How do I get the blur that I see on tv
 

Easy question I think but I don't know it. When you watch cops or whatever and they are blurring there face where is that in vegas cause I don't see it. I have to use a black circle or something. Also it seems as if that blur they use stays right on there face no matter what.

Is that like a tracking thing that you can use and it does that or do you just have to go frame by frame and do it?

Thanks, Jason

Check Edward Troxels newsletter, vol 1 #12-it walks you thru the process.

Don

Don sorry for the newb question but where do I find this article.

Jason

link
 

Here you go, Jason. All the newsletters, chock full of great Vegas info, all thanks to Ed... http://thetroxels.com/vegas/forum/vi...909021013b5c33

Vegas is goal, Fireware Drives or Raid 0
 

Just finished my short and now onto post. I have lined up my software method Connect HD > DVFilmaker > Vegas > (maybe some plugin for color from Vasst) and now onto the hardware. My main project being editing in Vegas I wanted "Vegas Specific" people to give me their advice on Hardware. First plan is to get a mass amount of storage and see if my current machine... can hande the HDV. So...

1. How much faster (percent) is a Raid 0 setup than a single Firewire drive? Is it negletable? Is it worth the cost to performance? If so, can someone point me to a link on basic Raid 0 setup?

if my machine is not fast enough... I may have to put together a new machine... keep reading if you like... and help if you can... keeping in mind final goal is Vegas 7 >

Motherboard >
Although VideoGuys suggest this board >> ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe >> I have read many reviews (and the ASUS site even says it on a note below the board) that if you happen to get a board with the older BIOS... it will not recognize a Core 2 Duo chip and you have to update the BIOS using a P4 chip and... and... and... what a hassle/pain!! (where the heck to they expect paying customers to "borrow" a chip for BIOS update... let alone the amount of wasted time!) so... thinking of...
ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP

Processor >
Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13

Video Card >
Another bit of confusion... many people... include Videoguys... suggest this card >>> PNY Quadro FX "series" <<<< for video editing.... but 1.) does the cost to performace justify this card? for half the price... can get a Nvidia card with double the memory onboard... AND... I am getting the idea that Vegas 7 wouldnt even take advantage of the Quadro, (VideoGuys, http://www.videoguys.com/DIY-GPU.html "As of the latest release - version 7 which just started shipping, Sony Vegas does not utilize GPU performance in any way. So there is no reason to spend more than $300 on a graphics card unless you need it for other applications or plug-ins.) If it does... give a decent cost to performance ratio... say +%10 or so... the extra hundred bucks would be worth it. Note, I do not plan on using After Effects but Do plan on using Connect HD.

I'm bad at percentages, so... RAID 0 (with 2 drives and the "correct" stripe size for the files being read/written) will be roughly twice as fast as a single drive.

Here're some RAID explanations:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=1491&p=2

hard disk performance depends on which drives you compare.

hard drive performance depends on rpm and cache size. in some threads in dvinfo. it is declared that 7200 rpm drive is sufficient for Vegas. and most of the firewire drives are 7200 rpm.

but RAID 0 will almost double the hard drive speed without compromising the storage capacity. i would choose that if I were you. it will also speed up overall computer performance.

and about video card. I am not sure if Vegas can utilize the GPU (graphics processing unit) on the video card but as it is also told in many threads the main requirement for vegas is cpu power. and that I agree. i can render the vasst render test in 38 secs with a Pentium D 950 (3.4 Ghz) and when I overclock it the time goes down to 30 secs. so go for a pentium core duo setup. I suggest you to buy ABIT AW9D. I use AW8-MAx the previous generation for pentium D's and I am quite happy with it.

Time Lapse in Vegas 7
 

So I have some HD footage of a sunrise and sunset, and I was wondering if I could make a time lapse out of it in Vegas 7. How would I go about doing this? Just speed up the video by 2000%?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks,

Steven

You can experiment with the "Velocity Envelope".

Just do a search in the Help files in Vegas for "Velocity" and you will find instructions on this subject.

Add a velocity envelope for up to 3x faster

Hold down the CTRL key and resize it smaller for up to 4x faster (or change the playback rate in the properties)

Do both of the above for up to 12x faster

Now render that out and repeat (2nd time 144x faster, 3rd time 1728x faster) OR you could use nested VEG files and add either or both to that.

