I realize one book isn't going to teach me everything I'll ever want to know about Vegas, but it really is a great start. A primer is what most people who are new to the program are looking for. When I get finished with it, I'll go back to some of the more advanced materials, like your "Editing Workshop" book and Edward Troxel's newsletters.

Some people like taking a course where the material is crammed into a short timeframe, but I tend to learn better if I can absorb the material more slowly in a self-paced format. Having an instructor around to answer questions is definitely an advantage, but you can't have everything for $50.

Thanks for the reply.

Audio render for PAL DVD?
 

I've just finished my NTSC render of a Cineform DI. Audio went to AC3 stereo.

Gonna' run my PAL render tonight. Only done one before, it went to AC3 audio as well. I received no complaints... but this one will distribute a little more widely. (Primarily Germany and Turkey)

Is AC3 the best audio choice for PAL DVD? I've read that MPEG2 audio is prevalent in PAL countries. If MPEG2, do I have that capability in Vegas6/DVDA3?

Help with V6 Docking issue
 

This is going to sound stupid, but I have used Vegas for about 3 years and am very familiar with the default docking setup, ie having the tab at the bottom to select Explorer, Trimmer, Transition with preview window on right. Somehow, I don't know how, I moved one window, then trying to move it back I screwed the entire setup up. Is there a default button to take me back to the way it was? I just keep making it worse. Each window is seperate now and has to be sized to be viewed rather than just clicking on its tab. I'm so used to the other workflow that this new "arrangement" is killing my efficiency. I know there has to be an extremely easy way to fix this. Can anyone help me?

You can try ALT-D, release that, and then press 1. You can also to a full reset of Vegas by holding down CTRL-SHIFT when you open Vegas (but that will reset ALL preferences too).

Short answer: Use AC3 and you should be fine.

Longer answer: It is true that the PAL standard requires DVD players support MPEG2 audio, while AC3 is not mandatory. But AC3 has become the "De facto" standard, and every PAL player I've come accross handles AC3 fine. DVD Models are generally common accross Europe, so no different for Germany and Turkey.

Vegas/DVDA doesn't support MPEG2 audio (or if it does it is undocumented and I don't know how!). If you are really worried you could use PCM audio which is part of both PAL and NTSC official standards.

Mark

I live in Europe - less than one % of the sold DVD tilles have MPEG - Audio. In fact it is mostly used by amateur DVD - Software (and maybe in DVD Recorders) and that only of license reasons.

I don't how You create Your PAL video - most European - Customers can handle NTSC and would prefer native NTSC over badly converted PAL - material. Good framerate conversion from NTSC 60i to Pal is tricky (or in my opinion almost impossible).

Greetings Richard

I also live in Europe... I agree that many/most DVD players and TVs/displays here handle NTSC, but not all. If you have a small number of specific customers you could ask them if NTSC is OK, or send them one to try. For more widescale distribution I think it is best to convert to PAL, even if that is difficult to do well.

In my experience the majority of PAL DVD players when given a NTSC disc output "PAL60", and most PAL TVs handle this OK. However, some PAL DVD players output only true NTSC when given a NTSC disc... and most TVs won't handle true NTSC (at least not in color).

In my house I have one DVD player like that - feed it NTSC and it plays true NTSC; the result is the picture is black and white. The other one I have is switchable, it will do either PAL60 or NTSC.

Can I do this in Vegas?
 

Hello,

I want to know if there is a way to take blur the background of a video while keeping the foreground in focus using Vegas 6? For example, I have a person in some video footage (from a wedding) where they are stationary during vows and I want to blur the background for about 20 frames or so.

Thanks,
Troy

This is called a "simulated rack focus" and is *much* easier done in production with your camera than in post.
However, you can use the Bezier mask tool to create a mask around the image to be focused, and a Gaussian or even light radial blur to blur the background, or vice versa.
You'll probably want to feather the mask a bit.
There is a demo tutorial on the VASST site, and one on the Sony site as well.

Short answer is yes you can. You could start by looking at Vol 1 #12 of my newsletters about blurring faces. It shows how to do that using a cookie cutter effect. If you need more precision that the cookie cutter allows, you may need a different means of creating the mask. There are several examples of creating masks in the newsletters as well.

I doubt it is going to be worth your time.

I have to agree with Emre. You are much better off--both from a time perspective as well as effectiveness perspective--doing this optically when you shoot.

Thanks for the replies - AC3 it is, thanks for clearing that up!

