This is a good starting point for a dialog-based scene with foley and underscore, but wouldn't work at all for an action piece.

Consider the car/motorcycle/truck chase scene in the second Matrix movie. The music peaks near 0db and rocks the house as the Trinity launches the bike. The sound effects are also up at 0db with the music backing off as needed. Both the effects and music back off to make room for the minimal dialog.

A lot depends on the sound designer and composer. A good composer will manage the dynamics and go so far as to place the notes between words, so almost no detailed mixing is required. But if you're using some droning stock music, mix away, Merril...

Fortunately, Vegas rocks for creating a final mix. It's the right tool for this critical job.

Vegas 7 is Sl...oW!!
 

Holy smokes.. it took me nearly 48hrs to render 110min of m2t. There were 13 clips, nested into a veg file with 13 vegs. Each clip had was no transistions. Applied correct correction-gain and 2 text media for each clips. Thaz it! I have been hearding about the slow speed but this is crazy.. Vegas 6 works faster.

The great thing about V7 is the m2t editing is pretty good. I'm running a 3.0GHz P4, 1.5Gb RAM. Pretty nice.. no more using Gearshift for V7. I guess u folks have had similar experience rite?

Thanks Don! That works great

You might take a look at Satish Kumar's WAX. I believe it will do what you want.

Thanks a lot guys. That's extremely helpful!

YOu want the PLUGINPAC which I think is still a seperate plugin from satish. Although it's not really supported by him anymore it's simple enough to install and use.
Don

Thanks guys,

I'll give it a try.


ian

Just can't remember the setting..
 

...that turns on the name of each clip on the timeline.

Anybody?

thanks in advance

View Active Take Information
or
CTRL+SHIFT+I

Found in the View options menu.

Thanks, Douglass. That was fast and sweet.

Help with Color Corrections
 

Is there any help for turning black tuxedos that came out to be brown in the video back to black? I have tried to do a little color correcting but I have just not had any luck. Please see attached picture. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Try the color corrector secondary.

In that filter, use the eyedropper and drag-select an area over the tuxedo.
Drag the limit luminance smooth slider very high (~200).

Change saturation to a low value like 0 or 0.2.

Do Avid keyboards work with Vegas 7??
 

Hi, I've got my version of Vegas 7 in the post and have the possibility of buying a 2nd hand LogicKeyboard type keyboard. However, it's an Avid version. Can you select Avid keyboard in any of the Vegas preferences? I really want a decent quality shortcut keyboard but don't want to pay the Logickeyboard prices and want to if possible avoid the stickers option!
Thanks
Stuart

Mpeg from a DVD audio is missing
 

Hey guys I had to import the VOB files from a DVD I was given and just rename them as mpg files. They playback fine in Windows Media player and Premiere Pro (which I don't use) but in Vegas and DVD Architect the audio is missing. Why is that and how do I fix it?

Thanks

The AVID keyboard, is just a keyboard with the shortcut keys printed on it. It has no 'special' powers. In fact, in AVID, you can assign shortcuts to ANY key on the board. So most people have their own set, that are saved in user preferences. (Along with screen layouts.) That's one of the great things about AVID. If you cut your film (And I DO mean FILM, with edgenumbers and keycodes) On Avid Xpress Pro, you can save the EDL and take your preferences into a Symphony suite, load them up, and the screens and keys will act just the way you expect them to.

All that to say, an AVID keyboard will 'work' for VEGAS in the same way any keyboard does. IF you can asign the same functions in VEGAS to the already pre-printed keys on the keyboard, then... yeah, I guess it would be better than sticking stickers on the keys.

(Though I am assuming there are functions unique to both VEGAS and AVID that won't be found on either NLE, that will not be on the keys.)

Why did the black on some of the tuxes come through ok? You sure the others weren't brown to begin with? There are definitely a few shades of tux in that pic...even cc'ing your pic in PShop, look at the difference in shades.

