thanks Don for the info.
I didn't see where the vegas movie maker could convert 60p to 24p....do you know if this has it? I also wanted to make sure that I could modify color timing and give it some "film look" effects.

Very impresssed with Vegas but is there a straightforward way of saving a selected region of a video clip to disk in the Trimmer Window? If I only will ever need 30secs of a five minute file, in the previous program I used, it was simple to save this trimmed section as a file allowing the deletion of the never to be needed 900MB or so (in this example). Have searched help and manuals to no avail and would appreciate advice.

Yes, Vegas Movie Studio can convert to 24p. I haven't tested it against the full version to know if there is a difference in algorithms, but it does indeed, do 24p. Just for giggles, I recently did a 2 hour project in VMS Platinum to see if I could. It was all 24p from 50i HDV.

No. You can make a subclip, but this always references the original. The easiest method, and VERY fast, is to set a region, and render that region to a new track. This is one area I wish Vegas could improve, allowing a subclip to be actual, not virtual.

VASST Absolute Vegas training DVD samples are up on the VASST site here: http://www.vasst.com/coming_soon.htm. What do you think?
Randy

thanks for the info guys...i appreciate it.
Dean

Thanks for quick answer Douglas, I will stop looking. Would be great if sub-clips could be saved as files.

Where on the net I can find good tutorials for quality MPEG rendering inside Vegas, (templates, bitrates,....) some tips and tricks for faster rendering....
Regards.

Where I can download free wedding video effects, like flying baloons,explosions, moving stars, moving hearts, 3D text like "Our Wedding", "Just Married" or something to put on Vegas timeline in alpha channel.
Regards.

www.jetdv.com-Edward Troxels site for Vegas and DVDA- register then goto>Newsletter Archives>Volume 1 Number 7 has a Bitrate chart.
You should take a look at ALL of the newsletters, there's a wealth of information.

Don

Vol 1 #7 gets into many MPEG2 rendering details and Vol 4 #1 talks about going from Vegas to DVDA to build a DVD.

Well, I know a few sources for that type of clip but none that are free.

I just ordered Vegas movie studio deluxe - I got it for $89 !!
Thanks
Dean

i am a new vegas user too, and i cant tell you that you will love it

I have two mono tracks which I would like to convert into one standard stereo track.

Is there a way to do this in Vegas?

I am using Vegas 6.0(b) at this time. I will upgrade to 6.0(d) as soon as possible.

Background: I recorded a concert last night using a Sound Devices 744T. I recorded four separate tracks into one polyphonic broadcast wave file.

I used "BWF Manager" utility from Fostex to separate the one polyphonic file into four separate mono tracks. This utility will not separate four tracks into 2 stereo tracks, which I want.

Put one on track 1 and pan it left
Put another on track 2 and pan it right
Render to a new WAV file

That should do it for you.

You "cant" tell us you'll love it? Or you "can" tell us you'll love it???

Dear Edward,

Thank you very much.

You certainly are a wealth of knowledge. Your solution worked great!

i am a new vegas user too, and i cant tell you that you will love it
ohhh, now its ok
i am a new vegas user too, and i can tell you that you will love it

Hi gang,

It's clear Vegas will run nicely on a decent (read: "modestly priced) laptop.

So. Can you edit with an external HDD connected by USB 2.0?

Or is FW the preferred method of editing with external drives?

Here are a couple of examples I'm considering.

Example #1: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1696315&sku=TC3J-2048

Example #2: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1828384&sku=TC3J-2066

Well. What do y'all think?

Thank you for your time.

sincerely,


ian

I haven't looked at those links, but it should work fine. I've done editing work
on an external harddisk without problems. I would however use the USB2 interface instead of Firewire, this to ensure no problems between the harddisk and the camera when you capture / preview / playback (as I had).

