Maybe I can put this question another way ...

I want to render from an .m2t file processed by CineForm Connect HD into a Connect HD .avi file to an HD 720-24p MPEG-2 file (thus preserving a 1280x720 resolution but in an mpeg-2 format).

What should my rendering settings be in Vegas 6.0(d)?

(perhaps my lack of practical knowledge is killing me here, and I can certainly render to files with a .wmv or a .m2t extension keeping the 1280x720 res, but I just can't seem to get Vegas to save to a file with a .mpg extension at that res)

Sytnax Olevia LCD TVs http://www.syntaxgroups.com/ are supposedly good quality at a low price, but I don't know if they are good enough for editing. Many users have rated their 26" HDTV with positive reviews. (http://www.pricegrabber.com/rating_getprodrev.php/masterid=12430844/id_type=masterid). However, if you want a true 1080p monitor, then check out this thread (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=63316).

Thank you guys so much - this worked perfectly. Sorry about the list of
"not gonna do its" sounding a bit snoby. Sometimes I post something and I get responces that are way off center like suggesting editing mpgs or something.

I thought for sure that TVs all generated different black bars, because they look blacker on computer screens and more grey on TVs. This wasn't the case, monitors are just usually set darker or something. I tested it on every monitor, tv, portable DVD player and computer that I have and it works perfectly, no matter the brightness setting.

I now have a saved timeline with a 16% generated media grey clip and several different crop macros for different aspect ratios, and am ready to roll.

My rendering time is even more horrible now, but I think that when I buy my decklink card and SCSI array and use uncompressed video, that will solve that problem.

Anyone trying this be sure to use the generated media clip from Vegas under the video and not a bmp made in photoshop or whatever. The generated media clip should be uniform with the color settings all the way through your output in DVD architect. And if you use a color filter on your video (like I do) be sure to only apply it to the clip or the track(s) necessary and not the whole project (because then it will skew the grey clip). I'm glad I didn't have to end up using a different authoring software, because I really love Architect.

Not sure if you've got a different version of Vegas, but on mine the column view ('grid') comes up automatically in media manager but the only column relating to date and time is one labelled 'original date' which is empty for all media. However, given that these are long clips covering multiple dates, I'm not sure what it should say? There's no date/time stamp option in 'column chooser'.

Update: I thought it might be something to do with the camcorder (HC1) or a feature missing from HDV footage so I tried adding a short avi file filmed with a different Sony DV camcorder that I know recorded this info. The file is a clip all filmed on the same day but still nothing in the 'original date' field.

I would have expected to see something on the clips on the timeline so that when it changes I could see imediately which clips relate to which dates/times. I tried turning on 'view active take information' but that only seemed to put the name of the file on the clip.

More thoughts welcome.
Thanks

That procedure works for Vegas 5. I haven't tried it yet with version 6 (as always not enough time in a day). Sorry!

I'm not sure if this can be done, but I have a scene that has a heavy shadow over an object that I want to be seen more. Is there a way to lighten just the shadowed area a bit?

You can do it a few ways, but your best bet might be with the Color Curves.

Using the RGB curve, raise the lower left corner a little bit.

I'm not sure if this can be done, but I have a scene that has a heavy shadow over an object that I want to be seen more. Is there a way to lighten just the shadowed area a bit?

Brandon, there is indeed.
You can use a mask or cookie cutter to isolate the area you wish to lighten so it doesn't affect the other areas. YOu'll want to use either Curves or secondary color correction to achieve this.
Make a dupe track of the trouble area.
Isolate top track problem areas with mask
Apply curves or SCC
Blend top and bottom.
You may/likely will need to toggle the SCC or Curves to apply BEFORE the mask, using the pre/post toggle in the SCC or Curves filters.

There is a tutorial on this found at: http://vasst.com/resource.aspx?id=b6ae8dc8-1929-4047-9ce9-d8621e39d313

[edit] looks like David beat me to the post!

thanks to both of you, I will try it!

I've made my project in dvda. I have the film in mpeg2 format on the main menu with it's partnered ac3 audio file.

I press preview and go through it to make sure it's ok. It works perfectly - looks & sounds great.
I press make dvd, press 'burn'. It prepares the files and burns a dvd.
The movies looks perfect but there is no audio.

