Others have mentioned the 500GB G-Raid. A bit more pricey but seems to deliver speed and has a fan to keep it cool. Any thoughts??

We recommend G-RAIDs highly to our customers. Just posted G-Raid info for you in another forum http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=58175

Gary

Cloned track field order
 

Hello!
I want to do this:
a footage on video track 1,
the same footage on video track 2.
Then I want to set the field order of track 1 to LOWER FIELD FIRST,
and the field order of track 2 to UPPER FIELD FIRST or NONE/PROGRESSIVE SCAN/. But it is impossible!!!!!! Vegas automaticaly sets the field order the same for track 1 and track 2, i.e. the last set of track 2 becomes the same for track 1.
So, what to do so that to get one and the same footage on the timeline with different field orders choosen by me?
I don't COPY the footage from track 1 to track 2, I open the footage twice: once on track 1, once again for track 2. But the same result. Please, help!

What you are seeing is normal. If you want one upper and one lower, they have to be two completely separate files. Just copy the file and then put each on separate tracks.

you can use NRS to render mpeg2 files. you cannot use Distrute rendering service on mpeg2 files .. so you could assign a mpeg 2 render job to your 2nd computer ( it would render the whole job) and then you could assign a mpeg render job to computer 1 = they both are rendering separate jobs at same time. NRS will not render AC3 files ...

you can line up ( i've done up to 25 jobs) mpeg rendering jobs before bed or before you go to work and they'll render while you sleep/work ...

you can enter both distribute and non distribute jobs in line ..
if job 1 is a non distribute render assigned to computer 1 .. then it will start rendering job 1 ..
if job 2 is a distribute render then computer 2 & others will start that job as computer 1 does job 1... nothing will be assigned from job 2 to computer 1 until it is finished with job 1 ...

you will NOT have a licensing issue between 2 machines.

Compression & Letterbox (Horisontal)
 

Three questions.
First, how do I make Vegas 6.0c transform my movie (World of Warcraft footage) into a sort of letterbox format, where there is a black thick stripe at the top and bottom, like the old Western movies and so? :)

Secondly, how do I compress my movie the best? I use VirtualDub to make it into DivX 4.12 codec, which makes the file size very low, but it also makes the video quality on footage in motion very poor. Tearing up and all.

What is the best way to compress a movie, when you want the file size to be lowered, but still don't want the quality to be all that bad?
You may suggest what compressing program and codec you feel is the best for me! Thanks :)

... and what does DV mean? That was all! :)

Letterboxing is the proper term. Unless you want to make a widescreen (native)
dvd movie. Then the proper term is 16:9 anamorphic widescreen.

If you want to do letterboxing see my letterbox calculator and downloadable
masks (get the 16:9 NTSC or PAL mask) from this page:

http://www.visuar.com/letterbox/calc.htm

Unfortunately my calculator only supports Internet Explorer, still need to fix
that. Of course these masks are for SD (DVD) resolution, not HD

In Vegas add a new video track above all other tracks. Drag the mask to this
new track and stretch it out to the full length of your movie. Right-click on
the mask and select properties. Go to the media tab and make sure Pixel
aspect ratio is set to the same as your project (is normally "0.9091 (NTSC DV)
or 1.0926 (PAL DV)". Then change the compositing mode (little green square
on the left of the track with CC in it) to multiply.

That should get you started. Another option is to go in to pan and crop and
select the 16:9 preset. However, you will need to do this to every media
file on the timeline (or render out your final movie, start a new project, load
that file and apply the crop).

Good luck.

Jamie: please don't cross-post (posting the same question to multiple forums).
I've removed your other thread.

DV stands for Digital Video. However, when most people say DV they mean
three things:

1) a MiniDV recording camera

2) the MiniDV tape and encoding on that tape

3) the DV compression algorithm (a bit similar to JPEG only then for movies)

HDV is simply a higher resolution version of DV.

Encoding a movie is an artform all together and can take many tries to get
right. DiVX is a good format and you can encode to that straight from Vegas,
check the manual.

With all (most) codecs you can setup how much bandwidth they are allowed
to use. The less the smaller the files and the more information is thrown away.
The higher the larger the files and the less information that is thrown away.

Usually you want to output to a lower resolution (for example 50%) and perhaps
a lower framerate to make the files smaller without sacrificing too much quality.

The best thing you can do is experiment with that a lot and check what happens
when you change the advanced settings when encoding.

