Vegas Video discussions from 2004 (Q1Q2)

[Graham Bernard]

" mate ur getting mixed up... " - most likely!

"teh artefacts ur seeing are teh bitrates ur using.. ur proll using VBR at startin at about 8000 and droping down to 192.. " So, would it be that the processing has to deal with this "Variable Bit rates" and things start to go silly?

"try to render the mpg with a constant of 6000 to 8000 the duration WILL fit onto one dvd with these settings.. " YES I will .. thank you!

"what ur experiencing has NOTHING to do with action safe areas.. unless ur titles are being chopped and unviewable... " . . Yes I agree that it couldn't be, but I'm still learning, I as needing some more knowledgable individual to come across - as you have. And YES the text was very very close to the edge if nor over the Safe Area. How would this make a difference?

"action safe doesnt affect resolution or pixels the manner in which u describe (artefcat on titles), but from the sounds of it you using default settings within VEgas to produce a DVD which COULD be upped in bitrate due to the short duration.. " I tink you have the nub of it here . . So, I choose the bitrate appropriate for the duration available to be PUT on a single DVD platter - arrgghh! Got it!

"Your titles look distorted due to the low bitrate of the default Variable preset your using "

Tell me why this happens? Can't be anything else other than the "amount" of contrast - black then white then black then white from the scrolling text - that creates such a demanding need for a "higher" bitrate AND that it is sustained by forcing this from the outset by electing CBR .. is that it? I suppose it is too much to ask for that this MPEG process to be able to demand CBR when it needs it and VBR where it doesn't matter .. see my point here? . .Is there such a mechanism?

Look Peter, thank you .. You've cleared up some major misunderstandings for me.

If you have the time, please try and answer my further points above?

TIA

Grazie

[Ian Stark]

My client has asked for a number of videos I have created for them (mixed animated/live action business to business 'messages') to be made available in a format that will make them easily emailable.

They are very much into the concept of viral marketing and at a trade show in the UK this week (where the videos were shown) many visitors requested copies.

My question, therefore, is could someone give me an indication as to what might be the best format, ie a combination of low file size against quality of video/audio. Also, which format would be recommended for maximum user-compatibility?

The videos are each around 5 mins long and file sizes are roughly 1 gig as AVI.

I could play around with the formats myself to experiment, but I thought I could ask the question of someone who has already gone through the experience.

I was hoping to get them down to around 2mb. Of greatest importance is audio quality - I believe people will forgive poor pictures but will soon give up if the audio is dire.

All suggestions or pointers to other resources much appreciated.

Thanks . . . Ian . . .

[Rich Lee]

Hi ian, i use sorenson squeeze to make all my files for the internet/email. you may want to consider it. its really great at optimizing the sorenson 3 compressor.

[Adi Head]

is there a way to delete ONLY media files that are NOT currently being used in a vegas project?
the situation is this:i'm working on project A, which is not finished yet. meanwhile i have to begin project B which is more urgent than A. the problem is that the media files i have been using for project A are taking up most of my hard drive space. BUT, i know for a fact that only a small portion of those files are actually being used at the moment by project A.
so what i want to do is to delete all media files except for those being used at the moment (on the timeline) by project A. this will clear up space for project B. after i finish project B i will then continue with A and capture additional media files again if i have to.

is this possible?

thanks

[Rob Lohman]

5 minutes is too long for an e-mail unless you agree with post
stamp size video. What I see companies do more often is just
link to the video and put that up on a webserver. A lot of these
are done in flash today.

You really do not want to go over 500 KB or 1 MB attachment.
A LOT of people are still on dialup and that will even take them
minutes to download. You just cannot get a video into that
amount and still be able to see anything. Especially if it is 5
minutes in length.

In my opinion what your client want is just not doable. Again
I would put the video up on a webserver and just put a link
in the e-mail like : click here to watch the video.

Personally I have a broadband connection at home. But if the
mailing lists I subscribe to would send attachments I would
remove my self from that list.

A medium ground solution would be to embed the video into
the HTML mail and have the file on the server. I'm not sure it
would actually play in the e-mail client or not.

