Problem with rendering some dual layer slomo custom effects...
 

Hey all. Well, I'm tweaking a slight effect I'm doing on my current short in Vegas 4.0 . I have a scene where there are shots of people on a drug and some of them are slowed down to 61% while others are then sped up. I have the bottom layer with just some colors curves, then I duplicated for the top layer set at 50% opacity and applied a gradient map effect. When I render out, all the shots without any slowmotion speed change work fine but on all the shots where I slowed down the footage, it has a jerk like motion to the people moving, like they were being jerked back into place or something. There is one clip where I go from 60% to 300% and this one has the issue only during the slow part and is fine once it hits 100% and beyond. I just recently reformatted and reinstalled XP so performance is not an issue (I'm on a p4 2.4 gigahertz, 1 gig of RDRAM, ATI 9700 XT card, tons of space, project files are on a seperate HD than program and operating system). What gives here? Any thoughts?

Here's a link to some of the shots (3 meg qt file)

http://www.DefiningFilms.com/prob.mov

The footage is 24p DV from a dvx

How to make a background video loop in Architect 2
 

Hi Folks.

I have created couple of DVD using a still picture as a the menu background and now I would like to replace the still with a short mpeg file instead.

I have sucessfully put the video file to the background and it play great but I can't figure out how to make that video background loop and loop until the user press the play button.

Your help is greatly appreciated.
AP

DVDA music question/carryover
 

Does anybody know how I can do the following?

What I have...

Opening media is silent.
Music comes up under ensuing opening menu.
Music dies if "Chapters" is selected.

What I want...

Music from previous opening menu to continue into "Chapters" submenu, playing while person X decides, as opposed to starting music over again (which would sound stupid, given the piece) or just having silence at that point.

Is there a way to pull this off?

Marcia

Right-click the event, go to properties, and turn on "Resample". This should help. If that is not enough, you may want to try supersampling. But only try that on the small sections that really need it, render out those small sections, and then remove the supersampling.

Which version of DVDA? Basically, look at the properties on the right hand side. In DVDA2, you change the "End Action" for the menu to "Loop". In DVDA1, you change the Looping property to true.

Anytime you do anything on any of the menus, it will proceed to a different media file. Therefore, if a button is pressed the music will suddenly stop and then you will be taken to the next media. There's no way to get music to continue across menus.

Key frame confusion
 

Do I add the key in the keyframe time line first and then pan my video to were I want it? or move the video first?
Also when I lock to the curser, does that automatically add a key to the beginnig?

The reason I ask is that there is a half of a triangle at the head of the key frame time line and I'm not sure if I should be adding a key next to it or not.

I have read the manual but it is either not clear enough, or I'm a complete moron. (could be the later).

At a minimum, you MUST move the CURSOR to the new position on the timeline before chaning the pan/crop settings. Basically, here's your workflow:

1) Make sure the first keyframe is selected and change the pan/crop settings to where everything should begin.

2) Move the cursor to where you want the movement to end on the timeline. Now change the pan/crop settings to where everything should end. This will automatically create the second keyframe.

If you click on the link under my name, I have all this explained in the latest issue of my newsletter.

A Ha, thank you very much

HARDWARE: give me opinions
 

Hello.
RIght now i am going to start a big project. Since i will be using a lot of effects and tracks, render times are huge.

So I have two problems to fix:
- previewing
- rendering

In order to render faster, the best choice right now i think is to buy a P4 3 Ghz HT as a server and main computer, and 1 or 2 cheaper network computers.

I have two options for the network CPUS:
- I could buy TWO whole P4 Intel® Celeron® D 325 (2.53 GHz, 256 MB cache, 533 MHz FSB for just €300
- Or another Intel® Pentium® 4 with HT (3.0 GHz, 1 MB cache, 800 MHz FSB) for around €600

I´m sure the 3.0 HT will go faster than the celeron, but we are talking that we can have TWO PCs for the price of one, rendering together in the network, and having each one 512 Mb of RAM and a 80 Gb hard disc.

Since i have not use the network render in vegas, i do not know how fast things go.
That is why i am writing this, so you could give me your personal experience.



And second point, how to speed up previewing. Since i use level correction, and cropping... usually the preview screen goes too slow (around 4 or 5 fps). I do not want to mute video tracks nor to ignore video effects, becasue that is what i need to see. And if i render a preview, it takes a lot of time which i don´t like.

Is there any way to speed this up? Thanks for reading the whole post. Bye!

Rats. Ok, thanks, Edward. I understand now. Just shows my lack of experience with DVD authoring. Will have to come up with something else to put under it.

To speed up preview, it helps to pre-render sequences to RAM. Obviously, this takes one heckuva a lot of RAM, depending on the length of the preview, the more the better. 512 Megs is too low to get an effective result. I suggest 1 Gig min.