Thank you for the replies, Rob. About the cross-posting, it really wasn't intentional. First after a few visits, did I notice I entered different forums (As the topics I visited earlier, wasn't there on other visits).
I failed to find the delete button for my first topic and as that was in the HDV, which I thought was something about High Definition Video of some sort, I felt I was in the wrong place. My bad...

I will try to do as you told, to make it work. Will come back if there are further problems :) ...

I tried the Mask thing, but wasn't quite sure what it was. My native language is not English, so that makes things a little harder. I tried studying the Content and Index help to see if that could tell me how to create a "Mask", and I ended up finding out there was an icon called Compositing Mode to the left of the track.

When pressing there, it shows Add, Subtract, Multiply (Mask) and so on. Is that the wrong place? Even when choosing "Add" there, I still couldn't press the empty new Video Track I placed at the top and get the option to go to Properties.

I then tried the Pan & Crop for all my scenes. That gave the right look, but at every scene change it starts in normal screen and then the letterbox "grows forth" from the top and bottom, until it is where it should be.
Then scene change a few seconds later, and again it goes from normal screen to the 16:9.
Can I force it to just stay there and not have to redo the move from normal to 16:9 view every time a new scene comes?

Jamie,
You're seeing the letterbox "grow" because you've inserted keyframes rather than just having one keyframe.
In the pan/crop tool, you should have only one keyframe per event (or scene in your case). If you have more, you need to delete one of the two, probably the first one. They look like diamonds on the keyframe timeline.
Second, once you've got a "scene" looking the way you want it, you can easily just copy that "scene" (called an 'event' or 'clip' in Vegas) then select all other events, right click, and choose "Paste Event Attributes." This will apply the crop/letterbox to all of your events.

Quick question about playback rate, help appreciated!
 

OK, Vegas. . .It only let's me speed up the playback rate 4x. . .is their any other way to make increase the speed of a video!? It seems like it's such a basic feature, thanks guys.

Right click the event, choose "Insert Envelope" and choose Velocity envelope. Coupled with the 4x speed you've already discovered, this gives you up to 12x speeds. If you need more, there is also the TimeBandit found in Peach Rock software or in Excalibur's toolset.

Excellent thanks! I just set up my gigabit home network so I am ready to fly! Mark

Awesome, thanks very much! I knew it would be something ridiculously simple like that. haha

Ok, thank you, Edward! I tried it, it works fine. But I have a project which consists of approx. 80 clips mixed, transitioned, with some parts cut and speed changed. So, if I put all the copied files on video track 2, how to copy ALL the settings made on track 1 to track 2. It would be a nightmare to do every setting manualy for every copied clip exactly as on the clips of the above track 1. Any suggestions?

How does one adjust sound levels throughout an entire project full of long clips?
 

i know that i can break the clips up (s) and then adjust the levels up or down depending on which segment of the project. is there a way to do so on one entire clip uncut? it seems i can only do fade in and then the clip gets louder until it reaches its peak or do a fade out in which the clip gets softer until the sound is no more.

in another words, how do you adjust the sound levels at each interval of the entire project full of long and short clips?

Insert >VOLUME ENVELOPE
You can then ad points to adjust volume up or down OR set the AUTOMATION CONTROLS and use the TRACK HEADER SLIDER to adjust on the fly.

Don

Flickering Slomo?
 

I'm slowing interlaced clips (GS400 PAL 25fps) to 50% with a velocity envelope to make two frames from the two fields for smooth progressive slomo without any blending (deinterlace set to interpolate, resample set to "smart resample", rendering as a progressive avi), and I notice the footage often looks flickery.

When I look at the preview as "Best (Full)" it looks like every second frame is a little blurred. Is this something to do with the camera and it's capturing lower res on one field compared to another, or is it something that can be remedied in vegas?

Is there a way to get higher res on progressive slomo from interlaced using Mike Crash's smart deinterlacer?

Thanks
Andy

email me bro....

Thank you, it seemed to work :) The screen in Vegas that generates the movie as it is, to show me it when playbacking, seems to lag a little after this in places, but will render the movie to see if it is just there, or what...

EDIT:
The lag was because I copied over the Light Ray effect from Title to the video clips, I removed it now and it should be better :)

u CAN do this..
its a lil tricky..
Duplicate your track... BUT

once u duplicate ur track.. make sure that the new Dup is the only track thats selected.. NOT BOTH, else BOTH TRACKS will reflect these chages..
Be sure to single left click the track u want to effect.

