Learning Architect 4: Scene Selection
 

I am learning Architect 4 and would like to know if there is a way of changing the format for scene selection. By default it provides text and image for the chapters in the video in particular layout on the menu screen. I would like a way of changing this to text only in vertical columns. Or any other way of creating this sort of menu from the chapters ( exported from Vegas 7 and named)
Thanks
Ron Evans

Right click on the image part button and make it TEXT only OR highlight the image box of the button and DELETE leaving the TEXT only button part of the button. As for placing it you can move the buttons in any way you want.

Don

Raylight has a new user interface so be sure to point to the latest version
of the tutorial: http://dvfilm.com/raylight/raylightTutorial2Index.htm

Thanks very much for y'all's support

Yes that is how I have done it at the moment. Even grouped them and used the align tool to get them all on the left edge and then sort. It would be nice to actually set up a default for the scene selection so that when used they would set up this way. I have just gone through creating a DVD with over 90 chapters in 8 submenu groupings. It would have been a lot easier to set up a default that created the scenes this way rather than essentially doing them one at a time. I am just learning, normal authoring is with DVDLab 2 so am keen to identify what is good /poor about these applications. I wanted to try importing from Vegas with chapters and creating with Architect to see how this would work out and this project with so many chapters gave me the opportunity where having this realationship would be benificial. I will keep trying as I think there has to be a way of doing this, even if I have to learn how to write a script for it.

Ron Evans

I see
 

Thank you Jon, sounds easy enouph and will give it a shot, thanks.

Vegas 7, JVC HD100 and preview... Ouch
 

Okay, I've done some searching, but I haven't been able to deduce what my solution might be.

I am editing a short 720p project shot with my JVC HD100U. This is really only my second project with Vegas (second project editing video, too !) , so forgive me if this is too basic.

I find that if I correct for good-looking visuals in the preview window in Vegas, the resulting DVD ( after I render with DVD Architect 4 and display on my TV ) is waaaay too contrasty, highlights blown, etc. Unusable. I'm pretty good with 'Levels' and color-correction in Photoshop, so am not flying completely blind.

If I 'correct' in Vegas for the preview window, I have to correct to 'muddy', no-contrast, ugly-looking previews to get a reasonable result on my TV. That just can't work.

My research in this forum reveals that I should preview on something like my output hardware, but here's the trouble: the HD100U apparently does not do '1394 pass-through' of video. I can't preview by directing Vegas' preview output to Firewire with the HD100 (which is connected to a monitor via the camera's component output).

Has anyone done this with widescreen preview output to Firewire from Vegas without $ 2000 worth of gear ?

I see 3 or 4 gadgets from Canopus, with prices ranging from $ 225 to $ 1000. But I don't want to waste money getting to the 'right' solution. I see cards from AJA and BlackMagic that range to $2000 or more. I just want to preview on component (preferred) or S-video or composite with widescreen output from Vegas 7 via Firewire.

If anyone has some solid recommendations based on actual experience, I'd really appreciate hearing them.

Thanks,

Stephen H

Thanks for the advice guys. Any specific ideas for removing wind noise? Would Sony's Noise Reduction 2 work for that?

Are Threshold and Black Restore already part of Vegas? Thanks for the suggestions.

Eugene have you tried contacting Sony tech support?

Undo Crashes
 

Hello Everyone,

I have installed Vegas 7.0b on my computer. Over the past few months the program will somethings crash (it disappears) when I hit the undo icon. It has down this to me on several occassions. It even disappears when I use the undo shortcut(ctrl-Z). I am now very afraid when I reach to click on undo icon. Sometimes I take a shortcut to save before proceeding. What is going on? This is very frustrating.

I feel that Sony Noise Reduction 2.0 would not be successful in removing wind noise due to the nature of the noise.

In Sony NR 2.0, you can take a "Noise Sample" of the noise if you have a quiet period in your desired sound, but in which the noise is present. This gives NR 2.0 a "Noise Sample" (fingerprint, my term), of the noise.

Then Sony NR 2.0 will analyze the "Noise Sample" and remove those frequences from your sound track. You can take multple "Noise Samples".

However, you may not be satisified with the results. A lot depends on the nature of your sound track. Is it dialog, nature sounds, music or something else?

If you wish to send me your sound track on a CD or DVD, I could import it into Vegas and use Sony NR 2.0 in an attempt to remove your wind noise.

