You can import them into Vegas (all versions, or at least 4.0+). You just have to specify "view all files" in the dropdown menu in the "import" dialog, instead of "view all media files."

Likewise, you can just drag a file into the media pool.

Just wanted to point out that any form of transcoding will cause a loss in quality. That (major) point aside, AVI's are much better for editing if you can take the quality hit, because your cuts are frame-accurate. Not possible with MPEG-2. But again, transcodes are usually very lossy.

DVDLab will also import and create a combined file for video and audio in the same folder which can be used to edit or re author a DVD. Most of the consumer programs like Ulead Moviefactory will also do this too.

Ron Evans

How did you learn Vegas?
 

I just bought this program (Vegas 6.0) as a step up from Pinnacle 9. This is a huge step and the learning curve for this program is great. What's the best way to learn? Should I click in and out of everything, buy a tutoring DVD, scan forums, or get a book?

Thanks!

Use all the resourses you mention,but try VAAST at: http://www.vasst.com/

They are a DVInfo sponsor and have "written" the book on Vegas training.

This may sound weird, but try it:

Find a project to do. Short film, commercial, whatever. Give yourself a specific goal to accomplish. You'll come to a point where you want to know "how do I do this?", and then you can look to the help files, look to a book, etc. That would be the way I'd do it, as opposed to watching DVDs or just reading a book straight through. The first thing you might need to learn is "how do I capture?" So you'd open your book and look at the section on setting up for capture. Next maybe you need to know how to get a clip on the timeline. Then you need to learn how to slice clips up to get rid of the unwanted material. ETc.

Basically, work until you encounter an obstacle, and then learn how to overcome it, keep working 'til you encounter another one. Your body of knowledge about the system will develop over time that way, and it seems like, since you're actually using the program, you'll retain more than just watching/reading.

I think I like books better than DVDs for this kind of thing.

That's my opinion.

Render HDConnect video capture at 24P?
 

I glanced around but did not find the immediate answer. I am going to mess around with HDConnect's ability to convert to 24P. My plan will be to shoot in 60i and then let HDConnect 3.0 do the rest. My question...what settings
should I use in Vegas to edit and then render for SD dvd output?

Thanks for your help.

Good advice from Josh. That's pretty much what I did to start - initially just with the manual (which in itself is pretty good).

Once you become confortable with it, then it is time to get some "training" of some sort. The reason I say that is I got to a point where I could do what I needed to do in Vegas, but there were lots of features of Vegas which I wasn't using. I bought Douglas Spotted Eagle's Vegas book and worked through that - it introduces a lot of features I didn't know or use... or in some cases easier/better ways of doing things I was already doing.

The training DVDs are definitely worth it. Spot's book, the manual, and even the forums are filled with good information and tips. You can also browse through my newsletters. It has an ongoing "Beginner's Corner" series.

Let me go a little further. In the new project template there is no HD 24p setting. There is a dv setting for this. I need to know what my project setup should be to input this 24p and then what my output setting for dvd should be.

Basically do I keep it at 1080 60i and change the frame rate to 24 or do I need to look somewhere else.

Thanks again

Take the 1080 60i template, convert the framerate to 23.976. Change the properties to progressive scan. Let Vegas do the rest.
Render as NTSC Widescreen, 24p.

Thanks very much Douglas

Quick question....what is the 23.976 IVTC vs 24 film?

23.976 is the NTSC film frame rate, same as what you get when you remove pulldown. 24.000 is the real film speed.

Another question. Since I am just starting to mess around with 24p I will not know what to look for. I took a quick 10 minute clip...just a speaker at a stand and people walking on stage to except awards. I notice with the 24p conversion that the people seems kind of jerky (well that is the best way to say it) vs the standard ntsc video. Is this common or did I maybe set something wrong? I did shoot in 60i and then use HDConnect 3.0 set to deinterlace and remove 3:2 pulldown. From there I used the setting that Douglas sent me.

