Yes, Vegas has a Broadcast Safe filter. It may be just as easy to simply make sure the colors fall within the 16-235 range instead. (i.e. instead of 255,255,255 use 235,235,235 which will still look white but won't be "pure" white which can cause problems)

You can also put a 16 16 16 RGB black background underneath... the Vegas default is 0 0 0 RGB, which is not a legal black.

I don’t have M-Audio KeyRig but I do have M-Tron and it does not plug in. I’m not sure it really is an audio plug-in. What would it process? (it’s just a sample player) I have use Native Instruments B4 in Vegas as a Leslie effect and it works great.

~jr

One of my favorite tools is keyframing special effects...for example making the lens flare effect move across a picture/video clip.

Unfortunately, the keyframe feature is gone from all video effects work areas.

I can still keyframe in Pan/Scan, but in nothing else. I suspect I accidentally removed it somehow, I have a vague memory of having had no sleep for three days and messing something up a while ago, but I'm not sure what is going on!

Appreciate any help...

Jeff Harper
Cincinnati, OH

Open up the window missing the timeline at the bottom of the effect screen. Move the mouse SLOWLY to the bottom of the screen. As soon as it turns into an up/down arrow, click and drag upwards.

The timeline at the bottom of the effects windows is resizable. You've apparently resized yours to nothing.

All

Thanx for the great advice. I've reduced the black and the white slightly - and as you've suggested - it still looks black and white - but jitters gone and I can still keep the rectangles a decent size.

Ian

I just love this stuff -thanks!

E T...that's who...thanks Edward...that was it...Jeff Harper

Put that tiny section in a LOOP and keep playing it WHILE adjusting the transition. It helps me get that kinda *BANG* urgency.

Grazie

So I'm working on a project with 5.1 surround sound and the only way I could direct anything to the LFE channel was to make copies of the appropriate audio tracks and mark them for LFE. Is this the "right way" to utilize LFE, or am I missing a way to configure an audio track for both (example) front L/R and LFE (using cutoff frequency).

Thanks,

Ron

Themes - Buttons - Background Tabs are all empty? I went to make a DVD and those 3 folder were all empty so I couldn't have any menu's. When I look at the directory that DVD arcitect is in there two themes folders. One is "_Themes" the other is "themes". Why do I have 2 ? Why does the program not show any in the tab themes, and why no buttons or backgrounds? I don't even see a folder in the directory label buttons or backgrounds. Are they located somewhere else? Thanks - PK

Is there a way to direct where Vegas saves it's .sfk files?

They get kind of cumbersome and clog viewing of folders.

Thanks in advance.

They will always be saved in the exact same folder as the file they are created from. There's no way to change that behaviour. Besides, what if you had two files with the same name in two different folders? One would overwrite the other if you were able to direct them somewhere else.

When I delete an AVI or WAV file (or any other for that matter), I always try to also get the associated SFK files too.

Plus, they're safe to delete as well. They'll simply be recreated as needed when those files are next accessed.

There's supposed to be two (_Themes and Themes). These should automatically have files in them upon the installation of DVD A. If those two folders are empty, I'd reinstall DVD A.

There's supposed to be two (_Themes and Themes). These should automatically have files in them upon the installation of DVD A. If those two folders are empty, I'd reinstall DVD A.


Thanks Edward. That is what I did, and after reinstall - all is good again, but it is strange; Where, or why they weren't there all of a sudden?

Hi,

I am looking for a professional (no loss of quality) solution to read back alrady produced DVD-material (VOB) files. I am using Sony Vegas and Sony DVD production software but they do not support reading VOB files.

A VOB file is acually MPG video and audio, with some additional info added, as subtitles...

I have noticed that you CAN convert a VOB file to MPG just by renaming it accordingly!!! I found this idea in the Wikipedia. The file then plays and imports into most applications that reads the MPG format.

However, this works only if the project is a single VOB file. Since VOB files have a size limitation (about 1GB) a longer than 15 minute project is split in multiple VOB files on a DVD.

Converting the remaining VOB files (those that do not start at timecode 00000) does not work. They come out just as short unusable clips.

So - I am looking for a application or method that could simply convert the VOBs to MPEG without loss in quality. No re-encoding is necessary since the video is already MPG within the VOBs.

Please anyone - please enlight me in this matter. Any help is more than appreciated. Additionally, I think that this question is of bigger general interest. I cannot be the only one that needs to re-edit material that I have produced into a DVD earlier.