That is what I was thinking. Thanks.

BTW: What do you guys think I should set the speed to? (of the sunset/sunrise)

SB

I recommend that you experiment to get the results you desire.

It is so easy to do.

I do not have a specific recommendation, sorry.

Pre-Render Options
 

I'm working on a Vegas 6 project that will be comprised of five separate blocks (not sure what the correct term is). Each will be 3 to 5 minutes long. Some blocks will be still photo slide shows, some will be video with overlays, etc. I will be working on each on separately and then combining them all to form a single video. One of the video blocks will be comprised of 25 5-7 second video clips.

I'm wondering if it's better to create each block and render to a new avi file and combine the new avi files at the end - or should I do everything in a single project and Render to New Track (seems like this would pretty much be the same thing as the first option?). Or maybe there's another option.

What's the best way to do this without losing any quality along the way?

Thanks in advance!

You could do this a variety of ways. For example, you could do each section separately, render each section to a separate file (like DV-AVI or Sony YUV...) and then create a "final" project adding each piece to the timeline.

Or you could cut out the intermediary step and create a "final" project adding all the other VEG files to the timeline!

pulldown removal help?
 

Ok. I have some footage that I recorded a few months ago, and I have some footage that I recently recorded. Ive noticed that the newer footage looks different than the original - the original footage looks more like film and the newer footage looks more like regular DV. Now, when I right click the original footage clips - the pulldown removal says 2 3 3 2 ...when I right click the newer clips, the pulldown says 2 3 -- is that why it looks different? If so, can it be corrected by resampling the footage into my computer, or was it simply recorded differently (eg 24P vs. 24P Advanced?)?

Im using a Panasonic DVX100B and Vegas 6...

Thanks in advance!

I forgot to mention that I filmed both in 24p, thanks...

Thanks so much John! That's much appreciated. I have interest in your tutorial package for Vegas, but disapointed there's nothing yet on Vegas 7. Any plans to introduce a Vegas 7 tutorial?

Jon

Did you change the pulldown setting on the camera?

Vegas does pulldown removal automatically if the have the pulldown removal box checked in the global preferences. So if it's removing 2-3 on a clip, it's because it was shot that way. If it's removing 2-3-3-2, it was shot in 2-3-3-2.

The thing is, either pulldown scheme should look more or less the same... pulldown doesn't really affect the look, they're just two different ways of putting 24p video into a 60i stream.

Are you sure you shot the footage that doesn't look right in 24p, or might you have been shooting 60i or 30p by mistake?

Render Problem
 

Hi guys.

I have been using a borrowed comp with Vegas 4.0. I have encountered a small problem that is now driving me crazy! When I render a project to AVI it stops the render at exactly 18.48 minutes and an error comes up. The error says that the file is either write protected or I have insuffiicient space. I have lots of space and no idea why this is happening! Help?

Sounds like the drive you're rendering to is formatted as FAT32 and not NTFS.

It’s in the works. ;-)

~jr

Thanks Edward - so it sounds like it's a matter of preference, not an issue of quality loss? And thanks for the tip of adding VEG files to the timeline. I didn't know you could do that.

Custom built system... Depends on your work flow...
 

I have built two systems, both of which are used for my Vegas6 work. One was built 4 years ago. It was a Dual Athlon MP 1800+ with 512MB PC2100 DDR ram and an 80 GB RAID 0 stripe (7200RPM ATA133s running through a 64bit PCI bus). Then a year ago I bought an Alienware MJ7700 with a P4HT(3Ghz) with 2.5GB of DDR2 RAM and a 160GB ATA100 7200RPM RAID 0 (motherboard raid controller).

Now here is the fun part.... I rendered the same video on both systems at the same time (source stored on the raid partition and rendering to the raid partition) and performance was only ~3% better on the $3000 Alienware when compared to my 3 year old custom dualie.

All this to say that you need to put your money into CPU and RAM because that is the limiting factor. The GPU doesn't matter a bit, other than to provide multi munitor support, which I HIGHLY suggest.

