Joven:

You could do a lot worse than load down all 23 of Edward's newletters, print them out, and read them!

They are one the the quickest ways to get a head's up, they were invaluable to me when I was getting started.

Andy

Yeah, seriously. All you do is drop in this one file (I use a PNG I made myself, but it's the exact same thing), then stretch out the thing in the timeline to cover the whole project. It's extremely simple and takes like 30 seconds.

Letterbox Distortion
 

Ok Ive been editing some xl2 and dvx footage together. Heres the facts.

-The XL2 was captured as 16:9.

-The DVXs were captured as 4:3 and shot letterboxed.

-Vegas is set up as a 4:3 project.

Ok so when I butt the DVX letterboxed with the XL2, I first discovered that the black bars didnt match up and looked like they were jumping around. No problum, I pan/croped the dvx stuff in slightly to match the xl2 letterbox that was automatically produced when I draged the xl2 footage into the 4:3 timeline.

The problum is, when I burnt it out to DVD there is occasioanlly a white line of distortion along the top of the black bars on both the top and bottom. Its slight but noticable. It also seems random. Any ideas what this is?

I figure I can put in a mat on another track to correct but Id rather know what the problum is. Thanks. Oh yeah, is there a downloadable letterbox mat anywhere?

Thanks

What I've found to be what seems to be the "correct way" to do it (assuming you're wanting 16:9) is this: you take something easy, like a solid color, apply the letterbox in pan/crop, then render out that to an AVI File (for some reason, I've had issues using stills, I get a white line at the top of the letterbox, between the black and the video). Take this AVI, put in a track over the video, stretch it to whatever length you need (if it loops, who cares? It's all the same), and use the chroma key to get rid of the solid color.

This may be too elaborate, but it always works for me.

thank you
 

Thank you.....

I use to get a line between the letterbox and the video as well. That was when I was using a gif though. That or something created with the media generator. After I created the same thing as a PNG (which has an alpha channel and all that jazz) it works fine. I just crop it out in Cleaner anyway, but it looks fine.

The PNG method sounds better.

If you use the pan/crop tool, check that effects are applied BEFORE the pan/crop. If you have gaussian blur, then the letterbox (black bars) will get blurred too. Also, you may accidentally copy over some clip attributes you may not want to (like reduce interlace flicker).

<<<-- Originally posted by Glenn Gipson : Here's an honest articel about 64bit computing.

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/20...s/index.x?pg=1 -->>>

Very well written - best so far... this section i enjoyed...

"By moving to a 64-bit addressing scheme, the possible address space grows exponentially from 232 to 264, so that the x86-64 ISA allows for what seems like a practically unlimited amount of memory. The theoretical peak size of a 64-bit address space is 16 exabytes, an extremely large number. Current AMD64 processors allow up to 40 bits of physical address space, or one terabyte, and up to 48 bits of virtual address space, or 256TB. Initial versions of WinXP x64 will support as much as 128GB of physical RAM and up to 16 terabytes of virtual memory. The upper limits of the Windows system cache size grow from 1GB in 32 bits to 1TB in 64 bits, a thousand-fold increase. WinXP x64 even takes advantage of the additional headroom for 32-bit apps, giving each one up to 4GB of its own space."

"Special offer: Oder your Dell workstation before August 20 2006 and get two Exabyte of RAM FREE!"

Quicktime movies
 

Having trouble saving a file as a quicktime movie. It renders the entire file, but then gives an error message. Any suggestions?

First of all (just to make sure), when you installed Quicktime, you did choose "Custom" and then picked everything (especially the Authoring Components)?

If yes, what error message are you getting?

How to Increase bass only (Audio)
 

Hello,

In Vegas5, is there a way to increase the bass only for audio music?

Thank you in advance.

Serious help needed!
 

Hey guys... I am on a deadline with this weekly tv show I am producing.. Our first show is coming up on air... SOON!

And I am having stupid -shit-ass-trouble!

I am using connectHD to capture to m2t

then converting to the .avi form to work with

its alot faster and more responsive that way... (in the big file .avi)

I am editing using Vegas5.d

The video and audio are becoming out of sync...

Can anyone give me any ideas on how to fix this???

Time is of an essence!

thanks for taking YOUR time to help me.


Shooting in HDV with Sony Hdr-FX1
Editing on Dell Poweredge 400sc with 2 gigs ram
2 terrabytes of storage

Use the track EQ.

In the left hand column, click on the track effects button (it's green and looks like a rectangle in a chain.)

You should see track EQ in the top of the menu that comes up.

