Slow Motion??????
 

Hey folks,
I want to put a clip in slow motion, and retain the audio, but have that also be the rate at which I sample the video... This is not possible with the video envelopes event velocity. Any suggestions?

Michael Estepp

As long as you only need a SINGLE speed (i.e. not a variable speed), hold down the CTRL key and resize the clip. This will "stretch" or "shrink" the clip and the audio will be adjusted as well.

Thats a cool tip, thanks... is there any other way to do it? This method actually stutters the audio and doesn't slow the speed, is there anything else you can suggest?

Michael Estepp

Does Vegas use DirectX functions when rendering?
 

Hi,

I can't make up my mind about this question - is it silly or not ?

What got me thinking was that when I run my computer with the case open I could feel my gfx card get alot hotter while rendering in Vegas... so a thought was born...maybe Vegas uses directX filters/functions to speed up things...and then just maybe those instructions are being executed on the GPU?

Or maybe everything just head up cause the CPU was working 100%...

Please don't laught yourself silly about this :-)

// Lazze \\

DVD Arch must recompress into its own MPEG2 codec?
 

i've been using ATI's MMC 8.9 to capture old VHS i have. i have a tape that is 5 hrs 30 min. i already captured @MPEG2, 1Megabit @low res. after finnishing the capture i have a 3GB file. that should fit a 4.7GB DVD-R media easily. how come DVD Arch has to recompress and says that my file is too large (23GB?) and still needs to recompress? i don't get it.

yeah i thought as much...

thanx Edward

direct x is a series of drivers which run computer based (ie number crunching) commands...

most of vegas plugins are DirectX, reliant, expecially the audio plugins.

Direct X wont have any adverse effect on your graphics card due to the fact that the rendering is done thru your ram and cpu, BEFORE your graphics card takes over to create the image u see.

things like Hollywood effects and some openGL apps like combustion and some pinnacle apps do use your gfx card and its respective drivers...

with vegas though, it doesnt. (oh unless your running Boris, sorry)

i think the heat your seeing is your mobo automaitcally picking up that the gfx card is idle, so to save power, it may have dropped the rpms of your gfx card fan.

or you could have answereed ur own question :)

good call Edward, another one is to cut the scene in b&w. depending on the shade of blue, you may be able to get away with it :)

SoFo have a pitch changer plugin for your audio, while, vegas can work on teh video, u can export the audio run the plug, and reimport the audio to your project.. but Edward's is a better idea IMO...
pitch changer and time stretch plugins are ok, but costly if u dont use them much..

The "stuttering" you hear could be from the flange introduced from slowing it down too much. There is a limit to where the audio can be played slowely before flange is introduced.

If the MPEG2 file is not DVD compatible, DVD Architect MUST recompress it. The final size will vary depending on the the bitrate you choose.

While Vegas plugins are based on DirectX, the video card doesn't make any difference when editing. CPU speed, bus speeds, hard drive speeds, RAM speed.... these will affect the rendering speeds. The CPU WILL get a lot hotter during rendering which, I suppose, could affect other items within the case.

Stupid Newbie question
 

I'll say I'm sorry right of the bat here. I downloaded the demo's for Vegas 4.0 and Screenblast. I am not used to the 4+lines for text/video etc. Do they explain better in a manual how to use them all together. The text still work's in the video line etc. So whats the point of all of them? It's still all very new but very frustrating to me. Can you please explain this?
Also when I play back a video in the viewing box I get all kinds of blurry lines through the middle. Is that normal before rendering, and will it go away?
One more thing, when doing text like a credit scroll. Why can't you put a body along with the headline etc? Do you have to just keep making one per box and putting them together? Thanks in advance.

Multiple video lines allows for complex compositing options. As you have seen, text gets placed on a video track. Video placed on a lower video track will show through behind that text. You could have additional video tracks above that to place additional pictures (such as the "bug" in the corner of most TV programs)...

Preview quality will depend on the quality level setting and the power of your computer. If the computer has to do a lot of work, you need the preview either on a lower setting. Also, frame rate will drop when the computer cannot keep up.

Not sure what you mean by the "credit scroll". You can have 3 different types of entries in the "credit scroll" tool. Of course you could use the standard text box and add keyframes to scroll it. You can also create the text in Photoshop and use keyframes in Vegas to properly scroll it.

You're only other options is to export the audio to some other program (such as Sound Forge) and modify the speed there.

Is there a way to zoom in to the pixel level in the preview window in Vegas, something akin to Photoshop? I can get at the big bits when working with the secondary color correct, but not the glow. It's maddening.

