I think it's more complicated than dropping frames, at least in Vegas. My impression based on my own work with Vegas is that it's more of a blending kind of thing.

I agree that Vegas' renders are reeeeeeeeally slow. For what it's worth, at least the Sony guys are working on it, it seems. By all accounts 6.0 renders much faster than 5.0.

Which reminds me... I really need to upgrade from 5. :)

That’s what I love about Vegas it’s like working in a word Doc. I find it very easy when wanting to make some changes in a project but want to keep the old version. When you right click in Avid its a deferent world to me. in Vegas its like going home…..

Vince

Hey Douglas...
 

Is there a table of contents for the Absolute Training for Vegas+DVD, Vol. 1-3? I was going to order some DVD stuff for Vegas, and was looking to get a better comparison of what VAAST has.

Thanks for replying Jeff. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite clear in my request. I have 3 audio tracks in the project:
- Stage mic (stereo)
- External mic on camera (wide stereo, back of theater)
- Music (stereo wav)

Using the surround panner I've assigned each track as follows:
- Stage: LeftFront, Center, RightFront
- Camera: LeftRear, RightRear
- Music: LeftFront, RightFront, LeftRear, RightRear (pushed mainly to the fronts)

Using only these three tracks I don't get any signal in the LFE channel. The only way to get a signal in the LFE channel seems to be to specifically assign a track to LFE using the surround panner. So I've created copies of the stage and music tracks and assigned those copies to the LFE track. The final result looks like this:

1 - Stage: LF-C-RF
2 - Camera: LR-RR
3 - Music: LF/LR-RF/RR
4 - Stage (copy): LFE
5 - Music (copy): LFE

This achieves the goal of getting the signal to the LFE channel, but isn't exactly intuitive. I would have thought that I could pick any audio track and mark it for LFE based on some crossover point. As it is now, if I change the stage or music track, I have to remember to re-copy to the LFE track. Am I doing this correctly, or am I missing something?

No, I think you are right on. Sorry for my misunderstanding.

Jeff

the safe-areas feature doesn't automatically keep your overlay within bounds, does it?.... or is it as simple as staying within the red lines under the "placement" tab in generated media?

... and if so, that's great that it tells you the safe area, but is there a way to ensure that all of the screen will be viewable on any tv?

Thank you!

It's not automatic. YOU have to keep things inside the safe area.

I also would like to see something along these lines so that there is a better picture of what is covered. Although books are great, I also like having a dvd guide that is well made. I believe there are 3 out there (probably more), including Douglas's contribution.

Gray Footage Correction
 

Sorry....this post should have been on the Vegas DV forum. Sorry. I moved it.

Thanks - David Bird

Grey Footage
 

Hi folks,
Just shot some agriculture scenes....hot and humid during the shoot. My footage has some nasty gray casts in the background. I need to "blue up" the backgrounds but retain the overall green of the growing crops. Can I do this with the color corrector? And for future reference, would a UV filter or polarizer help defeat the effects of the heat and humidity my video?

Oops..almost forgot. I started playing with the color corrector on one clip. When I dragged the filter onto the clip, a small square appeared in the preview window. Is that to help determine what the filter is doing and will it go away on rendering.

Thanks - David Bird

Hey Adam.....THANK YOU!
I shot some footage yesterday that needs to be flipped and I was a little concerned about the "pan/crop" thing....
Again, thanks for helping all of us out.
David Bird

Way to change 30 fps to 24?
 

What does the option in Preferences that indicates 23.976 do?
Does it change the frame rate of the video?

David,

The "low" color wheel/circle I believe works best on backgrounds or darker areas. Mid = midtones/blues-greens, high = reds, yellows, brighter areas. You may also try a "complimentary color" selection against the grey. If you need to correct a specific area in your video event, try the "secondary" color corrector and use the "select effect range" eyedropper to draw a box where you selectively want to correct. Don't know about the small square on your preview though. Hope this helps. Paul

Sony Announces Two New Certification Programs For Vegas Software
 

Sony Announces Two New Certification Programs For Vegas Software
June 22, 2006

Gain peer recognition and differentiate yourself from your competitors with official Sony Certification for Vegas software. There are two levels of certification for Vegas software, Sony Certified Vegas User (SCVU), and Sony Certified Vegas Editor (SCVE).

Once you complete your certification, you will receive a certificate as well as a logo that you can use on your business card, website, and other promotional materials to advertise your proficiency with Vegas software. You'll also be listed in the Sony Certification Directory. Other benefits of certification include special discounts on Sony Media Software products and training courses.

To kick off the new certification programs, Sony is teaming up with VASST, a leading provider of training for multimedia professionals and hobbyists, to deliver several two-day, hands-on training courses designed to fully prepare you for the certification exam(s).

The cost for the two-day training course is only $799 and includes a copy of the Digital Video and Audio Production course book, and an exam code needed to access the online certification test. Laptop computers will be provided for classroom work, along with all of the media required for the hands-on exercises. Lunch will be served on both days, and a free t-shirt will be thrown in just for fun.

