Here's an even better question- does anyone actually USE slip trims?!

My answer is NO.

I will NOW :-)

Seriously though, it's somewhat similar to sliding a transition with Ctrl/Alt and adjusting the in point of one event and the out point of another simultaneously, which I do all the time.

Gary

Alpha Compositing
 

Good Day,

I have done this many times before, but this time no success.

I am using a video animation I have purchased as a mask in the parent track. I have a still photo in the child track. The black portion of the parent track is the area that requires the still to show through, and I have set the alpha properties of the parent track media to 'straight (unmatted)'.

Can some kind soul point out the simple process to achieve the desired result of having the still in the child track show through in the black area of the parent track.

This is a great forum! Thanks for your help in advance!

Track 1 - Mask

Track 2 - That which shows through Mask

Track 3 - That which Shows "Outside" area of Mask - that is the background of the Mask


Make a Parent Child of Track 1 and Track 2.

Just done it to make sure . . .

Vegas + AMD
 

Does anybody have any comments about using VV5 with a laptop running an AMD 64 chip (specifically the E-machines M-6809).

Graham,

Thanks for the reply. I have done this, and it still does not seem to work.

If possible, please give me the step by step. I have been racking by brains to determine where I am going wrong.

The mask media is a Quicktime Video File set to straight unmatted alpha channel.

The child image is a .png file.

I am finalizing my work on a documentary highlighting my church's 110th year anniversary, and this is one of the items I have left till last to complete.

Thanks for your help!

In Vegas 5, you now need to add the Mask "Effect" to track 1.

I don't know that particular chip or computer but many people are running Vegas on AMD chips.

square in the middle of track motion
 

I was toying around with the track motion and i noticed (if you don't you are blind) that there is a square that always stay there throughout the whole lenght of the clip . See example here:

http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/phil2film/


anyway that can be removed or is it part of Vegas

Make sure "Split Screen View" (one of the buttons above the preview window) is turned OFF.

Here we go , done.


Thx a million Ed :)

Apple Steals The Show
 

Quote from the Sunday Mail, Queensland Australia, :

"At the recent National Association of Broadcasters annual convention in Las Vegas, Apple stole the show with its latest digital video offerings. It added high-definition capabilities to its flagship program Final Cut Pro, released DVD studio Pro 3 and Shake 3.5, and introduced a new motion graphics program called, fittingly, Motion."

Not the picture I got from here! :)

Guess they just skipped over the award given to Vegas!

Edward what award did Vegas get ?

Vince

Yo Andy down under..

The Pick Hit award is in recongnition of innovative technology shown at NAB.

Judges are readers of Broadcast Engineering magazine and working professionals in the broadcast, post and network and satellite industries.

That looks like a nice technological package. I have used AMD processors for 5+years with no regrets. One thing you might want to look into is the reliability of the e-Machines laptops. The models I have seen in the past weren't too robust. This is just my observation since I've never owned one of their laptops.

Kink in the 1 avi file per tape workflow...seeking insite
 

I've been following the workflow in Vegas of capturing my tapes in their entirety as one file per tape. I originally switched to this workflow because Edward introduced me to it...just made it much easier organizational wise, etc. I however realized a "kink" in this workflow. It has to do with the way windows handles files.
The other day I captured a single DV tape (1 tape, roughly 13 gigs). After capturing it I checked the drive in xp's defrag and the entire 13 gig file was fragmented. Apparently the content on the drive (though it had be defragged prior to capturing) left gaps and the new file being captured filled the first gap then continued after the content on the disc ends and and so on. Needless to say that causes the ENTIRE file to instantly become a giant fragmented file. Not only that but I think it caused 28 dropped frames in the clip. I'm assuming when the disc had to skip a large file that got in the way to continue writing during the capture it caused enough latency for a 28 frame drop.

My question is this- if I I shot a program without any breaks (ie without hitting stop..just letting the camera roll)...is there a way to capture it in Vegas so it breaks the file up incrimentally?

For some reason, it seems that even if a drive is totally empty a capture will be fragmented. It doesn't make sense to me be really seems to happen. However, the drive should be fast enough anyway.

Let me give you a slight modification to the "capture everything" method (and how I REALLY do it). I will capture via "segments". For example, assume I tape a wedding. When I capture the first tape I will batch capture into possibly 3 files over an 83 minute tape.
1) Complete ceremony in a single clip
2) Everything that happened between the ceremony and the reception in a single clip.
3) Reception activities in a single clip.

While I am still capturing large segments, I'm not actually capturing a full tape into a single file.

On a different note: Suppose I'm taping a 2 or 3 hour event - in this case I WILL capture the entire tape into one file as the entire tape is a non-stop run in the camera. If I wanted this into 2 or more different segments, I could, once again, use batch capture to break it up into multiple segments. Just make sure the second batch capture entry starts at the same timecode as the first one ends.

