Thanks guys. I appreciate it

Here is a partial meeting agenda for the upcoming Wednesday, September 22nd SCVUG Meeting. If you would like to get involved and attend - please rsvp by clicking the SCVUG link. SCVUG


SCVUG - September 22, 2004 Meeting Agenda

1. Jeremy Strappard and Danny Brant from Cal AV - will be making a presentation on Blue Sky Speaker Systems for Audio/Video Editing. Cal AV is a distributor for Sony Pro Audio products.

2. Liam Kennedy will be giving two great presentations.

The first presentation will be about Liam's recent trip to Iran in which he participated in a astromical conference and recorded over 20 hours of video. The footage is amazing and is being turned into a major documentary.

The second presentation by Liam will be about the Ins and Outs of producing Public Access Television Programs. Liam, currently produces a Public Access Program for the Orange County Astronomers Association which airs in Southern California to a half million homes.

This presentation alone - is worth the price of admission!

3. Jay Mitchell will be making a Showcase Presentation of current Vegas Training Products. Planned are VASST DVDs "Introduction to Vegas 5" and
"Vegas 5 FASST"

Every Month, Jay will be Showcasing Different Training Products that will be of great value to all Vegas Users.

4. Matt Reason will be giving a training session on the most requested Vegas feature Sets.

5. A Q&A session to get answers to all of your Vegas Questions

6. And, no SCVUG Meeting would be complete without our World Famous - Free Raffle of valuable editing products.

Hope to see you all there,

Jay Mitchell
SCVUG Host

Hi Edward!

I've done a multicam shoot, and been teetering on getting Excalibur.

On a recent post here, you answered by saying that putting two different camera shots of the same scene on two different tracks, then using the sync wizard, it will automatically sync them.

Is this correct?

Cheers,

Andy

There is still a small manual process. YOU have to find a common point on both camera angles (sudden change in sound, camer flash...). After that, yes it will automatically align them on that point, create the PIPed view, and add the camera number overlay. It really works quite nicely.

OK Edward, thanks for the reply.

I'm going to break out the credit card tomorrow. Be prepared for more questions :)

Cheers,

Andy

My camcorder has a progressive setting, and it is off by default. What is it used for, and should I have it on for better results when editing in Vegas.

Thanks, Dennis

Depends on the camera. If it's anything but the panasonic DVX series or the Canon XL2, leave it off. You are losing resolution and information. Vegas will work with the footage either way, but you are giving Vegas less information to work with. Frame mode/progressive mode on most cameras either shifts pixels or cuts framerate to achieve the progressive look.

I rendered a video as MPEG-2 in NTSC DVD and it worked but the picture does not fill the screen when it is played on a computer. Is this normal or how can I fix this problem.

Mitch

1. what do you use to play this with

2. what is your computers resolution (if it is anything above 720x480 then it will normally per default not fill the screen)

3. most players can up-scale the footage to fullscreen in realtime when you double-left-click with the mouse on the picture or hit alt+enter (same way gets you back)

id u change ur project from interlaces to progressive, you will get a psuedo "Frame" look..

as DSE said, you DO lose resolution... in trade off to the "look"

another thing is that progressive doesnt necessarily mean progressive in these cameras (apart from DVX/XL2)
It can also mean Progressive Photoshoot...

It is a panasonic ag-dv7 camcorder. Sounds like I should just leave it off. Just needed to understand what that feature did. Thanks.

if you want to know the difference between progressive scan and interlaced frames go here:

http://hometheater.about.com/od/beforeyoubuy/a/progressivescan.htm

it explains it pretty good... ...if it's fake progressive scan then leave it off, shoot in interlaced, then if you really want to get the "film look" then do it when you render to mpeg 2 (dvd architect 24p file) or NTSC 24 dv file. vegas does a good job at this if you have version 4 or 5.. ..not sure about 3 etc.. ...this 24p is fake too, but ive had good luck with it.