What version of Vegas? I'm betting the audio is AC3. You either need a newer version of Vegas (6.0c added the File - Import Camcorder DVD option) or you need to convert the audio from AC3 to WAV using some other program.

It looks to me to be a material issue. My bet would be that the two chaps in front and the feller in the left corner are either, 1.) new to the group 2.)wearing newer tuxes, or 3.) have yet to have thiers dry cleaned! If these are school/church issued then there is more than a 90% chance that the brown tuxes are faded from the cleaning process.

The bow ties give it away. They almost never get the cleaning process!

I am not sure why the colors came out the way they did. There were some different shades of the black tuxes, but nothing like the way it came out. There were obviously some problems filming, but I am really not sure why they came out brown.

Using Glenn's advice, the final vid came out fine.

Thanks for the help

Vegas Ram and Veg Files
 

If Vegas only reads, what 2 gig of ram on rendering a mpeg/avi/etc file, does that same principle apply to rendering veg files? I'm at two gig now, wondering if I should bump up to 4 gig.

Boris Graffiti Ltd Text is horrific, am doing right?
 

I purchased Vegas 7 and Boris Gaffiti Ltd came with it as most of you know. The Ltd version is severly limited but was hoping to at least see wonderfull sharp text at least. So... I did all my keyframing and effects in the stand alone "keyframer" then... because Ltd, have to "Export" as avi file. All settings are at Highest, 720x480 with Alpha Strait. Bring this file into Vegas, right click it, properties, media, Alpha Channel Strait and makes the background transparent. Now... everything seems to be going ok... but when exporting (even on highest settings) The text is HORRIBLE... regular Vegas Text is MUCH better and even graphic text I have made. It jitters, it combs, it loses shape when it moves... What is the deal? Am I doing somthing wrong or is this the maximum capability of the LTD > have to export version?

Movie Studio & Widescreen
 

Hi - simple question that is confusing me!

If I shoot with camera set in 16:9 mode, should I be renderin the subsequent .avi and .mpg files in normal PAL or PAL Widescreen for them to display correctly on a widescreen TV?

Thanks!

Excalibur problem on a managed computer
 

I installed Vegas 7.0b and Excalibur as the admistrator on a computer at my school. When other users log on to that computer they can use Vegas but get a list of unaccessible resources when they try to run Excalibur. Is this a known issue?

No.


Does it say what resources aren't available? Do other scripts run?


Send me an e-mail and we'll see about figuring out what the issue might be.

on windows
 

The OS controls memory allocation. 1/2 of physical RAM is dedicated to the OS, regardless of need. That is just hard coded behavior. I have found that a render of Vegas cannot use any more than 900MB of ram. THe limiting factor has always been CPU. OF course I am rendering on a 2.5GB system so given the 1.2 rule of windows, I "only" have 1.25GB to play with for all the apps running at one time.

jason

I had heard that too, about the limitted use of ram, but I thought it was more than 1 gig.

I was just wondering if vegas limitations on rendering actual video files is the same when rendering veg files, such as those updated and then rerendered in a master project.

my mistake
 

I have no reason to guess that the limitation would be different if rendering nested veg files or working on only one. DSE may have more info on that.

jason

probably widescreen
 

Since the source is widescreen, the render should be as well, unless you are also making a pan / scan version for 4:3. Then include the 16:9 project into a 4:3 project and use the "crop" to focus on where the attention is.

jason

Thanks Ed. I created a new local computer user account and put it in the power users group. That works, but I have to really trust the users, and we're talking high school students. It would be nicer if it would work with their network logon (on just that computer, of course). So I'll try to capture the error message tomorrow and email it to you.

Fred, please let me know what your eventual solution is as I have similar issues with Vegas.
I'm running 3 student Vegas suites at the college I work for and I've found out that, under student profile (XP SP2), a number of things do not work properly. For example, scripts and the ability to import an audio track from CD are my two main concerns.
I'm asssuming it's a Windows issue but I'm not certain nor do I know wher eto begin looking.
Also, like you, I have no desire to swtch them to a power user profile :-(

Mike, do ALL scripts cause a problem in this situation?