I have been using an acomdata 250GB firewire drive to capture video to Vegas from my DVX100a by plugging the camcorder into the drive and the drive into the computer. Works like a charm, no problems or dropped frames. My computer is an Asus p4p800 deluxe with a P4 2.4C cpu. I am using the onboard firewire controller. Mark

I have an external drive that I've connected via USB and Firewire. I use it firewire for normal usage (USB was when connecting to another machine). I go computer --> firewire --> hard drive --> firewire --> deck. With this setup, I can capture from the deck to the external drive.

Edward: that's the exact same setup that caused problems with my Maxtor drive and a Canon XL1S. Any reason you are using firewire instead of USB2?

I've heard that setup does not work well with some cameras - seems to be especially true with Canon. It has worked great with my deck, though, so I saw now reason to go USB.

I picked firewire over USB because firewire needs less system resources (i.e. cpu power) than USB. Plus, it simply worked the way I expected it to work. Capture, print to tape, external preview... all have worked great with my Panasonic AG-DV2000 deck connected piggy-back to the drive.

Amen. I did, we all did. You will love it. Darryl

The tradeoff with quality and bitrate is heavily dependant on the type of footage you are encoding.. You cannot simply say 8000kbps is good for all things..

If you have a rock band on stage with lots of lights fading up and down and erratic movement i would say 9000kbps + is required to get it looking good. Even then i would be interested to see how it may look on newer TVs which are unforgiving with artifacts..

But if you have 2 hours of the clouds moving across the sky you could probably use 2000kbps and it would look exact same as 9000kbps cause nothing is changing too fast.

I am getting a repeated error message when trying to set up an MPEG-2 render in Vegas 6.0(d). I am hopeful that someone out there can let me know what I'm doing wrong.

Here's what I'm doing:

1. Capture native HD 720p at 24 (23.976) fps from the HD100 to Vegas;
2. Convert from the captured .m2t files to .avi files using Connect HD;
3. Insert the avi files to the video tracks and complete the edit per usual workflow in Vegas (I delete the audio tracks as audio is not necessary for this project);
4. It's render time, so I hit the "Render As... " command. I want to render to an mpeg-2 file, so I select that option in the "Save as type ..." window;
5. Oddly (at least to me) the "template" that pops up in the template window is "HDV 720-25p" - but my source material is 24p, so I hit the "Custom" button which takes me to the Custom screens. I change HDV 720-25p" to "HDV 720-24p" which then (properly, in my view) Vegas' description of the project is "Use this setting to create an HD 720-24p MPEG-2 file" - which is exactly what I want. Video rendering quality is set to "Best";
6. I then go to the Video Tab. The settings that appear here (most of which I don't even pretend to understand) are: output type (ATSC) (which I change to "MPEG-2" because that's what I want outputted) which consequently automatically changes all the variable bit rate settings to 9,800,000. The other settings in this tab are Width (1280), Height (720), Frame Rate (23.976), Aspect Ratio (16x9 Display), I-Frames (15), B-Frames (2), Profile (Main Profile), Level (High 1440 Level), Field Order (Progressive Only), Video Quality (15 on the slider);
7. I go to the audio tab and uncheck Audio;
8. I click OK, taking me back to the main rendering window. Having named the file to be saved, I click OK (hoping it will render) - but as soon as I do I get the Vegas 6 pop-up message "An error occurred while creating the media file ... The reason for the error could not be determined".

Any thoughts?

The template is ignorant of your project settings, to start with.
Second of all, how are you planning/where are you planning to author the DVD? Currently, DVDA doesn't support HD output, so it will recompress your file anyway.
You are creating (I think) another HDV file when you're choosing these options, but you're violating the specs for the stream. If you are looking for output on a DVD that can be shared with friends, you need to render to a 720 x 480 file using the NTSC 24p template. That'll give you what I believe you are looking for.