Keep in mind also that more and more people get scared by
virusses and leaks in IE/Outlook (express) and therefor a lot
of them are running anti virus software or other protection
software that usually disallows embedding stuff in e-mail or
they might even have turned of HTML e-mail alltogether.

[Ian Stark]

I'll certainly look at Squeeze and see if that gets me to what I want, thanks Rich.

Rob, I tend to agree with you, however this is purely business to business email and is intended to be emailed internally within an organisation so the assumption has to be that they will be working off an email server. It's aimed at the major players in the retail industry.

I think a 2 to 3mb attachment would be workable and they are comfortable with 160 x 120 size.

Thanks for the rapid replies, gentlemen!

Ian . . .

[Rob Lohman]

You can delete all unused footage from the media bin, but I don't
think you can actually delete unused footage from the harddisk.

I thought about that a bit and thought it might be possible to do
in a script, but then I reconsidered.

How would Vegas or a script know WHICH footage belongs TO
the project but is NOT used. Basically it can't. It might be possible
to write a script that lets you select a directory and it will delete
all files (or a selected pattern?) that are in that directory and not
used in the project.

Why not simply do it by hand? I know it is tedious, but it can't
take more than 15 minutes or so. Go to View -> Edit Details
and select Events from the Show dropdown. This will get you a
list of all the events in your project that are used (do a Remove
All Unused Media From Project under the media pool first to be
sure it only contains what you use) including the full file path.

If you only have a couple of events this will probably be easy
enough for you to delete the rest. If you want to print this out
(and this works best if you have Microsoft Excel running) hit the
corner between the word Track and the number 1 (upper most
left corner with no text in it on the sheet) and it will select the
whole sheet. Now hit CTRL+C (copy) and go into Excel or Word
or Notepad etc. and hit paste there.

Now you have the full list in there. If you don't want all of the
fields you can also select just the filenames. This is a bit more
tricky. You can't select the filename column header since it will
change the sorting of the list. You can however select the whole
list. Go to the first empty filename slot at the end of the list and
click with your left mouse button and hold it. Then move up through
the list and thus select the whole list. Now hit CTRL+C and
paste in whatever you want again.

With any of these methods you can then print the list for example
to know which files not to delete.

That's the best I can do...

[Graham Bernard]

Done the "Reduce to fit in Frame" thingy - better much better but still "sticky" but less artifacts . .Doing the 8000 CBR as I type .. .

G

[Graham Bernard]

Peter that did it . . 8000 CBR beautiful scrolling text on a DVD+RW . . off to play with DVDA2 ansd create a Menu etc etc etc ..

Grazie

[Mark Miles]

Ian,

You could set up the same type of arrangement on a corporate Intranet and just e-mail the links. We do this a lot with things like company standards and ISO 9000 documentations. You could e-mail a link to a file located on the company's internal server.

[Ian Stark]

Again, good advice. Thank you.

I'll be forwarding these suggestions to the client.

Interestingly, the client has another company in its group that specialises in ISO9000 management software called Achiever Plus. Just wondered if you ever came across it?

Ian . . .

[Mark Miles]

When you're going for ISO certification it's important that there be only 1 "official" document. the easiest way is to keep it securely on a server somewhere and allow access to it. In my company the documentation control person generated an internal web page referencing locations on the server. THat way, everything is located in 1 place. A lot easier to manage when there's only 1 version of something. Being on a corporate intranet, you won't have the bandwidth issues as you would have hosting on the internet.

[Edward Troxel]

I would render to WMV (or whatever format they desired), put it on the web somewhere, and just e-mail them the link. That way, even if you have a 10 to 20 meg file, the e-mail will still be very small. If they want, they could just right-click and download the file directly to their computer OR just play it from the net.

[Edward Troxel]

One thing a script COULD do, go through the media pool and delete the files for any items that are not being used. There IS a use count on the media pool items so it could limit itself to only the files that have a use-count of zero.

However, you may then get into the problem of a sub-clip not being used but the base file IS being used. So, it would need to be carefully coded.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

I believe there are some sessions there, but I'm not certain. I was originally slated to go, but am unable to break away from the VASST tour as originally planned. I think Tim Duncan will be there showing Vegas at the FCP event.
There's a lot more info on the site I linked to.