One thing I did notice. After I was down downloading the clip from my camera, I went back into HdConnect Prefs and saw that deinterlace was not checked anymore. I am wondering if this somehow got unchecked prior to my downloading. Would this cause what I am seeing on the video?

Also...in Architect should it compress the video file? The file is only 350MB, but architect says it is going to compress the video file.

Sorry for my poor explanation, but I do appreciate your help

Mike

No multithread in preview
 

In my experience - No. Renders are multi-core multi-cpu enabled in Vegas - preview is not. Vegas puts video on one core and audio processing on the second core. Our dual-core dual opteron 270 system has processor utilization at 25% during preview/playback. Not great. And a playback fps at 12 to 15 on HD/Cineform material with effects and transitions on.

Renders, not suprisingly, is lightning with better-than-realtime MPEG2 rendering speed, and Cineform/DivX is at CPU utlization 80-90% on all cores during render.

Vegas sucks in preview. Since Vegas only uses one CPU I would recommend a single-CPU AMD Athlon 64 X2 system at the highest clock speed you can afford, such as the 4800+ or similar.

Good luck!

/magnus

How did you render the file for DVDA?? Should have been mpeg2

If all you want to do is convert a VOB to MPG without loss of quality, MPEG2VCR will do that.

It was mpeg2

update
 

Well, I now have the system I described earlier.

My experience is the same as Magnus's. Not full framerate preview. Good enough though.
We did our first week with the kids this past week. They did a great job and the parents were blown away.

If You only want to do simple cuts and additions, You should try out Cuttermaran (Freeware) in connection with the TMPGEncoder. You can cut frame accurate, only broken GOPs are reencoded. You need to demultiplex the VOBs first. You can load fhe final elementary streams in every authoring tool. If cutting on I - Frames is sufficent, You dont need TMPGEncoder. Works with AC3 and PCM and DTS sound.

Greatings Richard

Vegas User Group Meeting - Washington DC, Baltimore, Northern VA
 

REMINDER:

The next Washington Baltimore Vegas User Group (WBVUG) meeting is next week on Thursday, June 29th.

For more information go to:

http://www.oicproductions.net/wbvugm.html

If you plan on attending, please let us know.

Thanks!

Mickey Grackin
mgrackin@oicproductions.net

Velocity
 

Hey guys, I've been using Vegas for a while now, and one thing I can't figure out is how to speed up the footage BEYOND what the Velocity envelope can do. Sometimes, the max Velocity isn't enough, as is my current situation. I need to speed up atleast another 100%, maybe 200%. Right now, the only NLE that I have that can do this is Premiere, but my footage is 24p and we all know what Premiere does to 24p!

Is there even a way to increase the speed change in Vegas (beyond the given velocity in the envelope)?

Use the Velocity Envelope for up to 3x.
Hold down the CTRL key and resize the event for up to 4x.
Do both for up to 12x.

For more than 12x, options include:
a) Rendering that section, putting it back on the timeline, and doing the above again.

b) Saving that section as a separate VEG file and putting the VEG file back on a new timeline and do the above again.

c) Using a script (Like "Time Bandit" found in the Veggie Toolkit and Excalibur) which will cut out pieces to go beyond 12x.

Awesome, thanks a lot Edward!

EDIT: I must say, I hate Vegas' velocity options. I speed up my footage well beyond 12x. This is what I did:

Original Clip, raised the velocity envelope all the way, and then held CTRL and resized event to 4x (as small as it got). Saved the it.

Got that VEG and did both again. Saved it.

I took the secondo VEG and imported it into my project, I then used CTRL to resize the event a little more, almost all the way, but not quite.

Now, it previews just fine, not much lag, and it looks nice and smooth...so what's the problem you ask?

RENDERING! It's taking me well over a minute to render 1 frame from the sped up footage. Premiere didn't have this much trouble rendering sped up footage like Vegas does, in fact, Premiere blows Vegas out of the water in this particular situation. My computer has spent the last 2 hours and 41 minutes rendering a 20 minute project. Normally, this would have finished an hour and a half ago, if not quicker.