Your dropped frames have other causes than capturing 1 long AVI. Your hard drive will always, naturally be fragmented. This is because the drive arm writes wherever the disk happens to be at any given moment regardless of what you are putting on it. The clip you capture will still be shown as one long clip, no matter how scattered the bits and bytes are. This makes writing to the drive go faster. Defragging the drive puts the bits back into sequential order, which makes accessing the data quicker for the drive.

28 dropped frames? I'd be checking out my setup.

Well prior to this I never dropped a frame ever. I had over an hour of footage capture prior to this and didn't drop a single frame. Like I explained I "think" the dropped frames (aprox. 1 sec worth...28 frames) could have been caused by me trying to capture an entire tape as a single file with a hardrive with lots of data already scattered on it. I'd have to assume the 28 frames were in one 1-second chunk when the write head had to jump a considerable distance across the drive to skip over the other 13 gig file I have stored on it as I captured. Just an assumption. Other than this recent capture I've have absolute great performance out of this external 200gig 7200rpm drive. It's a Maxtor one-touch, connected via firewire.

So Edward, how exactly do I get it to break the footage up using batch capture...do I have to litterally go through all the footage and create capture points first. UGH...how about if I wanted to simply break the footage up into a separate file every 10 minutes? Is it possible to automate something like this? Thanks in advance.

PS Edward, have you ever dropped any frames capturing a large 60-minute clip as a single file on a hardrive with video content already residing? In other words is my assumption that the fragmentation...or it having to write AROUND the content already on the drive in the gaps caused the dropped frames?

Yes. You have to pick the capture points and, yes, you could do something like every 10 minutes. I used to have to do 9 minutes in EditDV/Cinestream because of the 2 gig limit. Something I would NOT want to go back to.

No. Something else has to be going on in order for you to have dropped frames. I seriously doubt that the dropped frames was because of a fragmented hard drive UNLESS it is a really slow drive. Even on the 5400rpm in the laptop I have not experienced this problem.

Well it's a 7200 rpm drive (external). Like I said I captured an entire tape with my PD-170 just fine...not a single dropped frame. I went over my friend's house to capture the b-roll footage from the event from his Canon XL-1s. I'll have to keep an eye on it in the future.

Some Vegas 5 questions
 

Finally got a good nights worth of editing in the new Vegas 5. I ran into some things I'm curious about- maybe some can give me insite on a few of them.

1. Is it true you have to set up a compositing parent/child when using the cookie cutter now? I tried using the cookie cutter but it didn't seem to be working. It only showed black over the areas that were supposed to be masked. As soon as I made the one layer a child to the other the cookie cutter worked.

*Oddly enough I found I was able to break out of the parent/child mode and still maintain the mask. When I first did this I thought I was wrong and I DIDN'T need to set up compositing for the cookie cutter to work. I then tried going back and using the cookie cutter WITHOUT setting up a composite- no dice. A glitch maybe...but difficult to reproduce- I was only able to get the making to stay a few times after turning OFF the composting mode...and it was when I wasn't trying to reproduce the glitch.

2. Is it me or does the ram render no longer render smooth slow motion?! I used to be able to ram render a clip that was slowed and get the silky smooth preview. Now I have to do a pre-render to get a smooth preview of what my slow motion is going to look like.

*Another oddity I ran across was the inability to alter a peice of footage that was prerendered. I tried applying a pan/crop to a fresh prerender and I couldn't get it to change the view of the clip?! Later I tried again on another pre-render and it was fine?!

3. Lastly, my workflow doesn't entail me usually using prerenders so I don't have much experience using them. Should prerenders render out a single clip as multiple files? If so, why?
I was watching a pre-render render out and it kept chopping the file as it rendered it.

Found a few things out in the past few minutes:

-May be old news but new to me but you CANNOT alter a prerender with pan/crop, it does nothing to the prerendered clip. You can, however add filters, though as soon as you click add, choose your filter(s), then hit ok- the prerender is nullified.

-You most definitly DO need to put the tracks into compositing mode for the cookie cutter to work now. I'm still trying to reproduce the glitch where turning off the composting mode didn't disable my cookie-cutter.

-Apparently Vegas 5 handles the levels of preview window quality differently than Vegas 4. In Vegas 4 you could be in Preivew (auto) and do a shift-M (ram render) to get an accurate depiction of the footage's movement. You now have to change it to at least "best" mode to get smooth slow motion preview even with ram renders.

-Lastly, having a track in child mode cuts frame rate tremendously. I a small section in the beginning of my timeline I needed to use compositing....but further down the track I had a lone clip with no parent above it, yet it still played back at much slower framerate?!

Roches
 

Hi Glen,
there is something not 100% right in the parent/child code in vegas 5 - i had a project with a parent/child mask and the mask did not show up on external preview - only in preview window.

Then a [can't go wrong with] XP reboot and the problem was gone. Multi-child is new in V5 so I think this could be on the software engineers to do list for 5b release... maybe they had an intern write that part of the code...