Sincerely,

Christian

For editing purposes, you are probably better off converting to AVI files. If you Google "Convert VOB files" you will find a pethora of commercial and freeware VOB convertors out there.

Hallo,

there ist always the possibilty to join the 1 GB - VOBs to one big VOB - File. Some VOB - Rip Tools offer the possibilty just to do that. Check the preferences in Your Rip - Tool.

Richard

I am looking for a professional (no loss of quality) solution to read back alrady produced DVD-material (VOB) files. I am using Sony Vegas and Sony DVD production software but they do not support reading VOB files.

If you're using Vegas 6, this feature was added in the 6.0c update and it works great. I've had to use it a few times for the same reasons you do. There is a quality drop when you do another DVD though because Vegas has to re-encode everthing. Apparently this can be avoided with software such as Video Redo and Womble MPEG2VCR as they don't change anything if all you want to do is cuts.

Mike

Thanks for the reply. That makes sense about the Mtron - though it leaves me with questions as the documentation lists under the requirements needing a 'VST 2.0 or RTAS compatible host application for plug-in operation.' I don't quite understand all this stuff yet.

You can import them into Vegas (all versions, or at least 4.0+). You just have to specify "view all files" in the dropdown menu in the "import" dialog, instead of "view all media files."

Likewise, you can just drag a file into the media pool.

For editing purposes, you are probably better off converting to AVI files. If you Google "Convert VOB files" you will find a pethora of commercial and freeware VOB convertors out there.Just wanted to point out that any form of transcoding will cause a loss in quality. That (major) point aside, AVI's are much better for editing if you can take the quality hit, because your cuts are frame-accurate. Not possible with MPEG-2. But again, transcodes are usually very lossy.

DVDLab will also import and create a combined file for video and audio in the same folder which can be used to edit or re author a DVD. Most of the consumer programs like Ulead Moviefactory will also do this too.

Ron Evans

I just bought this program (Vegas 6.0) as a step up from Pinnacle 9. This is a huge step and the learning curve for this program is great. What's the best way to learn? Should I click in and out of everything, buy a tutoring DVD, scan forums, or get a book?

Thanks!

Use all the resourses you mention,but try VAAST at: http://www.vasst.com/

They are a DVInfo sponsor and have "written" the book on Vegas training.

This may sound weird, but try it:

Find a project to do. Short film, commercial, whatever. Give yourself a specific goal to accomplish. You'll come to a point where you want to know "how do I do this?", and then you can look to the help files, look to a book, etc. That would be the way I'd do it, as opposed to watching DVDs or just reading a book straight through. The first thing you might need to learn is "how do I capture?" So you'd open your book and look at the section on setting up for capture. Next maybe you need to know how to get a clip on the timeline. Then you need to learn how to slice clips up to get rid of the unwanted material. ETc.

Basically, work until you encounter an obstacle, and then learn how to overcome it, keep working 'til you encounter another one. Your body of knowledge about the system will develop over time that way, and it seems like, since you're actually using the program, you'll retain more than just watching/reading.

I think I like books better than DVDs for this kind of thing.

That's my opinion.

I glanced around but did not find the immediate answer. I am going to mess around with HDConnect's ability to convert to 24P. My plan will be to shoot in 60i and then let HDConnect 3.0 do the rest. My question...what settings
should I use in Vegas to edit and then render for SD dvd output?

Thanks for your help.

Good advice from Josh. That's pretty much what I did to start - initially just with the manual (which in itself is pretty good).

Once you become confortable with it, then it is time to get some "training" of some sort. The reason I say that is I got to a point where I could do what I needed to do in Vegas, but there were lots of features of Vegas which I wasn't using. I bought Douglas Spotted Eagle's Vegas book and worked through that - it introduces a lot of features I didn't know or use... or in some cases easier/better ways of doing things I was already doing.

The training DVDs are definitely worth it. Spot's book, the manual, and even the forums are filled with good information and tips. You can also browse through my newsletters (http://www.jetdv.com). It has an ongoing "Beginner's Corner" series.

Let me go a little further. In the new project template there is no HD 24p setting. There is a dv setting for this. I need to know what my project setup should be to input this 24p and then what my output setting for dvd should be.

Basically do I keep it at 1080 60i and change the frame rate to 24 or do I need to look somewhere else.

