HD Files
 

Hello again. I am beginning to experiment with HD rendering in Vegas and recently rendered a clip with it, and the clip came out with the extension .m2t. What is this, and is there a way to convert it to avi or mpg? Thanks for any input.

Mitch

It's already MPG, Mitch. M2T means MPEG-2 Transport Stream. Transport stream is one in which there is audio and video together. Elementary stream would contain video only. You can change the extension to MPG and it should still play just fine.

-gb-

Thanks a lot man. I appreciate it. Now one other question, you said that transport stream have the audio and video together, how is that different from a regular MPEG2 file? The audio and video are in one file, what is the difference? I know this may seem like a novice question, but I'm still learning. Thanks again.

The DVD explains this well, since it shows you the whole process including how to use the clipboard function. (It's the camera matching section/chapter.)

For a quick rundown, you can take a look at my .veg and look at the filter chains.
http://www.glennchan.info/Proofs/dvinfo/dgrimes.veg

Basically:
A- The unsharp mask on the wider camera tries to make the perceived sharpnesses match.
B- The exposure on the second camera was brought up. I prefer using the input start and input end over gamma, since gamma causes subtle changes in hue and saturation.
C- The secondary CC makes the coat color match. You can use another secondary CC on the wall too.
D- Color corrector to get white balance. (I was lazy here. It should be applied to both clips.)

Cheers.

hi Mitch ... actually this page has a lot of info.. there are others, but this one's ok (I haven't verified all of the facts on it):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDV

the hdv mpeg stream is a long GOP format of mpeg, where there are fewer I (full) frames than the mpeg2 which is used for SD DVD's, for example. So, the mpeg compression's the same concept, but different structure of the group of pictures (sets of full frames(I) and partial frames (B frames)).

you wouldn't want to convert an M2T format back to AVI, unless it were the original M2T file off your mini DV tape and you want to edit it. some PCs are ok performance with the M2T editing, or you can convert it to and AVI and use a codec like cineform to get good performance and get away from the M2T mpeg format.

Glenn, thanks for the samples. I have them open and again have learnt loads just from this VEG.

Many thanks - G

Removing halos
 

I recently shot some SD video of penguins in Antarctica. In a few of the shots there are somewhat objectionable halos around the subjects, I presume from in-camera sharpening, and I would like to try and reduce these artifacts. I use Vegas 5.

I have tried using light blur and negative USM, but the image is too soft by the time the halos are significantly reduced.

Does anybody know if there is a different way to deal with this problem, such as a third party plug-in? I couldn't find anything using search.

Many thanks

Duncan

Thanks guys!
That helped me alot! In the drop down lists you refer to several both in Vegas 7 and DVDA would it be too much to ask the exact options to select. optimally I will want to shoot in HD for future use. But for now I would like to Shoot in HD and down convert to SD. What options in the dropdown lists i.e. step 1 Vegas to Step .X. DVDA. Keep in mind that I also need to make a master to send to the replicator. So there might have to be two different procedures...I don't know. Thanks again. I know it takes time to respond and write at least it does me. So thanks for taking the time to respond to this rudemantary post. I am an old 'hunt and peck" typist. I will check out Spots Vegas editing also.
Thanks John

Photoshopping large numbers of frames in a row?
 

I realize Vegas is very powerful and can create some awesome looks by using Levels and the other native color correcting tools. However, I find that in Photoshop, because I can use blending between layers and so on, that I can create more of the look I'm going for.

Question: Is there a way I can extract large numbers of frames from my footage (.AVI's) and convert them to numbered stills for batch processing in photoshop, then convert them back into .AVI?


(I searched and found similar answers but nothing about large quantities of frames, nor about re-importing them all automatically.)

Thanks!

take the clip you want to do in PS (either split it to make it a seperate clip OR highlight the REGION) and goto TOOLS>SCRIPTING>RENDER AS IMAGE SEQUENCE.
That will make each frame a still that you can now bring into PS do your thing and then save them as the same name but perhaps put an A or something to differentiate from the originals. Keep them in sequence and then when your're ready go back to Vegas and goto FILE>IMPORT MEDIA and point to the image sequence you have. It will then come back into Vegas in the proper order and play out properly. Of course you need to set the time length of the stills in your preferences, if it's set to say 5 seconds it's going to be a very long non moving clip ;-)
HTHs
Don

If you import using the Image Sequence option, it will import correctly regardless of what the preference length says. Image Sequence brings them in as one frame per image.

John - how much editing are you doing for this material, what type of content is it (in general, eg sports, etc), and how are you getting it to the replicator, DVD or tape?