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : 1. what do you use to play this with

2. what is your computers resolution (if it is anything above 720x480 then it will normally per default not fill the screen)

3. most players can up-scale the footage to fullscreen in realtime when you double-left-click with the mouse on the picture or hit alt+enter (same way gets you back) -->>>

also, what was the res of your raw footage? regular dv?

this is one feature i wish vegas had

I've worked out a bodged workaround. I'll create seperate projects for all the seperate scenes so I can edit them all individually. Then I'll render out each scene as another file. I'll import them all in order into a new project and save that as something like "fullfilm.veg"

Now whenever I make a change to a scene I just resave over the rendered file for that particular scene, and the timeline for fullfilm.veg will automatically have the new version of the scene. Of course if the scenes change length I'll have to adjust the fullfilm timeline, but it's a sort of solution.

Ed, why so blunt? I don't write scripts and don't know how. So I don't know what they can and can't do.

Wasn't trying to be blunt. At the time I posted I didn't have time to elaborate on the answer. (and I *DID* say it was the SHORT answer) :-)

Here's my reasoning behind the answer, though. In order to load a VEG file, you would have to be able to read it. However, the format of that file is not publicly defined. Then there may be effects added to clips or tracks...., the scripting API cannot apply the various settings - they can only use presets.

There are a LOT of things that simply cannot be done right now via scripting that you'd have to be able to do. So, the long answer is NO.

Your "workaround" is the same approach I take.

Folks I really hate to bother you all with this but .... I am at the tail end of my first project and have wind noise on a couple of key interview clips.

I know, I should have waited until the wind died down or conducted interviews somewhere else but there were mostly intermitent gust and of course the gust were always when they said something really good. It does not overwhelm the voice but you can hear it, especially with headphones.

I know, I should have gotten that muff mike thingy but the day started off really calm and I didn't think it would be a problem (I know, I know, I know). I couldn't reschedule and can't reshoot and, like I said, the wind was intermitent and I did stop recording when it got really bad as well as junked a lot of footage where it was just intolerable IMHO.

Now, with all the groveling and apologies out of the way, does anyone know of a simple fix in Vegas to minimize wind noise? I checked into Noise Reduction but can't afford the cost of the program right now and was hoping that there is a simpler fix from all you Vegas gurus out there.

You can use the parametric EQ filter to remove bass frequencies. Adjust it around until you hear it mess around with the voice, then back off.

You could also replace individual parts of words, but that's very time consuming. Jay Rose's book Audio Postproduction for Digital Video (see dplay.com on how to buy it) covers this (it's an excellent book).

There might be some other things you can do, but it takes more time/money.

2- Try to check your mix on something accurate. On headphones you hear way too much.

It might be that the amount of wind rumble is acceptable. It may also make the audience get a better sense of the environment.

Hi.

After I rendered/printed my project to MiniDV tape (80 minutes long) I discovered at 2 or 3 different points on the tape the video showed thick horizontal stripes combining the two adjacent shots.
Anyone know why this is happening?

Thanks

DSE (SPOT) had a few great tips on the Sony site.

Here's the link:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=317110&Page=0

Hope this helps.

P.S. I'm not sure about crossposting from another forum so if ettiquette is not being followed please let me know.

Andy

You noticed this in the RENDERED file. What does the same point look like in the SOURCE files? Is the same thing there?

Thanks folks. I will try your suggestions but you're also right, on a standard tv, the wind noise rumble is barely noticable to the untrained ear of my wife. I can barely hear it unless I turn the tv up fairly loud myself. I am just concerned when it goes to professionals who may use every reason to label it amatuer and therefore want to decline my project.

Thanks again

if the stripes are thick i would say its a tape issue

<<<-- Originally posted by Simon Wyndham : I've worked out a bodged workaround. I'll create seperate projects for all the seperate scenes so I can edit them all individually. Then I'll render out each scene as another file. I'll import them all in order into a new project and save that as something like "fullfilm.veg"

Now whenever I make a change to a scene I just resave over the rendered file for that particular scene, and the timeline for fullfilm.veg will automatically have the new version of the scene. Of course if the scenes change length I'll have to adjust the fullfilm timeline, but it's a sort of solution.

