... and not just a bit. If you use the microsoft DV codec and you play back the scenes that are recompressed with this codec on a 82cm widescreen TV-set (assuming you've shot widescreen DV) - you'll notice a degraded picures (almost like the picture is subvivided in little squares of 8x8 or 16x16 pixels...)

I'll grab a frame and post that later or put it on my website...

bottom line: DON'T USE the microsoft codec. You get the sony/sonic foundry codec with the NLE... use it!

Vegas Preview and Windows MediaPlayer have different appearance
 

I have made a displeasant discovery. I needed to color correct some shots in Vegas and I got them fine, but after rendering they looked slightly different colored when playing back in MediaPlayer. For one reason or another the colour of files played back in Windows MediaPlayer or in Sony Vegas Preview is somewhat different. This is very annoying. Is there any way to correct this? or some setting I can change about this?

HDV to HD-DVD compatible 1080i Help?
 

Seems my last posts were deleted due to cross posting.....

Does anyone have a solution to transcode HDV to HD-DVD compatible h.264?

I'm currently making red HD-DVD's with mpeg2 but want to fit more video on a DL DVD.

Thanks in advance (and hoping my thread lasts more than day....)

Wes

Render it out in Vegas?

And if you're using an intermediate codec in Vegas, render it from the intermediate file, instead of from an edited m2t file (so the quality remains as high as possible)

How to Print Video to Tape or HDV Tape?
 

I've connected my Sony HVR-A1U HDV camera to my computer via Firewire and the computer recognizes the camera. However, when I am in Vegas trying to print my project to either Mini DV tape or HDV tape, I am having problems.

When I choose print video to tape and choose OHCI complaint IEEE from the drop-down menu, it says no device available. I can't use it. Why? How can I fix this? Ideally, I want my project printed to a regular Mini DV tape in Standard Definition with a 4:3 aspect ratio and 23.976 fps. Next, I would accept it printed in HDV format as 1080i 29.97fps and 16:9 AR with black bars. I am working with a 16mm film transfer btw.

When I choose print to HDV tape then Vegas will see my A1 camera, so I click next letting it choose the HDV-1080i format. I have plenty of space of my hard drive for it to render the .m2t file, so again I click next. The next screen is where I'm supposed to choose manual or crash as the device control mode, but BOTH options are greyed out. I am unable to select anything. How do I fix this?

I'm like Don, with external cases that go both ways. They're handy.

Bear in mind that DV and HDV are the same data rates to and from disk. What works for DV should work for HDV the same. The big difference is processor load to decode the M2T on the fly and display it, but you should be fine on your speedy new Core2 Duo.

The picture changes a little bit for Cineform digital intermediate files, as the datarate is about triple of an M2T, but I've had good experience with USB2 here as well. I don't really do much multilayer video, though.

Did you change the camera to standard mode instead of HDV mode?

several firms are now making SATA adapters to go in the PCIe slots of a laptop. My own PCIe SATA card has two ports, allowing a RAID 0 with 2 SATA hard drives. RAID 0 will give you a thruput in the regime of 100mb/sec, almost fast enough for uncompressed video.

really dumb question, crtl-z
 

its been a while since i used vegas, but i cant seem to find the setting for this...

when i hit ctrl-z for undo, it will close vegas right down instead of undoing...so then i lost whatever i was working on (well some of it is saved in the auto-restore)

cant seem to find that setting in the options or keyboard preferences (albiet i could be blind)

thanks!

I've had that happen, too, actually, usually (if not always) right after a ripple edit.

Hey Wes,
Do you mean this thread?
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=79073

Cheers.

Thanks for the info guys. I figured the data rate was the same for HDV as DV, but yeah still wasn't sure. Sounds like USB2 might be able to handle it, but possibly better to fork out the extra dollars to be safe.

The PCIe option sounds nice but I live in Australia and can't say I've seen them around at all. I'm guessing they are a lot pricier as well. I'll have a look around for them.

Thanks again for the info. If anyone is out there that does work with HDV on a laptop with USB2 or Firewire external HDDs, It'd be great to here from you.