Windows Strikes Again!
 

This is indeed a windows issue. Restricted users on WinXP do not have access to some of hte same features as power users. Unfortunately, it sounds like the Vegas install application (NOTE: I worked for Hewlett-Packard's software installer division for several years) does NOT correctly support the NT user / group permissions. A correctly installed application would ask if the install should be made available to all users or just the current user.

There may be another way called the "Set Program Access & Defaults" which you can use to grant access to certain programs to users.

jason

Thanks for the tip Jason. I'll look into that after the semester is over and I have some free time.

Edward, as I recall, it affects all scripts as well as the "extract CD" option. I haven't been able to get near a computer yet today to confirm this though. The end of the semester is fast approaching and this means deadlines have to be met which translates to panicking students :-)

vegas rendering question 60i / 30F (canon)
 

I'm using a Canon XH A1 and am planning to do a shoot (school holiday show really) in widescreen SD. Since the camera's new, I've been doing a few tests all the way through encode / create DVD to confirm the workflow and also see a few samples.

I did one test, 30F (progressive), and when I encoded and played on both an interlaced monitor and progressive display (high def TV), I noticed a flickering which shouldn't be there. Checking the encoding settings, I had told it to encode interlaced, but the source was progressive, which I thought was my problem.

Change the encode on 30F to field order progressive only, and I still get the flicker (which I thought should be gone).

If I tape in 60i, and encode in interlaced (field order as defaults), it looks fine..no flicker, as I would think should happen.

I think I've got the source of the problem identified (field order vs. source material interlaced vs progressive), but for some reason, changing the encoding on the 30F didn't seem to change anything.

Has anyone come across this and/or figured out what's happening here?

That slowness is a general problem of doing anything HD on a PC or MAC unless you have one of those add-in cards like a Canopus Edius or Matrox RTX2. Not that I am ready to go back to using one, but I have to work around this slowness by rendering my HD files over a weekend.

It'll get better if you get into the dual core rigs. I have an AMD Dual 3800+ that is pretty good, and I know the Core Duos from Intel are supposed to smoke..... I can also tell you that I get quicker rendering on Premeire Pro 2.0 of the HDV native edits I have done. I don't know why Vegas is as slow as it is....

Underwater Footage
 

Hello

How does one go about correcting white balance in underwater footage. In Pinnacle it is a simple procedure. But Adobe and Sony seem to make it more difficult. Footage here in Ontario ends up a bit green. Searching in the help ends me up in a colur correction screen but it wants a black area, a white area and a gray area. Thankyou in advance.

Chris

NTSC to PAL issues
 

My PAL Panasonic GS400 had problems when I was on holiday in the States and I had to buy an NTSC camcorder.

I have edited the NTSC footage in Sony Vegas 5 and saved as a PAL DV-AVi file.
I then imported this Avi file into the edited PAL footage to make one PAL edit. This was then deinterlaced and exported to DVD. When this DVD was watched on a normal PAL TV the PAL footage played fine but the NTSC to PAL footage showed the typical interlace jaggies. I then played it in the DVD drive of the computer and again jaggies were evident on the NTSC to PAL footage, particularly in scenes with motion (as expected).

Any ideas what has gone wrong and how I may rectify it ?

I was just watching a video from a recent dive on the Gunilda over the weekend so I know exactly what you're talking about.
Unfortunately there's no magic button to automatically correct for this.
I'd suggest going through the colour correction tutorials on BillyBoy's site at http://www.wideopenwest.com/~wvg/tutorial-menu.htm
Once you understand what the various tools do, it becomes easier.

Widescreen Render Settings for HDV
 

Maybe it's me, (I was up late)

I was working on my first HDV project in Vegas (6d). All went well untill I tried to find a high rez render setting that would preserve the 16x9. I ended up saving as an .avi, which was predictably HUGE.

Any advice?