Ed, why so blunt? I don't write scripts and don't know how. So I don't know what they can and can't do. -->>>

I used this method for the feature i just finished up, the only problem is you have to go through another recompress

Here is a very special offer to receive a $100 savings coupon off of the price of DV Rack by Serious Magic. And, all you have to do is join the SoCal Vegas Users Group - aka SCVUG and purchase the DV Rack by September 30th.

There are many reasons to join the SCVUG - and these type of benefits are just one of them.

Joining the SCVUG does not mean that you cannot still be loyal to your favorite Vegas Forum. We are a group of dedicated Vegas Users that enjoys the support of Sony and shares our knowledge and benefits, freely.

Here is the link to join the SCVUG

Jay Mitchell
SCVUG Host

It's true that another recompress will need to be gone through, although I will be applying Magic Bullet to the final scenes anyway. I could use the Sony YUV codec, but the Sony DV codec is so good over multiple generations I don't think just one generation of recompress will make all that much difference?

As long as you don't apply any more filters or other settings, the file will simply be COPIED for the final render. So the ONLY pieces that are "recompressed" would be any overlaps creating dissolves between sections.

OR a dirty head.

I've been getting better at editing the various 2 camera shoots that we've been doing in the past but now I'm about to start on the biggest project we've done to date which is a 5 camera multi-day shoot of a live festival.

For the 2 camera shoots I've used composite trackers to switch between the shots and every now and again I've added an additional video track to do some sort of effect that couldn't be created with only the two tracks.

So as I start pulling all of the video and getting ready to sink my teeth into these 5 camera shots I'm wondering if there are any tips that any of you might care to share?

I know that if I am to continue using composite tracking as my method of crossfading I will need to put composite trackers on all of the tracks except the lowest one.

Is there any other tidbits that you can share that might save me time, frustration, and hair?

Thanks,
Kevin

Yes - get Excalibur (see the link under my name)

It's also reviewed in several of the newsletters at the same link.

It will save you a tremendous amount of time when editing your multi-cam shoots.

NEWBIE question!

I've got a video event and audio event in vegas that I'm editing. When I make cuts, I set in and out markers, select between them and delete. Ok fine and dandy until the one time that I screw up and just delete from the audio line. I keep rolling along, and looking for "bad" video where I want to cut next, not really listening (it's a football game). When I get to the end of the game, I find my screwup that I had lost audio sync. Is there anything I can do other than undo back to the screwup and redo everything after that?

Make sure that either BOTH the audio and video tracks are selected OR, if you're using a selection area, just press CTRL-SHIFT-A to deselect everything before pressing Delete.

Thanks. I was hoping that there would be a way to skip a forward action after undoing to the point of the error.

Since I wanted to delete the Video also, I just figured out that once I found the error with undo, I could forward to my last instruction and go back to delete the video portion.

Ok way of undoing things:
Select your clip.
Put the playhead in the middle of the clip. Click on the area below all your tracks.
right click your clip and select "open in trimmer".
Drag the video back into the timeline. Delete the original video. You can right click the track (on the left column of your screen) and select "expand track layers" to make your life easier.

If you have to do this process for multiple clips then there might be a way to undo things with less button pushing.

I am using a rather cheap camera, a Hi-8, and have been doing all of my video with it thus far. The only method I have for uploading is an analog converter that shrinks the picture down to a very small resoultion. I think it is 320x280 or in that area. Now when I render it, it causes people in the distance to have their faces blurred. Is there any recommendation you guys have, short of buying a new camera, that can help improve this?

Mitch

1- You might be able to use Virtualdub and capture to whatever format you want.

Without knowing which capture card you're using and what drivers it uses (VFW or WDM) it's hard to say what you should do.

Virtualdub should be free.

2- new camera: You could get a digital8 camera, which will read hi8 tapes and convert them to DV.

Caveats:
You're stuck with another dying format. If you lose or break your camera then you may have a lot of trouble accessing your footage.
Old digital8 cameras are better than the newer ones.