Why is this preview speed so important? I do all editing priort to
any effects work and that plays full frame rate on my system with
simple cutting and cross-fading and every other cutting tool.

Then I move on to effects and color correction work and this might
indeed get things slow downed to 5 fps. But this is not a problem
for me. I don't need to see the timing of shots anymore, just how
it looks. And this I usually want to do on a frame by frame basis
anyway to see if it looks great across the whole shot.

If I really need to judge some section I'm working on I select
that section and render a ram preview (which is fast on just a
scene for example) and I can watch it play at full framerate.

I'm just wondering why that is important to you...

But the faster the (single) processor the faster your preview will be.

<<<-- Originally posted by Bill Ravens : To speed up preview, it helps to pre-render sequences to RAM. Obviously, this takes one heckuva a lot of RAM, depending on the length of the preview, the more the better. 512 Megs is too low to get an effective result. I suggest 1 Gig min. -->>>

512 Mb of RAM are just for the net render CPUS, which won´t need too much to do their job.

Thank you again Ed. I'm heading over to your link now.

well vegas will only allow for one other render module.. not two..

so youll have the project on one machine and have that connected to the other.

these days fo rthe price of tthe celery, a lil it more will get u a p4.2.4 or 2.8 with HT

as for you rmain unit, the more ram (and the faster the ram) the faster your render will be

u could always try Maestro if u have a spare 30 grand .. :)

what im tryin to do is set up a clip action after a button is pressed and before the chapter begins..

still having issues with that after al this time.. lol

Quantity of ram really doesn't make a lot of difference in render time UNLESS you're using a bunch of large images. That's not to say that more ram isn't useful.

The faster the processor and the faster the data paths, the faster the render will be.

With network rendering, Vegas allows the base machine and TWO network renderers so up to three machines can be rendering a single project at the same time (unless you buy more licenses).

<<<-- Originally posted by Peter Jefferson : what im tryin to do is set up a clip action after a button is pressed and before the chapter begins..

still having issues with that after al this time.. lol -->>>

This is very doable in DVDA2. You just need to point your menu button to the intermediary video. Then set the end action of that video clip to the real chapter point.

Degradation after rendering
 

Hi.

After rendering, I get sporadic spots on the parts of the video that I've processed - color correction, color curves, even fades to black (are these the infamous artifacts?)
Is there a way to avoid/get rid of them? (I want to apply other filters but I'm afraid that's going to degrade the video even more)
(the project was taped at 24p)

Thank You

Glen,
I've had experience with this earlier this year. I've spend hours and hours comparing different tests on a big tv-screen. The way that worked best for me (without motion problems or some shadow-ghosting problems) was the following:
- capture all PAL footage in a DV PAL Vegas project
- make all edits you want
- render the results to a single PAL AVI file, using the Best render quality options
- open a new, empty NTSC DV project and import the rendered PAL file onto the timeline
- check the PAL video on the timeline for it's properties, it has to be PAL
- render to an MPEG2 NTSC file using the Vegas presets (renderquality at Best).
- burn an NTSC dvd using the NTSC MPEG2 file.

Watch out with 25P footage (DVX100). I asked for and got several advices for trying to keep the progressive look towards the NTSC material, but all setting combinaties I tried in Vegas gave problems. In one of the two render steps described above I changed the 25P/progessive into interlaced (lower field). This solved the conversion artifacts (motion/ghosting). The NTSC dvd still has got the progressive look and the quality is fairly good. The only thing I notice that the video is a bitter smoother in it's motion, due to the higher number of frames/second with NTSC.

Audio quality after DVD burn
 

Anyone notice that the audio sounds sort of hollow, almost mono-like after burning to DVD? This is for Vegas 4 with DVDA 1.

I rendered the project as an NTSC DVD MPEG-2 default template with audio stream. The audio later gets recompressed as AC-3 stereo during the prepare and burn process. When I test the DVD on a DVD player and TV, the audio sounds noticeably less "full" than a commerical DVD or even just regular broadcast TV. I've double checked every setting and made sure I was encoding in stereo, but it still sounds very flat to me. I even tried PCM stereo in one burn. I also realize I'm dealing with TV speakers, but again, broadcast TV sounds much much fuller than the DVD's I've burned.

Is this is a limitation of the software MPEG encoding? Any thoughts?

Render the audio to AC3 from VEGAS and use that audio file in DVDA1. Here's what's happening in your procedure:

1) Original audio is compressed to MPEG2
2) MPEG2 audio is decompressed
3) decompressed audio is recompressed to AC3

That's a lot of extra compression. Turn off the audio in the MPEG2 file (which is the default) and render the audio to AC3 direcly in Vegas. Either that, or give DVDA an AVI file instead and let it compress both.