I've used Vegas to render PAL from an NTSC timeline. I'm able to check burned discs w/DVD playback software on a computer, that's about it, but the sw reports it as PAL and it looks good. And no complaints (yet)!

It seems my customers have no idea about what their TVs do and don't do. I have seen one of my NTSC DVDs played in Turkey, scaling was a little off and it played back in B&W. So it seems worth it to render PAL.

Again, thanks!

Striped Shirts!
 

I'm sure everyone has seen this problem in movies and tv. Tony Soprano puts on a black and white finely striped shirt and on screen is attacked by a force field of red green and blue. I've always assumed this was because my non-HD tv couldn't handle the interlaced information of this pattern, but now I'm editing a project in Vegas (not too fancy, a speaker about 4 feet away from the camera, static angle throughout, shot on miniDV with a consumer 3CCD Panasonic, but shot in front of a green screen) and I'm faced with this same problem.

I've tried applying a bezier mask over the general area of the shirt with seperate chroma keys applied to the mask to remove the offending colours in between the lines, which has tamed the issue a little but pretty much been replaced with less offending colours.

I realize using chroma key in the first place aggravates the situation, but it's necessary that I use green screen in my projects.

I'm wondering if anybody's had experience dealing with this problem and could provide some insights into the background issues and/or possible solutions.

The issue can start with the CCD(s) in your camera.
Even the slightest micron or two of misalignement can result in these patterns when the real life texture is both high-contrast, and finer than the CCD resolution.

A subtle blur of your chroma data (sometimes as little as .5 pixels) can often soften this out. If you keep luma untouched, the image will still look sharp.

What software are you using for your keying work?

You may be seeing both of these effects:

A- False color / aliasing from your camera's CCDs. The Panasonic camera probably uses pixel shifting, which means the CCDs are slightly offset (i.e. intentionally misaligned) from each other. This gives you higher resolution, at the cost of higher aliasing / false colors like what you're seeing.

B- Cross color artifacts - When you have composite-encoded video, the luma and chroma are mixed into one signal. When your receiver tries to decode the signal, it can get luma information confused with chroma information. This generally happens when you have fine / high-frequency detail.

2- The easy way out for A is to change the wardrobe. Avoid fine detail in the shirt that causes the false colors.

!! FINAL REMINDER !!:

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

For an agenda, location and directions please go to:

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

Also, if you plan on attending, please let us know!

We look forward to seeing you there!

Thanks!

Mickey Grackin
mgrackin@oicproductions.net[/QUOTE]

Got it. Thanks so much.

help converting frame rates.
 

Hi all,
I have alot of footage shot with the Canon GL-1 in frame mode 29.97.
as well as alot of newer footage shot on the XL2 in 24p.. how can I convert all the GL1 footage to 24p in vegas?
I have also noticed that when I capture footage from the XL2 that is at 24p, it says that it captured at wierd frame rates like.. 28.96 or somthing other than 24p.. my footage seems to play back ok.. just curious to why this is.
any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, -Ryan King

Vegas Filter or Plugin Effects?
 

Hi. Does anyone know if Vegas has any plugins or workaround to simulate/mimic any of these effects from Digital Film Labs? I've been playing around with the effects in Vegas, but can't find one that gets close (or perhaps I'm just missing it).

Star: http://www.digitalfilmtools.com/55mm/Star.htm
Streak: http://www.digitalfilmtools.com/55mm/Streaks.htm

I could go the After Effects route, but I hate moving between programs.

Richard Kim's Star can do this, www.velvetmatter.com

Just change the template in your project properties window (under FILE menu) to "NTSC DV 24p (720x480, 23.976 fps)." If you're already in a 24p timeline, just drop in your 60i footage. Then use the NTSC 24p preset when you render, inserting either 2-3 or 2-3-3-2 pulldown, depending on your final output needs. Search the forums if you're not sure which to use.

As for your second issue, sometimes Vegas' "average frame rate" statistic is a little off in the post-capture window. Just ignore that. What it looks like to me is that you shot 24p with 2-3 pulldown (which will show up in a 60i timeline as being 60i even though it wasn't shot that way), and the average capture rate was thrown off by irregular bits of data somewhere on the tape. Anyway, sounds like the footage is fine.

For future reference, you'll get better results in converting your GL1 footage to 24p if you turn the frame mode off. See this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=70260

Wow thanks a lot you guys that was very helpful. I've tried messing with the blur settings in the chroma keyer like you said and it didn't make much difference unfortunately. I'm using Vegas 6 for everything, specifically the chroma keyer video effects plugin.