Click on the 1 and drag it up a little until it reads 3dB or so.

2- Make sure you are monitoring on something accurate. On poor equipment that cannot reproduce the low-end well you may be tempted to boost the bass too much. It may also have exaggerated bass and treble. In the deepest frequencies your speakers may be very quiet (possibly with distortion or lack of detail), the frequencies above them will be exaggerated (too loud), then you have the mids, and you should be able to figure out the rest.

REPLY
 

I just have the basic Quicktime that came with the computer. Do you have to have Quicktime's authoring features to be able to save a Quicktime file from Vegas 5 to your hard drive?

Vegas requires the authoring components to properly use QT, Tiff, and some other formats. Just install QT again and install everything listed under "custom".

Integrating M-Audio firewire 410
 

I know someone having problems integrating the M-Audio 410 into Vegas. They can't seem to get each track assigned correctly for surround sound editing. Has anyone here had experience setting it up and using it?

Thanks in advance

btw, I'm assuming ASIO would be the preferred interface?

Multi-phase editing workflow
 

I just want to check my thought process. I am already working on this project, but if anyone can point out easier/better, I will appreciate it (for now or next time).

I have some interview footage with 2-3 camera clips and 1 long audio clip from my iRiver/AT897. About 30 different interviews and 25 minutes of total footage. I was interviewing guests at the dinner table during a party. Before I start editing, I need to merge the two.

1. Add audio and video to timeline, sync up the two audio tracks, mute the camera audio, and render as an AVI (uncompressed default) file to lock audio to video.

2. Use that file as input for next stage, where I need to apply FX (mostly brightness and contrast), a bit of framing (I didn't test wide angle with MKE300 mic attached), and then chop it up into short clips. I will create subclips out of this.

3. Assemble the subclips.

Wonder if anyone would do it differently or use different settings for intermediate AVI file ??

Most all of the cubclips will need the same brightness adjustment. Would you do that before the intermediate render or will I lose info by doing it too early?

1. Add audio and video to timeline, sync up the two audio tracks, mute the camera audio, and render as an AVI (uncompressed default) file to lock audio to video.

Adding and syncing fine. Rendering is really not necessary but you can do that. However, if you DO render, there's no need to render as uncompressed. Since you're starting with DV, render to DV (i.e. NTSC DV or PAL DV)

2. Use that file as input for next stage, where I need to apply FX (mostly brightness and contrast), a bit of framing (I didn't test wide angle with MKE300 mic attached), and then chop it up into short clips. I will create subclips out of this.

3. Assemble the subclips.

This is fine. You'll be slightly better off applying the FX AFTER the first render (which really copies since you're not changing anything). While the intermediate render is not strictly necessary, I can see how it can help you with the organization of your project.

Thanks ed. The problem I think I have is that after combining the iRiver audio, I will be chopping up and shuffling the interviews quite a bit. It seemed like this was the only way to do it. Trying to manage grouping of an alternate audio track looks hard. Or is there a way to lock teh audio so that trimming cutting keeps everything in sync?

And thanks for the heads up about rendering DV format.

This might work better:

Throw all three cams and the iriver audio onto timeline. Sync them up. (Slating at the shoot helps.)

Right click the audio (in timeline), select "create subclip".

Right click the audio, select show in media pool.

Right click the audio clip IN THE MEDIA POOL, DRAG and hover over the VIDEO clip. Select audio --> add as takes.

The audio should now be 'embedded' in the video clip with synced audio.

Rinse and repeat for the other two cameras.

2- Right click the video track and select "Media FX". You can apply exposure correction this way, and it will affect all clips based off that media.

3- If the MKE330/wide angle is an issue, you can drop cookie cutter onto Media FX too. Or if you want to render it out, include the color correction. When bringing the footage back in, add it as a take to existing video.

REPLY
 

I downloded QT again. Does it have to be QT PRO or are the authoring features available on the regular free version of QT?

You do NOT need QT Pro. Just install the STANDARD QT, choose "Custom" as the install type, and pick everything.

THANKS!
 

Hey, I purchased Quicktime Pro & problem solved. Thanks for all the help.

Color Correction
 

I had a plug-in for auto color correction, I believe it was Mike Crash or something like that, but I just had to format my computer and lost it. Can anyone direct me to the link to get that particular plug-in or something similar to it? Thanks again.

