Magic, Thanks heaps Edward!

Ian

Ok, I have no more pride left
 

Since this is the first edit I've done using my post-production monitor, should I be able to get the same amount of sharpness and detail from my television.

Because I have tried every setting I can, and my footage does not look as sharp as my post monitor.

I'm mainly losing sharpness on distance shots, the same distance shots that look great in my monitor, and computer screen ofcourse.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=319818&is=REG

The short answer is no.
The (slightly) longer answer is that a post monitor like ours (I've got 4 of the same ones you do at the college I work for) will always look better than a home TV set, for a variety of reasons. I've got a 26" JVC TV at home that was approx. 1/2 the cost of the 15" monitor. The post monitor is capable of resolving 750 lines of resolution. I doubt that any normal TV can come even close to that spec. And, as you know, our JVC is far from the most expensive one B&H carries. That "honour" goes to the Sony BVM-A14F5U at a mere $5,400.00 :-)
The primary reason we have monitors like these is because of their colour accuracy and options such as underscan and blue gun only that a normal TV doesn't have.

http://droptodesign.com/test/test1.avi

There's the clip, just fyi

Try the 32" BVM-A
It's only several times the cost of the smaller monitor ($37k list).

It's probably that your television just has lower resolution. You may be able to improve it a bit by turning down the "contrast" (white level) control.
If it's a CRT, the electron beam will lose focus as you try to push the TV brighter.

You could also try running a test pattern through the monitor to see how good it is. You can try generating 1-pixel wide lines alternating legal white and legal black.
In a default Vegas 5+ installation (using the default Vegas codec), legal white = 235 235 235 RGB.
legal black = 16 16 16 RGB.
A quick way to do that is to make a line of text with the 1 \ / | symbols (and real text like the quick brown fox jumps over the whatever). Shotgun it at various pt sizes... so there's definitely something that's 1 pixel wide.

Adams flip
 

Couple of other options:

1. There is a free filter online called 'Adams Flip' that lets you reverse flip horizontal and vertical. It's supposed to be a lot faster than the inbuilt one. Do a google on it.
2. HDConnect has a 35mm adapter flip feature if you capture with it.


Regards, Nick.

Thanks Nick. I'll check it out

Ian

Ok, I'm buying two of them.

I suppose that my tv may be too cheap, although it's new. It's a 300.00 flat panel CRT from Samsung. This might come into play though when I show demo's and such at the home office. Hmm...

I was just surprised at how much detail I lose from what looks awsome in my post monitor, to it looking kinda crappy on TV, and I've tried every possible render combo I could think of.

Steven, it's not that your TV is too cheap. It's that the technical quality of your post monitor is far higher than that of your TV. Think of it as the difference between watching a DVD you made vs. the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Why does theirs look so much better than yours when the video resolution of a DVD is fixed? Simple. They start with much higher quality equipment. It's the same thing here.
If you ever have the chance, go to a TV station or a sports mobile and see what the picture quality is like right out of the video switcher. The usual response is "that's NTSC? Wow!!" Then have a look at the off-air monitor after it's been through numerous stages of processing :-(

Mike, but I want to show high quality on TV lol. It's highly frustrating, I spent 7 hours yesterday trying every render combo I could think of to increase that distance detail,to no avail. Although upclose, and like 20 feet away it's fine, but I was trying to increase the detail when that couple is like 50 feet or more, and I'll be darned if my TV would do it. It's peachy in post. :}

I might for the 'h' 'e' 'double hockey sticks' of it take my little DVD to Best Buy and plug it into some more expensive TV's, if just for the sake of my understanding.

Thanks for that info.

Can you render in two formats in Vegas 5?
 

Hi,

Can anyone tell me if it's possible to render two different formats, on the same timeline, in the same render process? I have a feature film I'm rendering, all of it except for one scene, shot on 24P, and one scene in the middle of the film, is shot on regular NTSC DV video. If I try rendering the whole project as 24P, the regular DV scene comes out fuzzy. I could render the scene seperately but I'd rather keep it all as one single rendered project. Can that be done?