Ron,

The .1 in 5.1 is the bass or LFE channel. When you are working with 5.1, USUALLY the audio tracks are mixed seperately with the intention to go to their respective channel. For example, if you have 10 discrete tracks and want to make the project a 5.1 project, then you can assign each channel to it's respective speaker config. Generally, what you intend to come through as bass, you send to LFE. what you want to come out to RF, you send to RF. You can also send 1 channel to a combination of speakers so when all 10 tracks are directed, you can get the sound to surround as you wish. Once you render to AC3, it will be encoded so it will play exactly to what proportions you set up to each speaker.

Hope that helps.

Jeff MAck

Don, I would love to do so, but I currently can't have that kind of set-up.

Lars, I have no idea how the bad looks good on your screen...I can't get it too look right at all.

Glenn, great tuturial, but I already have tried playing with the Levels and it did nothing. Of course in my preview monitor it looked nice and vibrant, but as soon as I rendered out, it looked even WORSE. The bird was more visible, so were the blocks, but the background texture was COMPLETELY lost.

I haven't gotten a chance to really read your tutorial, but will do so as soon as I get a chance. It looks very informative and hopefully it solves my problem.

Think about it: for every ten seconds of sped-up footage, Vegas is having to cram 129,600 images into the space normally occupied by 300 (this is assuming you've increased velocity by a factor of 432, as your workflow would seem to indicate - 3 x 4 x 3 x 4 x 3= 432). If there is a lot of detail in those frames, and a lot of movement in the footage, it shouldn't be hard to imagine the kind of computing power it would require to accomplish this.

Granted, render times have always been the chink in Vegas' otherwise very shiny armor, in my opinion. Still, I don't remember Premiere outperforming Vegas all that much when it came to rendering (or an any other area, for that matter). I jumped the Premiere ship and boarded the Vegas vessel (pardon the nautical metaphors) before PP 1.0 came out, and I imagine things have improved a decent amount since then. But this still seems like a very CPU-intensive process in any environment, to me.

Side note: I usually just start my renders late at night and then go to bed. I was looking at routine 16-hour renders on an extremely composite-heavy project I recently completed, and I don't think I'd have remained sane if I'd waited around all day waiting for the render to finish up. The long render times are just part of the price we pay for being able to do such amazing things on home computers, IMO. If you want faster renders, build a render farm or set up a huge network.

Single frame capture
 

If I'm using Cineform codec to edit HD in Vegas, if I do a frame capture (in the usual manner from the preview window) - will it be full HD resolution - 1440x1080 or would it be a lower res because of Cineform?

Thanx

Ian

Be sure to set the qualtiy settings to "Best" and You will get a 1920x1080 picture. Check if You need Deinterlacing. If You need 1440 x 1080 - I dont konow if this is possilble. Fpr tis You can use Vdub (freeware).

Greetings Richard

I learned vegas after I ran out of curse words using Premiere, (sorry PP users), and I can honestly say, this forum, the people here who have written books and tutorials will help a ton. As mentioned earlier, get a project and push it using different techniques. Don't be afraid to try something. I seem to learn something new every day about Vegas.

I thought the horizontal 'real' (ie number of pixels) is 1440 - it just looks like 1920 because of the shape of the pixel?

And just when I thought I finally understood aspect ratio....

Ian

I bought a training DVD from vasst by ( Douglas Spotted Eagle ) and it really had a lots of info. Buy the vegas 4 training DVD not the 5 or 6 yet. The vegas 4 DVD will get you started on the basic and everything you need to know about it.

So you used the Nested VEG option? What if you did the first option, speed up, render, now speed up that render instead of nesting VEGs through multiple levels. How's the render speed then?

Scrolling Logo
 

May be a stupid question. How can I make a logo scroll across the bottom of a clip? Need to scroll our logo across the bottom of our outdoor tv show opening. Thanks

Use the Pan/Crop tool, and keyframe it from one side of the screen to the other.

You can do this using either track motion or event pan/crop, depending on the situation. Event pan/crop would probably work the best.