I do not think I wll be successful due to the many frequences involved in wind noise, however, if I am I will send the sound track back to you. Please send me a private email and I will send you my shipping address.

If you look thru the VIDEO FX tab you'll see that Threshold and Black Restore are part of the FX offered by Vegas.

You might try TRACK MOTION to enlarge the portion you want without degreading in too much. You would probably still need to make an adjustment or 2 but it MIGHT be better than PAN CROP depending on how much you're try to crop out.

Don

I have now found a way of doing what I want. Apply the Corporate Theme. This has given me two columns. Great. I also have now modified it to be what i want. Now if only Sony can find someone to totally re write the help files for Vegas and Architect that have just a little logic to them it would be a big improvement!!!!! Simple things, like when one searches for something have the word be the first in the list rather than not appear in a list of 20 items!!!!!

Ron Evans

3d Compositing
 

I'm having a little trouble compositing video over a TV screen. I cant seem to get the aspect ratio right. Anyone have any tips on how to do this? Thanks!

You really have to apply some pincushioning and barrel distortion to get this right. I think After Effects is a better tool for this job but I do not speak from much experience. Then there is the the matter of adding lighting cues.

it looks like the screen is all blue? have you tried any chroma keying?

i would use after effects corner pinning

you might be able to do this in your editor

good luck

Editting M2T transport stream vs Cineform AVI
 

OK, I'm confused by information I'm getting about the highest quality method to edit HDV. The conventional wisdom seems to be that I should edit m2T files native if I expect cuts only editting. If I intend to do much color correction or special FX, I should convert to the Cineform codec before editting.

Now, I hear that cut editting in Vegas7 does not quantize to the I-frame. If this is true, then re-rendering the entire m2t clip is necessary to redefine the I-frames for the entire clip. Re-rendering any mpeg2 file results in a degraded image quality. The advice is to use an editting software from womble.com to do cuts on a clip, because the womble software quantizes to the nearest I-frame.

Given this info, it would seem that editting native m2t files in vegas7 is still a no-starter, given that the entire m2t clip has to be rerendered...time and an image quality issue.

Am I right?

The entire frame needs to be re-rendered; Vegas doesn't have what many apps call "Smart Rendering." That said, Vegas does have a higher accuracy as a result, but accuracy vs speed isn't that important to some folks.
Vegas 7 does cut/seek I frames, however.
All that said, I generally still prefer converting to CineForm or other codec (I wish I could access the Cineform codec via my Xena card) because it holds together much more nicely, and more and more of our delivery is ending up on HDCAM, which requires conversion anyway.

Douglas...

thanx. perhaps in a future release vegas will incorporate smart rendering. it seems like I'm taking a hit, however small, for every render I do. That would be trivial if I could make all my cuts on one pass, however, I find that in my editting workflow, I continue to make cuts only edits until I finally finish the piece. Because playback is never real time in vegas, I have to go out to a playable version to find timing errors, then back into vegas to correct them. It's hard to get the final tempo of the peice without rendering to a playable version. I'm getting into the habit of going straight to HUFFYUV for editting, then back out to mpeg when I'm ready to release. Works nicely, except that all those re-renders really take t~i~m~e.

This is actually a really complex subject and has been talked about a bunch but here is my experience in a nutshell. I've done a bunch of work with the JVC and Vegas and as far as color correcting on the cheap:

Use Vegas secondary preview monitor function and select the "use color management" , "use studio RGB" , "sRGB Color Space Profile" in the Preview Device folder under Prefernces. Then open up some color bars and calibrate your monitor (if you can) or at least see how off it is and use that as a point of reference.

If you want to go out firewire to an external monitor you can't do this in HD - it all gets converted to standard def so any cheap firewire to component converter box will do the job. If you are going to be going to standard def anyway this is probably a good step to check your levels, etc.

Combining these two methods - starting on my dell 2405 via secondary preview and then checking on my little Toshiba NTSC monitor via ADS Pyro AVlink has given me pretty good results. Not perfect but it's pretty cheap :)

Hope this helps...

Just to be clear.
 

If you have a choice, re-render as few times as possible.

If you can edit in native HDV (from the original captured files) without rendering until your final delivery format, this is best.

Just take a test-pattern, render it to CFHD a few times, and compare it in the scopes to the original pattern. CFHD is a better intermediate format than m2t, but no intermediate is still best.

