for about 3 years now mostly for making motorcyle
stunt videos. Vegas rocks for sure. All of my video is shot at 30fps and I am looking for a way to give it that "film" look. Getting tired of the way it looks when I watch it on tv.
- Will deinterlacing the footage give me that result ?
- Can Vegas do it out of the box or do I have to fork over the $$ for s/w like Magic Bullet ?
- I have access to After Effects at work and have found a few techniques on the web to do it in AE. Will that give me the look and feel I am looking for ?
- Is it worth the hassle ? I mean will the footage have a better look once its deinterlaced when previewing on a normal TV ?

Of course I am saving up for a camera that will do it, but for now just looking for an alt solution.

Great forum, have learned a ton so far. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

SC

I have several widescreen SD DV projects from a month ago or so, - saved as .veg files. I recently have been working on a mostly HDV project (it has some widescreen DV clips in it as well). The preview window is set at Best (auto). All of the clips - HDV and DV look normal. However, when I go back to any of the previous DV projects, the preview is EXTREMELY fuzzy and blurry. Checking the project and clip settings, they are both set as they should be - Widescreen DV 720x480, pixel=1.222, 29.970fps. This is with ALL my SD DV projects. If I watch the AVI's in Windows Media player, they look fine-sharp and clear.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any idea what could cause this, or how to fix it? Thanks - PK

Thank you, I will look for those tutorials and appreciate your help.

It's called "Color Pass" because you're inhibiting every color excepting one.
You can pass single or multiple colors, the Secondary Color Corrector is awesome for this. Multiple colors require some compositing, but secondary is a single process.
There is a tutorial on color pass at both the VASST site and JetDV's website

Not sure how I've done this. But now, when I call up Event FX, Media FX, etc, the window zooms to the botom of the screen as it opens. I get the normal window allowing me to selet and add an effect, but after that, the wndow which lets me set the properties of the event is somehow hidden. It still has focus (the main Vegas title bar is greyed) but I just can't see it or get to it.

I've launched Vegas with Ctrl+Shift held down and that has reset just about everything, er except this!

Any ideas?

Thanx

Ian

I'm thinking of switching to Vegas. I've been using Premiere Pro 2, and there is one effect that comes standard with it that I can't seem to find an equivelent of in Vegas. It's called 'Posterize Time'. For those that use both programs, could you please tell me how/what to do in Vegas to achieve this result.

Taken from the Adobe Help File: "The 'Posterize Time' effect locks a clip to a specific frame rate. Posterize Time is useful on its own as a special effect, but it also has more subtle uses. For example, 60-field video footage can be locked to 24 fps (and then field-rendered at 60 fields per second) to give a film-like look. This effect is sometimes called Strobe in hardware devices."

Cheers,
Dennis.

I got you covered... not sure if this is the *Vegas* way but this works (and works with lots of things like this).

Open your FX window that ducks out of site... don't click anywhere... at this point hit ALT then Space bar... this has now brought up the window's menu (though you can't see it)... now hit the "M" key.. and now you are in "MOVE" mode... use the arrow keys to move it around... usually you just have to initiate the move then when you move the most it snaps to where the pointer is... if for some reason it doesn't (never seen that before) you could just keep bumping it with the arrow key.

Let me know how it works!

For the effect you're looking for, there are several methods in Vegas, and you don't need to render a 24p file to do this, either.
Just put a 60i clip in a 24p timeline, and then use the Properties to get the strobe you want. Or, you can purchase the CreativEase bundle, and it too, does this, with the posterize color FX as well.
Additionally, you can use Secondary color correction along with several various Vegas plus to give you the traditional posterizer look.

Cheers for that Doug!

Hi, if anyone has any expert advice on the best way to get the images below to look good for use on a DVD that will be viewed by people on both computers and on televisions?
Also, keep in mind that I will use pan/crop to resize the width of the images to fit a 4:3 screen as necessary. I included two to show the different sizes I have to work with from not so wide (4 grids) to very wide (8 grids) that have to appear all at once within the frame. Basically they will be placed under the teacher giving the lesson. I've already gotten some input about blurring the image slightly, changing the black and white to 16 and 235 for NTSC safe color.. Hard for me to tell since this is my first attempt at doing this type of work.. I've found that blurring the image makes it look blurry (obviously) on the computer monitor.. Has anyone here done this before? If so, how did you succeed?

http://www.filelodge.com/files/room22/568910/Image1.png
http://www.filelodge.com/files/room22/568910/Image2.png

Kevin

It worked like a charm!!! Really appreciate it.

Thanx

Ian

Bit of a long shot this one.

But i have some footage from an unmanned camera (Z1E) and at some point the tripod was knocked meaning the shot isn't level - it slopes slightly left to right.

I shot in HDV format but will be delivering in SD format. I was wondering if there's anything I can do to fix this by taking advantage of the higher res of HDV. Something like - capturing HDV - than rotating the picture - then cropping it so the frame is rectangular again - then scaling down to 720 x 576 (PAL) - then rendering as DV then wishing on a star....

