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How do I boost the audio in Vegas? I have some dialogue scenes that are just a little too quiet and need to be made louder.

Thanks

On the track header, slide the volume to the right.

On the track, right-click and add a volume envelope. Raise the envelope up.

On the master slider, slide the volume up.

Create a bus, route the track through that bus and raise the volume.

NOTE: You will also increase any background noises which you may have to try to reduce using other tools such as EQ and Compression.

The Volume envelope is great, not only can you just raise and lower the audio level, but just like any other envelopes in Vegas, you can add points and adjust them wherever...

I knew about hte volume enveloppe, and didn't think about it. I'm getting slower in my old age...

Anyway, after doing the volume enveloppe, it doesn't raise the volume high enough for what I need. Is it possible to make it louder than that? (even after turning up the volume on the track header too).

Thanks

Highlight the audio portion you need to boost and right click-there is a menu with a number of options. One being to open your audio program or use a copy of the track in your audio program and one of my favorites is under the 'switches'-that is 'normalize' and of course the always popular 'apply non-real time event fx'-the 1st one in that list is amplitude modulation-you can make it pretty loud there, just watch the background noise.
Hope this helps,
Don

Why don't you try exporting that clip as audio and then reimporting it. Then boost it again. After a certain point, though, you will lose quality, of course.

If the volume envelope doesnt do it, you don't need to export it and all that, just right click on the track on the left, and go down to FX/Automation envelopes > FX Automation, and then go over to track compresser, and check output gain, and hit ok, WHAM!

For dialogue (and for a lot of other stuff) I always use the graphic dynamics FX, usually one of the compression presets. Normalize will raise the level of everything, but with graphic dynamics you can hold back the parts that are loud already while you raise the level of what's below it, down to a certain adjustable point.
If noise does become a problem, add the FX twice and use a noise gate preset on the first instance.

If you want to be serious about audio, buy Noise Reduction from Sonic Foundry. First time I tried it I almost thought I was seeing a burning bush. Magical! I removed a dishwasher that was closer to the microphone than the person I wanted to hear.

Thanks for pointing that out, Edward!

Jet- I really want this script tool, but I utterly REFUSE to use PayPal. Can I send you a Money Order instead?

My concern is with tip #10. It states that 3rd party burning software can cause burn failure, "Veritas being a common culprit".
My problem is I have the Sony DRU-500 burner and that's the burning software it uses. Sure I could uninstall like they say to do but then I can't burn data DVDs and or duplicate DVDs. UGH!

At work I am forced to work with reduced resources which has gotten me into a bind.

I have a 60 minute tape to capture and barely enough HD space to accomodate it. I can capture the 60 minutes but I don't have the space to stitch the separate Clips together into a single one.

First Q: Why does VV3 capture in multiple clips?

Followup: Can I get VV to capture in one continuous clip?

Vegas will split based on the stopping and starting of the tape IF you have that option turned on. Go into the capture program, Options - Preferences, and turn OFF Enable Scene Detection. With that off, you will get ONE clip instead of multiple clips.

Alternately, you could use the advanced capture tab and specify the beginning and ending capture points. This will also give you ONE file.

Ed. I have a similar question. For some reason, when I capture from my VX2k's, the continuous video from the cam is being broken up in vegas. It hasn't always done this, and I'm looking into all of my settings trying to figure out if I've changed anything, but, no luck yet.

Thanks for Excalibur and Tsunami, awesome tools. If I buy a ShuttlePro device, will I be able to program a couple of the buttons to launch those applications?

now THERES a thought....

Thanks, Edward. I'll start the long process again.

thats why you should use Nero or Prassi

2 of the best applications on themarket...

and GearDVD for DVDAudio....

one thing they DIDN'T mention was that Architect despises the use of HDD accessable apps while its prepping and burning...

remember to do NOTHING while it preps and make sure all Windows Explorer is closed....

i wish they'd fixed some more bugs, they've been saying they're gonna fix it but ....

one idea that i hate doing but i have no choice, is to burn to DVD-RW test it on a PS2 (perfect rw playback) then duplicate to DVD-r

Launch the applications: YES
Pick a certain tool: NO

All you would need to do to launch the application would be to assign the script to one of the presets (CTRL-SHIFT 0-9) and the set the button to do a SHIFT 0-9.

I am recording vocals and wanted to try input monitoring, but it was giving a robotic effect when turned on. I was basically trying to add a little reverb to the vocal track itself while recording realtime. I reset the default audio track properties and now I don't have an option for input monitoring, just stereo, left or right.

How can I get this back? I want to add some reverb while it is being recorded not after the track is already layed out so that the person singing can hear some more life added to their vocals while they are singing with the headphones on.

soundcard is an audigy and not using ASIO is this matters.