/magnus

Coaster in DVDA
 

Well I made very simple test home movie and decided to burn to a DVD-R.
I left it to encode the neccessary files from .avi and to burn afterwards before to go to work.

Later on I had the successfull mesage but the PC doesn't recognise that there is DVD in the drive at all.
I repeated the whole action (this time I had ready the files from the DVDA project) using DVD+RW. The only thing I changed from the default settings was the size to 4.7GB media.
This disk work without a problem in the PC and stand alone DVD player.

So is it the media size left at 3.5GB the reason for the failed DVD-R?

1. Is it true you have to set up a compositing parent/child when using the cookie cutter now? I tried using the cookie cutter but it didn't seem to be working. It only showed black over the areas that were supposed to be masked. As soon as I made the one layer a child to the other the cookie cutter worked.


No it is not true. It works just fine without a parent/child relationship. I just tested it on two tracks with NO parent/child relationship and all appeared as expected.


3. Lastly, my workflow doesn't entail me usually using prerenders so I don't have much experience using them. Should prerenders render out a single clip as multiple files?

Pre-rendering does multiple files - usually in the 10 to 12 second time range (depending of format).


-May be old news but new to me but you CANNOT alter a prerender with pan/crop, it does nothing to the prerendered clip. You can, however add filters, though as soon as you click add, choose your filter(s), then hit ok- the prerender is nullified.

This is an acknowledged bug. You can remedy this by right-clicking the "pre-render" indicator and choosing delete.

The media size would not have affected the playability of the DVD. Was anything really burned onto the DVD-R disc? It may still be blank.

Apparently there's something wrong on my machine- the cookie cutter will not work without setting up the top track to be a parent, etc. If I simply add the cookie cutter to the top track it shows black where the mask would be. As soon as I click the make child button it works.
*Granted I was doing a ctrl drag duplicate of the track. And applying the cookie cutter to the top track. Though I don't think that should make a difference.


Watch I'll go back in there today and the cookie cutter will work perfectly (like Magnus said...after a nice XP boot...). Hopefully Sony will clean this up....


PS Yet another thing that was acting up was the ram render interuption....usually during a ram render you can hit the space bar to snap out of the ram render and watch what you had renderd up till that point. On some ram renders I could escape...I was stuck untill it was finished. ?!?!?

Perhaps a screenshot of your timeline and settings showing the
thumbnails might help.

UPDATE:

-Found out my problem with the cookie cutter...I was applying it to the track and not the event. If you apply the cookie cutter at the track level it needs to be in a compositing mode to work. Or, oddly enough, move the opacity slider to 99% and it looks perfect. Although at 100% and no composite mode it only shows black where the mask resides.



Still trying to figure out why my ram renders aren't rendering my speed changes smoothly in Preview (auto) mode. Granted I know preview auto isn't the best mode to view effects in but in Vegas 4 you could get a smooth preview of slow motion (below 40% speed) simply by ram rendering a section. NOW...it seems, it HAS to be in a higher quality preview mode regardless of ram-rendering. Maybe Edward can confirm this. I no longer have V4 on my machine.

Someone (in Vegas 4) take a clip slow it down to 33% speed, keep the preview mode to Preview (auto) and ram render a small section. Does it play smooth or have a bit of choppiness to it. If my memory serves me correct Vegas 4 would ram render smooth playback even in Preview quality mode.

Chicago and Denver, just around the corner
 

Looking forward to meeting a bunch of y'all in Denver and Chicago next week. We'll be giving away Pixelan, Artbeats, Bella Keyboards, ADS Enclosures, ACID loops, and more. Plus the famous goodie bags....
See you there!!

http://www.vasst.com/training_tours.htm

Wish I could be there. Maybe one of the other stops along the way!

I wont give up!
 

When you coming to London . . hmmm??

Grazie

Grazie,
You put together the users, we'll market as best we can, and we'll be there. We've been talking with the distributor in London, they're interested too.
Haven't been there for a LONG time, did a training in Earl's Court 3 years back.
C'mon, Grazie, push those folks and bring me over. I'd love to meet you in person.

I'm trying . .I'm trying . . The distribs here have a word for me here . . I think it is "fanatic" ? Frankly this IS an understatement . .

I'm going to the Broadcast Production Show at Olympia London - I'll see what and where Vegas is showing . . .

Spot, I'm doing a "Grazie-Type" Review of V5. Might we chat off line to chuck some ideas about? You got a little time to spare me?

Best regards,

Grazie

But of course I have the time, and you've got my email addy. Remember, I leave on the VASST road on Friday of this week.

Yes, I can see the burnt area on the disk.
Also in my other writing software the disk is shown as having 1MB and no free space.
It was brand (Mitsubishi) x4 media and I chose this speed in DVDA. I couldn't see the actual burning process.

I also burnt the DVD+RW at x4 and can see same area changed but so far no problem playing back this one. At burning it showed lead in, actual burn and lead out process.

burning multiple dvd
 

Anyone know how to burn a project across multiple dvd's in DVDA?