Any Ideas For Film Motion Blur
 

Hello everybody!
So, whatever I do, I can't get filmic motion blur with Vegas. The best motion blur ever I used is The Foundry Furnace (for AE), but it takes one whole life for rendering out a footage approx 1 hour. It is REALLY same as any film motion blur, i.e. no any shutter (strobes) or flickering, perfect blurred motion. That's why then on the TV I see very nice look&motion, but I can't get it with Vegas Motion Blur, no matter what adjustment I do.
So, any ideas and suggestions?

Have you tried RevisionFX ReelSmart Motion Blur?

The corner pinning in after effects worked perfectly! That was the first time I had ever used after effects, so it took me a little while to get it right....but once I had it sussed out it worked as planned.

Great! That's exactly what I was looking for.

I'll try the ADS Pyro. That seems to be even cheaper than the Canopus gadgets I saw.

Thanks, Burk.

Stephen H

Hi Will,

Sony got back to me and other than telling me to update all my drivers and stuff (which I have), offered no other solution.

Had to transfer my projects over to a friend's edit suite to finish them off :(.

Yes, of course, it is little faster, but not better result than Furnace. Shuttering and strobing still remain.

I got a reply from Sony today, yep, it was another lame reply from Sony.

I'm not at my home to quote it, but their reply was something like, '2 gig of ram may help performance but we would advise you to close down background processes.' To which I replied, ummm, thanks for the useless reply to my question.

I asked them point blank if the rendering of veg files has the same ram limitations as Vegas rendering avi's and mpegs and such. I asked them to actually reply to my question, I'll update this post if they actually give me an answer.

More Stupid Newbie Questions "Slicing Clips" and "Slow Motion"
 

Ok I for the life of me cannot figure out how to take a clip and cut it. Basically if I want to delete the first half out I have to shorten it by dragging it, there has got to be some way where I can cut it in the middle and just delete the unwanted?

Also Slow motion, how do I slow the clip down say I have a car do a burnout and half way through for a few seconds I want it to slow down?

Thanks NewB!

Put the cursor where you want it cut. Press "S" (Split)

For speed changes, either hold down the CTRL key and resize the clip or use a Velocity Envelope.

I guess I could use some help too with Vegas 7

Could someone help and give me a simple step by step instruction of how to get my video HD 60i from my Canon XH A1 to my computer at the highest quality possible to make a viewable DVD. I know how to connect it wirh the firewire and the computer sees the video. Just the quality is not right jumpy, stutters, soft looking image.
i.e. what setting should I capture the video at on the computer?
Save as what kind of file?
I tried opening the rendered project in DVD architect and it does not see it in the browser folder. The manuals just say choose a file not which one.
For example when one renders audio in ProTools the manual let's you know for commercial release you need to render your project at 16 bit 44.1.
It would have been nice to just have a starter from Camera to Vegas to DVD Architect final DVD Burn. Is there a good primer anyone could recommend?
Thanks

Help getting video from Camera to Vegas 7 to DVD Arch
 

Sorry to repost but I don't think what I posted would be found where it was.
I could use some help with Vegas 7

Could someone help and give me a simple step by step instruction of how to get my video HD 60i from my Canon XH A1 to my computer at the highest quality possible to make a viewable DVD. I know how to connect it wirh the firewire and the computer sees the video. Just the quality is not right jumpy, stutters, soft looking image.
i.e. what setting should I capture the video at on the computer?
Save as what kind of file?
I tried opening the rendered project in DVD architect and it does not see it in the browser folder. The manuals just say choose a file not which one.
For example when one renders audio in ProTools the manual let's you know for commercial release you need to render your project at 16 bit 44.1.
It would have been nice to just have a starter from Camera to Vegas to DVD Architect final DVD Burn. Is there a good primer anyone could recommend?
Thanks

***edit***

reposted here:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=81031

Likely the capture is just fine on disk. Set your preview window to "Preview-Auto" and see what it looks like. Then, try "Preview-Best". See where you get the best combo of good playback frame rate and sharpness. This only affects what you see when you're editing.

Above assuming that you captured with Vegas. What processor and how much RAM do you have?

Douglas Spotted Eagle's "Vegas Editing Workshop" book got me started back with V4 (thanks DSE!), he has updated it with each new release, not sure if it is out for V7, check out vasst.com. There are also DVDs, if you learn better by seeing than reading.