Thanks.. now will my project be effected if I have both the real 24p footage and the gl1 footage on the same timeline and render at once?

Also avoid bright red. Or checks and patterns. And ocra, but that is a different story.

I make it a matter of religion to avoid okrah. Yukky stuff no matter how you slice it. ;-)

Not as far as I know. I've never mixed frame rates, but you should be OK. You'll want to use 2-3 pulldown though.

What? Okra haters?

It's easy enough to see who isn't Southern around here (Florida isn't the South, by the way). :)

Not since the Snowbirds discovered it!

Running Text cross the bottom
 

Hello,
This is my first post here. I'm working on a little project using Vegas 6 that I want to make a text running on the bottom from right to left like you see it on TV news stations when there's a warning or closing schools due to heavy snow. We see that quite often in western NY during winter time. I know how to scroll the text from bottom to top (credit text), but not on the bottom. I did a search 'running text' on this forum here, but didn't find what I want to accomplish.

Thanks for all your help

Have a look at this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=69902

I have that fully explained in Vol 4 #3 of my newsletters.

I have never heard of them. Thanks!

Instead of using pan/crop, as suggested in that thread above, for a long news scroll, do this:

Type out your news scroll in a text box from beginning to end -- all in one line.

Look at the frame size and length at the top. Change the length to what you need it to be. (You might need to experiment some here.)

Then, go into the "Placement" tab, make sure the cursor on the timeline at the bottom of the editing box is on the first keyframe, and place the start of the scroll where you want it. Remember what the Y coordinate is.

Put a keyframe at the end of the timeline. Move the whole scroll over until you get the end in the position you want it. Make sure the Y coordinate matches your original Y coordinate.

Now, the scroll should run from beginning to end over the length of the clip.

Thanks for all of you. When I get home, I'll try what explained above and if I still get stuck, will let you know. There's such great help in this forum.

Yes, that's what my article describes as well. Using the Placement tab using the "X" values to control the scroll.

Frame Image in DVD Architect
 

I am just learning Vegas+DVD. Vegas has been simple and works great. On DVD Architect the manual is not so clear to me. A question.

I inserted media onto a menu. Because it fades in, the image is black. Can I easily tell it to use a specific frame on the video as an image for the menu? Or do I have to go back to Vegas and separately capture and save the frame I want to use?

Thanks.

Dale

Yes you can. Select that menu item and then look on the right hand side. You want the "Media" section. Then change the "Start Time" to be the frame you want displayed.

Thanks. That worked perfectly. I appreciate the help!

Dale

Render Speed and Processors
 

I do several projects per week with similar settings. I render from AVI to mpeg 2 in order to make DVD's. I recently bought a second computer to improve my workflow, and it has, because I work on my second project while rendering the first and so on. The problem is that I thought the new computer would also render a good bit faster than the old, but they are approximately the same. It's about an hour and 30 min. of render time for every hour of video (this is just the video stream, I'm not concerned with the audio, because it's pretty fast).

Here's a comparisson of the parts of the two computers that should make a difference:

New Computer:
MSI 939/Nforce4 sli/sata2/raid/a&gbe motherboard k8n-sli
AMD athalon 64 X2 Dual-core processor 3800+
1 GB Supertalent 1024 CL 2.5 DDR PC 3200
Western Digital WD1200JS 120GB sata2 7200rpm (system drive)
Western Digital WD400KD 400GB sata2 7200rpm 16mb HD (video files)

Old Computer:
Dimension 8400 Series, Intel P4 Processor 540 (3.2ghz) w/HT and 1 mb cache
1 GB DDR2 SDRAM at 400mhz
250GB serial ATA HD (7200 rpm) (system drive)
Seagate 300 GB sata 5nf1f23z

Now with the dualcore and sata2 doesn't the new computer seem like it would be a lot faster? If not, I'm taking it back, it cost about twice as much as my old one from just a year ago.

Here's a brief description of what I render:

AVi files with default settings and 1.2121 pixel aspect ratio most often with only a crop effect (to crop out parts of the top and bottom...not changing the h/w proportions) and a RGB - 16 generated color clip beneath (this is because a lot of my stuff is 2.40:1 or similar). Anyway, there are mostly straight cuts, VERY RARELY is there a single disolve or speed effect or overlay, and the only effect over the whole thing is the crop. I take that and Render AS: mpg 2 - DVD architect - Widescreen - and usually change the average and max bitrates depending on length. It's usually about 2 hours long and like I said take about 1.5 hours render per hour of video - on EITHER COMPUTER. Does this sound right?