The template is ignorant of your project settings, to start with.
Second of all, how are you planning/where are you planning to author the DVD? Currently, DVDA doesn't support HD output, so it will recompress your file anyway.
You are creating (I think) another HDV file when you're choosing these options, but you're violating the specs for the stream. If you are looking for output on a DVD that can be shared with friends, you need to render to a 720 x 480 file using the NTSC 24p template. That'll give you what I believe you are looking for.

Douglas, thanks very much for your reply.

The project will never be authored to a DVD and it will be used as an MPEG-2 demo on my (and possibly other) computer and also uploading it for web access. In short, Vegas' decription of my choice of settings in the "project description" box is exactly what I want - an HD 720-24p MPEG-2 file.

I suppose that I could render the project as an .m2t file, but that would limit me in being able to burn the file to a disk and dropping it into another computer that only had Windows Media Player installed and not VLC media player or equivalent.

Please bear with me here, because I'm very new to the HD100 and editing its product in Vegas.

Is there any way of displaying the original date and time of clips on the timeline in Vegas 6.0d? I've been used to seeing this automatically in Windows Movie Maker but can't find any reference to this info in either clip properties or media manager. I convert the original caputed .m2t files into avi for edit purposes by the way, (replacing later for final render).
Thanks

I've written about this before for DV, not sure if it works with HDV. Give it a try?

A friend of mine found out that you CAN see the original date and
time your footage was recorded (from the DV file) if your camera
saves this! As some may know besides time code extra information
like date and time (which is used to automatically split files during
capture for example) is also present inside DV files.
To view this information in your project do the following:

1. go to your media pool

2. select views -> details (the little icon above the media pool with a little grid and an arrow pointing down, click on this little arrow)

3. now the mediapool will change to a column view.

The third column from the end is "Date/Time Stamp" which is the
date/time the DV camera gave to the file.
Came from this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=20830

(it is a sticky thread in the SD Vegas forum)

Hello fellow Vegas geniuses (I’m actually still an amateur though),

I have a couple of questions regarding sound. I understand that mp3 formats compress the sound files and that there are other formats that don’t. This naturally results in some quality loss after each render. Here are my questions:

1. Which file format is best for editing? I have been told that avi is best for video, but what is best for audio?

2. I noticed that most programs typically render mp3 files at a constant bit rate instead of a variable bit rate by default. I have been told that variable bit rate is more efficient that constant bit rate for mpeg and I assuming that it is for mp3 as well. It just puzzles me that most programs don’t select “highest quality” for the mp3 files by default but they select constant bit rate. Is there some big disadvantage to variable bit rate?

I appreciate your valuable time to answer my questions. Please feel free to leave me any additional information that would be useful or links to sites that you think would help educate me better in this area. Also, do not hesitate to add a response even if someone else has. The more responses I have the better.

Thank you so much.

~Peter Diamond

"Best for editing" can mean a number of things.

Highest-quality native editing would be the native format of whatever you're editing. For DV, best quality will result from editing in DV.

An AVI file can be DV, and Vegas captures DV as AVI. But AVI is just a file format; it's not a codec or a standard. An AVI can be highly-compressed or uncompressed.

But if you're working with HD, editing in HD might not be "best," because your computer might not be up the challenge of moving all of that information around. In these cases, it's often "best" to work with an intermediate codec so that you can preview in real time, or even play the timeline at a frame rate above 4 at all.

As for audio, use the best-quality codec/format (sometimes it's both) you can. WAV files are typically far less compressed than MP3s, if at all, so WAVs are typically superior.

I was looking for a simple and inexpensive way to do nice title effects when a friend mentioned swish max.

My question is does Vegas 5 support flash files made with swish and if it does do you just place them on the timeline like any other piece of media?

I often want to sync a clip relative to another clip in another track, for example, to match up to an audible beat in an audio track or to a visual cue in one frame of a video track. Without being able to "lock" these two clips together, when I edit things, I lose the match-up between the two clips; one stays behind in its same position.

