Showing date and time
 

Is there any way of displaying the original date and time of clips on the timeline in Vegas 6.0d? I've been used to seeing this automatically in Windows Movie Maker but can't find any reference to this info in either clip properties or media manager. I convert the original caputed .m2t files into avi for edit purposes by the way, (replacing later for final render).
Thanks

I've written about this before for DV, not sure if it works with HDV. Give it a try?

Came from this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=20830

(it is a sticky thread in the SD Vegas forum)

Questions regarding audio formats (mp3, wav, etc.)
 

Hello fellow Vegas geniuses (I’m actually still an amateur though),

I have a couple of questions regarding sound. I understand that mp3 formats compress the sound files and that there are other formats that don’t. This naturally results in some quality loss after each render. Here are my questions:

1. Which file format is best for editing? I have been told that avi is best for video, but what is best for audio?

2. I noticed that most programs typically render mp3 files at a constant bit rate instead of a variable bit rate by default. I have been told that variable bit rate is more efficient that constant bit rate for mpeg and I assuming that it is for mp3 as well. It just puzzles me that most programs don’t select “highest quality” for the mp3 files by default but they select constant bit rate. Is there some big disadvantage to variable bit rate?

I appreciate your valuable time to answer my questions. Please feel free to leave me any additional information that would be useful or links to sites that you think would help educate me better in this area. Also, do not hesitate to add a response even if someone else has. The more responses I have the better.

Thank you so much.

~Peter Diamond

"Best for editing" can mean a number of things.

Highest-quality native editing would be the native format of whatever you're editing. For DV, best quality will result from editing in DV.

An AVI file can be DV, and Vegas captures DV as AVI. But AVI is just a file format; it's not a codec or a standard. An AVI can be highly-compressed or uncompressed.

But if you're working with HD, editing in HD might not be "best," because your computer might not be up the challenge of moving all of that information around. In these cases, it's often "best" to work with an intermediate codec so that you can preview in real time, or even play the timeline at a frame rate above 4 at all.

As for audio, use the best-quality codec/format (sometimes it's both) you can. WAV files are typically far less compressed than MP3s, if at all, so WAVs are typically superior.

Vegas 5 and Swish
 

I was looking for a simple and inexpensive way to do nice title effects when a friend mentioned swish max.

My question is does Vegas 5 support flash files made with swish and if it does do you just place them on the timeline like any other piece of media?

'Lock' one clip to a frame in another thread
 

I often want to sync a clip relative to another clip in another track, for example, to match up to an audible beat in an audio track or to a visual cue in one frame of a video track. Without being able to "lock" these two clips together, when I edit things, I lose the match-up between the two clips; one stays behind in its same position.

Is there a way to lock them together, one frame staying with another frame in another clip, even if you slide them around, etc?

PCM (packaged as .wav files in PC) are by far the best for editing. .wav is the same as uncompressed vid, in that it's an uncompressed audio file, and less costly on the CPU. While a wav can contain compressed information (just like an avi can) it typically is not a compressed file format.
16bit/48K PCM is standard audio for video, 16bit/44.1K audio is standard for CD. High Def audio is still a .wav format, but sampled at 24bit/192k.

3 Monitor Setup?
 

Hey all.
I'm finally going to move to a 3 monitor PC setup. I have a Dell 8400 with an NVidia 6800 with dual outs (one analog, one dvi) that I use for two standard 19" LCD's. I'd like to add a 3rd HD monitor to the mix, utilizing an NVidia 7600 video card, using the DVI out for an HD monitor. In Vegas, I would use this as the preview window and the other two monitors as workspace.

Using Windows XP Media center, does anyone see a problem with this? The Dell is a P4 3.0 with 2G's of RAM.

Thanks.

Also, anyone know where I can get a decent 19" LCD HD monitor/TV with DVI?

Sure. Select them both and press "G" to "Group" them.

There are some limitations but the short answer is yes.

I used Swish and then Swishmax for website development. They have a great product for the price. I hope you can use it with Vegas.

-gb-

look at this tutorial, i think it will help you
http://www.johnrofrano.com/tutorials/swishmax.htm

Perfect-o. Thanks!

If I knew the Vegas terminology was "Group" instead of "Lock" or "Sync" I woulda been able to find that with the search feature and saved ya the trouble!

mov vs wmv vs flash
 

I spent some time scouring the forums here with the search tool but I didn't really see anything that answered my question on the nose:

Does anybody know (based on statistics) whether more internet users can see .mov's vs. WMV's vs. Flash movies?

I'm wondering which one to encode to, for embedding in a webpage so the majority of users can see it.