Thanks again

Take the 1080 60i template, convert the framerate to 23.976. Change the properties to progressive scan. Let Vegas do the rest.
Render as NTSC Widescreen, 24p.

Take the 1080 60i template, convert the framerate to 23.976. Change the properties to progressive scan. Let Vegas do the rest.
Render as NTSC Widescreen, 24p.

Thanks very much Douglas

Quick question....what is the 23.976 IVTC vs 24 film?

23.976 is the NTSC film frame rate, same as what you get when you remove pulldown. 24.000 is the real film speed.

Another question. Since I am just starting to mess around with 24p I will not know what to look for. I took a quick 10 minute clip...just a speaker at a stand and people walking on stage to except awards. I notice with the 24p conversion that the people seems kind of jerky (well that is the best way to say it) vs the standard ntsc video. Is this common or did I maybe set something wrong? I did shoot in 60i and then use HDConnect 3.0 set to deinterlace and remove 3:2 pulldown. From there I used the setting that Douglas sent me.

One thing I did notice. After I was down downloading the clip from my camera, I went back into HdConnect Prefs and saw that deinterlace was not checked anymore. I am wondering if this somehow got unchecked prior to my downloading. Would this cause what I am seeing on the video?

Also...in Architect should it compress the video file? The file is only 350MB, but architect says it is going to compress the video file.

Sorry for my poor explanation, but I do appreciate your help

Mike

So, the main question is: Can I expect full frame preview with this setup?


In my experience - No. Renders are multi-core multi-cpu enabled in Vegas - preview is not. Vegas puts video on one core and audio processing on the second core. Our dual-core dual opteron 270 system has processor utilization at 25% during preview/playback. Not great. And a playback fps at 12 to 15 on HD/Cineform material with effects and transitions on.

Renders, not suprisingly, is lightning with better-than-realtime MPEG2 rendering speed, and Cineform/DivX is at CPU utlization 80-90% on all cores during render.

Vegas sucks in preview. Since Vegas only uses one CPU I would recommend a single-CPU AMD Athlon 64 X2 system at the highest clock speed you can afford, such as the 4800+ or similar.

Good luck!

/magnus

Also...in Architect should it compress the video file? The file is only 350MB, but architect says it is going to compress the video file.

Sorry for my poor explanation, but I do appreciate your help

Mike
How did you render the file for DVDA?? Should have been mpeg2

If all you want to do is convert a VOB to MPG without loss of quality, MPEG2VCR will do that.

How did you render the file for DVDA?? Should have been mpeg2


It was mpeg2

Well, I now have the system I described earlier.

My experience is the same as Magnus's. Not full framerate preview. Good enough though.
We did our first week with the kids this past week. They did a great job and the parents were blown away.

If You only want to do simple cuts and additions, You should try out Cuttermaran (Freeware) in connection with the TMPGEncoder. You can cut frame accurate, only broken GOPs are reencoded. You need to demultiplex the VOBs first. You can load fhe final elementary streams in every authoring tool. If cutting on I - Frames is sufficent, You dont need TMPGEncoder. Works with AC3 and PCM and DTS sound.

Greatings Richard

REMINDER:

The next Washington Baltimore Vegas User Group (WBVUG) meeting is next week on Thursday, June 29th.

For more information go to:

http://www.oicproductions.net/wbvugm.html

If you plan on attending, please let us know.

Thanks!

Mickey Grackin
mgrackin@oicproductions.net

Hey guys, I've been using Vegas for a while now, and one thing I can't figure out is how to speed up the footage BEYOND what the Velocity envelope can do. Sometimes, the max Velocity isn't enough, as is my current situation. I need to speed up atleast another 100%, maybe 200%. Right now, the only NLE that I have that can do this is Premiere, but my footage is 24p and we all know what Premiere does to 24p!

Is there even a way to increase the speed change in Vegas (beyond the given velocity in the envelope)?

Use the Velocity Envelope for up to 3x.
Hold down the CTRL key and resize the event for up to 4x.
Do both for up to 12x.

For more than 12x, options include:
a) Rendering that section, putting it back on the timeline, and doing the above again.

b) Saving that section as a separate VEG file and putting the VEG file back on a new timeline and do the above again.

c) Using a script (Like "Time Bandit" found in the Veggie Toolkit and Excalibur) which will cut out pieces to go beyond 12x.

