slow mo in vegas
 

Could someone please tell me where to find the slow motion effect in sony vegas. I can't find anything in effects or anywhere in the program. What am I missing? I've already read some info about other programs that are used for slow mo that work better than vegas. Is this true?
Thanks Lisa

Hi Lisa,

Right click on track <insert envelope

>Velocity Envelope

>Drag line down to desired %

:)

Lisa,

To create a slomo in Vegas, place your clip on the timeline, hover the mouse over the right edge until you see the symbol shown in the Manual on page 35 as "Trim". Now press and hold the Ctrl key while you right-click and drag the event to make is shorter. You will see a squiggly mark through the center of the event indicating it has been altered. The whole procedure is in the Manual on page 125, including a discussion of Resampling to improve the quality of compressed video.

What? Really??? :)

Lorinda, Yeah I got that kinda backwards, didn't I. To create a slomo, Ctrl drag to the right and stretch the event. Sorry!

Not at all, Patrick; the whole concept was news to me!! But is this one of those "more than one way around the barn" things? Because I get along with the velocity envelope method pretty well.

Also, its left click not right click on a standard right handed mouse.

Matt, I guess I just hoarked the whole thing up. Hopefully, I've not scared Lisa enough to quit Vegas.

Lorinda, I never think about the Velocity Envelopes because I started with VegasVideo and it didn't have them, but it did have the technique I described (or tried to describe). Its the 'Law of Primacy' thing making me go back to the old way of doing things.

LOL! Sorry, Lisa! Patrick and I both mean well. We'll be more careful next time. :)

@ Patrick: I'm glad we had this little train wreck! I didn't know about that other method--it works like a charm. Thank you.

I've never been a fan of the velocity envelope method because it causes a looping of your track, and so you have to adjust the clip length just the same to prevent it from looping from the beginning. Its not an issue if you know the speed you are shooting for, but if you have to play with the speed alot, clicking once to change the envelope and then again to change the length can quickly become tedious. However, if you need to change speed mid-clip its the best (and maybe only) way.

Matt, But you have to admit that its nice to have the option of different techniques!

So either way, I can get it done, right? Patrick, I thought you meant "make it longer", but I was willing to try your way too. :)
Thank you both for the info. I'll try it out. So great to have "experts" at your fingertips. Vegas can be tricky, but I'm figuring it out.
Thank you,
Lisa

Certainly...every method has its own purpose. Like I said if you wanted to change speed mid clip there is almost no other way...as well as velocity envelopes being a good way to do reverse.

I can hear Edward Troxel muttering to himself, "I can't leave these people alone for five minutes!" :)

Naaa. But I HAVE written about it. Just look at the Beginner's Corner section of Vol 1 #9 of my newsletter.

I didn't know about the Ctrl drag thing! That's cool. I still prefer to use the Velocity Envelope though, because you can adjust the speed throughout the clip. That way tou can speed up AND slow down the same clip.

All of this brings up a good point, "Get training on Vegas!"

Go to Edwards website www.JetDV.com and download and read all of his newsletters. He teaches how to do many of the common things you'll want to do with Vegas.

For a comprehensive education, Gary Kleiner makes a great training set of DVDs and Edward and DSE have a set out also which I'm sure are great (I just don't have them yet).

Edward provides links to these and others on the left side of his JetDV board.

to get pretty nice slow motion do this-
shoot 60i video, then put on a 24p timeline and slow down to 40%. and make sure on properties to have deinterlace method set to Interpolate fields.

here's a test i did
http://www.t-mun-e.com/movies/slomotest.mov

so does increasing shutter speed effect the quality of slo-mo?

a big fat whopping YES

the slower the shutter the more motion blur you get. this is accentuates when slowmotion is used.. the image can sometims look unfocused due to the native blur (not motion blur set in the file properties.. thats for your motion blur video bus... )

anyways.. when doing slow mo, i usually have a setting/scene file on my camera (DVX) which is pumpin 1/250th gain up +12 to compensate luminance, interlaced with a VERY sharp setting...
As slow mo will soften the image natively, the sharpening helps (only if you have no bleed though of chrominance or luminance n the original shot..) but even with a bit of bleeding, chroma blur cleans it anyway..

1- Can you light the heck out of the scene and use less gain?

2- No matter which method I use to slow down my video, the audio always stays normal speed, not slowed down to match. What am I doing wrong?


Thanks!

Isn’t that cool? It allows you to slow down a clip and keep the audio constant so no one is the wiser. ;-) If you want to have the audio drop in pitch to match the clip, then right-click on the audio, and check the Pitch Change box that says Lock to stretch. I think this will do what you want.

~jr

"1- Can you light the heck out of the scene and use less gain?"

definately.. in fact thats a better method, but of course it depends on whether you want to use a light indoors during the day...
90% the time u dont need to use gain..forgot to mention, that with gain, your also illuminating the background, so DOF shots will be far more pronounced considering the speed at which your shutter is moving....

Thanks, folks! I did find that you need to set the "new length" when you check the Time Stretch/Pitch Change box in Lock to stretch, or nothing changes at all. But is there some way to lock the audio to the video stretch?

I ask because not only is it less cumbersome than manually entering the new time you stretched your video to, but also I am trying to change speed with a velocity envelope, ramping it up and/or down, so I'd like the audio to match. Is that possible?

When I place a clip on the timeline, I get a video event and an audio event on two tracks. If I hold down the CTRL key and resize the video event, the audio event also changes. If that is not happening, look for a couple of things:

1. Make sure "Ignore Event Grouping" is NOT turned on.
2. Make sure they are still grouped

There is no velocity envelope for audio so matching in that case will be a much tougher situation. You can still do the CTRL resize on the audio part but it will be a constant speed change. Alternately you could take it into Sound Forge and make the corresponding speed changes.

You da man, Edward! Thanks, everybody, very much. I always like to learn - even if the answer is no, as in, "there's no velocity envelope for audio so you gotta do it in an external app" - because it all helps you operate more "natively" in an application.

I did find it interesting that Vegas' interface behaves just a little differently than Adobe apps. For example, if Vegas were an Adobe product, if you were to toggle the CTRL key while your left click button were held down and you were dragging, it would snap back and forth between audio stretched to match the video, and unaltered audio. With Vegas, once you start dragging with CTRL on or off, the drag continues in the style in which it was initiated, and pressing or releasing CTRL has no effect.

I definitely agree this thread brings up the very good point that one should get training on Vegas. I'm in the process of reading Edward's newsletters and old posts, as well as posts from others and old threads, and using Search, and - forgive me for not knowing this - now that I know Ed has training DVD's, I gotta get those, if for no other reason than to do my part reciprocating for, and supporting, all his online help.

However, I find if I steep myself in studying without trying to cut loose and practice, I lose touch with got me interested in the first place, and my creativity loses its passion.

So, my happy medium is to study as much as possible while actively experimenting in editing. If I see a thread that raises a question, I search and then post. If I hit a roadblock in my editing, I search and then post. Otherwise I just remain in "Vegas sponge" mode!

Thanks again, all.

The only training DVD to which I am a party is the Vegas 5 Update by Class On Demand.

For Vegas 6 info, Class On Demand (with Tim Duncan), VASST (DSE, etc...), and Gary have, or or are working on, training DVDs. There are other threads here talking about what is available. DSE also has training books available.