Thanks for the quick reply. I tried giving DVDA an avi just now and I'm still getting a hollow sound compared to broadcast TV audio. The DVD menus background music sounds the same way. Maybe I need to do some audio sweetening in Vegas? Currently the only thing I adjust with in-camera audio or music files is levels. Any thoughts?

first, you need a common basis for comparison between the finished dvd and the raw .wav audio from the .avi... that should be happening with your editing setup, where you should have quality speakers to use.

i would also be looking at the details of the .ac3 that you are encoding... what is the bitrate, what filtering do you have turned on with the .ac3 encoder, etc... don't ever encode anything without knowing exactly what the encoder settings are.

It sounds like the AC3 is being compressed too much. Try the following settings:

* Main audio service: complete main
* audio coding mode: 2/0 (L,R) = simple stereo
* dialog normalization: either -31 dB (this kind of means that you disable it), or -27 dB sometimes (but this may turn out quiet for some players, which use this number for playback); I don't use the settings scheme described in the article from doom9
* dynamic range compression: none

That will basically compress your audio to AC3 without losing too much of the dynamic range (if any).

1K tone??
 

Hello,

Is there a 1 thousand hertz tone comes with vegas?/ I am in need of one on a tape I ma working on. If can can anyone direct me to where i could find a 1K tone??

Thanks,
Mike Moncrief

You can generate some by printing to tape and capturing that.

Other ways:
Use Sound Forge.
use Audacity, which is open source.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Set Audacity or SF as your default audio editor and you can right click stuff and edit sound files in your audio editor.

Hello,

well thats true.. but i am jumping between systems and various software and was hoping to find a wav file without going to tape.. Hmmm there must be one in with the Vegas software, as it can generate the tone to Print to Tape.. not sure where it is at though..
Mike m

Just use Audacity, use the "generate" tool thinger in there to generate tone, and save the wav file. I think you just need exactly 1s as it can loop flawlessly that way.

Hello,

Ok I downloaded Audacity, and used that,m it did the trick !

Thanks,
Mike M.

Vegas only generates tone upon printing to tape. It's a simple matter to just PTT a few seconds and then turn around and recapture that tape. The captured file can be rendered to WAV and then shared across as many machines as desired.

If you have Sound Forge, it can also generate a variety of tones.

This sounds like compression issues instead of problems with the
effects or rendering itself. What is your final output format when
you see these "issues"?

You should try to put up a picture, that would be the best way to describe your problem. (before and after)

Otherwise be more descriptive as to what these spots look like.

Last chance to vote on Scripting Requirements
 

The Scripting Wish List poll will be open for voting through the end of this week, then we will be sending the results to Sony to help in ranking enhancements to scripting for future Vegas releases.

If you haven't voted already, and have things that you would like to see added to the Scripting API, please vote soon.

Randall

DVDA (red) disc space used warning?
 

On my last pass, why did the "disc space used" msg in the lower right corner turn red once it decided my project is 4.4 gigs? The discs hold 4.7, and it still burns and (from what I can tell) plays fine when I ignore it. Is that just a dummy warning light that you're getting close to capacity?

Marcia

Odd surround bug
 

I've recently being making a project in surround and have been using the 'Film' pan type. Strangely though when I come back to the project after reloading (and sometimes while I have been doing some editing) some of the layers change back to the 'constant' pan type on their own!

Has anyone else experienced this?

Another odd thing I have come across the last few days is that I keep getting told by DVDA2 that my DVD+RW (yes re-writable) disc is full in spite of the fact I told DVDA2 to erase the disc and go over any information that was on it!

This has been with two seperate brand new discs and I've never had a problem with anything like this before. Windows itself says that the disc only has 832mb capacity!

Obviously this is a pain as I like to test DVDs on rewritables so that if anything needs changing I don't end up with a room full of drinks coasters and an empty wallet!

Sorry I should mention that I am using Vegas 5b.

A burnable DVD labeled "4.7 Gig" will hold a total of 4.37 Gig. It's a difference between base 10 math and binary math. Computers use 1024 instead of 1000. The 4.7 is based on 1000. When based on 1024, it drops to 4.37.

Naturally, they "label" with the bigger number. That's also part of the reason why a 200Gig drive will only hold around 180 Gig! Part of the lost space is due to the above (the rest is due to formatting information).

If the disc actually burned and played fine, the final result must have actually been 4.37 or less. Remember the number there is just an estimate.

Thank goodness for you, Edward. :-) You're right of course, that it's actually much less. Since reading your post I noticed the difference when I went to burn this morning. Hadn't paid attention to that before. Actual size at that point was indeed lower. I reduced the file size anyway. I shortened how long bacground media I'd created played. Out of curiousity, is there a standard "average" for how long people let them go? I can't imagine anyone staring at a menu and debating what to select for longer than 30 seconds. I have it set to 1 min now, but does it even need to be that long?

Marcia