Thank you. Ruben

When you render, everything you render at that time will be rendered the same way. So you can't start one rendering process and have it render different pieces in different ways. You might be able to set up a batch render process to do that using regions and specifying a different format per region using a script.


How are you going to output this/what format are you rendering to?

Thank you, Edward. I'm outputting the whole thing through Sony DVDArchitect as 24P (except for the one scene which has to stay in DV form, because if I render that scene as 24P in Vegas, it loses definition.) I'd like to keep the whole project together and not have to bring the pieces to DVDA and try to cut and paste the DV scene in between the 24P scenes in Architect...if that's even possible to do. I'm not sure about that either. Any thoughts?

If you render as separate pieces, you can end-action from the 24p to the straight DV and then end action to the other 24p. However, then you'll have a slight pause at those places so you'll have to plan for that.

I assume that "end action" means lining up the three segments in DVDA. Two questions:

1) Is there a specific way to do that?

2) Is there any way to eliminate that slight pause?

Thank you, Edward. Ruben

Try inserting a playlist and see if that works.

As for the end action, you just add the first one to the menu, add the other two to the project, and then set the "End Action" from one to the other as needed. However, that DOES create the pause which will vary between DVD players.

Personally, I would probably render the whole thing to a single file accepting the known issues.

Pan/Crop and HDV
 

Up to now I've always captured from HVR-Z1E is SD mode (in camera downconvert) but I now want to try and capture HD using Cineform.

Presumably when using editiing on the timeline using the Cineform avi, you're editing at full HDV rsolution - 1440x1080 or wheever it is. You might then use pan/crop to reduce the picture size of an event (eg pip/etc); if you then render as standard mpeg2 (for DVDA) does it automatically reclaculate what the sizes of those cropped events should be as if they were for a 720x576 picture????

Thanx

Ian

Yes, essentially. I think basically it just rescales the frame. If you've zoomed it, cropped it, whatever, those are retained.
It also means you can zoom in without quality loss (at SD) as you've got that extra resolution to play with.

Cheers Mark

Ian

rendering help - maintaining original video settings
 

what are the best render settings to maintain the exact same dimensions when i'm done editing?

alot of times i'll be doing a video, and then after i render there will be
letterboxes when i didn't want it or the image will be stretched. Do i change
the project settings to match exactly the video?

(ie 512/384 24 frames a second)(also, is it better to have the ratio to 1.00 or 0.9101?I played around with the stretch to avoid letterboxing setting thing but it's still sometimes hit and miss.

Also, any ideas for the best way to handle several video files with different
properties? I have at least 5 movie files i want to merge into one but when i
render i'm afraid it will mess up as i can only make one setting for the end
file?

I am rendering to divx if that makes a difference. Thanks in advance.

That's the best way to do it.
As you've discovered, there's no easy way to mix and match videos that have different settings without making compromises (letterbox or pan & scan) somewhere along the line.

Emulating ProMist Filter
 

Now that I've purchased a ProMist filter for my cam, I'm having second thoughts about shooting original footage with it, i.e., I'm stuck with the "look". Any suggestions on how to get a similar look in post. Gaussian blur, luminance, etc.
Thanks in advance for any help.
David Bird

Ya', that black promist has mostly stayed in my camera case, too.

I've not tried as such, but I'd start with a little gaussian blur, glow, and I'd bring the black level up to perhaps 15 or 20 using Brightness & Contrast or Levels.

I think you'll find the glow efx interesting. Maybe light rays as well. Blur probably goes last in the chain.

I've tried dragging glow, light rays, and gaussian blur effects to a clip on my timeline. I'm not seeing any of the effects in the preview window....does the clip have to be rendered before I can see how the effects have changed the look?
David Bird

Click on the "Split Screen View" button just above the preview screen (it's a circle that's half light and half dark) to turn it off. You apparently have it set to "bypass effects".