I tried the cookie cutter btw, but needed more careful animation, so I put on a garbage matte, but I'm still not happy with how it looks. Bottom line, correctly exposing the image for what was happening under the arbor, and ignoring the hot white in the distance beyond the groom, was a costly mistake. In hindsight, I'm not totally sure what I could've/should've done differently cuz the rest of the shot looks pretty good, albiet still a little dark for my taste. I wanted to string a couple of Pro Lights to hang down off the limbs, but the bride wanted "natural" light. Should've pushed them harder on that.

Edward, how would you match the speed of your clip if you import the audio into Sound Forge? Say if I used Ctrl+drag to slow a clip down- how would I get the unknown % speed figure matched.

Old Time Silent Movie Effect
 

I am struggling to reduce the frame rate of a Vegas project to produce the old-time silent movie effect. The video looks great on the preview with the project set to 12 fps, but Vegas only gives me 3 options when I go to render for NTSC (29.9997 & 24 with 2 different pulldown modes). I cannot seem to render the video with the low frame rate that an old-time silent movie requires.

If anyone knows what to do, please tell me.

You really can't zoom in like you can with Photoshop. If you set your preview quality to one of the full settings, you'll get the full 720x480 image. You can also resize the preview window so that you can see the whole 720x480 image.

You CAN get the speed so it's not really unknown. Just right-click the clip, choose properties, and look at the "Playback Rate". Another way would be to render out the original cut clip to a new file, resize the the proper amount, and then make the same size correction in the other program.

Try this:

Pull the clips in normally in a normal framerate project. Now, right-click each clip, choose Properties, and change the "Undersample Rate".

Will this give you the results you want?

Sounds like ATI compressed it at something lower than 720x480, which isn't DVD legal/compatible. It's gotta come up to spec.

Deinterlacing and FRAME mode
 

Hi,

Yesterday was the second day (on a shedule of 6) of shooting for my next short film. In the preproduction process, we decided to shoot this project with an XL1 in FRAME mode for the "film look".

This day was really great! 16 planned shots in a house with lot of them involving children. They were very cooperatives.

But I made a mistake. The 6 firsts shots were filmed in NORMAL mode instead of FRAME. So I will need to detinterlace it in post.

I never had has to do dinterlacing until now since I always use FRAME mode for narrative work. But the day before this shooting session, I covered a live event in NORMAL mode and I forgot to change this setting back to frame.

What is the best way, preferably using Vegas 4.0, to deinterlace theses 6 clips so that they mixes well with those in FRAME MODE?

Thank you very much!

yes i was capturing @320x144 or somn like that. now i'm gonna use vegas capture... should work better with DVD Arch

Thank you Edward,

I will try it tonight, and post a reply as soon as I know more.

Brad

Run it through a converter can capture via firewire. You'll be much happier with the results.

Convert DV to widescreen DVD
 

Sorry if this has been asked before, can't find anything with the search function.

Well, a friend of mine asked if I can make his regular DV footage (I shot) to widescreen DVD.

The way I figure, DV captures 3:2 ratio, normally left and right get chopped a little off, but for widescreen, the top and bottom get chopped a little off instead, and waala, you have widescreen, right?

Well, went into Vegas 4.0, select "new", and then "DV 720x480 widescreen", and use the crop box preset to convert DV footage to widescreen, and render it back out, so far so good.

Bring up DVD Architecture, select "DV 720x480 widescreen", and bring in the new footage. It has a darn big black border all around it. What is the deal?

I burn a short test footage to DVD, play it on PC, and it has a large black border all around it again, wasting real estate.

Anybody know what is going on? How do we eliminate the useless black border?

It renders faster when set to progressive? That should be the
case since it is. You should not set it to interlaced since it isn't.
Vegas Effects take interlacing into account, so that's why it should
be set properly for example.

Glen: "fields are doubled" -> that is totally depended on the
camera that does the "progressive" shooting or emulation. A
true progressive camera will not do a field doubling, only the
worst camera's will. The Canon GLx/XL1 range definitely doesn't
do field doubling. It does a special form of blending which is
better than most post algorithms.

DV can be either 4:3 or 16:9. If it is 4:3 and you want to convert it to widescreen 16:9, you can do that by adding a black border on the sides or cutting off some of the top or bottom.

Set the project properties to 1.2121 pixel ratio to tell Vegas that you want 16:9 widescreen. Then use the track frame motion or pan and crop to slice the top and bottom off. If you right click in a pan and crop, you can tell Vegas to set it to fit the output format. (Sorry, going by memory here, as I don't have Vegas on this machine.)