There's no warning messages in the prepare stage.
I tried re-rendering the audio track. I deleted the prepared files and re-prepared the dvd.
Still the same problem.

Please help - I'm stuck.

There are a couple of things I've seen that can cause this:

1) The audio is on the left only and the right is all that's plugged in (or the other way around)

2) The audio from left+Right is being combined into a single audio input and the two channels are cancelling each other out.

If it previews fine in DVDA, the audio should also be present on the DVD.

Yep, you were right
my bad - thanks Ed

i have a finished 720p hdv file i want to network render using to networked computers. I have set up a shared folder on my e drive with the vegas project not the media. media is on e drive though. when i goto render with networked checked vegas trys to open up that service and says network service not available. it is a full version of vegas. i know the computers are linked. but it seem microsoft net 1.1 is having trouble mabye????


1. do i need vegas installed on both machines and running on both machines to do this.

2. Can i do this if my media files are in cineform codec and the codec is not installed on both machines

2. if i have magic bullet effects do i need to install that on both machines too or are third party effects, text, and codecs only for nested projects like it says in the help section.


I already have a pretty fast machine but want more power!!! lol

nevermind i think this is not going to work anyhow from the research i have done. seems like with the large source files from hdv incineform codec it is just going to make things longer even with a 100mbps network card.. the test i read work well with small source files and heavy effecets...

but rate my rendering time anyhow

1080i cineform footage 3minutes 21 secs long with magic bullet applied to entire timeline going to wmv 720 30p 6mbps. 26 minutes

oh and can you even tell a difference with 1080 and 720p. i got that newwidescreen gateway monitor 1000:1 contrast looks real nice. 21". 720 looks just as good. mabye only see a difference on big screen huh?

Hope I'm not asking too many questions lately, but I'm trying to edit down a wedding and keep running into little issues that really annoy!

In this case I am editing down a slideshow using digital pics taken by the wedding photographer in Vegas5. In certain pictures in the slideshow (after rendering and encoding) there is a drastic 'shimmer' effect that is horrible (mainly with subjects against white backgrounds).

Without dealing with stills that often in Vegas, I'm not sure if its because they are rendered interlaced, just badly encoded or something else. They are very high resolution JPEGs and I am using Canopus at a fairly high encoding bitrate.

Anyone else had this issue or know of a fix?

1) vegas must be installed on both ( total 3) computers

2) Vegas has the cineform codec within it ...

3) magic bullet needs to be installed on all computers .. also any other plugins would need to be installed on all computers

network rendering doesn't help render to WMV or mpeg2 or ac3

it isn't so much the files size over the network but how fast can the CPU render a frame ... if you have NO effects or FX's that take up little CPU then a 100 network will NOT keep up and would slow the rendering of the project.
if you were rendering to avi .. and say you have heavy CC, magic bullet and few other effects then even a 100 network would NOT have any problem keeping up with the CPU's rendering ? if you see it is taking 1-10 sec to render a frame then a gigabyte network isn't going to make it any faster.
basically if you can count the frames (verbal or in your mind - look bottom right V preview) as vegas renders them then it is NOT using the full 100 network speed.

also under network rendering it has to "stitch" all the pieces togther when it finishes rendering .. sometime i use 4-6 computers and can spit out a render in 10 min but it might take another 6 min to stitch it together into one clip ..

yeah ...thanks for the answer. Man whats your power bill with 6 computers going on...lol...I'll just click render on one machine and go to sleep for the night...lol

hi
my audio level in trimmer is very low, but not in timeline. How can i put it to normal level?

I'm using vegas 5. I just started editing a music video we shot over the past few days and I'm having trouble with a flash transition(at the 30 sec mark). I only want it to be in the letterbox but it's in the entire frame. Any ideas?

http://www.millenniumbmx.com/2nd verse_1000k.wmv

What will be the export format(16:9)?
I guess you have 16:9 footage on a 4:3 project. You can go file>properties and select a widescreen template(apply) and then right-click on the video preview and check "simulate device aspect ratio".
This might be a solution...

The vasst website is what you need. The path is vasst.com>free resources>Project files (but you just have to sign-up before)
There are a lot of *.veg files to try.

http://www.vasst.com/search.aspx?type=1

The video is in 4:3. I just cropped it to siimulate a 16:9 look. I tried your suggestion and no luck. It just stretched the video to the full frame.