I'm going to try to walk you through this...

Go into the pan/crop dialog by clicking the small square icon on the upper left corner of your clip on the timeline. You'll see a small keyframe timeline in the bottom section of that dialog box. Place your cursor on the left side of the keyframe timeline and then drag your logo to the left (assuming you want to start on the left of the frame) in the large window on the upper right. You can drag it all the way out of the frame, if you want to come in from the side. If you want the logo to stop somewhere in the middle of the frame, place your cursor at the point on the keyframe timeline where you'd like the scroll to stop, and then go back up to the large window on the upper right and drag your clip into the desired position. Say you want the logo to stay there for three seconds and then shoot off to the right. OK, move your cursor again to a point three seconds further along the timeline. Click on the small "+" icon below the keyframe timeline to add a key frame. Then move your cursor to the end of the timeline and drag your logo all the way to the right.

If you just want the logo to scroll past without stopping, that's even easier. At the head of the keyframe timeline, move your logo all the way to the left. Then move the cursor to the end of the timeline and move your logo all the way to the right.

If the timing or speed of the movement doesn't suit you, you can just click on the keyframes and move them wherever you want.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: I guess DSE explained it much more concisely, huh?

Off-screen
 

I've got a simple question:

After rendering a particular video, during one scene I realized that part of the text overlay was off-screen. The only way I knew to fix this was to zoom out with the pan and scan and re-render/burn.

Is there an auto-fit feature in vegas or architect? Obviously if the text was partially off-screen in one shot, that means all the video is partially off-screen. Does that mean that I'm missing out on partial footage for commercially produced dvd's as well??

Thanks in advance.

my apologies, this should've been in the Vegas DV forum.

You must allow for the "safe areas" when shooting. In Vegas, click the button above the preview that sort of looks like # to turn on the safe area overlays.

Vertical Banding / Blue?
 

Hi, I am running into an odd problem, this is the second time it has happened to me.

I am rendering to DV AVI trying to create some backgrounds for future projects, and just playing around.

The first time it happened I was using one of the media genetators to create some swirling blue background stuff. I created the whole project, rendered it, and it looked like it was working till I looked at the finished AVI. The whole file had vertical bands in it. I went back, started rendering little pieces of it, and changed things till the bands went away. When I changed the color of the rendered waves the problem vanished. I tried all sorts of things, and the only thing that would make the bands stay away was to not use blue.

I gave up on that, as I am just playing around, and I did learn by doing it. Recently I decided to make a 5 pointed star logo thing for fun. I drew 5 lines in photoshop, then used 5 wipes to reveal all 5 lines at the same time. The whole thing was looking great, till i looked at the rendered file. I have vertical bands again in my video. I like blue, so my 5 lines I made are blue.

Does Vegas have a problem in it's head with blue?

I will capture some stills tonight & post them tomorrow. I can show you one where all I change is the color of the waves, and the bands disapear. It's quite annying, blue is my favorite color!

Any ideas?

Actually, this is the first thing I did before I posted on the forum, but stopped it immediately because it was still insanely slow. And this is considering I only did a 3x speed up (using only the velocity envelope to its fullest). I was going to reimport that clip and do it again, and again, but it was simply too slow, even when not sped up as much as I have it now. It was going to take about an hour to render footage sped up 3x.

Jarrod, I'm not sure EXACTLY how sped up footage works, but when I expand my timeline to view frame by frame, it looks like it drops frames to create the illusion of sped up footage. This may be true a long with what may have said, but again, I'm not a pro at how sped up footage works.

As for premiere outperforming Vegas that much, well...yeah, it does actually. I took the exact same clip, dumped it in premiere, speed it up, umm....lets see if I remember correctly...I believe it was 4,800% (could've been more, I can't remember), but I had it at the same speed that vegas has it at and it rendered in LESS than 30 minutes, on the same machine. My specs:

1GHz processor
512mb of SDRAM

I love Vegas, I truly do, but when it comes to rendering it underperformes so badly, it's embarassing.