Is there a way to lock them together, one frame staying with another frame in another clip, even if you slide them around, etc?

PCM (packaged as .wav files in PC) are by far the best for editing. .wav is the same as uncompressed vid, in that it's an uncompressed audio file, and less costly on the CPU. While a wav can contain compressed information (just like an avi can) it typically is not a compressed file format.
16bit/48K PCM is standard audio for video, 16bit/44.1K audio is standard for CD. High Def audio is still a .wav format, but sampled at 24bit/192k.

Hey all.
I'm finally going to move to a 3 monitor PC setup. I have a Dell 8400 with an NVidia 6800 with dual outs (one analog, one dvi) that I use for two standard 19" LCD's. I'd like to add a 3rd HD monitor to the mix, utilizing an NVidia 7600 video card, using the DVI out for an HD monitor. In Vegas, I would use this as the preview window and the other two monitors as workspace.

Using Windows XP Media center, does anyone see a problem with this? The Dell is a P4 3.0 with 2G's of RAM.

Thanks.

Also, anyone know where I can get a decent 19" LCD HD monitor/TV with DVI?

Sure. Select them both and press "G" to "Group" them.

There are some limitations but the short answer is yes.

I was looking for a simple and inexpensive way to do nice title effects when a friend mentioned swish max.

My question is does Vegas 5 support flash files made with swish and if it does do you just place them on the timeline like any other piece of media?

I used Swish and then Swishmax for website development. They have a great product for the price. I hope you can use it with Vegas.

-gb-

look at this tutorial, i think it will help you
http://www.johnrofrano.com/tutorials/swishmax.htm

Perfect-o. Thanks!

If I knew the Vegas terminology was "Group" instead of "Lock" or "Sync" I woulda been able to find that with the search feature and saved ya the trouble!

I spent some time scouring the forums here with the search tool but I didn't really see anything that answered my question on the nose:

Does anybody know (based on statistics) whether more internet users can see .mov's vs. WMV's vs. Flash movies?

I'm wondering which one to encode to, for embedding in a webpage so the majority of users can see it.

I had some footage on a DVD that was 2.40 aspect ratio. As you know, this is wider than widescreen (16:9). The result is large black bars generated on a 4:3 TV and small black bars generated on a 16:9 tv. I captured this video from my DVD player through the capture card into Vegas. Playing it at 16:9 (which is the best I can do), it captured the video with the small black bars included.

After editing it and then rendering to WS NTSC video, taking it into DVD architect and exporting a DVD with menu, it comes out the correct ratio, like it should....but....This is a 16:9 video with small black bars built into it. The problem is that when you play it back on a 4:3 TV you see the video, the built in black bars and the black bars that the TV itself renders to fit the video onscreen. TV's render anything from totally black to very grey bars....this clashes with the built in black bars. It's very distracting to see two different tones of bars around the video.

So, I tried cropping the clip from 720x480 to 720x363.63 and adjusting the project settings and rendering a file that size. This works - it renders a file of the correct size and porpotions which houses only the video itself and no black bars, so theoretically if you played it back on a TV - no matter WS or regular it would have to render the bars for whatever area is missing and therefore it would be uniform. Ok, so now the editing process is done correctly....

The only problem is DVD Architect. It freaks out and does not recognize any video which isn't any one of four different sizes (4:3, 16:9, pal or pal WS). It insists on recompressing the video to 16:9 which basically gives it an anomorphic stretch. This is not desirable because it doesn't look good on this footage and I can't afford the recompression time.

Does anyone know how to make DVD architect accept different aspect ratios? Or do I need to use some other authoring software? If so, what software can do this? There must be a way to author in these aspect ratios, because there's a ton of movies with them out there. Thank you so much if you can help.

First, here's a list of things I've already tried or that won't be options:

-I am NOT going to edit VOB files in womble.

-I am NOT going to convert mpg to avi and edit that.