Then render out to widescreen MPEG2 or AVI file, depending on if you want to compress in DVDA or not. This should now stay without any extra borders, as long as DVDA thinks it is widescreen.

Thanks. I got it going.

Turned out I did everything right the first time, except when rendering, I did not select template as "NTSC DV Widescreen", it was "NTSC DV".

Well, now to render one hours worth and take it over to my friend's...

Masking applied
 

I asked a question ( http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=21502 ) about masking in vegas and here is the knowledge applied:

http://weeklydv.com/short.php?id=173

I used Vegas to isolate the red and desaturate everything else and then got the footage on a pc with afterfx and had Nelly (the director) animate the desaturation using the paint function.

She also added some color to the desaturated image.

Using the paint tool, or should I say, the PAIN tool was very time consuming. After creating 40-50 corrections, the application slowed down to a crawl.

Is there something else you are using for painting over video? I don't think I'd use afterfx again.

Is there a way/plugin for Vegas which provides such functionality?

I know corel painter allows opening an AVI and then painting over each frame -- I tried it but it could not open the 24p AVI file produced by Vegas.

Maybe I should export the footage as TGA...

Thanks!

You could export each frame as an individual picture and then individually modify each one in the paint program. However, that would be a LOT of work.

Have you looked at Boris Red? The current version integrates directly with the Vegas timeline.

A Bit of Help Please
 

Hi All.

I'm fairly new to DV, but am at the stage where I can capture, edit (Using Roxio VideoWave 5 Power Edition) and burn DVDs.

I have very quickly realised the limitations of the Roxio software, it's obviously an entry level program.

What I want to do is capture Bands playing live with the DV Camera, while capturing the sound on Mini Disc, then sync them up later (Amongst other things).

So my questios are these:

1/. Why would I get Vegas over say, Pinnacle?

2/. Where can I load down a demo of Vegas?

3/. How accurate can I get syncing up Audio and Video with Vegas?

4/. What does the program cost approx?

Video Wave is very hit and miss.

I have a Celeron 2.6 processor, 1 gig of Ram, and heaps of hard drive. I'm determined to get a quality product, and am prepared to put the time in to get to know the program so it will do what I want it to.

Any suggestions, advice etc. will be gladly welcomed.

Cheers,

Andy

Insert pithy saying here ------>

1/. Why would I get Vegas over say, Pinnacle?
I've heard many complaints of buggy programs from Pinnacle. Vegas has programmers that believe in stability first. If you do a search, you can find many comparisons between Vegas and other NLE's.

2/. Where can I load down a demo of Vegas?

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.co...p2.asp?DID=447

3/. How accurate can I get syncing up Audio and Video with Vegas?

Vegas has the most audio options of any NLE and is accurate to the sample level. (Vegas 1.0 was an audio mixer - video was added in Vegas 2.0)

4/. What does the program cost approx?

At Videoguys, it's $500 for Vegas and $700 for Vegas+DVD but they have ScreenBlast Acid, Vision Series 1, and Douglas Spotted Eagle's training DVDs included.

Thanks Edward
 

Hi Edward. Thanks for the prompt response.

Where are Videoguys? I'm on Oz, I assume they'll send it O.S. And the price is in U.S Dollars?

I have read on this forum that Vegas is a bit different, and harder to get used to, but once you try it you'll never go back.

I'll load down the demo and give it a whirl!

Thanks again

Andy

I watched the short Andre and it looked great! Good work!

Videoguys. The price Edward mentioned is in US dollars indeed

I just used Videoguys as a quick reference to get a price (that was below full retail). Yes, they are in US dollars and you'll have to check with them about shipping to OZ. I know there are places there selling it but don't know their names. One good thing about the Videoguys offer is that it includes the training DVD set by Spot.

For another tool to help a beginner, look specifically at the "Beginner's Corner" sections of my newsletter

How to join / splice segments?
 

If there is a split command, should there not also be a join command? I tried selecting segments and executing "Group>Create New" but this did not seem to have an effect. I want them to behave as a whole when moving or applying effects, without having to make a selection every time.

I am using version 4.0c

If you group them, and do NOT have "Ignore Event Grouping" turned on, they will, indeed, move together as one. However, the will NOT be made one.

If they are both sequential from the same clip (i.e. you just pressed "S", delete the right one and then extend the left one to fill the space you just created.

OR, you could use the Unsplit Wizard in Excalibur.