Now highglhgt ALL the media on that track (video media i mean) with the selctions tool (the little arrow that allows u to "box" your selection.

once highlighted, right click ANYWHER WHERE ITS HIGHLIGHTED and go into properties and change the field order from there..

this should work without too many hassles and ALL the media youve selected should be effected.

Why youd want to change field order, or deinterlace this way, i dunno, but the Vegas deinterlacer is perfectly fine IMO

A very quick way to add a volume envelope is to select the audio track and press "V".

that did it, thanks! =).

oh, how does one separate audio tracks from video?

When you say "seperate" do you mean remove or move to another position on the timeline?
In either case it's very easy. Highlight the clip and press 'U' that will "Ungroup" the clip thus allowing you to do things to either the audio or video without moving the other. (either moving or deleting)
Don

Another option would be to use the "Ignore Event Grouping" button on the toolbar.

wow, Vegas is very powerful =). just starting to really play around with the various options. it is uber-kewl. thx gentlemen. hopefully i can finish editing quick and then post some screencaps of footages from XL H1 =).

Using Mackie Onyx MIxer and Vegas
 

I recently received my Mackie Onyx 1220 Mixer with firewire card. After installing proper driver, software etc., I have tried to interface Vegas and the Onyx mixer. Vegas does recognize the mixer under Option>Preference>Audio Device. The problem that I am having is that it only allows me to select up to two lines at a time (I am guessing for mono and stereo purposes.) under the 'default audio recording device'. Is it possible to capture multiple tracks at one time using Vegas and an onyx series mixer? I have been able to capture(record) multiple tracks using Traction (the software that came with the system). I bought this mixer to interface with Vegas. Please help. Does ANYONE have any experiene using this mixer with Vegas?

I use this method because then I use opasity at 30% and the final result is too close to film movement. Of course, there are additional tricks...
Look, Peter, it is not problem fot me to adjust the field order of the clips one by one. The general problem is that /for example/:
- most of the clips are cutted on the timeline on track 1, i.e. I change the start or end of every clip to get only the needed part of every clip.
- most of the clips on the timeline on track 1 are cross faded and mixed between each other, etc.
- some of the clips on the timeline on track 1 are speed changed.
So, do you inderstand now? The headache is if I have to make every setting once again on the track 2 manualy. Even if I try this, it will not be exactly sinchronized and absolutely the same like on the track 1.
So???

DV scene detection was off... I wanted it on.
 

I accidently captured footage without DV scene detection enabled and I wanted individual clips. Is it possible to run a scene detection on it now, or am I stuck with one clip? (Vegas 6)

Try Scenalyzer or Scenalyzer Live to split the clip for you without recapturing. Within Vegas, you'd have to recapture with scene detect turned on.

What if you do this:

Render the project to a new AVI file. Add this AVI file on a track above your current project and then change the field order on the newly added clip and adjust opacities as desired.

When you right-click the audio tracks, do you have choices to pick more than two channels? And the proper driver is picked in Vegas?

You can recapture with another tool, or take the one long clip you've got, split it, and render each of those segments as new avi files, then discard the original. Since you're not processing the video, it's a bit for bit transfer, it'll render extremely fast, and you'll have separate files.

Disappearing Effect?
 

Hi guys.I would like to creat a person "disappearing" as he walks down an alley.I figured out I can film the background on a tripod first, before filming with the guy walking.I could fade the top layer to show the bottom layer of the background alone.

Now,is there any way to do that in post in Vegas?

To have it look natural, that's the only way I know of. Shoot the alley with locked down sticks, then shoot the alley again with the guy walking in or out of the alley, and then fade them together in post. Be sure to shoot fast so the light doesn't change, or have enough light there to keep it consistent.

Yep, you can do a cross-dissolve in Vegas.

2- You can almost do the same shot handheld if you have Combustion (or similar program). It can motion track the background and let you do the fade that way.

See
http://www.glennchan.info/Proofs/dvi...ion%20test.mov

But don't actually do that- in my case, it didn't quite work. Also, the falling leaves the background will be difficult to get right. It may be possible to get that shot done right (with more money and/or time), but the simple solution is probably the best.

Ahh shoot fast..yes I almost missed out that point.Yup,I gonna use a nice tripod.Thanks guys!

Yes, Edward, I got the idea just some minutes after writing my previous post.

That sounds like the output driver.. Isnt the Onyx multiple inputs but only stereo output ? The way to select inputs is arm a track for record and then hit the button to the left of record button.. There you select the input..