We shall pioneer this problem and name it the DREADED "Mis-Shapped X"! Bummm BUMMMMM *imposing music*





I'm sorry I'm a bit wacky right now I'm sooo close to finishing my first wedding in Vegas. Took me over 3 months (up from 1 1/2 months I usually take) I have one more sceen to edit and two to color correct then it's off to assembling the peices and encoding the MP2! I'd love, repeat LOVE to show you guys the highlight montage I did- I'm really proud of it! Probably the best work I've done yet!! Vegas definitly helped use my creative energy more effieciently. What a difference an NLE can make!!!!

Color correction latency with larger clips?
 

Was doing some mass color corrections and monitoring the results on external monitor via IEEE tonight and noticed there was a huge delay as I changed settings, yet other clips have very little delay. Is it possible for larger clips to have a latency while color correcting due to their size, even though the instance/event of the clip is small?

Also every so often the screen would flash blue for a second then come back... almost like it lost connection with the camera- is this normal.

GRHD1/Vegas 4.0d WMP9 Demo here.
 

Hi all,
Just got my copy of Vegas yesterday and I put this together last night then encode it for WMP9. I have the quality level set lower to create a smaller file size (about 45 Mb/min) so it’s not as good as a native mpeg2 but IMO acceptable. I may be able to reduce the file size further by adjusting some of the encoder settings. To play this file you should have at least a 2.4 Ghz P4 and WMP9

Right Click and Select Save Target As

This is the first NLE I have worked with and I must say I am impressed with the capabilities.

Note: I am still not that comfortable with the cameras manual settings so be kind. I going out later today to shoot more footage and experiment with some of the suggestions posted in the HD1 forum.

Thanks!
Mike

The ZO6 is one badd-a** car- I have my sights on a more realistic car for my budget the 2004 Subaru Impreza STi, awd, 0-60 in 5.1 seconds, 1/4 mile in 13.6...bone stock and thats with 3 cats to pass US emissions- oh and it's a 4 cylinder as well! I only wish I had the funds for a Vette. Very nice.

On to the video- very sharp. HD correct? Refresh my memory which camera is the GRHD1? Is that the JVC mini-dv cam?
I would have gone HD but I don't think enough of my clients (for weddings) have the hardware to display HD footage.

Regarding the editing ...not bad, especially for being *new* to NLE. Very imaginative. The only quam I have is I'm not usually a big fan of flashy transitions (flying window) and during some of your 4 window shots there isn't enough movement in all the frames. There was a good deal of time when 3 frames had still shots with only 1 showing action- then again, that might have been the idea. Lastly the ZO6 deserves more sinister music- sounded more like a corporate training video. Why not some rock or metal!

All in all great job and stick with it, you definitly have the imagination to create some great work. Keep us posted on your future edits. Oh and kudos on the beautiful car and as a fan of hi-fi home theater hardware myself... awesome set-up *I glanced at your homepage!*

<<<-- Originally posted by Glen Elliott : The ZO6 is one badd-a** car- I have my sights on a more realistic car for my budget the 2004 Subaru Impreza STi, awd, 0-60 in 5.1 seconds, 1/4 mile in 13.6...bone stock and thats with 3 cats to pass US emissions- oh and it's a 4 cylinder as well! I only wish I had the funds for a Vette. Very nice.

On to the video- very sharp. HD correct? Refresh my memory which camera is the GRHD1? Is that the JVC mini-dv cam?
I would have gone HD but I don't think enough of my clients (for weddings) have the hardware to display HD footage.

Regarding the editing ...not bad, especially for being *new* to NLE. Very imaginative. The only quam I have is I'm not usually a big fan of flashy transitions (flying window) and during some of your 4 window shots there isn't enough movement in all the frames. There was a good deal of time when 3 frames had still shots with only 1 showing action- then again, that might have been the idea. Lastly the ZO6 deserves more sinister music- sounded more like a corporate training video. Why not some rock or metal!

All in all great job and stick with it, you definitly have the imagination to create some great work. Keep us posted on your future edits. Oh and kudos on the beautiful car and as a fan of hi-fi home theater hardware myself... awesome set-up *I glanced at your homepage!* -->>>

Thanks Glen!

Yea the Z runs pretty good. A friend of mine is looking the Subaru, it’s also a very impressive package.

Yes the camera is the consumer HD model. I made a few changes per your suggestions I did leave in the flashy transition but I took more footage today to add more motion to the 4 windows. I also change the music. BTW everything was shot by myself with the camera on a tripod. All the shots where the car is moving I was driving.