If you make it any quicker and easier for us. . . our editing will be done before the tripods get folded up.

Tor, good advice on the compressor. I'd like to add that normalize doesn't always work. If there is a single instance of
overload in your track, any normalization software will judge the signal to be normalized. The normalizer is a two pass process: first, it scans for the highest absolute value of the signal. Second, it rescales the signal by Max Value Possible/Max Value Found.

I have Nero 5, it came with my Lite-on cd burner...when I load Nero it doesn't recognize my DVD burner. It comes up with a screen asking me to choose my recorder...and the only thing listed is "Image Recorder"...which I think is there by default.
Is there a specific version of Nero that does DVD data burning? Why doesn't it recognize my DVD burner?

The most current version of Nero burns DVDs.

What's the newest version #?

I had trouble seeing and understanding the ssstuttering tool in Tsunami. Is that a similar effect as the ghosting effect we talked about in a thread last month?

I will agree that that effect does not show well in the video demo (it looked better on the screen). I still need to update that video and get a better sample of that shot and improve the audio.

Here's the basic premise behind it. Say you have a locked down shot on a tripod and someone walks across the shot. The person would be seen 3 times - kind of like a shadowing trail. It's a really interesting effect.

Look at your mouse when you turn on the "trails". This behaves similarly.

I ran a short test on a clip of a child lighting a candle in a church in the near dark. Slowed it down a bit and applied a little stuttering effect. Beautiful.

Edward, are there plans to enhance or add to the current tsunami offering? If so, will there be upgrades fees, or is a lisence good for any/all future updates?

Any updates to Tsunami will be free. If there is a Tsunami II, it will be an entirely different product. As to whether Tsunami will acquire additional features: unknown at this time.

Hi all,
I am capturing scenes from an anolog 8mm sony and entering them into Vegas. Some of the more active scenes (like walking across the room with the camera following me) appear to be wavy. I figured this problem would go away after it was rendered so I rendered what I had as an AVI. Playing the AVI back with windows media player showed no signs of the probem, it was nice and clear.
Then I brought the AVI into mydvd (which came with my burner) and burned it onto a dvd-rw. The dvd played in my dvd player, but the darn wavy picture was back. What could be causing this?
I was going to link to a picture on my page, but it is temporarily down. I can email a captured image to anyone who may be interested.

Thanks in advance.
Any help will be greatly appreciated

Adam

WHERE are you playing this? It sounds like the interlacing issue. If interlaced video is played on a PC, you can see this. If progressive video is played on a TV, it can also show this.

Render to standard DV-AVI and give that file to MyDVD. Create the DVD and see how it looks on a TV.

hi,
I guess I used standard avi.
This is what it said below...

Audio: 48,000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo, PCM Uncompressed.
Video: 29.97 fps, 720x480, Lower field first.
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 0.909. OpenDML compatible.
NTSC DV video files compatible with Sonic Foundry Video Capture.

Edward,

Congratulations on Tsunami - the thing I love about it is that by making long and arduous jobs so simple, it gives us more time to "play" with settings and become more creative. I know many have commented on the Extract Good Clips tool, but the ones I have had most fun with so far are the video wall and PinP.

The fact that you've moved into the Artistic side of script use has I think unlocked a huge potential for creativity.

Anyway - I was wondering ....

An effect sometimes used in TV title sequences is breaking a picture into several separated vertical rectangles, and for those rectangles to vary in width - some getting wider whilst others shrink. Sometimes the rectangles have shadows.

I have achieved a somewhat similar effect by duplicating the same clip several times and applying pan crop, then keyframing sizes.
Track Motion also can be introduced to make the "split" picture smaller within the main frame.

This of course is a long and fiddly process, which made me wonder whether scripts could make things easier in the same way you have with Excalibur and Tsunami

Anyway, I'd certainly be happy to purchase such a tool..

regards

peter

I was wondering how you could do this. Setting a velocity envelope to 0% would obviously be impossible. I've done it by taking a snapshot of a frame and inserting it, but I get black bars on the sides even though I compensated for 4:3 ratio (720x540 ntsc).

Thanks for any help.

Split the clip where you want the freeze to start and end (unless it's at the end of the clip, then split where you want it to start freeze and go to the end) use a velocity envelope set to zero;0, and you're done.
Don

Could you explain why "setting the velocity envelope to 0% would obviously not work"?

I DO use a velocity envelope for this task. If you want a sudden stop, you can set TWO points, one frame apart, the first at 100% and the second at 0%. Then, when you want movement to start again, set two more points - the first at 0% and the second at 100%.

If you want the speed to gradually change, just increase the number of frames between the two points.

