Downconverted CF25 DV footage converted to 24P in Vegas....
 

Will someone give us the steps by the numbers. Not allot of discussion, let's not lose focus by talking about outher stuff.

For those of us with a Sony FX1E or Z1U who shoots their project in CF25 mode and will like to use Sony Vegas 5.0d to edit and convert their project to a 24P DVD....how do you do it?

I'll start it off....

Scenario: You are an indie filmmaker and want the so-called 'film-look' that is wonderfully shot in the DVX100a and XL2. However instead of buying those cameras you have purchased a Sony HDV camera because you want the bragging rights of telling people that your stuff is in High-Definition rather then SD and to 'future-proof' your work for the days when you can finally afford to have every room in your house outfitted with a 42" plasma and a HD-DVD player! *smile* You have read everywhere on the WWW to shoot your project in CF25 mode for many reasons we won't get into. You agree to do it. Your pre/production workflow is to Shoot in HDV so that your MiniDV tapes will have the footage in HiDef (so in the event you wish to deliver your movie in high def you can, by onlining it later). You don't have a Super-Computer, so you have decided to 'cut' your project in SD by capturing your footage, not in HDV, but rather in DV format so you can cut it like normal. To do this, you tell the camera to do an 'in-camera' downconversion via firewire. You have now reached post production. What are your steps????

1. Shoot your project in CF25 mode with your Sony HDV camera.

2. Downconvert the CF25 HDV footage to your computer via Firewire.

3. Open up your Sony Vegas 5.0d program

now what?

4. (will someone fill in the blanks)
5. (will someone fill in the blanks)
6. (will someone fill in the blanks)
7. (will someone fill in the blanks)
8. (will someone fill in the blanks)
9. (will someone fill in the blanks)

10. You now have a 24p DVD with a wonderful looking movie that carries the cadence of a Hollywood movie that you can show off to your friends & family and submit to festivals and prospective buyers. You also have the bragging rights of saying you have the same movie in High Definition and can be delivered in HD at anytime.
____________________________________

Will someone fill in those blanks above for us please??

- Shannon W. Rawls

How to "select event" with ShuttlePro2?
 

If I could figure out how to do it with a keyboard, I could program my Shuttle, but I always need a mouse!

I want to be able to change focus from one track to another, then move from event edge to event edge.

Using Alt+Shift+Up/down seemingly changes focus, but when I try to move to the next event edge, it still uses the previous track! I have to click on the event to focus on it.

When I enter the Contour Shuttle Device Configuration and select Mouse Click instead of Type Keystroke as the response, I can select whichever event the mouse cursor happens to be stationed over. This is very close, but I want to select the event on the focused track at the current time.

You could write a script to select the event under the cursor on the currently selected track. This could then be assigned to a keypress and, subsequently, assigned to a button on the Shuttle Pro.

Sounds like a winner! Unfortunately, I have never written a script for Vegas before so I do not know what function to call. I am writing this in case someone writes before I find it...

Procedure:

Go through all tracks until you find the first selected track
Go through all events on that track until you find the one under the cursor

Set the "Selected" flag of that event to true.


If you want to make sure it is the ONLY selected event then you need to make sure the Selected flag is set to false on ALL other events in the project.

Click the link under my name for more scripting details OR contact me directly and I can help you out.

Understood.

I presume you determine which event is under the cursor by ensuring that the event starts before the cursor and ends after it (therefore the cursor is in the middle.)

Thank you, sir! I ended up with the following:

The only problem is that I could not disable the beep upon completion of the script.

Not sure why you would be getting a beep. I would change:

track.Events[i+1].Start > Vegas.Cursor)


because it is POSSIBLE that the "next" event starts after the cursor but the "current" event stops BEFORE the cursor.

Instead, use:

(track.Events[i].Start + trackEvents[i].Length) > Vegas.Cursor)

Absolutely right; I fixed it. The beep was due to an incorrect hotkey assignment. I filed it under TrackView instead of Global. Now it is working perfectly...I can hop from event to event with a touch of a button.

Thank you!

Bad news for CF24 and Sony Vegas Capture 5.0
 

Ran some tests on Saturday. Running some more today. One thing I noticed:

If you run Sony Vegas Capture 5.0 and plug your camera up via Firewire (dv downconverted=yes), then In all modes on the Z1U you get to see a live action preview of what the camera is seeing. At any point you can hit the "CAPTURE VIDEO" button and begin capturing that footage to your computer...easy as pie.... My camera was in 1080i HDV mode (as I will always keep it), I had the downconversion ON via firewire, and I tried capturing directly to computer with Sony Vegas Capture in ALL framing modes of the Z1U.

