Actually, to create a PIP you're better off using Track Motion. Owen, go to the link below my name and look at the first three issues. I cover PIP's extensively there.

Or even better, download the free trial of Excalibur (which Edward and Gary developed, I think?!?). Excalibur will do some really cool PIP stuff, very easily. If you use the trial, be careful...you'll buy it! ;)

Why didnt i think of using the pan-crop tool! DUH! Thanks for all the advice guys, I'll check it all out and see what suits me best.

This forum is like having IT services on hand 24/7, except you have one great advantage over IT services, you know what you're talking about!!!

Thanks again
Owen

help with bezier masks
 

I was trying to use Bezier masking to make a puzzle appear to break into peices and leave the field of view. I made a whole bunch of peices with the Bezier mask with no problem and then made them move with the 3D track motion. The problem is I used ADD masking to put all the peices together (one peice per track). I had to render (in DV AVI) every few tracks to a new track to keep rendering from crashing my computer and to prevent motion aftifacts.

The ADD mask caused two problems.

First, overlapping peices (as they move off the field of view) turn brighter (because they are added). This is anoying but can be acceptable. Second, as I rendered to new tracks, the puzzle became progressively brighter. It seems that some low level background is being added during each render to the new tracks and this slowly accumulates until the puzzle is superlit. Since I start with 286 tracks, this is a significant problem. I used some of the filters to adjust the final output but it looks terrible. Low resolution.

Any suggestions on how to solve these problems? I also tried converting my Bezier masks to regular masks (with the blue screen mask, forgot what it's called) but render times then increased exponentially. A render of a 60 second piece of only 5 tracks was estimated to take 8 hours before it crashed my new notebook.

BTY, I'm using V5.

Thanks.

Hmmmm.....clicked on the link and it redirected me to a microsoft site. Is that right? Love to find out about the academy.

Milt

http://www.digitalmediaacademy.com/c...ets/vegas.html is the direct link.

Looking for a good transfer house
 

I've been entering a video that I completed this winter in various festivals and I had a question about the best ways to go from my computer to a tranfer house, and which facility has done a good job for people.

My film (VIDEO LETTERS FROM PRISON) is a 30 minute piece that I edited in Vegas and have turned into a DVD. I also have an AVI file of the same piece.
What I need is a BetaSP to send off to the Winnipeg Festival. Other festivals want Digi-Beta.

My question is - can these transfer facilities use an AVI file, and would that result in better quality, or should I just send a DVD? Because it's 30 minutes long, I used a higher constant bitrate, and it really looks good, but the original tape was 24P from my DVX100A and I'm wondering if it would be better if I sent them the AVI file, without the 2332 pulldown.

Shameless plug - the film recently won BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT at the Native Voice Film Festival.

Thanks for the help!
Milt Lee
Hollow Bone Films

Cool, this time it worked!! THANKS!!

Milt

I fixed the top link. It should also work now.

Limitations on Academic V6
 

Hi,
I'm considering the purchase of V6 for my son who is a broadcast journalism major. Does the "student" version of V6 have any limitations as respects functionality as opposed to the standard retail version?
Thanks - David Bird

Does anyone exist at http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com ?
 

Never aswer the phone, just get on hold forever listening to that stupid music.

Never answer emails.


If there is any sign of life over there then post here and let me know.

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: My understanding is that they only answer during normal business hours. Plus there is an hour period of time during lunch during which the phone is not answered.

Confirmed (straight from Sony's website):
Hours: 9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST, Monday through Friday.

There is ONE version of Vegas - just different pricing depending on qualifications. So, no, there will be no limitations.

Thanks for the info, Ed.
David Bird

I've gotten pretty good support from them (when I had an install issue with CDA 5.2, and once on a SF plug-in), but you do need to call during business hours. Unfortunately, business hours don't include weekends.

Steve - maybe someone else could help, but I can't understand how Bezier masks would be used in a "breaking apart a puzzle" effect.

Admittedly, I haven't thought this out, but what I would do is make the puzzle pieces in Photoshop from the image. It would be easy enough to draw the pieces with the pen tool, turn the path into a selection, then CTRL-J to make a new layer for that piece. Then you could, one by one, save each piece/layer as a PNG. The transparency of the layer remains transparent in Vegas.

Then you could import each PNG as a track in Vegas, and could animate each piece independently, rotate, pan, 3D motion, spin, etc. It'd be easy to make them all end up where you wanted, joined together, by just stacking them up (each fills in the other's transparent areas).

This way, there's no need to use an "add" blend mode or anything unusual like that.

HTH. And like I said, I gave it about 10 seconds of thought. There may be a lots easier way to do it. ;-D

Steve, how about e-mailing be the VEG file so I can play with it?

Edward, It's in the mail. If you have trouble getting it let me know and I'll put it up somewhere for downloading.

Brian, I know I'm probably going about this the wrong way. I'll think a bit about your idea.

