Any reasonable speed PIV will work well. Get as fast as you can afford. I would recommend a 512 Meg or 1 Gig of RAM. Get as much hard drive space (separate from the system drive) that you can afford. Otherwise, Vegas will pretty well work on any PC.

Because, certain shots were a framed with the subject a little higher in the frame, if I simply apply the mask to the entire project, then I chop heads. If I apply it to seperate parts, I can reframe my subjects and have perfect framing.

You could still apply the mask to the entire project but use Pan/Crop on the individual trouble areas to adjust the position as needed.

Vegas will run fine even on really wimpy computers.

Rendering speed is about proportional to CPU clock speed (among the same processor family, so don't compare Pentiums to Celerons or AMDs). Hyperthreading and 800FSB vs 533FSB (front side bus speed in mhz) add a few % each, but not much to worry about. For MPEG2 encoding hyperthreading should give about a 15% speed boost. A faster computer would be nice since you have to wait less for rendering, but Vegas has real-time previews so you should be able to get decent quality previews of your video.

RAM... Vegas doesn't need much.

I wouldn't obsess too much on performance. Like Edward said, "Vegas will pretty well work on any PC." An exception to that is your monitor resolution. 800X600 just won't really work that well. Try the demo.

I'm upping my RAM from 256 RAM to 512 MB not because of Vegas per se but because I have so many plug-in programs for it that I think it can only benefit performance.

Thanks for the advice. I just downloaded the demo and I'm pretty sure I'll be making my purchase within a few weeks.

Gold Coast Queensland
 

Hi Guys.

Just hanging about, waiting for the postman to tell me My Vegas 4 + DVD has arrived.........


In the meantime, are there any Vegas users on the Gold Coast, that might be interested in drinking a few beers at my expense in return for giving me a quick tour of the program?

I'll even get the wife to cook dinner!

Waiting, waiting....

Cheers,

Andy

LOL

I wish I could be there. Check out Klieners 2 DVD Vegas tutorial. It helped me tremendously. (I was new to NLE). I have a solid grasp now because of these!

I'll drink a beer anyway and think of the Gold Coast!

Power Point mpegs?
 

Hello all,
I'm trying to embed an mpeg2 (default setting), into a Power Point slideshow and it seems to work OK on my PC but when I try to play said file on my client's PC it will not play. Same OS, same version of Power Point.
Should I render as an mpeg1?

Thanks in advance.

Shane

David Hague is a very knowledgable Aussie user although I am not sure exactly where he lives in Australia---He actually was the technical editor for DSE's book. You can find him over at http://www.digitalvideoediting.com---in the Vegas forum section---

You need to install the MPEG2 codec on the other machine. MPEG2 is not standard.

Based on newsletter subscriptions, I can say there are MANY Vegas users in Australia.

Thanks Edward,
The spot is a 30 second advertisement that will be projected from a PC using Power Point at a local theater chain. Installing the MPEG2 codec might not be an option in this case (not sure how many theaters as of yet).
Would MPEG1 be acceptable in this use?
I did notice some serious degredation when I rendered it to mpeg1.

My last moronic question; where would I get the MPEG2 codec?
Is it on my Vegas CD? (I should know this, huh)

Edwards suggestion is excellent. This is exactly what I did for my
Lady X episode. I put a mask on one track above everything else
and almost every scene has been moved slightly lower or higher
underneath this mask with pan/crop tool. Works PERFECT.

Perhaps you've accidentily keyframed something?

That's interesting. I've been asked to investigate embedding a small segment of video in a PowerPoint presentation that will be distributed around the client's business partners - all of whom are using PowerPoint but with almost inevitable system differences.

Is there a "safe bet" format that would offer the highest probability of successful playback from PowerPoint/different versions of Windows etc?

No it isn't on your Vegas CD. Most MPEG2 codecs in use today
have been installed by a software DVD player like WinDVD or
PowerDVD.

MPEG1 should be supported on all systems out of the box. It
does have a bit lower quality indeed. Not much around that
I'm afraid. You might try increasing the bitrate a bit.

Thanks Rob. Experiment time!

It will be run from a CD/hard disk anyway so size isn't an issue.

You might also investigate formats such as WMV as well. With a high bitrate, they can also look quite good.

Can someone repost Edward Troxel's 24p conversion Film Look plugin?
 

Just what it says. I'm in a rush and a director friend of mine needs to make her music video she shot for a NYC band on a Panny DV953 to look less videoie and more 24pish. The thread only has a broken link for the script now.... thanks in advance!

It's still there. You may be looking at an OLD link. Here's the current link:

http://www.jetdv.com/scripts/RC3_VegasFilmLooks.exe

how to mask 4:3 for 16:9?
 

HI,

I just purchased DVXA Pal!


1) Anyone can tell me how can I be sure how much should I mask 4:3 LCD screen for 16:9?