MITCH

The Mike Crash tools can be found here: http://mikecrash.wz.cz/

There's also the 6cc (six vector color corrector) tool here: http://www.moosehill.se/vegas/

I'm not sure which one you're referring to.

settings for a slide show...
 

for my job i often have to make little slideshows in vegas 5.

i wanted to make it is automated and uniformed as possible.

i see in the preferences where you can change the amount of time a new still is displayed, and i changed it from 5 seconds to ten.

my question is:

how can i tell vegas i want it to automatically space each new image? basically, is there a way that everytime i enter a new image it is automatically crossfaded into the next? by default, it spaces them one after the other. i would like them to automatically be crossfaded say 1 sec everytime i insert a new image.

also, what about automatically matching the output aspect? is that possible?

is there a better app for making these simple little slideshows?

On the same tab in Preferences is an "automatically overlap" checkbox and you can enter the amount of the overlap. However, If you're doing "Ken Burns" style movements, I don't like to do that. I have the procedure I use written up in Vol 1 #8 of my newsletter.

If you want to really automate the process, you can use the tools built into Excalibur/Neon and/or Ultimate S to build a slide show for you.

I have tried both and since Ed's came first I use it the most. Ultimate S is a bit more powerful but either way you can't go wrong.

Freeze Frame
 

I can't seem to figure out how to do a freeze frame on my video. I read about the Velocity envelope, but I can't get this to freeze my video up as it plays. Can somebody give me some suggestions on how to do a freeze frame? Thanks.

thanks!

Ahh, never mind, I got it. I was simply bending the velocity envelope all the way down, thinking that would freeze it, instead of paying attention to the velocity numbers.

An easy way to make sure you have a freeze frame it to right-click the node, choose "Set to..." and type in 0. Otherwise you may be "close" to zero but not exactly and experience a slight "drift".

.avi aspect ratio vs. mpg aspect ratio
 

Why does my .avi display partially letterboxed in WinDVD, while the rendered .mpg displays full screen? They're both 720 x 480.

I've tried a search on "avi aspect ratio" but the hits that came up seem to center on 16:9 and 24p.

the real question might be, does your .avi show up as letterboxed in the vegas editor window, windows media player, etc.

Short answer: when you render set Pixel aspect ratio to 1.0 and Frame size to NTSC Square Pixel (under File>Render>Custom>Video)

Long answer: The AVI extension merely indicates the file format, not the codec, and not all codecs have or use an aspect ratio tag. In fact, I know of no popular codec that actually does respect the aspect ratio, so I always use square pixels when I am not rendering to MPEG-2. A video container may be compatible with many video and audio codecs, so being able to play one AVI file in no way guarantees being able to play another.

I always just copy/paste the last frame until i've got enough freeze frame time...

NYC Sony Vegas Users Group meeting at B&H 4/5/5
 

Get your creative juices flowing at the April 5th meeting of the New
York Sony Vegas user group. Our Main Event will be our first-ever
Creative Video Challenge Contest, a game that challenges you to
construct a move in only one hour from the media clips we'll supply.
Bring your laptop running Vegas (or any editing program you like) and
join the fun.

The meeting will also feature our first-ever Vegas Quickstart Tutorial
for people who are new to Vegas (or to video editing) as well a
showcase for videos that you've created and a Tip Swap where you can
get answers to your most pressing Vegas questions.
If you want to join the creative challenge, email Charles Dennis,
info@... just so we'll know how many people to expect.
To submit work for the showcase portion of the meeting, contact Jay at
jayvivid@.... Please keep submissions to 5 minutes or less.

The pre-meeting will begin at 6:30 pm with the Quickstart Tutorial,
then the main program begins at 7:00 pm. The new home for our meeting
is B&H Photo at 33rd Street and 9th Avenue.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nysvug/

Are any of you guys going to the Weva Town meeting tomorrow. I'll be there and at B&H tomorrow (Thursday April 1st)

Hi Glen:

I am going to try to make it to the WEVA Town Meeting.

The Next Generation: Preparing for the Transition to High-Definition Wedding & Event Videography which starts at 3:30 looks hot, but I will not be able to get there that early.



In this information-packed workshop, experience the future--HDV! See actual footage from a wedding shot with Sony’s new HDV Pro camcorder and learn how your business can make a smooth and cost-effective transition from SD to HD/HDV. Also see how Sony's high-powered Vegas Video nonlinear editing system can assist in this evolution to high-definition widescreen video production.

http://www.wevainstitute.com/program...l.asp?cityID=1

Vegas with Premiere
 

Hey guys I just aquired Vegas 5.0 and I'm currently running my editor with Premiere pro. There are a few little things that Vegas can do (at least easily) that premiere can't so I'd like to have the abilty to run it if need be. What are the pros and cons of having both systems installed on the same editor?

Thanks guys.