In the media pool, change it to "detail" mode. One of the columns will include the date/time of the first frame.

Wow, thanks, that does exactly what I need.

Thanks again.

Me too! It's gonna be great to meet you guys in person!

The best part of trade show events like these, is putting a face to a name. Can't wait!

It rendered to DV in one hour. A subsequent one-pass render in Procoder took 25 minutes (60%-real time)

In other words, the time lost due to the frameserver is negligible. The quality is the same (it's only DV, after all.) Good to know.

Me

So you take all of your footage that you shot and without any editing what-so-ever, not even trimming it all up at all, you convert it all to 24p?

What do you do after that? I don't see how that would be better than just having everything at least edited together, without any effects or anything. So if you have a 10 minute movie......edit it together, then produce the 24p from 60i, how would that be much different?

Although the only problem I see is with the audio. Say you want to mix into 5.1. If you don't no biggie, but if you do, then you are forced into having the sound be on 1 track of audio unless you copy a bunch of dupes onto other tracks to set the pans and effects and such.

I sometimes use Cubase to handle ALL the audio since it's about 10x easier to mix with than Vegas as far as using effects and writing automation. It does require an extra step, but it certainly doesn't degrade any audio.....if not make it better.

All in all, why is rendering before editing better? Would using Adobe's Magic Bullet 1.5 better than Vegas's 24p? I have that.

This would require some fancy managing of files, that's for sure.

Thanks Glenn!

Anyone want to fly me up? <g> Seriously, have a great time guys!

The quality is NOT the same if you have done any effects or other
changes to the frames except a straight cut. Frame serving is done
in an uncompressed manner. DV is a 5:1 lossy compression that
tosses away information, so if it needs to re-encode (which it
needs to do for everything except straight cuts) you will loose
information.

Whether it is visible in the end result is a different matter,
personally I would just use the frameserver to get the best
quality I can. No need (for me) to cut corners there.

Well... that wasn't exactly the question I asked. I wanted a comparison between frameserving to Procoder 2-pass vs rendering straight from the timeline with the MainConcept 2-pass. Then what was the speed difference/quality difference between the two MPEG2 files?

Media Pool is missing??
 

I know this is something that I am doing but I can't seem to find "Media Pool". It does not come up in a window at the bottom of the screen where it usually is positioned.

I can open and close all the other windows but when I click to view "Media Pool" I see no changes on screen. However music from the timeline starts to play.

Has anyone had this happen to them? The worst thing is that I can open any of my projects and they seem to keep the format that I last used when editing. This means as I try various ways to bring back media pool each time I open a different project media pool remains missing.

Very frustrating.

You've just docked it somewhere and just needn to shuffle a few windows until you uncover it.

Also try Alt/5.

Gary

Thanks, Gary, but I suspect it is a bit more than that.

For one thing I went to View and unchecked every item. I would suspect that then when I clicked alt-5 Media Pool should appear it doesnt. However, music starts to play the way it does if you select an item in media pool. If hit enter it adds the sound clip.

Toggling with alt-5 shows no difference on the screen.

I had this happen once when I undocked a window and parked it in the lower right corner of the screen and then subsequently change my screen resolution to work with another program. Next time I launched Vegas I couldn't find my window (audio meter if I recall). Have you changed screen resolution lately?

Patrick,

I haven't made any changes but I went to the highest resolution to see if that was the problem. I am running two monitors and I have put media pool on one monitor just by iteslf in the past but not lately. I thought perhaps it was lost on another window.

In Premiere you can save you desktop setting. I think you can on here but I have not utilized that unless I did it when using Vegas Training Tapes. If there is a default setting somewhere it would work for me.

You need the Cineform plug-in, which also exports M2V files back to your camera/deck.

Charley, I would try two things:

First, Press ALT-D, release, and then press 1. This will hopefully bring everything back to normal. If it does not, exit Vegas, hold down CTRL-SHIFT, and start Vegas. This will reset EVERYTHING back to default (including any settings you have changed in Options - Preferences).

Now there are a couple commands I hope I never need again!

Thanks so much, Ed. the Alt-D,1 think did the trick. I will print out your reply in case it happens again in the future. I managed to miss a lot of editing today trying to chase down that problem.

I encoded an 8 second clip using various settings, and found at that the quality was more or less the same at the high bit rates I was interested in (around 6 Mbps.) The encoding times are:

Saving to the same hard disk:
Mainconcept
Good: 67s
Best: 68s
Procoder
High Speed: 28s
High Quality: 29s
Highest Quality: 42s
Mastering Quality: 42s

Saving to another hard disk:
Mainconcept
Good: 68s
Best: 69s
Procoder
High Speed: 28s
High Quality: 29s
Highest Quality: 35s


Using a one-pass VBR setting with an average bit rate of 6 Mbps I ended up with Mainconcept encodes of about 6.6 MB (~6.4 Mbps) and Procoder encodes of 5.2 MB (~5 Mbps).