Both SCVU and SCVE certification training will be offered at each location listed below:


http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp...ification.html

Paul,
Thanks for the info...I'll give it a try. The "secondary" color correction would seem to be the most desirable, if I can isolate the area in the square/rectangle.
David

Small square: It may be the video preview setting. Click the half-moon icon to stop that (in the video preview window).

2- If the secondary color corrector doesn't quite work, you can combine it with bezier masking (vegas 6 feature).

Duplicate the clip onto itself.
Apply bezier masking to the top clip.
Apply secondary CC to the top clip.
In the videoFX window, click the little triangle in the bottom left for pre/post.

3- The UV filter won't help you out. Not sure what effect the polarizer will have... I suspect it won't do anything.

That's what I really like about this board....knowledgeble folks willing to share with those in need of assistance.
Thanks alot, Glenn.

David Bird

Sound Sync?
 

Hello again.
My first project has finished shooting and it's time to edit. I have the tapes caputered to the HD using Connect HD, and I have my sound files in .wav form on the same HD. Now it's time to merge the two. Is there an easier way than opening a new vegas session, adding the sound files, and then rendering in the cineform intermediary? Seems like a long process and if there's a quicker way, I'd love to take it.

Thanks.

BTW, I tried using DVRack with the HD power pak and it kept locking the laptop up (Dell Inspiron 5150-P4-512 RAM). I gave up after the first couple of takes. Moving on to the DR-HD100 and seeing how that works.

Heath, there may be no real need to render again if your clips are already in Cineform DI. Lock the synched audio to the video on the timeline and you're ready to edit. (highlight the events and press "L")

At least as far as timeline editing goes. (I do a lot of timeline editing!)

If you're looking for small clips in a bin; you could render, then bring the merged file through the trimmer and create some subclips.

You could set up regions on the timeline and use the batch render script of your keepers.

You could highlight the video and sound events, make a selection, right-click and pull down to "create subclip". This will create separate audio and video subclips, but the numbering will match and if you drop them on the timeline at the cursor or snap them to a marker they will re-sync.

There's a white paper on the Sony site at http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/dow...p2.asp?DID=511 titled "24p and Panasonic AG-DVX100 and AJ-SDX900 in Vegas and DVD Architect" that makes for good reading on this feature.
David Jimerson from this group has an excellent tutorial called "24p Basics: A Vegas Tutorial Video" at http://www.david-jimerson.com/Vegas24pBasics.zip

Mike

Problems rendering!! Sloooooow!
 

I captured someones old wedding footage just to burn to a dvd for them. The video "is" a little more than an hour long. I added a little color correction in Vegas 6. ( Which I had just purchased) It is taking literally days to render. Eventually it just freezes and I would have to start over. This is VERY Frustrating!! At first I was very pleased with Vegas 6, as it seemed much faster than 5.0 and also had more capabilities. I have a pentium 4 3.2 Ghz, 756 megs of ram. I have an ATI Visiontek X1300 video card with 512 mb of AGP, with around 100 gigs of hard drive space. Is it my settings? I hope I am just doing something wrong when I render. I recently ordered a HD100 and if I am getting these kind of results from Vegas 6.0 with regular video I am going to have problems down the road. Does anybody have any suggestions?

Just a wild hunch, but are there any processes running that might be tying up your RAM? Has your system been running continuously since the first time you tried to render? Have you tried rebooting and then starting the render?

Sorry for asking such general questions, but there could be all kinds of things going on that might cause a problem like this. To me, these things seem like a good place to start.

Hello Ian,

at least these are my experiences. Vegas seem to render the single frame with a pixel aspect ration from 1 - so it does covert 1440 to 1920. Maybe that the used data format doesn't allow nonsquare pixels? Anyway, I sometimes work with single frames and to get 1440 to 1080 Frames I use Vdub. The might be a workaround for Vegas: Change the aspect ration in Properties and in the Take to from 1.333 to 1 - then You should get what You want...

Greetings

Richard

Use Task Manager to see how much memory is currently being used (Ctrl-Alt-Del then Task Manager). Make sure you select the Performance tab. Then - keeping Task Manager running - start your rendering in Vegas. CPU Usage *should* go up significantly (!). More useful, though, will be to see if the amount of memory used keeps increasing. Obviously, it will go up at the start but should then remain pretty steady. If it does keep increasing, it could indicate a memory leak within Vegas - e.g., after every frame, it isn't releasing a bit of memory back to the OS that it should. For small renders, it may never show up but for a l-o-n-g render it could easily bring your system to a crawl. Once the physical memory is full, the OS will start to put more on more stuff into the virtual memory file on the hard disk - then things will get really sluggish.

Just a thought...please post back any findings.