Ah! I see...
You can insert a black solid color chart (from the media generator) above your timeline in a new video track and with a duration as long as your transition is. Go to the event pan/crop tool of this chart and make two rectangle masks, top and bottom of the screen (assuming these are the black stripes that gives you the "widescreen" feeling.
This works for me in vegas6 but a can't give you the x.y numbers of the rectangle's anchors because I am in PAL and I'm not familiar with the NTSC dimensions of DV. Experiment and you'll see.

check this *.veg I uploaded to help you
www.geocities.com/stamvas1/Untitled.zip

If that's a Vegas 6 VEG file, he won't be able to open it in Vegas 5.

As Vasilis was saying, just add another video track above all other tracks and put a mask on that track. Then you won't have to worry about anything showing up in that area no matter which track it is on.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=54275

You can't do anything with the audio levels in Trimmer. It likely is you've got a mix level on the Timeline that is allowing audio to be at correct level, but level in Trimmer is the untouched, actual audio level.

is it due to limitations of wmv, mpeg2, etc. that it can't be network rendered?

if so, what use is network anyway?

Adding to the suggestions in the post Edward referred to:

4) Rescaling (one pixel rez on the timeline, rendering to a different pixel rez) is one of the applications in which choosing "best" in the rendering custom settings may help. Be prepared for longer rendering times - try a short test first to see if this helps.

5) Gaussian Blur is good, as Douglas suggested, I've also been using unsharp mask in photoshop/paintshop pro to prepare stills. Many times I have higher rez stills on the timeline so I can do moves on them. Not sure if this works as well for digital stills as it does for scans.

SB

Ok, Ill give it a try tonight. Thanks.

If that's a Vegas 6 VEG file, he won't be able to open it in Vegas 5.

stupid me didn't noticed George has mentioned V5 if I had so, I would have done it in V5. sorry george.
Btw what camcorder did you shoot the video? I'd like to know cause I'm planning of buying one soon.

I shot it with a Panasonic gs-120. I'm getting my fx1 in a few weeks though....

On my Computer somewhere......

flicker....stuttering pictures
In VMS 6, right-click on the event (each still photo), and select "switches", then check the box "reduce interlace flicker".

One of the things I did to help alleviate the problem is to turn off 'Fast Video Resizing'. This is a check box that appears
on the Render Settings screen when you go to Make Movie (at least in Movie Studio 4). It slows down the rendering, but also
cleaned up some of the problems like you are describing.

Also check "best" in project render settings.

Eliminated it completely for me.

I shot it with a Panasonic gs-120. I'm getting my fx1 in a few weeks though....

I was thinking of buying the same (fx1) after a long period researching but I'm not sure yet.
Good luck George!

I find out how to speed up rendering time from DV AVI to MPEG 2.
After editing on the Vegas timeline is much faster encoding video to DV AVI again , and then encoding as DV AVI file to external Mainconcept encoder to MPEG DVD format( 720x576, 8000 bitrate).This will short the rendering time of the project abut double with the same quality.Using TMPGEnc encoder is the different story. How do you explain this?
I have to render 90 min DV AVI file. to MPEG (720x576, audio 224). Video bitrate calculator says to encode with about 6500 bitrate to fit on one DVD disc.But when I encode with same parametars in Vegas the final MPEG file is about 3.2Gb.Then I've try with 8000 bitrate and the final MPEG file was about 4.1Gb.
So that says that I can put 90min top quality (720x576, bitrate 8000) to one DVD disc.Question? If I have to render 60 min project, still to use 8000 bitrate as when I rendering 90 min????, because higher bitrate then 8000 I never use.But when encoding with TMPGEnc, there is no chance to render more theh 70 min with the same parametars.
So who lies here?Which encoder works corectly. Why bigger MPEG file when encoding with TMPGEnc?
Regards.

Is it possible the TMPGenc file included audio but the Vegas file did NOT? The DVDA presets in Vegas do NOT include audio - you are supposed to render that separately into an AC3 file.

Actually i found the problem in advanced internal preferences - default preview level was altered to less then 0,1 instead of 1 (so there is the way to alter the audio level in trimmer).I don't know what is the reason for this, because i never alter this prefs, only for positioning frame dock to the top and timeline to the bottom.