Edward Troxel has some great free newsletters that always have a "beginners corner". jetdv.com Read all the way back to the first ones, you'll get a lot out of them.

Preparation for DVD - File | Render As | Type: MainConcept MPEG 2 | Template: DVD Architect NTSC (widescreen?) Video Stream

Then, do the same again for your audio track Type: Dolby Digital AC-3 | Template: Stereo DVD

These templates will get you started with renders that DVD Architect can recognize and use.

Thanks Seth
I am using a centrino Vaio laptop 1.8. I also have a dual 2.5 mac but no editing software except imovie on it I think. 2G ram. That laptop is optimized for Protools so it should handle the video but I don't really know anything about that for sure. Will this be the best quality? I know I can save it as HD and render as SD right or am I wrong.

We need more information about what version of Vegas you are using.

Ultimately, with the stutter you are describing, your system seems to be having issues, so you should give us idea what up there to, ie., give us your set up info.

Color Correcting help
 

I need help color correcting!!! I am getting the VASST DVD on color correcting for Christmas(Gift from my son) so I can not get it until then. In the mean time, what would be the best way to correct the differnce in the color of the jacket this lady is wearing...any help is appreciated. Image0 is closest to real life

looks more like Exposure than color to my tired old eyes. I would pull a screen shot of A to the clipboard put the cursor over the area you want to fix then Split Screen the image. Use LEVELS FXs and adjust gamma first and see how that looks. You can always goto the Color Correction FX if necessary to highten up the color.
Don

Notice how much brighter the first one is. That means you need to set your white point more aggressively in the second one. Then you need to use secondary color correction to get the reds in line. In Photoshop I found the following settings worked well:

Levels: move highlight from 255 to 190
Hue/Saturation: shift red +15, making sure to deselect the skin.

You can do the same thing in Vegas....

(deep breth - this is not quite the 1,2,3 but almost, but with some notes)

HD you're going to use the vegas capture for HD - file / capture video, and you should get a prompt of HD or SD .. pick of course based on your source; vegas will pull up the right capture program (and as a side note, unless you're using a blu ray or HD DVD burner & player, your player won't send HD to the set. if delivery is SD DVD, your going to need to downres to SD either out of the A1 or in vegas (or shoot in SD, even at widescreen).

when you capture, you'll get full quality if you don't drop any frames (vegas shows you how many if any are dropped, typically due to PC/hard drive that can't keep up). as long as no dropped frames, your file is on your pc at the requested quality.

codec note - ("save as what kind of file?"): when you capture, you are going to capture in either the mpeg2 codec which is same as is on your tape or use an 'intermediate' codec which may be more suitable for editing, and also may give better performance when previewing your source. If you're not going to edit, you can capture in the m2t format. If you are going to edit, vegas comes with a version of the cineform codec which improves performance when editing..you can capture using that codec. All of this is set in the preferences of the HD capture program (press the 'prefs' button in the capture section and you'll see it). If you feel you'll do a lot of editing, etc. you can upgrade ($200) to the more full conncect HD cineform add on. Try using their free version first and see if that removes some of the jittering / stuttering you see when you try to play your timeline in vegas on your pc. As for softness, everything you set the camera for should be there, so if it's soft, it may be just a function of your video preview window.

strictly speaking, you can't open your vegas 'project' in DVDA, you'll just import your rendered files. render as per seth (is your laptop 1.8 ghz? mine's just a bit over 2ghz, so won't be terribly fast, but should be ok). If you want to render in one step for both audio and video, use the DVDA NTSC template, but on the audio tab, just check off 'include audio stream'. DVDA will use both the audio and video from this file. one note, I've noticed that the DVDA default now seems to be 48khz for the audio, which is correct for DVD (it used to default to 44.1 like on a CD and you'd have to change it all the time, but if you ever have audio problems importing a file, this is one of the first things to check). The file to open will be in the same folder in which you renderd it to in vegas - use the explorer tab in DVDA and just drag and drop your file onto a menu in DVDA and that's it. If you don't want a menu, you can do file/new, and select the movie only template, and it will just give you a dialogue box to select your mpeg file right from there! and presto, then just click 'make dvd'.

well, that's probably more than you were looking for..vegas and DVDA are great but just take a bit of learning...and this is somewhat complicated by adding HD to the mix.

throw back some questions and we'll see what we can do!!