Vegas Video discussions from 2005 (Q1Q2)

[Edward Troxel]

Basically, NO. There is no "save as Vegas 5" option and it's not backward compatible. You could render the timeline and the place that render on the Vegas 5 timeline.

[Ian Slessor]

Hi gang,

I just finished a dance recital DVD and I put together a nice little menu.

A quick synopsis for you. The main menu is a pic (.tga) of the front of the theater. I have a button on the street part of the menu pic that highlights for someone who wants to watch the kids show up for the recital in a limo. The limo "button" links to a quick clip that is identical to the menu but has a limo screeching onto screen, stopping and then zooming off the screen. It then goes to the actual limo video.

My question. Is there anyway to set up the menu so that there is no short (about 1.5 second) blank screen between the menu screen and the clip of the limo zooming onto and off of the menu screen?

Thanks for any assistance you can provide.

sincerely,


ian

[Edward Troxel]

The only way would be to add the video of the second menu to the actual beginnin of the limo video. In other words, the limo video would INCLUDE the transition. Otherwise, the delay time you are seeing will happen and can vary from player to player. The delay is actually a player issue.

[Paul Kali]

I'm still getting used to encoding. I am wondering is there any way to set Constraint Flags for MPEG-1 in Sony vegas. Is it automatically set at 1?

Thanks

[Fred Finn]

Thanks Glen. Yeah I created a bus and assigned one track that was blown out to that bus.

[Khai Yang]

I want to upgrade, but just so i don't confuse myself with "a lot" of new things.

i have pretty much mastered "vegas movie studio + DVD"

what will the next best software be....

thanks

[Edward Troxel]

Vegas 6+DVD

Everything you learned is still there. However, there is soooo much more available in the full version. You can find a comparison chart between movie studio and Vegas 6 on the Sony site. Take a look at my newsletters to see some of the things Vegas can do (link under my name).

p.s. scripts are WONDERFUL and can speed up many of the processes you had to manually do before. Vegas has scripting - movie studio doesn't.

[Miguel Lopez]

Hello. I have around 8 hours of HDV material. I have a P4 3,2 but still is slow. Is there any way that i could edit the whole video in DV and then renaming the files to go directly to the HDV original files?
How could i do this in vegas?

thanks!

[Edward Troxel]

Absolutely. Just render the files to DV, do your editing, and then replace them when you're done. In fact, Spot has a tool to make the process even easier called Gear Shift.

[Tony Rockliff]

I have a couple of strange things that happen from time to time with Vegas 5 and I'm hoping they're just pilot error so that there are solutions.

One is that sometimes when I select all my tracks and Insert Time, no time is inserted. On other occasions it is. What setting or switch might be causing no time to be inserted?

The other is that sometimes when I'm trying to do a fade in or out at the end of a clip, the fade tool is just not available at the edge of the clip, even when I zoom in and pull the 2 clips apart. Most of the time it is available, just occasionally it isn't no matter what I do.

Any clues?

Thanks.

[Edward Troxel]

Originally Posted by Tony Rockliff

The other is that sometimes when I'm trying to do a fade in or out at the end of a clip, the fade tool is just not available at the edge of the clip, even when I zoom in and pull the 2 clips apart. Most of the time it is available, just occasionally it isn't no matter what I do.

In this case, I would say the two clips are "just slightly" overlapped. Resize the clip to the left (i.e. make it smaller and then bring it back to the clip on the right). It should fade properly then.

As for the insert time, I've not seen that happen but, then again, I almost never use that function.

[Matt Champagne]

I found a tutorial for media pro showing a way to mask using a difference composite though for the life of me I can't figure out a way to do the same thing in Vegas. Here is the link to the tutorial

http://www.hiddenphantom.com/Tutoria...SPDiffMatt.htm

Anyone know how to do this in Vegas?

[Peter Jefferson]

or you could try Chrominator which does all this and more such as garbage mattes and rotoscoping..

masks like this only work with static backgrounds, so any moving camera work wont work with this.


chrominator works in a similar manner, however instead of using one particular colour as a key, you can set it to read a series of colours which are the keys. It also allows fo variable gamma settings so you can literally hrow on a green cloth and it will make sure that any green elements (irrespective of their luminance)are considered keys..

i dont know why more compositing tools dont use this method, but there u have it..

[Matt Champagne]

That can be done to an extent in vegas already using its chroma key functions. Theoretically this could be done on an extremely complex background (a non studio situation for example) so long as lighting conditions do not change at all (I think that's part of my problem right now).

The problem I am getting right now is after doing a difference composite I'm not left with an abosolutely solid difference between the subject and the background (resulting from the subject having some of the colors of the background). I tried to render the difference footage, then black and white, and then threshold....but the threshold function seems to generate a ton of noise. I can't seem to find a way to get good contrast between the subject and background....is this perhaps not a problem that can be solved in post?

EDIT: Actually reading over my last post I realize I answered my own question. It is possible, but you still need to prepare in advance with a background that contrasts the subject eliminating the need to threshold too far (though testing in photoshop, photoshop managed to do it on a still without so many errors). It's easier to just chroma key in that case (though perhaps this may yield better quality for dv).

[Edward Troxel]

Click on the track headers. One of the compositing modes is DIFFERENCE. Check it out.