Z1U in HDV/50i downconverted to DV via firewire mode: CAPTURES LIVE FOOTAGE
Z1U in HDV/CF25 downconverted to DV via firewire mode: CAPTURES LIVE FOOTAGE
Z1U in HDV/60i downconverted to DV via firewire mode: CAPTURES LIVE FOOTAGE
Z1U in HDV/CF30 downconverted to DV via firewire mode: CAPTURES LIVE FOOTAGE
Z1U in HDV/CF24 downconverted to DV via firewire mode: DOES NOT CAPTURE ANY LIVE FOOTAGE.

what happens: If I start capturing cf24 live, for say like 20 seconds...no problem, no dropped frames, clock is running fine. As soon as I hit the STOP button.....the pop up window appears that normally shows your clips simply says "No frames captured" and my thumbnail preview is empty!!

Thats not all....

If I start capturing, for say like 40 seconds or longer...HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM! Frames begin to drop as fast as they are captured (100% of them). and then computer begins to freeze up. If I hit STOP in time before letting the system freeze, the same popup window says "No frames captured" same as before for 20 sesconds or less.

So basically, using CF24 and Sony Vegas Capture 5.0...you will NOT be able to capture live footage from a direct preview via firewire.

However, if you capture your HDV footage to tape in CF24 mode, and then put the camera in VCR mode and THEN do a playback/capture, everything is fine.

Crazy ain't it?

- ShannonRawls.com

Thanks for typing this post. It saved me the hassle of typing it. :)

A question about letterboxing your footage.
 

Since I have a GL2 I don't have Native 16:9 CCD's so, I obviously have to letterbox the footage in Vegas.

In order to get the footage to properly show up on a 16:9 HD tv as a 16:9 movie what are the proper steps in rendering.

I would think that after you letterbox the final movie's footage, one might want to render the footage say....to DVD NTSC Widescreen right?

So the final footage is in the timeline, render to widescreen dvd, then place footage on dvd, done?

The best thing to do is to letterbox on the last render correct? I've rendered the footage letterboxed and when I import it back into Vegas it looks funny....like squashed.... why is that. The footage properties should be widesceen but it just doesn't look right.

Another thing I wanted to ask is that if I shoot in normal mode, should I run a full pulldown first 3-2 or 3-2-2-3 and then output to 24p or just output to 24p and be done with it?

Another thing, when you output to DVD NTSC do you go progressive or interlaced? I've been going progressive.

removing excess footage
 

Hi folks, just don't know what to call this - so I can't seem to find anyting in my books about it.

BUT - what I want to do is edit a bunch of stuff - shorten some clips to what I want - then import the shortened clips into an old project I'm working on.

Is there a way to do this without having to render each clip?

thanks,
Milt

Can I create subtitles in either Vegas 4 or DVD A?
 

I just stared editing some footage I shot in Germany, and I'm a bit anxious because it seems creating subtitles ain't so easy.
I'm dealing with a lot of German dialogue that needs subtitling.

If anyone has any thoughts on this (vegas solutions, alternate dvd authoring software, some other type of graphics software, etc.) I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

update...
 

Ok, it turns out there was some wacky application association that suddenly caused this problem, but what threw me was that it only seemed to be on the newest clips. It's a little weird, because my older clips (authored with ms' wme tool) would play properly when clicked, but the new stuff that was rendered with Vegas wouldn't. Or at least it seemed that way - I actually tried some other clips that were done with MS WME (using the progressive download format) and they too were not behaving as they should have, so I checked a few other things. It turns out it was a hijacked file/app association on this end. I fixed that, so everything (including the .wmv files created within Vegas) "streamload" properly now too. Sorry for the false alarm. I fixed it by going into the windows media player options and retoggling the .wmv filetype association.

If you want true DVD sub-titles, you need to upgrade to Vegas 5 + DVDA 2. Subtitles were added in DVDA2.

Alternately, in DVDA2 you can have multiple audio tracks so you could have one in German and one in English, for example.

Here's one way that would work:

Create sub-clips for all the sections you want to keep (Extract Good Clips in Tsunami is a good tool to simplify this task)

Put all of those sub-clips in a specific bin in the media pool

Copy that bin from one project to the other (i.e. Open Vegas twice - once for each project. Make the media pool in each visible, and drag that bin between the two.)

Nobody huh ?

Did you have it set to scene detect? If yes, try turning that off.

Did you have the minimum clip length turned on? If yes, try turning that off.

Hmmm.....copy that bin to the other project. Very cool thought. I never really think about opening multiple copies of Vegas, but why not?

Thanks a bunch!
Milt

Vegas 5d & DVD Arch 2b update/patch impressions.
 