-I know DVD isn't the greatest input source, but that's what I have to work with and that's what I'm going to do.

-I am not going to make a mask for the clip for the black bars. Every TV generates a different color - some black - and some grey and no matter what I do they won't match everyone's tv.

-I already tried cropping the clip down to where there are no black bars and rendering a normal 16:9 file. This is the same problem with the mask....it won't match every TV and everyone's different brightness settings.

-I cannot just adjust the settings on my TV until they match. This product will be seen by hundreds of different people and I can't just tell them to adjust their sets.

-I cannot just make a fake widescreen disc, because I want this to play on both kinds of TVs. I also cannot make two different versions.

-I already tried replacing the VOB of that file with the original MPG of the correct size....that's not going to happen, apparently.

All PC and some (many?) MAC internet users can see WMVs. This should be the majority by far.

David & Douglas, thank you for your responses. Can either of you, or anyone else reading this message, answer my question regarding bit rate:
-
I noticed that most programs typically render mp3 files at a constant bit rate instead of a variable bit rate by default. I have been told that variable bit rate is more efficient that constant bit rate for mpeg and I assuming that it is for mp3 as well. It just puzzles me that most programs don’t select “highest quality” for the mp3 files by default but they select constant bit rate. Is there some big disadvantage to variable bit rate?
-
Thank you again!

The short answer is that if you're not going to do all the things you listed that you're not going to do, you're not going to get the DVD output you want.

you can have anamorphic widescreen.
you can have letterboxed widescreen.

Some television systems correctly read the flag; others don't. Some televisions require a resetting of menu options, others don't offer any control at all.
I know DVD Studio Pro would manage it the same way, so will DVD Workshop. Those two, and DVD Architect are all we author with, so can't comment on Reel, Scenarist, DVDLab, and some of the others. I don't work much with Encore anymore, but it too, would manage it something like DVDA is, based on previous versions.
Maybe someone else has a smarter answer than I do, but I'm thinking you're going to have to give up one of your "nots."

I have attempted to use swish b4 but the outcome wasnt as good in terms of quality.. blufftitler does a better job but swish does have a lot more effects to offer...

There's a workaround.

All anamorphic video burned on a DVD -- and this includes Hollywood DVDs, too -- is 16:9.

If a movie is 2.35:1 or 2.39:1 or 2.40:1 or wider, black bars are part of the picture. This is as true of the "Star Wars" DVDs as it is of the project I just burned yesterday.

The problem comes when viewing on a 4:3 TV. When you do this, most DVD players are set at default to letterbox anamorphic (widescreen) video. That is to say, the player will squish the anamorphic picture down to its proper 16:9 proportion and then add black on the top and bottom to fill the rest of the 4:3 screen.

These bars, at least in North America, are 7.5 IRE to match the NTSC standard of every 4:3 TV. Which is to say, they're a little bit gray and not true black.

If you crop the footage on your timeline to 2.40:1, what you're really doing is reveailing the empty timeline below. That timeline is black, but true black, 0 IRE black.

You render as widescreen, you get a 16:9 image with 0 IRE bars as part of that image.

The DVD player inserts 7.5 IRE bars above and below, and they look gray next to the 0 IRE black. You end up with those black-black bands. They can really stand out.

So, what you need to do is make those black bars -- which you can't avoid having in the picture -- match the bars the DVD player will add. So you have to make them 7.5 IRE.

You can do this a couple of ways. You can use a mask, but the easiest way I've found is to do the 2.40:1 crop, and then go to the Media Generator and lay a solid color UNDER the video. Use a black solid, but then go into its properties and change the R, G, and B values to 16 instead of 0. This is the digital equivalent of 7.5 IRE.

Assuming you're working in a widescreen project, the black card generated will automatically be 16:9. If you're working in a 4:3 project, crop it to 16:9. But it has to be 16:9 in order to fill out the image.

This will increase render time, but it will get rid of the black banding you're seeing.