You can try:
First do a light blur or some other 1-pixel blur to get rid of the halos. i.e. in the convolution kernel, put in 0.5 1 and 0.5 for the middle three values (horizontally). Vary the middle value (1) until you like what you see- it should be 1 or greater. If the camera applies some sort of bigger 2-pixel blur, then try the gaussian blur (horizontal only). Most cameras only sharpen horizontally; interlaced cameras tend to blur vertically.

After that, apply unsharp mask with a somewhat high radius. This should increase perceived sharpness.

Adobe After Effects is Photoshop-like and I find that it renders much faster.

2- Vegas also has many of Photoshop's blending layers.

Let me rephrase that Im a newbie!

Glenn

Many thanks for the detailed response - I will try what you suggest.

Duncan

Vegas was not designed for post-production tasks like this; for that you still need After Effects. I have not got nice results from Vegas' motion blur capability either.

Ok, look at Vol 1 #9 of my newsletters for the article "Change the Speed of a Clip". You might want to look over the other newsletters while you're there as well.

Dave

I have not decided or been told yet. I believe it has to be delivered on Tape. It will go to a "post/production house" from me so I am not sure. I will shooting again Saturday. I tried the slowmo on vegas7 contl drag worked just fine. Close up of piano playing fingers in slow mo is very interesting to me anyway. Might be like watching paint dry for others!

How can Threshold and Black Restore help? I'm very confused on how to use them. I looked at them, applied them, but I'm not smart enough to know how to use them. Any tips on techniques with them? Thanks.

Bug or Setting, Video dissapears...
 

I am working with Vegas 7, HDV video in CH Codec. Working on movie so usually just working with the one track of video but had a flashback so added a second (from a different file). On this 2nd video track I did not need the audio so deleted that tracks audio. The video worked fine when I initially edited it. Saved it, closed it. Next day opened it and a "placemarker" is there but video not. I right clicked this placemarker and it says it's one of my audio files!! (just a simple background noise audio file I made). What happened...?? is this a bug? or... am I doing somthing wrong? I repeated and rebuilt the same file, saved it, and re-opened it and the same thing happened. In the projects "Project Media" folder all sorts of strange things happen when clicking folders I made... once again, video file swapped for .wav file... I re-added and then clicked away and back and it changed again... Has anyone had this problem? is there a fix?

I've not ever seen that happen. So it's trying to say you had an audio file on a video track?

very strange...
 

Yes, tried 4 times now. Every time re-open file the video is gone (white) and when right clicked, it says it's now my ambient.wav file..???? Anyways tried a different .avi file, saved it and re-opened and that was ok... remained fine on the 2nd video timeline so, looks like it is strange behavior with that file in this .veg only because I used that file in a different scene .veg and everything is ok with it their! Now... I created a new .veg file, and am re-rendering out the pieces I need from the strangly behaving .avi and hopefully that will work.

Hi John .. well, it'll be hard to say at this point what options, dropdowns, etc. to select without the project(s) being more defined. I think the basics are above and just suggest to add posts to this (or appropriate) thread(s) and people will be happy to jump in and help out as you go!

That Worked
 

Re-rendering a new file worked... strange behavior. For some reason, for that .veg only, Vegas saw that .avi file as a .wav file... Oh... well... back on track

Best DVD Settings for Vegas 5.0
 

Now I know I'm editing on ancient equipment here compared to all you 6 and 7 users but I needed to throw this question out there anyway.

What are the best/proper settings to render a file (widescreen or regular) that will be burned to a DVD? Now I've burnt many a video to DVD before with Vegas but they never have the full clarity and/or overall picture quality that I can get on my PC (and I hugely noticed this just recently as we got a new HD 1080i TV and my latest Vegas to DVD creation doesn't look very appealing at all).

Now to try and answer a few of your questions in advance so you can answer mine; I'm shooting on a Sony VX2100, I render in MPEG-2 format (DVD NTSC), then import it all into DVD Architect and go from there.

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong or better yet, what settings are you using?

Use the DVD Architect presets when rendering to MPEG2. They are set up to give good results.

Robb - yes, I've noticed things like that too, esp. more recently rendering SD out for playout on a hi def 'tv'. For mpeg2, vegas uses the mainconcept encoder, which I had long ago gotten away from because I didn't like its encoding results (esp. with interlaced material) when the target display was SD. What I had done was render the finished edit out to an AVI file and then encode in procoder (or also now using sorenson squeeze). There are other encoders out there too that people are using like tmpgenc (tsunami).

Try cranking up the bitrate and do a 2 pass VBR encode in vegas and see if that helps, and also set the quality as high as you can (will take more time to process).

Also, you may want to add a slight softening or noise reduction filter on your video and see if that helps the encode. Of course it will take more time to process, but is worth a test.

Ed's got it right, of course. Use the DVD Architect templates. They create ideal files for DVD Architect to work with.