Do you think it runs faster? What other bugfixes? Anybody run into problems with it?

Thanks Edward !!

Setting scene detect OFF did the trick ! :-)

Gotta love this forum !

Frank

My favourite so far is the much improved mpg2 encoder

Two pass ROCKS !

Frank

Thanks Edward!

Greg: 24p is *NOT* NTSC. It is a film based emulation. NTSC is
29.97 fps. So if you go to normal NTSC you need to do a temporal
interpolation.

However, you are still going (even in this case) from 720 x 576
to 720 x 480. So you are loosing some resolution in the process.

So you are converting, but it is often said that PAL -> NTSC or
PAL -> film is a far better and easier conversion than the other
way around (at least for NTSC -> PAL).

I would swear it was the MainConcept one, oh well. I trust Edward
much more on this issue then myself. I knew about the MPEG
encoder, for some reason I though the DV encoder was also by
them.

Perhaps my mind mixes up some information every now and then,
heh. Thanks for setting me straight guys!

Which exact version of Vegas are you using?

REEEEEEEEEEALLY NOW...........

i hadnt been bothered with the patch until i finish these projects.. BUT.. now that u got me thinking....

wheres my Ghost disc...

This may be a known issue (which exist with PAL captures when
scene detection is on) that manifests itself with this
downconversion as well. Try the following in the capture utility:

Options -> Preferences -> Capture tab, make sure that the options
before minimum clip length and maximum capture length are NOT
checked (capture start delay is also unchecked here).

That fixes that known issue. Perhaps it also helps in this case
(it looks like the same kind of problem).

Two Pass MPEG was added in 5.0 - it's not new to 5.0d.

Not sure the version will make a difference. There could be several things going on and it's hard to tell from the description WHICH it might be.

For example, if you are using stills, and they are not the same shape as the output screen, you will get black bars. Even if you zoom in these bars will not go away UNLESS you choose the "Match Output Aspect" option in Pan/Crop.

No, letterboxing is a way to simulate the widescreen look. If you
want a true 16:9 anamorphic DVD (and don't have anamorphic
shot footage either with an adapter or in-camera) you will have
to start a 16:9 project, crop and stretch the footage before output.
This works best if you render your complete project as 4:3 in one
file before doing the following (for Vegas 5):

1. start Vegas and choose a widescreen project, make sure "simulate device aspect ratio" is turned on for the preview (right-click in the preview screen)

2. load your footage (it should look pillar boxed, ie: black bars on the sides instead of top and bottom)

3. go to track motion on the video track (2nd icon from the left) and select "3D Source Alpha" for compositing mode

4. change the Z value till the image in your preview is fully filled (about -150 on my PAL test here)

5. make sure you output with a 16:9 anamorphic preset!

The DVD player will auto letterbox your footage if it is played on
a non widescreen TV (and the DVD player is setup correctly for this!!)

Thanks for the reply. I had a feeling I might have to upgrade, but it's nice to know they made this specific change. Subtitles seem so basic. Does upgrading to 5.0 require purchasing the entire software package again?

Upgrade pricing is available. It appears to be $250 to upgrade from Vegas4+DVDA1 to Vegas5+DVDA2

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.co...D=912&SPID=272

You will find many more changes there as well. I have a full review of the changes in the April 2004 issue of my newsletter. You can also see a comparison chart on the Sony site which compares the two versions.

Problem with Audio when printing to dv tape
 

Question. Sometimes, after I have rendered my project and I want to print to dv tape, the audio will sound like it is slowing down and dragging. Sounds like an old tape recorder with the battery doing dead. If I stop the process and start over it may do alright, or, it will appear in a different place on the project. This generally only happens for a few seconds but, makes it unusable, and I have to start the print phase over. It does not happen when burning a DVD. Oh, I also set the audio to "best" before doing the print to dv tape. Any ideas? Bob

What drive have you specified for your "temporary files"? The audio ALWAYS gets rendered to a W64 file. By default, that will be on drive C - you may not want it there.

Glad you got it figured out. Computers sure can be fussy at times, eh?

It's version 5.0b build 160

The problem happens with both stills and clips that display correctly at other places in the timeline.

Forget what I said about it happening after the clip is there for awhile - I just replaced a problematic clip only to see the same line appear in it's replacement. (I tried this delete and replace technique once before with success.)

In some cases the line goes across the bottom as well forming a sort of box within a box effect.

All clips have are defaulted to "Maintain Aspect Ratio".

thanks

How about a snapshot as to what you are seeing (I'm not picturing what you're describing).?

How about a way to reproduce to see if we can produce the same results?

Or maybe a copy of the VEG file into which we could drop our own media to see if we get similar results?

Thanks, I will give that a go.