I've seen the setup at amusement parks, and here in San Francisco on Fishermans Wharf. The have a greenscreen set up, and a 'flying carpet' that people sit on in front of it. The people are watching a monitor, which has the background on it, and everyone 'reacts' to the movement they see on the screen. It's all recorded and keyed in realtime, then they get a copy.

wierd, I couldnt find that thread, even with search..... Lets move over there and maybe the mod can delete this thread.

Sorry Guys,

Wes

Audio Compression in Vegas, need basic help..
 

I posted a clip once on another forum with a video related question and it was reposted and the guy told me, "I cleaned up the audio a bit too for you" When asked what he did, he told me he applied compression. I've been messing with this compression thing and reading about it but I still don't understand how to USE the tool to make the audio sound better. Can someone either give me a link or a brief but easy to understand explanation about how to use the track compressor?

there's several ways to apply compression to an audio track, the primary goal being to raise the overall RMS volume of the track. Since audio waveforms consist of peaks and valleys, the volume of the track can only be raised until the peaks begin to max out the audio amplifier and clip(distort). Compression reduces the volume of the peaks in one of 2 ways:
1-brick wall limiting in which no peaks are allowed to exceed a specified value, like 0 dB
2-general compression in which the peaks are rolled off gradually.

I use a compressor, in line with my mike setup, mostly because the dynamics of a voice in a song exceeds the dynamics of the instruments backing up the vocal track. compression helps to keep the vocal from exceeding the dynamic bandwidth of the recording stream.

software compressors, these days, work on several frequency bands, which are selectable by the user. selection of the frequency bands to apply compression to pretty much is a function of what the source is...vocal, musical, percussion, etc. application of a compressor is somewhat of an acquired skill, something a sound engineer is paid well to do well. different compressor algorithms each introduce a quality(or lack thereof) all its own, so the resulting audio stream is influenced by which compressor software you applied to it. the vegas compressors ar OK for general work, but, nowhere near the quality of something like Ozone or Waves. The Soundforge "Normalize" plugin is pretty good, when combined with the plugin's ability to rolloff values that exceed 0 dB. used alone, the Vegas Normalize function does nothing but raise the overall volume of the clip.

I would suggest you spend some time playing with the compressor plugin until you have a fairly good understanding of what the various settings do. Initially, ignore the attack and release settings and concentrate on playing with threshhold and margins. there's a free tutorial over at the Izotope website that might help you understand all the knobs to play with, including multiband compression.

No preview while capturing HD in Vegas 6.0d
 

Hi all,


I just got this wonderful Sony tape deck.

My computer recognize it. When I put a tape with HD content the Sony Video capture Xpress sees it and I can take control so the connection is good. But no preview. I can see the image on the tapedeck monitor but nothing through the program.

If I want to capture direct from Vegas it doesn't even let me control the tape and no preview as well.

I tried to look in the options and couldn't find anything. Nor was I succesful with a search on this board, maybe I wasn't thorough though.

Thanks

Phil

Purchased & Downloaded 7 but Grafitti Serial?
 

As I said in Title I purchased and downloaded Vegas 7 and easily installed and did fine with Vegas 7 and DVD architect 4 serials (as they were on a page after purchase) but did not see/get the serial for Boris Graffitti 3.0 LTD that came with the bundle download (and does Bullet also need one?) does anybody have a quick answer? Where are these serials? or do I have to deal with each company individually or contact sony through there SLOW support...

well at least I am not absolutely crazy...

Check again the order confirmation from SonyMediaSoftware. It should also have Boris Graffiti Serial next to Vegas and DVDA -numbers.

What strikes me odd is that I did not get the download link with Vegas 7 for Boris (or magic Bullet either). I can dl those through my Vegas 5 links, but still.

Nevertheless, I upgraded Boris to full license w/o bothering to install the LTD-versions... I do like the plugin-approach instead of needing each time to render and leave Vegas to accomplish something with Boris.

And I've posted two or three support requests to Sony during last three months and I've got the answer back in two or three days. Its not that slow...

7.0b?

not that I saw it anywhere as a fix or as a known issue in production notes, but worth to install another build?

for the record: I've never had it happen - and I use ctrl-z a lot as well...

If you cannot find the serial numbers, simply contact Sony Customer Service and they will help you out. If you ordered via download, the e-mail you received should have all the necessary serial numbers. If you got the box version, many people have indicated the box did NOT get the card(s) containing the other serial numbers.