2)Does Vegas have this 'drop" option?

Thanks for help,

Voytek

Picture to video problems with Vegas 4.0
 

I resized my pictures to 655 X 480 and when I watch it on TV it cuts off some of the picture. When I watch it on my computer I can see the whole image. I know I don't have the same res on my tv that I have on my computer but I must be missing something. I have a plasma tv and a normal analog tv and it cuts it off on both.

Any ideas would be helpfull.

Thanks,

Jon

The part you are missing is in the "safe area". TV will always show less than the computer does. Push the button that looks like # above the preview window to see the safe area lines.

Thanks so much Edward, I guess I was looking at the old link! We can make the rush to fedex this puppy off today now. Cheers!

Edward,

Thank you for the tip. I fit my picture in the square, outer square and it only cuts of a tiny part of the photo. If I reduce it to the inner square it shows the whole picture but has extra room. Is there a size that will fill the whole tv screen? I have played with the safe area to try to get it fill the whole frame with no success. What book would you recommend for a how to on vegas 4.0.

Thanks,

Jon

Only if you are lucky.

The safe zone may be different on different tv's. Set an unobtrusive background behind your pictures that won't distract from the project, just in case.

As Harry said, every TV is different. If you MUST see the entire picture, put in inside the inner safe zone and you'll get a slight black border on all but the oldest of TVs. Personally, I just leave the picture full size and let the TV cut off what it does. Just make sure you don't have anything important in that area.

Also, I never bother making my pictures 655x480. I just load any size, use Match Output Aspect in Pan/Crop, and then adjust the size using Pan/Crop.

I gathered there would be a few users here, just was hoping I'd get a reply from someone on the coast, or even Brisbane.

BTW Edward, been doing what you suggested and using the demo version. Already it's coming together, but how frustrating is it when you can't save what you've done!

Waiting, waiting.......

Great. Thank you both. I made the pictures 655 x 480 and let it cut out what didn't fit and it looked good. I am just a perfectionist, wanna be perfectionist that is. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't something simple that would make it look perfect.

Thanks again.

Jon

Anyone see Vegas 5 and DVDA 2 yet? Release Date?
 

I saw in my issue of Videography that Vegas 5 and DVDA 2 will be announced at NAB.

I have several DVD projects sorely in need of alternate audio tracks and menu transitions. Anyone seen these features that's not under NDA? Anyone going to NAB? Any ideas of release date and pricing?

i'm 50/50 on NAB .. it's HUGE !!! this time will not even try to see ALL of it .. might go in 21st AM and out 22nd PM ??
i think there's a lets meet thing sponsored by VASST on the 22nd 7:30am to 9:30 am ....

I would not trust any information until any official release announcements are made by Sony.

The information in Videography looks pretty official. It's in the NAB preview section.

You want a miniDVD, which can be burned with Nero 6.

I don't know your camera, but check to see if it has black bars.

I'm not sure what you mean with "drop" option, but I'm using
a mask I created myself in Vegas. Go to this page and
you'll be able to download the mask near the bottom of the page
(the PAL 16:9 mask is the one you want)

Make sure it is in the top video track in Vegas and select the
correct compositing mode (can't remember which one that is on
the top of my head, so just try the options on the list). Make sure
you have some footage beneath it on another track.

Why did you resize the pictures to 655x480? That sounds like
you are loosing resolution. What was the original size? You might
also have the wrong pixel aspect ratio.

Where did these pictures came from? Digital camera?

Time-lapse In Vegas 4??
 

Hey All!

I just wanted to know if it was possible to create true time-lapse clips in Vegas 4 from full length video.

I don't want to be having to use the 'reduce length - preserve content' feature and I would be grateful if anyone could inform me as to whether or not I can create frame-rate specific time-lapse clips in Vegas 4.

Thank You!

You just need to speed up the clip. You can do that by either holding down the CTRL key while resizing the clip (smaller) or by applying a velocity envelope. Not sure what you mean by: 'reduce length - preserve content'. There is a "Preserve Pitch" option related to audio.

Probably meant reduce the size of the clip but without clipping any of it off. Technically it's reducing the "duration"....he just decribed it in an odd way.

Speaking of time lapse, I'm looking to do something similar soon. I want to get a shot of a church with the clouds rolling by. I know the footage might have to be sped up well beyond what a ctrl+drag, or velocity envelope will allow- so I have to do it in steps. Speed it up- render it out- speed it up....will this result in any lesser quality, rerendering it so many times?

Glen, in your case, yes that will work fine. However, remember you can use BOTH the CTRL-Drag AND the Velocity Envelope on the same clip. By doing this, you can get up to a 12x speed increase in ONE pass. If you need faster than that, just do what you said and speed up the rendered clip. When removing frames (which is what you're really doing) this is much less of problem.