Thanks

Vegas deinterlace automatically?
 

Can someone help me out please?

Recently I switched over to Vegas 6 (yes, I'm a new user) and when I was importing some video clips from my camcorder to the computer, I noticed that the clips captured seemed to be deinterlaced. My shots are done in 30fps interlaced, and when I watch the raw uncompressed footage, I don't see the horizontal lines, which I used to when I captured clips from Premiere Pro.

My question is, does Vegas 6 automatically deinterlace when caputring clips to the computer and if so, does this degrade the video quality? Am I supposed to see the horizontal lines showing up when there's a lot of camera movement/action going on?

Capture via firewire just transfers the video from your camcorder tape to your computer. Both are the same format (DV AVI) so there is no loss of resolution. The video is not deinterlaced upon transfer.

Horizontal lines don't sound good. I've never seen this in my transfers.

Mike,
The capture window is usually of a low enough resolution to get rid of any interlace lines if that's what you're talking about, but it sounds like you mean the preview window. At the top there is a resolution/quality drop down - if you select best/full it will show the full resolution and hence any interlace artifacts.

BTW I have Vegas 5, I haven't used 6 yet but I guess this still applies..

Cheers.

Thumbnails on timeline are gone
 

One never knows....is this just something I bumped on a menu somewhere or is this going to be a crisis of epic proportions?

Anyone know what may have happened?

Steve, I never saw it. Can you send again and make sure "Vegas" is in the subject line somewhere?

Options - Preferences - Draw waveforms and frames in events.

Make sure it is turned ON.

Edward,

I resent the files. The veg file is around 4 megs, don't know if that is the problem. Or it could be I took out some of the spaces in your email address.

Hope they get there this time.

Thanks,

Steve

Something's coming through right now. I'll look it over later today.

Dear Charley,

The thumbnails on the timeline will disappear if you minimize the timeline (in other words compress it vertically.)

Just expand the timeline (event) vertically and the thumbnails will reappear.

5 days and still no answer to several emails.

Pathetic.

Your best bet is to call them. E-mails seem to be taking over TWO WEEKS at the moment.

Thanks guys, I just needed that reassurance!

Windows XP Media Center compatability
 

Does anyone know if Vegas 4.0 and above are compatable with Windows XP Media Center? I'm thinking of getting an HP laptop, and don't know if I should go XP or with the additional features of Media Center.
Thanks

Well, that was certainly all I needed. Just can't figure how it got turned off. I wasn't in there touching things.

Thanks so much, Ed.

c

Charley- that with the other stories you've been telling me...I'm convinced. Your computer is posessed! Time for an upgrade. Hmmm Dual Core?!

border surrounding video...?
 

i want to shrink a couple of videos and have them both on the screen at the same time

how can i add an edge around the videos to make them look nice/separated against the black background?

thanks

Hawaii Vegas Users Group
 

Hey guys, I don't know if I am allowed to post this but I'll give it a try anyway. We have recently started up a website for the Hawaii Vegas Users Group; on the site we have a small portion for a forum that we are trying to get started. Our group comprises of a 50/50 mix of amateur and pro editors so I am sure that we will be able to help with any camera or vegas editing questions you may have.

Also if there are any people who are on or plan to be on the island of Oahu who would be interested in coming to our meeting please feel free contact us either on our site or email me.

Thanks

Greg

Assuming that you're familiar with Video Event FX in general, the one you want is Sony Borders. Very straightforward to use.

Flipping video...
 

Hello all,

No I'm not angry at my camera. hehe.

With all of the talk of homemade 35mm adapters for videocameras (ie: micro35) the guerilla versions need to have their video flipped right side up.

So. How would I do that in Vegas without compromising video quality? ie: no rerendering, etc?

Thanks for the help.

sincerely,

ian

any change u make to video WILL require rendering.. irrespective of the NLE u use.. whether it be realtime thru an RTx or rendered through vegas.. it WILL be reprocessed...

as for flipping, its quite simple.. just go to either track motion, or event pan crop and u can literally click and drag from the bottom line up to where the top line begine, jsut make sure maintain aspect is selected...

I do alot of low to ground shoots with a tiny minidv camera mounted to a 501 head with a long neck (for weight = stability) as the footage is upside down, i use this method to flip back to the normal

additional features?? i wouldnt call them that but then again im a purist and prefer a no fluff approach to editing..

stick woth xp pro, as most of the "features' of media centre can be installed in xp later on....

Im curious as to what elements you would find useful in media centre pertaining to video editing? Im just wondering

as for your question, from what i understand it doesnt

Post your Vegas work
 

I'm a user of Premiere Pro, but when i look at Vegas it's seems interesting to me. I want to see some works edited in vegas. To make a decision if I stay in Premiere or changed to Vegas.
Vegas look an easy editor but the part that interest me it's the power of the software. Because I don't want to invest time learning Vegas and at the end don't use it.

Thanks
Angel Otero