When I first started to use Vegas I had the same kind of problem, in media player the image will look a lot more dark than it should.

There is only one thing that I know about that could help you.

Go into the options of Media player, go to the performance tab, click on the advance option at the bottom.

In the new window check a the bottom left and you should see "use overlays", uncheck that, click apply and restart Media player.

Hope it helps.

Phil

Whatever do that or not, the rendered image(video) remains really darker even when see it on TV via DVD player. That's why I have to put less contrast as an effect before rendering out.

FilmRender (FilmMunge)
 

Has anybody heard about that software? I found it out somehow and I all I can say is that FilmRender is the ONLY software which makes REAL film look and film motion from any miniDV and DV cam, and it takes approx. 700kb size, works fast and amazingly. Now I can say honestly that I can forget forever all the expensive software like Magic Bullet, AFter Effects plugins for film look & motion, etc. So, happy looking for film look.

Problem half-solved, update inside
 

Ok now a strange thing happened, for some reason Vegas sees my tapedeck but Sony Xpress can't connect to it anymore???

The only thing that remains to be cleared is the fact that I can't put in timecode for capture, the options are greyed out.

I have 5 hours of raw footage that needs to be trimmed down to 3 minutes, not to mention a limited hard drive space.

Any reason why I can't put in timecodes.

Thanks

Vegas 7.0, Ultimate s2, keyboard mapping
 

Vegas 7 forces you to use ctrl+key to bind global options....is there anyway around this?

Check that "device control" is checked in the capture preferences.

yep 7b

i also had a similar prob in v 6d

David, what kind of keyboard are you using? im on a logitech...its got built in software (setpoint) that maps keys...maybe that is somehow causing issues.

also...i seem to recall in like 4 or 5 version there was an option in the preferences that ctrl-z closed vegas

Sony Vegas Skin
 

There was a guide about how to change Vegas's skin, but I dont remember it. So, if somebody knows it, please let me know.

corrupt files after 7 upgrade`
 

i have several project files i was workin in v6 with, i just did the 7 upgrade recently and ofcourse it asked me to upgrade the 6 files to 7. now those files wont save properly. they save normally, but when i reopen the file i get "error loading plug-ins" and it fails to save any changes i made, which only include modifying transitions (the error under details will say transition 0000-0000-0000-0000) and give me one for each transition i modified.

i have tried copying/pasting my timeline into a new veg file with another instance open, but it seems to follow the file.

any ideas, short of redoing it all from scratch?

thanks!

Soooo... do you have an example of this 'magic' software?

ok, well i tried moving the project folder to another machine, and same issue. something obviously got corrupted when the veg file "upgraded" to 7 so it was probably just one of those "lucky" events.

i have exported the EDL and imported into a new veg, can put in the transitions they save ok...so just a hour or so to fix that all up i guess. dont think there was really any other option.

hmmm...it worked fine for 3 files. the last one it saved most the changes and now is doing the exact same thing when i try to apply transitions (flash)

I did a Google search on it and found this on Adam Wilt's site:

Ned Nurk worked on a standalone processor for Windows called FilmRender (formerly FilmMunge), which batch-processed AVI files. It was by all accounts good, fast, and very affordable. Unfortunately some slimeball crackers hacked his authentication system and pirated it. As a result, Ned stopped development and sales, and the DV world lost a useful tool.

:-(

Try to upload a short raw footage (approx. 30 sec.), even hard compressed, and I will upload it back processed.

What about credits?
 

So if you use Cinescore to shape some royalty free music that comes with it - then what is the best way to credit this music in your video?

Hi Seth,

thanks for your advice but there is no such option. In the capture window there a preferences button.

Three tabs in the preferences window: general, disk management and device, none of them has that option you wrote about.

I checked in the regular Vegas options but couln't find anything there either.


Anything else?

Thanks

How 'bout a sample, Plamen?

Animated Frame Problem
 

Odd one here. I have a veg project which mixes video with animated frames. I imported the frames using "open still image sequence" like always. Everything was great. I had this on the backburner for awhile, now when I opened the project instead of a sequence of frames Vegas 6 has converted it to a still image. Could I have possibly hit some button that made this happen or is there a quick fix otherwise? I can just reimport all the frame sequences I guess, but it's like 50 different sequences so would rather not. Any ideas?