Right Click and Select Save Target As

Thanks for the tips

Mike

Mike,
I work with Vegas quite a bit. You can render with lower bit rates by selecting Windows Media Video V9 in the Save as file type box of the render as menu, and then select a different template just underneath (I use 256K for streaming). Then go to the custom button and make sure Best quality is selected under the video rendering option. Quality won't be as good as you rendered with your show but quite acceptable and your file size will be much smaller. There are several other templates 512KB, 1Mps, 3 Mps, etc. to chose from but file sizes increase with each level. Hope this helps. Sorry if you already know this. Vegas is very powerful and easy to use. I learn something new every day.
Aloha,
Randy

Keep in mind that the Vegas capture tool can automatically
devide up your movie when it detects time/data (NOT timecode!)
breaks.

For my Lady X episode I captured the full hour and got around
120 files from it. One pass over the tape!

I'd have to assume he specifically chose a lower compression to show of the sheer detail in his HD cam, as these are some of the most clear, sharp images I've ever seen in a WMV. However I can understand how, at this compression...or lack there-of, would make it impossible to view for our 56k'ers.

I'm assuming your referring to ClassOnDemand.net's Vegas 4 DVD training series with Douglas Spotted Eagle. Yes I purchased them when I first started out with Vegas. I love books but find training visually is more efficient. DSE is very a very good teacher and takes time to describe every step of the editing workflow. I highly recommend the DVDs especially if you new to Vegas. I was having difficulty comming from a Premeire background- I had to unlearn my old workflow to adapt to Vegas's. The DVDs most definitly aided in my transition to Vegas- cutting the time it would have taken me to get up and running in half (at least).

To answer your direct question- yes they do both. The format they used is they have DSE talk to the camera describing each section of training in detail. Then they go to the screen view as if your TV (or whatever your watching it on) were the screen. In other words all you see is the Vegas app., and you can see him move around and navigate the program wich is a big help for beginners and visual learners like myself. It's one thing to be told where to go and another to *see* it. They even use tighter shots where one section of the screen is zoomed in to see the text in the various dialog boxes making it easier to view.


Beings I'm done watching them (probably 5 or more times over) and am on to DSE's book now I'll sell them to you if your interested. They retail for $129.99 and will part with them for $90 shipping included. If your interested let me know.

*I'd have to assume that it's only a matter of time before one of the Steves moves this post to the appropriate (Vegas) forum*

Rob,

I have used scene detection in capture, but I find it ends up being more work to open all of the capture files to then cut out what I want to keep.

I have a script written that does what I set out to do, but writes the original timecode info into the Comments field of the summary info since there is no way to preserve the original timecode from a script. This works in that I maintain a refererence to the original location on tape, but is not as elegant as what I was looking for originally.

I will be posting the script for others to use once I do a bit more clean up on it.

<<<-- Originally posted by Glen Elliott : I'd have to assume he specifically chose a lower compression to show of the sheer detail in his HD cam, as these are some of the most clear, sharp images I've ever seen in a WMV. However I can understand how, at this compression...or lack there-of, would make it impossible to view for our 56k'ers. -->>>

Exactly right. I used Variable Bit Rate encoding (VBR) with a quality level set at 86 on the first clip and 83 on the second. The native mpeg ts file is about 120Mb and the WMP9 file is down to 41Mb. That about 3/1 ratio with very little quality loss.

Mike

You can read my review of the 4 DVD set here: http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/post/troxel1.php

There is a 2 DVD set available at http://www.vegastrainingandtools.com and you can read my review of that set at: http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/post/troxel2.php

They are both very good and complement each other very well.

All footage is 30 frames (or 25 if you are in PAL land) per second
for an editor. Any. However, they can INTERPRET the footage
as being 60i, 50i, 30p or 25p (or 24p if you have such a camera).

It is ALL about INTERPRETING the footage. All CURRENT streams
are ALWAYS saved as 30 or 25 FRAMES a second in a DV stream
(even for 24p footage).

That being said, you must tell the application what to do with
your footage. Some people already gave some excellent advice
when you want to convert your footage from interlaced to
progressive.

MAKE SURE that all your settings are CORRECT and the SAME.
This means: the project settings, the footage settings AND
the OUTPUT settings!! (which a lot of people seem to forget
about).

I always shoot in frame mode and thus have the Vegas project
set to 25p (I'm in PAL land). My clips are automatically imported
as 25p so I don't need to change anything here. HOWEVER,
my export defaults to 50i which I need to change to 25p.

If you want to edit interlaced make sure everything is set
to 60i or 50i (PAL).

I hope this explained it a bit more.

Federico is correct. Here is the table:

VCD: NTSC=320x240, PAL=352x288 (MPEG1)
SVCD: NTSC=480x480, PAL=480x576 (MPEG2)
DVD: NTSC=720x480, PAL=720x576 (MPEG2)

All NTSC stuff is running at 30p/60i and PAL at 25p/50i.

If you want a higher resolution go with SVCD (most DVD
players can play that now-a-days and it still is a normal CD)
or DVD.