Aspect Ratios and DVD Architect
 

I had some footage on a DVD that was 2.40 aspect ratio. As you know, this is wider than widescreen (16:9). The result is large black bars generated on a 4:3 TV and small black bars generated on a 16:9 tv. I captured this video from my DVD player through the capture card into Vegas. Playing it at 16:9 (which is the best I can do), it captured the video with the small black bars included.

After editing it and then rendering to WS NTSC video, taking it into DVD architect and exporting a DVD with menu, it comes out the correct ratio, like it should....but....This is a 16:9 video with small black bars built into it. The problem is that when you play it back on a 4:3 TV you see the video, the built in black bars and the black bars that the TV itself renders to fit the video onscreen. TV's render anything from totally black to very grey bars....this clashes with the built in black bars. It's very distracting to see two different tones of bars around the video.

So, I tried cropping the clip from 720x480 to 720x363.63 and adjusting the project settings and rendering a file that size. This works - it renders a file of the correct size and porpotions which houses only the video itself and no black bars, so theoretically if you played it back on a TV - no matter WS or regular it would have to render the bars for whatever area is missing and therefore it would be uniform. Ok, so now the editing process is done correctly....

The only problem is DVD Architect. It freaks out and does not recognize any video which isn't any one of four different sizes (4:3, 16:9, pal or pal WS). It insists on recompressing the video to 16:9 which basically gives it an anomorphic stretch. This is not desirable because it doesn't look good on this footage and I can't afford the recompression time.

Does anyone know how to make DVD architect accept different aspect ratios? Or do I need to use some other authoring software? If so, what software can do this? There must be a way to author in these aspect ratios, because there's a ton of movies with them out there. Thank you so much if you can help.

First, here's a list of things I've already tried or that won't be options:

-I am NOT going to edit VOB files in womble.

-I am NOT going to convert mpg to avi and edit that.

-I know DVD isn't the greatest input source, but that's what I have to work with and that's what I'm going to do.

-I am not going to make a mask for the clip for the black bars. Every TV generates a different color - some black - and some grey and no matter what I do they won't match everyone's tv.

-I already tried cropping the clip down to where there are no black bars and rendering a normal 16:9 file. This is the same problem with the mask....it won't match every TV and everyone's different brightness settings.

-I cannot just adjust the settings on my TV until they match. This product will be seen by hundreds of different people and I can't just tell them to adjust their sets.

-I cannot just make a fake widescreen disc, because I want this to play on both kinds of TVs. I also cannot make two different versions.

-I already tried replacing the VOB of that file with the original MPG of the correct size....that's not going to happen, apparently.

All PC and some (many?) MAC internet users can see WMVs. This should be the majority by far.

David & Douglas, thank you for your responses. Can either of you, or anyone else reading this message, answer my question regarding bit rate:
-
I noticed that most programs typically render mp3 files at a constant bit rate instead of a variable bit rate by default. I have been told that variable bit rate is more efficient that constant bit rate for mpeg and I assuming that it is for mp3 as well. It just puzzles me that most programs don’t select “highest quality” for the mp3 files by default but they select constant bit rate. Is there some big disadvantage to variable bit rate?
-
Thank you again!

The short answer is that if you're not going to do all the things you listed that you're not going to do, you're not going to get the DVD output you want.

you can have anamorphic widescreen.
you can have letterboxed widescreen.

Some television systems correctly read the flag; others don't. Some televisions require a resetting of menu options, others don't offer any control at all.
I know DVD Studio Pro would manage it the same way, so will DVD Workshop. Those two, and DVD Architect are all we author with, so can't comment on Reel, Scenarist, DVDLab, and some of the others. I don't work much with Encore anymore, but it too, would manage it something like DVDA is, based on previous versions.
Maybe someone else has a smarter answer than I do, but I'm thinking you're going to have to give up one of your "nots."

I have attempted to use swish b4 but the outcome wasnt as good in terms of quality.. blufftitler does a better job but swish does have a lot more effects to offer...

There's a workaround.

All anamorphic video burned on a DVD -- and this includes Hollywood DVDs, too -- is 16:9.

If a movie is 2.35:1 or 2.39:1 or 2.40:1 or wider, black bars are part of the picture. This is as true of the "Star Wars" DVDs as it is of the project I just burned yesterday.

The problem comes when viewing on a 4:3 TV. When you do this, most DVD players are set at default to letterbox anamorphic (widescreen) video. That is to say, the player will squish the anamorphic picture down to its proper 16:9 proportion and then add black on the top and bottom to fill the rest of the 4:3 screen.

These bars, at least in North America, are 7.5 IRE to match the NTSC standard of every 4:3 TV. Which is to say, they're a little bit gray and not true black.