You MUST go either new new pentium Core 2 Duo (just can't beat that performance) or quad Zeon / Opteron. Get a $150-200 GPU and put the rest of the mony into the CPU.

As far as RAM, it obviously has to be fast, but I have NEVER has a single instance of Vegas use more than 1GB of ram. I usually operate with at least 512MB of unallocated free physical RAM. Part of this is due to a programming decision by MS where the OS automatically reserves 1/2 of all physical RAM for the OS & kernel, leaving the remainder for running applications.

As far as a RAID goes, you may notice the need for a RAID, but if it is going to cost you more than ~$300 to put in the RAID, I would suggest a 2nd render computer. Yep. Vegas comes with 3 licenses (as far as I know this is tru for v7) so make use of it! Get a moderate 2nd system that is bare bones.... Core 2 Duo, 1GB ram (or less) 100GB HD to store your sorce and a gigabit ethernet card in each system (or get an nForce chipset because they should come with Gigabit onboard). Put down $50 for a small 5 port gigabit switch and use remote desktop between the two (WinXP Pro only of course, not home).

You can either set up a render on one, and then keep working on the other, or do the true network rendering where your master pushes out the render jobs to the 2nd computer. Then you are still free to edit while the slave system renders your test footage.

Note that due to licensing issues with the MPEG2 codec, if you use the true network rendering feature (where you select "render to network" then multi threaded support will NOT be used on the 2nd system. BUT if you just copy the source over the gig network and copy the project file, you WILL be able to make use of the multithread rendering for MPEG2.

Above all, like my title mentions, keep your work flow in mind. If you usually are at good stopping points every once and a while, then a 2nd render system might not be a bad idea. Get a 2nd monitor so you can stretch that time line over the entire 1st display, and put all your preview, sound levels, and other tools on the 2nd display.

Hope this helps some.

jason

That's right. A tool like Vegas offers many ways to acheive a particular result, which is great for those who do a lot of editing. You have tools to optimize your workflow for a particular task.

Time is money and workflow is king, if you're getting paid for your work.

Yeah, they were both 24p...but not sure if one was 24pA or not.... I wonder if 24pA records in 2332....

James, Sony has a white paper titled "24p and Panasonic AG-DVX100 and AJ-SDX900 in Vegas and DVD Architect" that you might be interested in reading. You can find it at http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/dow...p2.asp?DID=511

Mike

Vegas 7 Start Up Issues / DVDA4 Bitrate
 

Sorry for all these questions on one posting but it seems to be the most efficient way of doing this. In advance, I thank you for your help.

Question 1: I have downloaded Vegas 7b. It works fine except when I first open up the program. A window appears stating to

"Please Wait. Opening Media Library Default".

This goes on for a few minutes and finally a window opens up states that

"The media library default could be opened".

You can click OK and you are good to go. It is just annoying. I have unloaded and reloaded Vegas and Media Manager twice according to the Sony forum but the problem persists. The uninstall and reinstall was done for Vegas, Media Manager and Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine. I am not married to the Media Manager and can work without it. Any suggestions?

Question 2: This is probably very simple for some of you. When preparing an uncompressed AVI file in DVDA4, is there a big difference in the final quality by moving the video bitrate from 8 to 9.8? i.e. for smaller files such as 15 or 20 minutes videos. Is there any downside to doing this? I do understand that increasing the bitrate increases the mpeg2 size.

Question 3: Is there a good beginners book for basics of HDV? I have been using Vegas for a few years but never with HDV. Mainly a hobbyist looking for something more challenging.

Match Output Aspect in Vegas 7
 

A quick question about a more efficient way to "Match Output Aspect" in Vegas 7 for a batch of jpeg images. Is there a way to do this for many digital images all at once? Is there a technique or a script that helps to accomplish this?

Thanks

In Vegas 6 you can copy the event (image on the timeline) that has the correct setting, then select all the other events, right click and select 'paste event attributes' (from memory that's what it's called, might be slightly different though). This should work in Vegas 7 also.

HTH,
Kyle

Yes, Panasonic's "24pA" uses a 2-3-3-2 pulldown scheme. The regular 24p mode on the camera uses 2-3 pulldown. That's the only difference between the two 24p modes.