Any thoughts?

Ian

Yes, you can definitely do that. Just capture as HDV, zoom in slightly and crop and rotate as needed with Pan/Crop.

I've done a few scripts in Vegas 5 to help me with some frequent and repetitive tasks but it took a while to figure out. Is there a complete object model reference somewhere for the Sony.Vegas namespace? I have yet to find one.

There's the API. Look here to download the Vegas 6 API:
http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/download/step2.asp?DID=635
That should get you headed in the right direction.

Here's what I did. Go get DV Film Maker at www.dvfilm.com to deinterlace. It works great and you can chose between 24P or 60i deinterlaced output. Then for the "Film Look" you can play with these plugins that come with Vegas;
Color Corrector, Brightness & Contrast, HSL, Film Effects. I mix and match with these to give a great film look for only the cost of DV Film Maker (about $150). A Magic Bullet plugin came with Vegas. It has a few "looks" but it will bring you system to its knees when it come time to render and I get the same results using the 1st method.

Thanks Ed,
I looked all over the Sony site and never ran accross that.... I must be blind.

Not trying to hi-jack the thread here but I have been working with the trial version of Ultimate 2 as well. Seems like it's worth the money for its time saving attributes. I want to purchase Ult 2 but with Vegas 7 looming over the horizon I have to ask; will Ult 2 be compatible with it and if not at what cost will upgrade options be available?

Apparently, while working on an HDV project, while using the lower left window (explorer, projectmedia, transitions), I must have enlarged the window, thus shrinking the video preview window in the lower right of the Vegas screen. I use a 2nd monitor for my preview, but this "shrinking" of the vegas preview window, lowered the max resolution of the preview - even on the external monitor to something like 180x260. The fix was to just slightly enlarge the video preview window.

When did you use the DVfilm? After you captured?

What about HD?

Kevin

It worked like a charm!!! Really appreciate it.

Thanx

Ian

No problem... my other job is IT, so I've run across all sorts of crazy problems and had to come up with crazy sollutions.

As Edward pointed out to me on his site, if you are using Visual Studio then after you reference the dll you will have completion as you type out the code.

In this particular instance, Nick is abreviating hard drive as HD. He's saying that it'll take more hard drive space if you convert to 24p first, as you'll be having both versions of the footage on there.

As to your original question, it's always been my understanding that you would want to convert to 24p BEFORE editting, because you run the risk of your edits not falling exactly where they were before when you edit 60i/30i and then convert. Which makes for disaster, or confusion when your watching and your edit gets cut short, and part of the scene is missing.

If I'm wrong, I'm sure that one of the Vegas Lords will soon correct me! :)

Ok, thanks - original clip drop to 24 p before editing. I guess that makes sense. I wonder when I render it out, how do I preserve the 24p with Vegas?

Great!! I love code completion. They need to give the guy that came up with that idea a big fat bonus check. It makes things move so much quicker for me. I can never remember all the different properties and methods.

Yeah. You capture the video then use DV Film Maker to make a deinterlaced copy of each captured avi. You can download a trial version. I did and made comparisons then purchased. It looks really good. You'll be hard pressed to find much detail loss.

I have two PD170's so all I can get is interlaced. I use DV Film Maker when I have to pan and crop the video for different reasons. Interlacing doesn't paly nice when you start panning and cropping. I convert to 24P mov files if there isn't much action or I'm looking for a movie look and drop it into a 24P Vegas project.

If there is a lot of action and I HAVE to pan and crop I will deinterlace the clip requiring a crop to a 60i avi then drop it into a 60i Vegas project and make sure to select "none" for the project deinterlace method option. This allows the non cropped interlaced video to work like it's supposed to and allows me to pan and crop (usually to cover up a framing screw up on my part) what is needed with out affecting the the whole project.

Simple as that... it seems that the SDK "suite" from Sony is very out dated... I was wondering if anyone had any good resources on this subject? I have some things I'd like to do and a script just wouldn't be as functional.

Could anyone tell me what topics are included on disc two of this three disc tutorial? I know it is supposed to delve a little deeper into Vegas, but I'd like to know some of the specific areas that it will cover. I've used Vegas everyday for the last four years, so it's not exactly new to me, but I've never had formal training, and I know there is still a lot yet to learn. Could anyone recommend a good advanced tutorial?

Disk two contains Using pan/crop, building slideshows, adding track motion, using opacity/blending, understanding keyframes, discussion of codecs, rendering for DVDs, print-to-tape, web output, PSP, and more. This is right off of the back of the DVD case. What I really like about this set is it shows you the way the pro's go about doing the tasks. I've picked up a lot of the shortcuts on how to do things that I didn't use before. And I'm sure you know about the other disks that really go into depth on topics like color correction, DVDA, found at this link: http://www.vasst.com/search.aspx?for=1&entity=16&category=Training+Video&sort=priority. I have them all. Really good stuff. Hope this helps.
Randy

The SDK suite from Sony seems a little dated, but I believe it's sufficient since Sofo/Sony hasn't changed the Vegas filter architecture much (other than multithreading for filters).