You could get any other camera to use as a analog-digital convertor (check that they have analog-digital passthrough). Of course, you might as well use that camera from that point on instead provided that it's better than your hi8.

3- Which NLE are you using?

not all digi8s will feed hi8 through firewire though, a buddy of mine got one (dont know the model number) that wouldnt.. ...I know most of them do, you can get TRV-103s (nice cam) off of ebay for $250 if you keep your eye out for them.... ...highly recomend this route over analog capture, asside from deck control, you don't have to worry about dropped frames at the higher res that you get from alot of consumer capture solutions.

Doug,

There is a script called MediaSync that you might take a look at that can get you back in sync. You can identify a master track of video for example, and then a slave track of audio. The script will resync all of the audio to the video events. If you get out of sync again, just rerun the script.

You can get infomation about it here:
http://www.peachrock.com/software/mediasync.html

Excalibur (http://www.vegastrainingandtools.com/plugins_excalibur_2.html) also has an align audio/video wizard that you might want to look at.

Randall

yea ive definately had this prob with dirty head in a camera...i think i ran a tape cleaner and re-recorded over it. ive seen the horizontal lines happen several times on different cameras and on some vd decks at our school.

have you been using the same brand of tape? it seems to happen more when you swap between wet/dry lube tapes

i would run a head cleaner yo....

if it doesnt work, is it possible to send it to a diff deck or cam? then it would rule out the tape or deck/cam

you could get a cheap miniDV for under $400

then xfer all your 8mm footage to it via RCA wires or whatnot, so now its on miniDV and you can suck it thru 1394 into your NLE

dont get a samsung miniDV...i got one a year ago to keep the wear on heads down on my gl1/xl1s and it has broken 3 times...the firewire port keeps going out and they keep sending me different cams, now the last one they sent the focus wont work.

Yep, VirtualDub rocks in that department. I'm doing the same thing with a Star Wars Trilogy LD set. I have excellent 60i->24p results although I need to make some adjustments to the levels. The whites are getting blown out...

How do you change the frame rate that you capture the video at from 30fps?

I found that the laserdiscs didn't have constant cadence, making pulldown removal problematic when using Cinema Tools, although the end result ended up looking pretty darn good.

Graeme

I am creating the DVD for a 45+ video and have been keeping the end credits in a separate video file.

I want to have both the main video and the end credits video files on the DVD, and also want to have only one button on the title page of the DVD.

Right now, when I add the second video file, a second button appears on the main title page. If I delete the second button, the corresponding footage also disappears from the DVD.

The question is, how do I add multipart video without having a button for each of the parts.

Thank you!

-- Andre

Jay, please provide a working link.

Thanks
-- Andre

DVD Architect 1 or 2? In DVD Architect 2, you just add the video to the project (NOT the menu) and then "End Action" from the first video to the second video. DVD Architect 1 did NOT have end actions.

click this link to the SCVUG (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/socalvegasusers)

How do you plan on capturing???

How do I "add video to the project (NOT the menu)"?

I try the Insert menu and add Media (Ctrl+F) and a button does appear on the menu.

Please tell me how to do this.

Thank you!
-- Andre

Here's what I did:

I want intro-clip.mov, main.mov and credits.mov to appear on the DVD in the above order but want a button only to intro-clip.mov

What I did is
- find the clips in DVDA Explorer
- drag each clip to the Project Overview window, being very careful to position them directly in the "root directory" indicated by a disc icon (If put under the "folder" icon or under the "window" icon, they will appear as menus)
- the order of the clips determines the order of their appearance in the timeline
- doubleclick each clip and in its Properties window change the End Action/Destination parameter to the name of the following clip.
- the last clip's End Action/Destination must be "Most Recent Menu" so that when the clip ends, the Menu window reappears on the screen

- the last step is to doubleclick the "folder" icon and use the Insert menu on the main window toolbar to Insert an "Empty Button" and lastly
- doubleclick on the inserted Empty Button and change its End Action/Destination to the name of the FIRST clip.

This is the process I used. Let me know if there is a simple way.

Regards
-- Andre