Conclusion: MainConcept better approached the target bit rate, but took much longer.

I just frameserved the whole video to Procoder, which encoded it to another hard disk at High Quality in 52 minutes (vs. ~85 for the DV route.)

Vegas 5 allows saving up to 10 different screen layouts and easily recall them. ALT-D, 1 simply "recalls" the first layout. Glad that it worked to reset your screen.

Simple ?: Stopping cursor at end of clip
 

So i get to the end of my video clips and theres no more video frames yet the cursor keeps on going, having a good ole time. Is there a button or setting so vegas will stop the cursor at the last frame of video, without me having to highlight the clip?

THanks

I just had to do something similar yesterday to solve a slight visual jitter problem occuring in just one section of a 90 minute project that was occuring whenever I used the MainConcept encoder, even at 2 pass encoding (it occured after fading in after a mid-title section).

So I frameserved to the TMPGEnc encoder (which is known to be slower then the MainConcept one) and that solved the jitter problem.

The MainConcept encoder encoded at 1.33:1 and the TMPGEnc encoder encoded at 2:1 (both using 1 pass as it was a draft review copy). It was worth the extra time to get the problem fixed.

Importing a veg file
 

How can I import one project into another project? I was looking to edit and save each of my scenes for my movie individually, so that I can assemble them together later. Can this be done? Thanks.

Open two instances of Vegas and copy from one, then paste into the other. You could also render each segment and assemble those in another project.

Gary

Thanks, that worked like a charm.

In most cases, playback will stop a few seconds after the last clip on the timeline. However, I have seen cases where it just keeps on going. You can always just press the space bar or enter to stop the playback.

Nope, this one doesn't stop it just keeps on going like the energizer bunny. I guess i could "just" press the space bar but i'm trying to be really lazy/efficent and see if the cursor would stop automaticly so it doesn't keep moving the time line to a new screen


<<<-- Originally posted by Edward Troxel : In most cases, playback will stop a few seconds after the last clip on the timeline. However, I have seen cases where it just keeps on going. You can always just press the space bar or enter to stop the playback. -->>>

Here's a hint: Start playback, click somewhere on the timeline or just slightly move the timeline. Now the timeline will continue to play but the screen will never be updated until you pause playback!

:-)

Thanks Glenn, very subtle work.

I liked the highlight across the drummer's shirt , creating contrast between the subject and background using cool vs warm, and enhancing the lighting. Excellent.

Scott

My video lags on the time line
 

When I play my clips in the Trimmer Bin, they play fine, but when I play SOME of my clips on the time line, they have this ghostly lagging effect to them. By the way, I shot in 24pA mode with the DVX100A. What could I be doing wrong here? Why are some clips playing smoothly, and som aren't?

Hmmm...now the problem is gone...but why could this be happening SOMETIMES?

Pip Bouncing Ball Transition
 

I've created a basketball video with stills that fly in and out as the video plays. My question. Is there an easy to use transition to make the still picture bounce in and bounce out. I have tried the "Wax Bouncing Ball" transition but having alot of problem getting it to work eg. crashes Vegas. Any other transitions out there where I can do this or is it easier to work within the track motion and manually produce this?
Thanks in advance.

Latency of Creative's ASIO drivers
 

Why does my audio surge ahead noticably when using these drivers, compared with DirectShow? I thought the idea was to achieve zero latency.

It could be the preview quality. If it is set too high, the computer might not be able to keep up. I always edit in "Draft" mode.

Found Transition
 

Never mind

Found a great Bouncing Ball Transition at:

http://mikecrash.wz.cz/

Forgot about that one. I was thinking maybe Adorage but nothing in that package was really coming to mind.

not really zero.. more like anythign between 2 to 10ms..

to get the most out of ASIO, u realy do have to set a buffer within Vegas, not only that, but run a DX diagnostic and adjstu yoru settings as required..

im using an audigy a have a latency of about 2ms, mind you im using a virtual midi cable triggering my sequencer (Sonar) which in turn is controlling my synths..
so if i can get it this tight with all this gear while running Vegas as the master im sure with some tweaking u cna too :)

I have an Audigy too. What is the procedure for this tweaking, and do I have to use additional software besides Vegas 5?

just make sure u run the latest drivers from creative, make sure ASIO is selected and then open up the audio properties. you will be given a small box with a 3 digit number in tehre. thats your latency setting.
put this to 10ms