With the filter architecture, you can also do things like GPU processing (like Magic Bullet Editor's 2).

Personally, learning how to write Vegas filter is on my (way too long) to-do list.

2- What are you trying to do?

Yes, you can definitely do that. Just capture as HDV, zoom in slightly and crop and rotate as needed with Pan/Crop.

I have a early a whole project shot in HD on the Sony HDV but am delivering in SD so the entire projects is scaled way down. I have used this more than once to zoom in a bit and pan to where the action is. Works wonders and best of all, I still didn't run out of native pixles.

jason

No problem... my other job is IT, so I've run across all sorts of crazy problems and had to come up with crazy sollutions.

I've had to do this several times as well. it is fun how people think you have some magic computer voodoo to do these sorts of things. :-) Nope. Just an insane amount of time learnign how the OS works.

jason

Rather simple... just do a flicker of some text... but I want to be able to do it randomly and be able to have sliders for freq. and such... a lot like Zenote's Random plug-in but for flicker (oh, and mine would actually work, UNLIKE theirs!)

yep, I love short cut keys... I know way too many... Oh, I learned another one the other day "Windows Key + L" locks the desktop on XP vs Ctrl+alt+delete then "K".

My favorite is walking people through settings blind, like while I'm on the road or something... they are very impressed as they couldn't even figure it out and here I am telling them how to fix it without even having a computer up :)

Thanks Randy. And yes, I did know about the other tutorials, as a matter of fact I'll probably be purchasing the color correction lesson in the near future.

In Vol 4 #3 of my newsletters I describe how to set up a VS2003 project with GUI and code completion and include the sample project for downloading. You might want to check it out.

Not sure what happened. I went to connect my xl1s via firewire to my sony viao and it won't let me capture my video. It say's it can't open the smrt capture card and to make sure it's on and not being used by another source.
It also says nothing is connected. My computer displays my xl1s is connected and window movie maker takes my video but vegas is not.

Did I hit a button by mistake. I have looked online and have found this happened to other people but they didn't know how to fix it.

What do I do?

Thanks,

Matt

Well I was going to ask how you got code completion to work in jscript but I thought I must have just missed something over the last year or two and didn't want to look too dumb. I'm using Vegas 5 and from your newsletter I see that starting with Vegas 6 you can run C# code without compiling. That's how... :-) Oh well. I'll have to get Vegas 7 when it comes out in a month or two I guess. I wish MS Office would have C# as an alternative to VBA, I like it so much better....

I hate it when I can find so many threads on a subject but no definitive answer...anyway...

I went out and bought an inexpensive Emerson television with Svideo on the back and am trying to use it for an external preview with Vegas 6. I am getting NOTHING. I first used my old Canon ZR45; connected Svid from the TV to the cam, then connected the firewire from the pc to the cam in VCR mode with AV passthrough enabled. Nothing in the Vegas preview pane, the camera, or the TV after clicking on the ext. preview in the Vegas window.

Next, I reluctantly took my PD170 out, made sure passthrough was enabled and went through the same routine after restarting Vegas. This time when I click on the external preview, it shows recompressed "Preview On External Monitor - (Frame Recompressed)" in the Vegas window but nothing in the cam LCD or the TV.

I also switched over to regular comp. cables thinking the Svideo may be the problem - still nothing. Can anyone help?

Technically, c# scripts compiled to .dll files can be run in Vegas 5 and you can still get code completion. However, you'll need some .js helper files. The "Custom DLL FAQ" section on my site has more info. The basics of how to do that can be found here as well:
http://www.peachrock.com/software/tutorials/samples.html#VegasHello

Some cameras require a menu setting to change the firewire connection from out to in.

Thanks Edward but I don't see anything like that on either my Canon, PD170, or VX2100. Any other ideas?

Surely someone has used a one of the 170's or the 2100's for this and I'm just missing something obvious.

You should be able to use the PD170 as a pass thru without changing anything in the menu BUT just for the sake of saying it (just in case) Brandon switch the camera on into VTR mode-THEN go into the menu then goto the 2nd icon VCR SET or 'V' then goto A/V-DV Out and press the scroll wheel -then roll the scroll wheel to that selection and change it to ON-that MIGHT make a difference for preview but honestly I've never had to do that. Of course I rarle use the 150 as a passthru either but for the odd times I do I've not had to change anything.

Don

Thanks Don. I finally figured it out and your suggestion helped indirectly. I never realized I had to turn the AV to DV out "OFF" to get it to work! I tried this first in my 170 and bingo, it popped on the screen. Switched back to my Canon and after turning off the AV to DV out it worked fine also. Unless I totally misunderstood, everything I've read points to this being "ON".

Also had to make sure I turned the "recompress frames" on in the Vegas monitor properties menu.

Thanks again - hopefully this will help someone else too.

Like in Cubase/Neundo? That way effects will be applied accross multiple "events" but not the whole track.