VCD is just that low a resolution, nothing you can do about that.

What do you mean with "no overlay" or "overlay preview".
Overlay is generally used when describing that the video card
takes care of getting the pixels into the video buffer instead
of your program.

Remember that you can undock Vegas' preview window and
make it fullscreen on another monitor (or TV) if Windows sees
it as a multiple screen configuration.

As others have said, I'd trust my firewire output any day over
a video cards conversion from a PC resolution with a non-
interlaced signal to a TV resolution with interlaced signal.

Also make sure you are using the latest version of Vegas (4.0d).

Pixel Aspect Ratio?
 

I just made an MPG from a sequence in a project I'm working on in Vegas. I noticed that in WMP the footage was actually displaying the correct aspect ratio which is odd. Technically it should be displayed slightly fat due to the rectangular to square pixel conversion.
Now that leads me on to my concern. With this project (wedding) I'm using the workflow of doing the project in sections and rendering them out as separate AVI's, then when finished assembling them in order on the timeline to be rendered out to MP2. When I finish one of these sections I chose File>Render As> Video For Windows (AVI). The only setting I change is quality which I change to "best". Now is there anything I need to change by way of pixel aspect ratio so that it turns out correctly on the TV....or is that set by default already. I'm just worried because this is the first big project I did in Vegas and have yet to output to see the results as I'm not finished with it yet.

If you didn't import weird footage and you set the correct
pixel aspect in the MPEG encoder then all should be well. My
experience is to NOT trust WMP with regards to pixel aspects,
especially with mpeg files!!

I view my mpeg2 files ONLY with a software DVD player like
WinDVD or PowerDVD to make sure it gets displayed OK.

When mpeg encoding you can set the pixel aspect as well
which must be 4:3 for normal footage or 16:9 for 16:9 footage.

Everything else should be taken care off!

Rob, I'm using the results I got from using Premiere/Procoder combo. Those MPG1 files looked slightly fat- which is completly normal due to the pixel conversion. However when I encoded an AVI I output from Vegas in Procoder it displays correctly for once. It's the fact the the aspect look correct which, ironicly enough, threw me off.
If my final output looks odd when I play the DVD on the TV you guys will be the first to hear about it. I just like to know what's happening at all stages of my workflow- I don't like *not* knowing why something is happening.

Why aren't you keeping it all in Vegas? I've had no problems
with this approach going from my XL1s through editing and
then down to SVCD (also MPEG2).

The Matrox Parhelia has a full calibration routine for NTSC and output is extremely hiqh quality.

I have hooked up an M-Audio Sonica USB device. It was a pain
to get it installed but works flawless now! I haven't tried the
5.1 mode though since my receiver is not at my present location.

M-Audio makes some very nice products.

Just wanted to make a quick MPG1 out of a 3 minute montage I did. Procoder is like 5x faster than Vegas's MPG encoder.

It might be fast and it certainly is a better encoder in my
opinion, but it seems to put problems in your path. Try making
a short mpeg with Vegas first and see if you have the same
problems there. It might well be that procoder isn't able to
use input pixel aspects other then 1.0 (I don't if that is the case)
or there is something else going wrong. Using an original
vegas encoded file you might be able to better narrow it down!

My primary laptop screen is doing 1400x1050 (LCD). I have a
CRT monitor hooked up to my laptop that is doing 1024x768,
very handy to have the scopes on there and other things.

I never want anything lower then 1400x1050 for my primary
screen again, ever.

Most laptops I've seen only have 1 firewire port. But that usually
isn't that much of a problem since the firewire drives have two.

I'm doing all editing etc. on a DELL Latitude laptop running WinXp.
My Lady X episode was done on that. Worked like a charm. I'm
running a 160 GB Maxtor firewire drive with it though.

Well it's not technically a "problem" per-say. Actually displaying in the correct aspect (not making the subject look fat) is a good thing. It's just the fact that all my previous mpgs didn't display this way (ones which source footage I edited in Premiere). All my older footage that was edited in Premiere (the ones whos MPG1 encodings came out looking slightly stretched) always looked perfect when output as MPG2 to the TV. So if you understand my thought process- if the MPG1s that looked stretched on the computer monitor came out perfect on the TV, will the MPG1s that look perfect on the computer monitor come out stretched on the TV? *follow me* hehe. That was what I was trying to explain.

I'm just vocalizing a concern. When it comes to paid gigs I turn into a worry-wort anytime something happens that I don't understand.
Thanks for the input Rob.

Yeah when you get spoiled by high resolutions it's hard to go back. Everything seems so HUGE and cluttered.

I gave a demo through a data projector recently and had to reduce display to 800 x 600.

It was horrible - claustrophobic - it felt like Alice in Wonderland - everything was different!