The "save snapshot to file" creates a PAR=1 still photo; so it will be 1920x1080.
(or if you take a snapshot of a PAL DV frame, it will be 787x576).

George,

A while back I contacted Sony tech support for rendering problems and they replied with a list of processes that should be running on my Windows XP system with the _exclusion_ of all others. Apparently certain programs like virus software, etc. are resource hogs. (Aside from having adequate hardware resources), before rendering in Vegas via the Windows Task Manager, it was recommended that I kill everything EXCEPT the following:

alg.exe
ccmexec.exe
csrss.exe
explorer.exe
lsass.exe
MsPMSPSv.exe
services.exe
smss.exe
svchost.eve (may be several)
System Idle Process
System
taskmgr.exe
winlogon.exe
wmiprvse.exe

You may have other processes that are particular to your system/environment and it may not be wise to kill them. Caution and common sense I suppose.

Good Luck. Paul

Thanks for all your input. I have a hunch this may be my problem. I actually did try to see what memory was being used, and tried closing everything that wasn't needed. I wasn't sure though what exactly I needed to run and what could be turned off. Thanks to you guys I can now safely get rid of the suprfluous processes.

Don't worry about the "general questions". I am "generally naive" when it comes to many computer issues. I just updated my computer hardware and I am still getting to know what is working and what is not. when I get home from work I will surely check that. Thanks again!!

That's a really handy list, George, thanks. I always try to kill as much as possible when capturing or rendering. I have a pretty good grasp of what's necessary and what isn't, but this list refines things somewhat.

Need help
 

Can anyone tell me if it's possible to take scenes or clips from films that are already on a DVD (not avi's) and edit them into a demo reel in Vegas? I tried bringing some of the video sections from a DVD to the timeline but no sound files comes with them. Thank you.

The audio is probably AC3. Your two main options are to use some other program to convert the AC3 to WAV or to upgrade to the latest version of Vegas 6 which has a File - Import - DVD Camcorder Disc option.

Thank you, Ed. A couple of things:

1) Some of the DVD's don't show any sound files at all (there's no audio folder or, if there is an audio folder, it's empty.) Does this mean that it's still probably AC3's, but they're just hidden?

2) What other programs could I use to convert the AC3's to WAV's?

Thanks for the plug, Mike.

Do you mean 30 fps as in 60i, or 30 fps as in 30p?

If you mean 30p, it doesn't convert to 24p well AT ALL. Terrible ghosting, terrible choppiness . . .

If you mean 60i (normal NTSC video), then it really couldn't be easier than with Vegas 6. All you have to do is drop the footage into a 24p timeline, then render as 24p. You can render as 24p from any timeline, really, but the reason you should be in a 24p timeline is so that you can be in a progressive timeline and set the deinterlace method in the project properties. If you have a lot of motion, choose "interpolate fields." If you have little motion, choose "blend fields."

As for the pulldown scheme to choose when you do (if rendering to DV), choose 2-3 pulldown if you're planning to watch the video or edit in a 29.97 timeline. Choose 2-3-3-2 pulldown if you're going to edit the video on a 24p timeline.

The audio is in the .VOB files.

See www.videohelp.com for a number of AC3 to WAV (PCM) converters.

Which, contrary to popular belief, you can import directly into Vegas, and I've been doing so since at least version 4.0. I can say that I've never had any problems. Just go to import, and select "view all files" instead of "view all media files" in the drop-down box. Vegas should import it like any other video file. If you're still not getting the audio, you can demux the stream in any number of free programs that are readily available. Just google it.

EDIT: nevermind, I re-read you post and saw that you were able to get the video. Try some things at Guy's link.

Audio_TS should be empty. It would be used for audio DVDs.

Check out Guy's link but a common one is BSweet.

Thank you, guys. I appreciate your help.

m2t compatibility
 

Will a final render of a m2t file from Vegas work on other NLEs?? Like Edius?

Vegas Training and certification
 

There have been some posts recently about Sony offering 2-day training and certification classes for Vegas.

For anyone interested in Vegas training, the Sony Digital Video and Audio Production book, which is included with the class, is also a good self-paced training kit. It' a spiral-bound 160-page book (the pages are 8.5x11, larger than a normal book) that includes a DVD with the media files needed for the lessons. I've been working my way through the lessons - I'm on module 7 out of 8. Each lesson consists of a set of tasks where you get to learn all of the features of the program by actually using them. At a cost of $50, it's a bargain compared to taking a class.

The book you refer to is only a primer that is used in the cert class. Book is quite good, but missing much of what is taught in the class and just as importantly, the book cannot answer a question face to face, nor will it entirely help you pass the tests required to attain certification.
It's a great start, but it's also like suggesting that owning a book on editing film by a famous editor will give you the same education that you'd get spending 2 days with the same editor.

All that said, it should also be noted that I'm one of the certified instructors for the certification course, so of course I'm somewhat biased. ;-)

Of course they will. They're just m2t files, same as what comes from the camera.