As I was saying, there's really no difference (visually speaking) between footage using the two pulldown schemes. 2-3-3-2 pulldown is better for editing on a 24p timeline (or for eventually going to film). 2-3 can be edited in a regular 60i timeline and treated like 60i footage in pretty much every way.

So if you have footage that looks like "regular DV" to you (by that I assume you mean 60i), then it either is 60i, or it's 24p and something about it is tricking your eye, so to speak.

What shutter speeds were you using in each of the two cases you mention?

Answer 1: You can disable the media manager by unchecking a box in Vegas' preferences. The next time you start Vegas, the media manager will be unavailable. Then you can remove the media manager tab from the docking area by going into the view menu and unchecking it there as well. Bingo. No Media Manager.

Answer 2: Higher bitrates will mean higher quality, yes. Many people may not see the difference at all, but a higher bitrate means more image data and therefore inherently means higher quality. There is no downside except for bigger file size.

Answer 3: I don't shoot HDV, so I couldn't really say what a good book would be for sure. Douglas Spotted Eagle's book seems to get pretty high praise, from what I've seen.

You can certainly do it the way Kyle suggested or look for a script called "MatchAspectRatio" (or something like that).
BTW, an excellent collection of scripts for Vegas is at http://s92274348.onlinehome.us/vegas.html

Kyle, remember that only works if all images are the same original size. It's MUCH safer using a script.

Thanks I'll give the scripts a try. I appreciate your help

Hi Jarrod

Thanks for the reply. I have followed the steps you outlined a few times, rebooted etc

"Answer 1: You can disable the media manager by unchecking a box in Vegas' preferences. The next time you start Vegas, the media manager will be unavailable. Then you can remove the media manager tab from the docking area by going into the view menu and unchecking it there as well. Bingo. No Media Manager."

Once the program is running there is no Media Manager but it still tries to load the media default library when I first start Vegas 7. I may have to call Sony tech support.

This is the matchaspect script from the everything.zip collection that Mike pointed you to. http://www.firsttakestudios.com/Matchaspect.js
Just dl and copy it to the Script Menu folder of your Vegas installation. It works perfectly with Vegas 6 and 7.
Ed is right on the nose, as usual, with scripts being the safest (and easiest) way to do it-you should throw the rest of them in there while you're at it, lots of useful and time saving goodies...

Is this a good way to multi render ?
 

I want see what other people do when they want to render multiple videos types from one project.

I have been capturing in HDV 1080 and setting up my project properties as HDV then edit . Once Im done I render to these formats from the same project

1st. m2t for HDV print to tape
2nd. 720x480 mp2 for DVD
3rd. mp4 for ipod
4th either HDWMV or 720MP4 for Blueray-HDdvd down the road. I have tried 1920x1080 mp2 but the render times are huge.

Is this what other people do ? I dont want to have to re edit for each video type.

I have 2 questions
#1 For each format should I change the project settings to match what Im rendering to? I have just left the project settings as HDV.
#2 What are the 2 best formats to render that would be compatible for Blueray ? I plan on getting a PS3 and I want to be able to play my HD videos.

Thanks Joey

I\'m in the same boat as you guys, but I did manage to find this video on Youtube that gives a demo of the projectmix and vegas in action. It even shows exactly how to set it up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56kwxKOw-Js

What do you think?

I\'m pretty excited myself.

-chopchop

Hey Jarrod, thx for helping....but I figured it out yesterday. For anyone interested, or who may have a dvx100b, if you\'re recording in 24p or 24pA and it just looks like regular dv instead of film - try setting the gamma and matirx to cinelike...
It\'s amazing that this camera can shoot in 24p and still look like regular DV if the gamma and matrix settings arent set.

Well thats my experience anyways...

Keep in mind that 24p is a frame rate, and that as such the only inherent difference between it and "regular DV" is the fact that you\'re getting 24 full-res images per second as opposed to 60 interlaced images per second. 24p in and of itself doesn\'t have any effect whatsoever on image qualities other than motion rendering. So it\'s not really amazing at all that the camera would give you video-like images in 24p mode if all the other settings on the camera are left in neutral positions.

When you said your 24p looked like "regular DV," I assumed you were talking about motion characteristics.