Glen,

The best way to find out is to try it. In my experience everything has looked correct on the TV no matter what I do in Vegas. Straight PTT, preview, or going to DVD all shows correctly. Similarly whenever I have rendered to WMV or MOV they also show correctly. Maybe Vegas is simply properly setting a flag so the media play displays correctly.

So can we see the highlight anywhere then?

It depends on what you are doing and the speed of your processor
mostly. Color correction is in expensive effect in terms of CPU
usage and is also depedend on the type of footage you are
correcting.

If you do NOTHING to your footage Vegas can just pump the
DV stream out through firewire. As SOON as you add a
transition or filter it must do the following:

1. decompress the DV frame
2. apply whatever effects you have running
3. compress the frame into DV again
4. send it out over firewire

So in this case it must do 3 extra steps which are quite
CPU expensive.

Why I usually do is the following. I'm working on frames when
color correcting. If a frame looks good I check a couple of other
frames in the shot which usually turn out fine as well. I can
keyframe the effect at certains major frames in the shot to get
it working basically.

Then when I'm doing correcting a sequence or that particular
scene I render out a DV file of that and then have that playback
(which is then again in realtime) over the firewire to my TV.

This work flow works quite okay for me because I don't need to
see realtime moving images with color correction when I'm
setting the filters up. I can check a couple of still frames. Then
when I'm done I can view the whole shot/sequence and look
at it in the bigger picture.

One advantage is that this takes me away from my computer
and actually has me really looking at the footage as a whole
as well.

Additional Memory
 

I currently have a P4 2.4 GHz system with 512KB RAM. I'm considering increasing the RAM to 1GB. Anyone have any firsthand experience with respect to overall Vegas performance when increasing RAM? Am I likely to notice any improvement or would my $$$ be better spent elsewhere? tia

You will not see much difference UNLESS:

1) You are running multiple instances of Vegas or

2) You need a longer amount of time for RAM Previews


What are you trying to speed up? Rendering? Playing from the timeline? Something else?

Maybe Vegas is simply properly setting a flag so the media play displays correctly.

Hmm very good point. Quite a possibility.

at first I had 512 MB of RAM in my system and I upgraded it to 1 GB of RAM. When rendering I did not notice a thing, just about 10 seconds faster on a total duration of 28 minutes of rendering time. So that is peanuts.
In my eyes it only makes a difference when there are many applications open, like photoshop, vegas, etc, maybe then you use more than the 512 MB you have now.

I have 1G of RAM in my computer. Vegas in general will not be faster or use the additional memory. I have set mine up with a 512MB RAM preview that I use often to speed up my work for checking edits. This is why I got the extra memory.

Randall

Finished first large project in Vegas!
 

Finished it last night. A wedding that took me close to twice as long beings I'm still becoming aclimated with the new workflow. I used a workflow similar to Edwards in that I did each part of the program in sections. When completed I assembled them on the timeline and encoded the MP2 (DVDA Template)@ 7mb/s constant bitrate, then wave (PCM) for audio...I had plenty of space and heard that AC3 can attenuate the audio. Did a simple "single movie" template in DVDA and burned it. Popped it in and it played perfect. Some of my color corrections are a bit light but that could be because of the discrepency between the little 13" TV I edit on and my 36" HD Wega I was watching it on.
I wasn't sure if it was going to work because I read over at the SoFo forums that you have to remove Veritas burning software because it conflicts with DVDA. I didn't seem to affect me at all, thankfully.

Lastly I do have one question however. When I encoded my video (MP2 @ 7 mb/s) in Vegas then imported it into DVDA...I do have to go to "Optimize DVD" and change some settings. I saw that the default bit-rate was 8mb/s. What if I had left it at 8 even though the MP2 I encoded was at 7. Whould it have to be re-rendered? I'd naturally think YES, however when I changed the slider the file never displayed an exclamation point only the green check like it was compliant.
Oddly enough when building the disk it took about 10 minutes even before it started burning, is this normal? It said "rendering" in the dialog during this time yet both my video and audio had green checks and I didn't choose to "re-sample video". Is this step just building the DVD, and should it take 10 minutes. In all burning a DVD from start to finish @ 2x took 35 minutes! Is that normal? What kind of times do you guys get?

Glen,

Congratulations on finishing your project!

Only certain parts of Veritas software will conflict. Apparently you don't have those parts installed. Specifically anything relating to DLA.

As for the Optimize, if you pass it a valid file, it will NOT be re-rendered so the slider makes no difference. Just make sure the Optimize screen says that it does not need to be rendered (i.e. a green checkmark beside it).

Unless you told it otherwise, DVDA probably converted the audio to AC-3 anyway. It does this by default. I have noticed no difference between the original WAV and the AC-3. If you ever want to do 5.1, you HAVE to go to AC-3.

That sounds like a decent render and burn time to me.