If you use something else (like Procoder or Squeeze) and set the parameters too far away from the DVD Architect template, DVD Architect will simply re-render the video to its own ideal and use the MainConcept coder to do it . . . and it will increase your DVD authoring time.

Thanks guys. For some reason I never put 2 and 2 together to think that perhaps the Architect templates would work for Architect! Guess I'm just dumb. I'll try that out and see how it goes. Thanks again!

You are the man!

Capture breaks files into ~500K pieces (thousands of them)
 

I have been capturing SD DV video with vegas 6.0d for over a year now, so this came as a shock when I recently tried to capture from my HDR-FX1. The video that was being captured was broken up into tens of thousands of avi files each no more than 500KB!

I reset the Vegas capture app to the defaults and nothing changed. I still get thousands of files each no more than 500KB. Yes I checked to see what the minimum clip length was (3seconds).

First I tried capturing on my other computer (the alienware) and it gave me the same problem, if it worked at all (wouldn't recognize the camera). So back the Dualie computer to do an OS image restore (thank goodness for TrueImage). Then installed a clean Vegas, updated to 6.0d expecting nothing but vanilla software functional goodness.

Same problem! This leads me to think that the problem lies with the camera. Since I rent my camera from my operator (as Japanese Sony HRD-FX1) I wonder if there has been a change on the camera's settings that can change how it allows footage to be captured. Anyone out there run into this problem? I am in desperate need of my footage from the business shoot I posted about last week (live auction).

EDIT: I am thinking this has somethign to do with the HDR-FX1s simulation of 24p footage as it seems that each clip is a single frame of video with the associated audio. When scene detection is turned off, the capture seems to proceed normally except all the project and media settings are screwed up for the aspect ratios.

But that still brings up the question of why can't Sony's own app talk to Sony's camera to capture (simulated) 24p footage with scene detection turned on?



Thanks for the help, ya'll.

jason

change to draft mode
 

Some times the effects being applied are just too taxing to see in real time at high res. For my system I found that when I am adding loads of audio tracks (about 3-6) and one ore two videos (PiP effect) plus color correction, plus contrast, plus some colorization effects things get MIGHTY sluggish. I have to switch from Good, down to preview, and some times to draft quality. Often times a reboot helps clear up that problem. Another culprit has been a fragmented file systme so the discs are jumping aroudn looking for the rest of the media file.

jason

Pan, Scan, and Zooming how to!
 

Hi, I am trying to do pan, scan and zooming on still pictures with Vegas 7; need advise on the how to do this. Obviously, iam a nub in editing, so please feel free to fill in all the detail as you can.

Thanks

Tung

Look at Vol 1 #8 of my newsletters.

Basically, open Pan/Crop, right-click the image, choose "Match Output Aspect", and adjust and add keyframes as needed.

Thanks Ed,
BTW, do you know any manual that describe in detail how to use vegas7? I saw a vegas 6 editing workshop dvd package, but not for 7; what would you suggest for learning vegas7? or should i scan through all the newsletter from your site?

Thanks again

Tung

I'm not Edward but the first best thing to do is go thru his newsletters. While the articles are not specific to V7 the basic are all still the same. I'm a fairly long time Vegas user and I can't begin to tell you how many times Edwards newsletters have saved my bacon or at least reminded me of how to do a little used something something. (you forget things when you get old like me;-)

Don

The gospel from Sony I suppose
 

Hello,

Thanks for writing.

More RAM does not really mean a faster render time. More RAM in a system will allow more instances of Vegas or more simultanous video or audio clips to be displayed, but does not greatly affect the speed at which something will render. Generally, processor speed, number, and type are the factors that determine render speeds.

Please note: at this time we do not support 64-bit processors or operating systems. These processors often cause exception errors or serious system crashes when trying to render, as Vegas has not yet been programmed to work properly with this architecture.

Sincerely,

Rob A.
Technical Support
Sony Media Software
1617 Sherman Ave
Madison, WI 53704
http://www.sony.com/mediasoftware
http://www.acidplanet.com

Don't be afraid to look at Vegas 6 training materials. The major concepts are still the same. I'm not sure exactly what Vegas 7 updates to training are available yet. I know Class on Demand has a Vegas 7 update DVD.

If you have many stills to pan/zoom you can use programs such as VASST's Ultimate-S to automate this process. This will save you an immense amount of time and it works great.

I haven't found any books or training DVDs for Vegas 7. But you can find lots of training materials for Vegas 6. Ed Troxels's newsletters initially brought me up to speed enough for what I need in Vegas 7.

Also, a big help for new Vegas 7 features is Vegas's online Help. Pull up Help and the first thing you will see is a list of new features in Vegas 7. You can click on context sensitive help for each new feature.