It's always the little things...Thank you, sir
David Bird

make timeline play from anywhere?
 

When i enter into pan/crop or a particular FX, i would like to be able to play
then timeline below for a quick preview instead of having to move the mouse
down and then hit play. I've read about a play from anywhere button ctrl-space
or F12 is supposed to do it but when i try it doesnt do anything.

Is there anyway to restore this setting so i can play the timeline from these areas?

DVD Architect 2 Menu Help
 

So I have made up my menu pic via Photoshop. Imported the
psd into DVDA. Now is there a way for me to hotlink certain areas of the
background pic to certain media clips ?

Cheers

Steve

drop the clip into the menu on top of photo ...
then change the button ( clip ) to TEXT only -
move the text over the area in the photo and shape it to the area - then "edit text" and take out the text ( leave area blank) .. now that area of the photo will be highlighted and links to the clip

F12 should work fine for that purpose. I just tested on my system with Pan/Crop and and Effects window open and it worked in both cases. If you haven't changed the keyboard shortcuts, it should work fine for you as well. If you have, you can hold down CTRL-SHIFT while starting Vegas to reset everything back to factory defaults.

Thanks alot, will give that a try..

Cheers

SC

Trouble capturing DVCPro with FX1
 

Hello everyone!
I've been aquiring video with my FXI and capturing /editing with Vegas 6.0 with never a problem. However, after a customer dropped off a DV tape that was recorded by a DVCPro camera. I tried to log it in but Vegas refuses to see or capture it. I can see the video footage play back on the FX1 monitor and I've tried every setting I can think of on the FX1 output. Any way I can capture DVCPro tape using the FX1 as a playback device in Vegas?

Thanks, Tony Newman

Yes, this works for me too. But, it also knocks out my Contour Shuttle Pro control. I need to go to the Time Line with mouse OR k/b to override the t/l cursor. And then I can use my CSP. So, one step forward, and one step back.


What do you mean Edward? Do you mean that if I have made "any" changes this will not work OR do you mean any specific changes? Your, "If you haven't changed the keyboard shortcuts, . ." is telling me that if I want to make this work I should have changed any k/b shortcuts? Or are you meaning any F12 shortcuts? I haven't changed any F12 shortcuts.

Please clarify,

Grazie

I have another question concerning FADE IN/OUT. Does that apply to the "video" part also? Can you fade out (gradually darken out) a video event's graphics?

Sure you can. On the timeline point the cursor at the top right corner of the video event and drag it to the left.

The FX1 won't pass DVCPro. DVCam, yes... But not DVCPro

Well... I specifically meant if the F12 key had be redefined to do something else.

Good! Phew . . Next!! - G

DVD Video quality modes for VHS & Hi-8
 

Hello everyone.

I recently starting converting VHS tapes to DVD. When converting the video to DVD, I am provided with various quality levels. As at least most of you probably know, higher quality means less playing time. Well, here's what I'm wondering. I'm fanatical when it comes to quality. At the same time though, you don't get much room on the DVD when you record on high quality. One level down from the highest quality level (Standard Play) does provide a good amount of time though. What I would like to know is if there can be any noticeable quality difference when converting any VHS tape to DVD in Standard Play mode as opposed to High Quality mode (I figured there might not be since VHS is already less quality to begin with). If there is no noticeable difference, then I have another question. Is there any noticeable difference when you convert a hi-8 video to DVD in Standard Play mode instead of High Quality mode?

Your help is greatly appreciated.

~Peter D.

It's exactly the opposite of what you'd think. Since most of the compression in MPEG2 video is accomplished by only encoding the difference between frames, really pristine, noise-free video can actually be rendered at a lower bit rate and still maintain quality. VHS video is typically pretty noisy and it requires a HIGHER bit rate to maintain quality. If you're concerned about quality, then the "high quality" mode is a must, PARTICULARLY with noisy VHS and Hi8 video.

John