Awesome, thanks a lot Edward!

EDIT: I must say, I hate Vegas' velocity options. I speed up my footage well beyond 12x. This is what I did:

Original Clip, raised the velocity envelope all the way, and then held CTRL and resized event to 4x (as small as it got). Saved the it.

Got that VEG and did both again. Saved it.

I took the secondo VEG and imported it into my project, I then used CTRL to resize the event a little more, almost all the way, but not quite.

Now, it previews just fine, not much lag, and it looks nice and smooth...so what's the problem you ask?

RENDERING! It's taking me well over a minute to render 1 frame from the sped up footage. Premiere didn't have this much trouble rendering sped up footage like Vegas does, in fact, Premiere blows Vegas out of the water in this particular situation. My computer has spent the last 2 hours and 41 minutes rendering a 20 minute project. Normally, this would have finished an hour and a half ago, if not quicker.

Ron,

The .1 in 5.1 is the bass or LFE channel. When you are working with 5.1, USUALLY the audio tracks are mixed seperately with the intention to go to their respective channel. For example, if you have 10 discrete tracks and want to make the project a 5.1 project, then you can assign each channel to it's respective speaker config. Generally, what you intend to come through as bass, you send to LFE. what you want to come out to RF, you send to RF. You can also send 1 channel to a combination of speakers so when all 10 tracks are directed, you can get the sound to surround as you wish. Once you render to AC3, it will be encoded so it will play exactly to what proportions you set up to each speaker.

Hope that helps.

Jeff MAck

Don, I would love to do so, but I currently can't have that kind of set-up.

Lars, I have no idea how the bad looks good on your screen...I can't get it too look right at all.

Glenn, great tuturial, but I already have tried playing with the Levels and it did nothing. Of course in my preview monitor it looked nice and vibrant, but as soon as I rendered out, it looked even WORSE. The bird was more visible, so were the blocks, but the background texture was COMPLETELY lost.

I haven't gotten a chance to really read your tutorial, but will do so as soon as I get a chance. It looks very informative and hopefully it solves my problem.

Think about it: for every ten seconds of sped-up footage, Vegas is having to cram 129,600 images into the space normally occupied by 300 (this is assuming you've increased velocity by a factor of 432, as your workflow would seem to indicate - 3 x 4 x 3 x 4 x 3= 432). If there is a lot of detail in those frames, and a lot of movement in the footage, it shouldn't be hard to imagine the kind of computing power it would require to accomplish this.

Granted, render times have always been the chink in Vegas' otherwise very shiny armor, in my opinion. Still, I don't remember Premiere outperforming Vegas all that much when it came to rendering (or an any other area, for that matter). I jumped the Premiere ship and boarded the Vegas vessel (pardon the nautical metaphors) before PP 1.0 came out, and I imagine things have improved a decent amount since then. But this still seems like a very CPU-intensive process in any environment, to me.

Side note: I usually just start my renders late at night and then go to bed. I was looking at routine 16-hour renders on an extremely composite-heavy project I recently completed, and I don't think I'd have remained sane if I'd waited around all day waiting for the render to finish up. The long render times are just part of the price we pay for being able to do such amazing things on home computers, IMO. If you want faster renders, build a render farm or set up a huge network.

If I'm using Cineform codec to edit HD in Vegas, if I do a frame capture (in the usual manner from the preview window) - will it be full HD resolution - 1440x1080 or would it be a lower res because of Cineform?

Thanx

Ian

Be sure to set the qualtiy settings to "Best" and You will get a 1920x1080 picture. Check if You need Deinterlacing. If You need 1440 x 1080 - I dont konow if this is possilble. Fpr tis You can use Vdub (freeware).

Greetings Richard

I just bought this program (Vegas 6.0) as a step up from Pinnacle 9. This is a huge step and the learning curve for this program is great. What's the best way to learn? Should I click in and out of everything, buy a tutoring DVD, scan forums, or get a book?

Thanks!

I learned vegas after I ran out of curse words using Premiere, (sorry PP users), and I can honestly say, this forum, the people here who have written books and tutorials will help a ton. As mentioned earlier, get a project and push it using different techniques. Don't be afraid to try something. I seem to learn something new every day about Vegas.

I thought the horizontal 'real' (ie number of pixels) is 1440 - it just looks like 1920 because of the shape of the pixel?

And just when I thought I finally understood aspect ratio....

Ian