If you crop the footage on your timeline to 2.40:1, what you're really doing is reveailing the empty timeline below. That timeline is black, but true black, 0 IRE black.

You render as widescreen, you get a 16:9 image with 0 IRE bars as part of that image.

The DVD player inserts 7.5 IRE bars above and below, and they look gray next to the 0 IRE black. You end up with those black-black bands. They can really stand out.

So, what you need to do is make those black bars -- which you can't avoid having in the picture -- match the bars the DVD player will add. So you have to make them 7.5 IRE.

You can do this a couple of ways. You can use a mask, but the easiest way I've found is to do the 2.40:1 crop, and then go to the Media Generator and lay a solid color UNDER the video. Use a black solid, but then go into its properties and change the R, G, and B values to 16 instead of 0. This is the digital equivalent of 7.5 IRE.

Assuming you're working in a widescreen project, the black card generated will automatically be 16:9. If you're working in a 4:3 project, crop it to 16:9. But it has to be 16:9 in order to fill out the image.

This will increase render time, but it will get rid of the black banding you're seeing.

Hmmmm ...
 

Maybe I can put this question another way ...

I want to render from an .m2t file processed by CineForm Connect HD into a Connect HD .avi file to an HD 720-24p MPEG-2 file (thus preserving a 1280x720 resolution but in an mpeg-2 format).

What should my rendering settings be in Vegas 6.0(d)?

(perhaps my lack of practical knowledge is killing me here, and I can certainly render to files with a .wmv or a .m2t extension keeping the 1280x720 res, but I just can't seem to get Vegas to save to a file with a .mpg extension at that res)

Sytnax Olevia LCD TVs http://www.syntaxgroups.com/ are supposedly good quality at a low price, but I don't know if they are good enough for editing. Many users have rated their 26" HDTV with positive reviews.. However, if you want a true 1080p monitor, then check out this thread.

Thank you
 

Thank you guys so much - this worked perfectly. Sorry about the list of
"not gonna do its" sounding a bit snoby. Sometimes I post something and I get responces that are way off center like suggesting editing mpgs or something.

I thought for sure that TVs all generated different black bars, because they look blacker on computer screens and more grey on TVs. This wasn't the case, monitors are just usually set darker or something. I tested it on every monitor, tv, portable DVD player and computer that I have and it works perfectly, no matter the brightness setting.

I now have a saved timeline with a 16% generated media grey clip and several different crop macros for different aspect ratios, and am ready to roll.

My rendering time is even more horrible now, but I think that when I buy my decklink card and SCSI array and use uncompressed video, that will solve that problem.

Anyone trying this be sure to use the generated media clip from Vegas under the video and not a bmp made in photoshop or whatever. The generated media clip should be uniform with the color settings all the way through your output in DVD architect. And if you use a color filter on your video (like I do) be sure to only apply it to the clip or the track(s) necessary and not the whole project (because then it will skew the grey clip). I'm glad I didn't have to end up using a different authoring software, because I really love Architect.

Not sure if you've got a different version of Vegas, but on mine the column view ('grid') comes up automatically in media manager but the only column relating to date and time is one labelled 'original date' which is empty for all media. However, given that these are long clips covering multiple dates, I'm not sure what it should say? There's no date/time stamp option in 'column chooser'.

Update: I thought it might be something to do with the camcorder (HC1) or a feature missing from HDV footage so I tried adding a short avi file filmed with a different Sony DV camcorder that I know recorded this info. The file is a clip all filmed on the same day but still nothing in the 'original date' field.

I would have expected to see something on the clips on the timeline so that when it changes I could see imediately which clips relate to which dates/times. I tried turning on 'view active take information' but that only seemed to put the name of the file on the clip.

More thoughts welcome.
Thanks

That procedure works for Vegas 5. I haven't tried it yet with version 6 (as always not enough time in a day). Sorry!

Lighten shadows within a scene?
 

I'm not sure if this can be done, but I have a scene that has a heavy shadow over an object that I want to be seen more. Is there a way to lighten just the shadowed area a bit?

You can do it a few ways, but your best bet might be with the Color Curves.

Using the RGB curve, raise the lower left corner a little bit.

Brandon, there is indeed.
You can use a mask or cookie cutter to isolate the area you wish to lighten so it doesn't affect the other areas. YOu'll want to use either Curves or secondary color correction to achieve this.
Make a dupe track of the trouble area.
Isolate top track problem areas with mask
Apply curves or SCC
Blend top and bottom.
You may/likely will need to toggle the SCC or Curves to apply BEFORE the mask, using the pre/post toggle in the SCC or Curves filters.