Who knows anything about the Vegas Training course and Certification Test to be held at NAB this year?

Sounds great, I just have a couple questions before I plunk down 500 bucks and miss two days of NAB.

I'd like to know who's teaching it, what the curriculum is, will it focus solely on HD, how applicable will it be to version 5?

Any chance to schedule it for Sunday/Monday rather than Tuesday/Wednesday?

fill me in,
Scott

I just called Sony Media Software and after a long wait, this is what the guy told me. The seminar is the class version of this item: http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/products/showproduct.asp?PID=1003&SPID=386

The table of contents are listed there. Some of the stuff I don't know -- but I think curling up with the PDF manual might be just as beneficial to me, since I think I know over half to 3/4 of this. For beginning users, it sounds like a godsend though. There are other seminars I'd like to be at during the course time.

Not to change the thread subject, but I'm curious -- does anyone's jobs require Vegas certification? Would it be a plus, say for job hunting?

e to know who's teaching it, what the curriculum is, will it focus solely on HD, how applicable will it be to version 5?
It will use Vegas 6 as the application current to Sony's releases. No, it is not solely on HD. It's the entire app. It's a certification class.

Any chance to schedule it for Sunday/Monday rather than Tuesday/Wednesday??

Not likely. Rooms at NAB are pricy and rare.

I'm sure you'll be hearing of other certification options in the future.
while you might know most of what is taught in the class, it's the cert that has value. Many corporations won't hire unless you're certified by a manufacturer or recognized traininer in a particular software application. It demonstrates that someone other than you says you know the software. The test isn't nearly as easy as you might think.

I can visualize what I want to do - I just don't know exactly how to achieve it... Imagine that you're watching a video of a one person interview. I want to be able to show a real-time graphical bar showing audio peaks and levels on the screen (like off to the side, bottom or something like that) where I can still see the interviewee and the graphic/bars side by side. The only method I've been able to come up with is to video record a meter that is properly synched up even with the video -- then do a split screen to finish the effect.

I have Vegas 6.0d - and thought I'd start here to see if anybody has any ideas beyond the idea I came up with.

Thanks in advance, in a rears and cherrios...
-Michael

I guess after editing the video, you could play back the timeline while capturing the screen and then overlay the vegas meters over the video afterwards (which is basically what you said).

Many cameras can display the meters on the screen. You could possibly capture analog (but you'd get the other screen information as well.)

after effects has a plugin for this.. cant remember what its called but i think its from trapcode..

what Ed said is another option.. u can use camtasia for this and then overlay the peaking levels video in vegas without a problem.

Media Player has several bars or waves which react to the audio - you could play the audio in MP, record it, either with a screen capture app like Camtasia or shoot on LCD with casmera, then input the video to Vegas and synch with the original audio.

yes it sounds simple but is it. NAtress sells a filter i would love to have but it works only for final cut pro. it allows you to draw a line over a layer of video that has growth to it. so you could animate a line on a map. how can i do this...otherwise

Thanks for the advice so far -- and it looks like that confirms my initial findings.. To Peter Jefferson -- thank you so much for passing trapcode along. I checked out their website and I was very impressed with all of their effects and add-ons.. To the best of your knowledge are there any other effects-driven programs out there that work inside Vegas?? I've checked out Particle Illusion before and it had similar effect-type things you could do with it.

Regards,
-Michael

Looks like the brand new VASST Absolute Vegas training DVD's are available for order now on the VASST site: http://www.vasst.com/. Great prices too. You can order one or a set. Woohoo! The samples look great. Can't wait to get them!
Randy

Prodad allows you to do this, very easily. www.prodad.de

Couldn't you do this by layering a no-line map with a lined map, then use an animated bezier mask to reveal the line over time?

Sorry. I'm not a Vegas user, so no specific instructions, but maybe the concept will help. Good luck.

Couldn't you do this by layering a no-line map with a lined map, then use an animated bezier mask to reveal the line over time?

Sorry. I'm not a Vegas user, so no specific instructions, but maybe the concept will help. Good luck.
Sure, you could do it this way too. ProDad is easier, but you could do it with Beziers. Or, you could create angular lines with track motion squeezed down, etc. There are probably a dozen ways to do it. Question is how fast, cheep, or good you want it.

thanks douglas this looks promising