You're right Edward. I kinda mis-read the post and then forgot about setting points. It was way to early to be answering anything.
Don

Well, until recently I didn't know you could insert the envelope value because click/dragging lets you only do 3% and -3%. I don't see why it's so hard to believe someone could think that.

see pic here
 

My page is back to normal, so check out this picture and tell me what you think.
As you can see, it is not the jagged lines that I would associate with interlacing, but wavy lines. But then again, I don't know what I'm doing so please help me!

http://www.geocities.com/freakyfamil...ts/shorts.html


Thanks,
Tate

One thing I found when using the VE this way - the audio continues regardless of what the video is doing, so if you want the audio to resume normally when you go back from 0% to 100%, you have to split the audio at the point where you went from 100% to 0%, and move it to restart when motion restarts.

If you ramp the speed up or down gradually it can get horribly confusing as to where you are audio wise. I hope that V5 has the Option to make the envelope do the same thing to audio as has been done to video, then one will stay in pace with the other.

The +/- 3% thing happens when the track is too short. There are two options. The first is make the track taller. This gives you more room to get the number but still isn't exact. The BEST way is to right-click the point, choose Set To... and then type in the exact number desired. Of course, another option is to use Excalibur.

One more question. I'm still confused of why black bars appear on the left and right sides of the video when I add a picture.

Because the picture isn't the same size as the video frame. When using pictures, open Pan/Crop and immediately right-click the image and choose "Match Output Aspect". This will eliminate the "black bars" and make things work the way you expect.

A few new Vegas questions...
 

1.) Dropped frames? I did a long capture tonight, and entire tape that spanned one long 50 minute file. I walked away while it was capturing and when I returned, near the end, I noticed it had logged 9 dropped frames. I had never dropped a frame EVER while capturing and the only thing I can remember doing different was choosing "capture tape" rather than hitting play then capture. Could the camera latency going from stop to play cause it to read as dropped frames?

2.) Captured footage resolution while viewed in Media Player? I played back a few clips in windows media player and noticed it's only playing at half resolution...I checked the source file to be certian and it is, indeed, 720x480. I did some searching in the options under Vegas capture and I saw something to the notion of "preview window size denotes decoder size" (not sure exactly how the box is worded, but it's checked. I'm assuming this is the reason why it only plays back at the resolution I had it previewing at while capturing. Does anyone know why this option is here and/or how it is there to begin with?!

3.) Color correcting while monitoring on external monitor. You know how you can creat an area/selection in the preview window through which you can see your color corrections. Can this be implimented while viewing on an external monitor?

4.) Re-encoded captured footage out to AVI any less quality? I ask because I'm now using a different workflow with my wedding videography. I capture large areas of a tape at a time, some times bordering an entire hour for one clip. Now once I'm done with splicing it up and extracting the good footage to use in my final cut...I encode the series of edits as a single avi file in order to delete the original un-edited 50 minute capture file. The problem is there are a few clips that weren't in my edit that I want to keep for a flash-back sequence later on in the wedding. If I spice these sections and separated them from the original long clip and render them out as another avi in order to delete the original file like I had first intended will the clips I cut and re-encode as AVI (to keep them on my hd) be of any lesser quality than the original capture?

Special Effects in Vegas
 

Any good sites/tutorials for special f/x in Vegas? I'm mainly interested in sci-fi type effects, muzzle flashes, light sabers, etc.

... or would it be better to learn to do these things in After Effects?

#1: It is quite possible that the "dropped frames" where at the very beginning of the tape. I always batch capture and make sure it starts a few seconds in.

#2: Not sure I followed all of that.

#3: Yes

#4: The ONLY areas re-encoded are the areas you changed (i.e. dissolves, color correction, ...) for all other areas, it will be a straight copy.

Taking it a step farther, say you edit a wedding ceremony with color correction. When rendering that to a DV-AVI file, it will be recompressed. Now lets say you take that DV-AVI file and put it in the "final" wedding video. This time it will NOT be recompressed because it will already be in the correct format. It will be copied instead.

Some of these things can be done in Vegas. A lot of people also use AlamDV. Vegas is a decent compositor but it sounds like you may need more power. Soon, Boris Red will be available for Vegas and will probably do all you want. Right now, AE is a valid alternative.

Ok let me re-iterate.

2.) In other words if I open one of my captured source files in Windows media player it doesn't display it at 100% (ie 720x480). I know the dimensions of full dv on my screen simply by choosing "full quality" in the preview window in Vegas and resizing the window to fit. Well when I play a captured clip in media player it only displays it at what looks like 1/2 it's resolution or 360x240....and I even made sure my zoom level in media player was 100%.

as for 4.) I'll try to be less wordy- I think you lost be because I took too long to explain my question.
In other words... if I want to delete a captured 50 minute file. But want a few short clips from it to remain on my hd, what's the best way to go about doing it?
I could splice it up and render the sections to new avi's before deleting the large 50 minute clip but would those new sections I spliced and rendered out as new smaller clips be of any less quality than the original 50 minute clip? {Does that make any more sense?)

#2: That's a Windows Media Player thing. There's an option somewhere to use full resolution. I've also downloaded an registry entry that does the same thing from http://www.scenalyzer.com/faqs.html. Here's what the question and answer say:

Q: When I open the files captured by ScenalyzerLive, they only show in a resolution of 360x288 or 360x240 - what's wrong?
A: ScLive always writes files with the full resolution, however Type1 DV-files are normally decoded by the MS-DV Codec, which by default displays the video only in half resolution. Either capture Type2 files (for Premiere 6.0) or download and start the file http://www.scenalyzer.com/hires.reg to set the MS-DV codec to high-resolution.



#4: Render those sections to separate files.

Thanks Edward, I think I'll go with AlamDv until Boris Red comes out. Being on the low end of the learning curve, I'd rather keep it simple and stick to a familiar interface.

Vegas 4 / AlamDV: Importing AVI movie files
 

I'm trying to import a movie file into AlamDV
but it says the AVI file is using the wrong codec.
Any solutions or workarounds for this?

Notes:
--------
The AlamDV website says I can use the MainConcept
codec to solve the problem ... I thought the MainConcept
codec came with Vegas 4?