There is a tutorial on this found at: http://vasst.com/resource.aspx?id=b6...9-d8621e39d313

[edit] looks like David beat me to the post!

thanks to both of you, I will try it!

DVDA Trouble - no audio
 

I've made my project in dvda. I have the film in mpeg2 format on the main menu with it's partnered ac3 audio file.

I press preview and go through it to make sure it's ok. It works perfectly - looks & sounds great.
I press make dvd, press 'burn'. It prepares the files and burns a dvd.
The movies looks perfect but there is no audio.

There's no warning messages in the prepare stage.
I tried re-rendering the audio track. I deleted the prepared files and re-prepared the dvd.
Still the same problem.

Please help - I'm stuck.

There are a couple of things I've seen that can cause this:

1) The audio is on the left only and the right is all that's plugged in (or the other way around)

2) The audio from left+Right is being combined into a single audio input and the two channels are cancelling each other out.

If it previews fine in DVDA, the audio should also be present on the DVD.

Yep, you were right
my bad - thanks Ed

vegas hdv cineform network render
 

i have a finished 720p hdv file i want to network render using to networked computers. I have set up a shared folder on my e drive with the vegas project not the media. media is on e drive though. when i goto render with networked checked vegas trys to open up that service and says network service not available. it is a full version of vegas. i know the computers are linked. but it seem microsoft net 1.1 is having trouble mabye????


1. do i need vegas installed on both machines and running on both machines to do this.

2. Can i do this if my media files are in cineform codec and the codec is not installed on both machines

2. if i have magic bullet effects do i need to install that on both machines too or are third party effects, text, and codecs only for nested projects like it says in the help section.


I already have a pretty fast machine but want more power!!! lol

nevermind i think this is not going to work anyhow from the research i have done. seems like with the large source files from hdv incineform codec it is just going to make things longer even with a 100mbps network card.. the test i read work well with small source files and heavy effecets...

but rate my rendering time anyhow

1080i cineform footage 3minutes 21 secs long with magic bullet applied to entire timeline going to wmv 720 30p 6mbps. 26 minutes

oh and can you even tell a difference with 1080 and 720p. i got that newwidescreen gateway monitor 1000:1 contrast looks real nice. 21". 720 looks just as good. mabye only see a difference on big screen huh?

The horrible "shimmer" effect with still pictures
 

Hope I'm not asking too many questions lately, but I'm trying to edit down a wedding and keep running into little issues that really annoy!

In this case I am editing down a slideshow using digital pics taken by the wedding photographer in Vegas5. In certain pictures in the slideshow (after rendering and encoding) there is a drastic 'shimmer' effect that is horrible (mainly with subjects against white backgrounds).

Without dealing with stills that often in Vegas, I'm not sure if its because they are rendered interlaced, just badly encoded or something else. They are very high resolution JPEGs and I am using Canopus at a fairly high encoding bitrate.

Anyone else had this issue or know of a fix?

1) vegas must be installed on both ( total 3) computers

2) Vegas has the cineform codec within it ...

3) magic bullet needs to be installed on all computers .. also any other plugins would need to be installed on all computers

network rendering doesn't help render to WMV or mpeg2 or ac3

it isn't so much the files size over the network but how fast can the CPU render a frame ... if you have NO effects or FX's that take up little CPU then a 100 network will NOT keep up and would slow the rendering of the project.
if you were rendering to avi .. and say you have heavy CC, magic bullet and few other effects then even a 100 network would NOT have any problem keeping up with the CPU's rendering ? if you see it is taking 1-10 sec to render a frame then a gigabyte network isn't going to make it any faster.
basically if you can count the frames (verbal or in your mind - look bottom right V preview) as vegas renders them then it is NOT using the full 100 network speed.

also under network rendering it has to "stitch" all the pieces togther when it finishes rendering .. sometime i use 4-6 computers and can spit out a render in 10 min but it might take another 6 min to stitch it together into one clip ..

yeah ...thanks for the answer. Man whats your power bill with 6 computers going on...lol...I'll just click render on one machine and go to sleep for the night...lol

audio level in trimmer is very low
 

hi
my audio level in trimmer is very low, but not in timeline. How can i put it to normal level?

Need help on a transition.....
 

I'm using vegas 5. I just started editing a music video we shot over the past few days and I'm having trouble with a flash transition(at the 30 sec mark). I only want it to be in the letterbox but it's in the entire frame. Any ideas?

http://www.millenniumbmx.com/2nd verse_1000k.wmv

What will be the export format(16:9)?
I guess you have 16:9 footage on a 4:3 project. You can go file>properties and select a widescreen template(apply) and then right-click on the video preview and check "simulate device aspect ratio".
This might be a solution...