<<<-- Originally posted by Don Bloom : Split the clip where you want the freeze to start and end (unless it's at the end of the clip, then split where you want it to start freeze and go to the end) use a velocity envelope set to zero;0, and you're done.
Don -->>>

There's really no need to split when you can just add two points to the velocity envelope at the beginning and end.

It's not impossible at all!
Suppose you have a video event that you want to run forward first - up to a point where you freeze one frame, and then the event continues after a while?

Set a point at the frame you want to freeze, then one just before it. Set the first one to 0%. Then - down along the timeline for the amount of time you want the freeze to last, set another point and one just after. Set the first of these to 0%. Now you must drag the event out (grab the right edge of it and pull) until you reach that little triangle that tells you the event now occupy as much space on the timeline as it will last in playback. That's it.

The distance between the 100% and the 0% defines how sharp or gradual you want the stop/start to be.

EDIT: "the first one" meaning the frist you made, not the first on the timeline.

You're right Edward. I kinda mis-read the post and then forgot about setting points. It was way to early to be answering anything.
Don

Well, until recently I didn't know you could insert the envelope value because click/dragging lets you only do 3% and -3%. I don't see why it's so hard to believe someone could think that.

My page is back to normal, so check out this picture and tell me what you think.
As you can see, it is not the jagged lines that I would associate with interlacing, but wavy lines. But then again, I don't know what I'm doing so please help me!

http://www.geocities.com/freakyfamily/shorts/shorts.html


Thanks,
Tate

One thing I found when using the VE this way - the audio continues regardless of what the video is doing, so if you want the audio to resume normally when you go back from 0% to 100%, you have to split the audio at the point where you went from 100% to 0%, and move it to restart when motion restarts.

If you ramp the speed up or down gradually it can get horribly confusing as to where you are audio wise. I hope that V5 has the Option to make the envelope do the same thing to audio as has been done to video, then one will stay in pace with the other.

The +/- 3% thing happens when the track is too short. There are two options. The first is make the track taller. This gives you more room to get the number but still isn't exact. The BEST way is to right-click the point, choose Set To... and then type in the exact number desired. Of course, another option is to use Excalibur.

One more question. I'm still confused of why black bars appear on the left and right sides of the video when I add a picture.

Because the picture isn't the same size as the video frame. When using pictures, open Pan/Crop and immediately right-click the image and choose "Match Output Aspect". This will eliminate the "black bars" and make things work the way you expect.

1.) Dropped frames? I did a long capture tonight, and entire tape that spanned one long 50 minute file. I walked away while it was capturing and when I returned, near the end, I noticed it had logged 9 dropped frames. I had never dropped a frame EVER while capturing and the only thing I can remember doing different was choosing "capture tape" rather than hitting play then capture. Could the camera latency going from stop to play cause it to read as dropped frames?

2.) Captured footage resolution while viewed in Media Player? I played back a few clips in windows media player and noticed it's only playing at half resolution...I checked the source file to be certian and it is, indeed, 720x480. I did some searching in the options under Vegas capture and I saw something to the notion of "preview window size denotes decoder size" (not sure exactly how the box is worded, but it's checked. I'm assuming this is the reason why it only plays back at the resolution I had it previewing at while capturing. Does anyone know why this option is here and/or how it is there to begin with?!

3.) Color correcting while monitoring on external monitor. You know how you can creat an area/selection in the preview window through which you can see your color corrections. Can this be implimented while viewing on an external monitor?

4.) Re-encoded captured footage out to AVI any less quality? I ask because I'm now using a different workflow with my wedding videography. I capture large areas of a tape at a time, some times bordering an entire hour for one clip. Now once I'm done with splicing it up and extracting the good footage to use in my final cut...I encode the series of edits as a single avi file in order to delete the original un-edited 50 minute capture file. The problem is there are a few clips that weren't in my edit that I want to keep for a flash-back sequence later on in the wedding. If I spice these sections and separated them from the original long clip and render them out as another avi in order to delete the original file like I had first intended will the clips I cut and re-encode as AVI (to keep them on my hd) be of any lesser quality than the original capture?

Any good sites/tutorials for special f/x in Vegas? I'm mainly interested in sci-fi type effects, muzzle flashes, light sabers, etc.

... or would it be better to learn to do these things in After Effects?

#1: It is quite possible that the "dropped frames" where at the very beginning of the tape. I always batch capture and make sure it starts a few seconds in.

#2: Not sure I followed all of that.

#3: Yes

#4: The ONLY areas re-encoded are the areas you changed (i.e. dissolves, color correction, ...) for all other areas, it will be a straight copy.

Taking it a step farther, say you edit a wedding ceremony with color correction. When rendering that to a DV-AVI file, it will be recompressed. Now lets say you take that DV-AVI file and put it in the "final" wedding video. This time it will NOT be recompressed because it will already be in the correct format. It will be copied instead.