<<<-- Originally posted by Kyle Ringin : Are the project settings set to either DV or DV widescreen?

If you are sending it to a DV camera it'll have to send it DV, not any other codec. -->>>

Does that mean it can't be a wmv or avi file?

Hey. My last NLE was a Casablanca. I'm interested in a user friendly system. I'd rather not spend the dough on another stand alone unit but I'm afraid that Vegas will be too frustrating to use. Now, I know it may seem simple to most of you but let me give ya some perspective. In my head: Casablanca= BIG BOLD CRAYON / Adobe Premier= alien cryptic code.

cheers,
-dave

NOT WMV.

DV is an AVI file. Pick either NTSC-DV AVI or PAL-DV AVI depending on your needs.

The best advice I can give is to download the demo and give it a try. You can also look over my newsletters - especially the beginner's corner articles.

p.s. Vegas isn't like Premier.

You can try the demo for Vegas. Some people find it easy to use... others do not (it made no sense to me since I learned Final Cut first, and it is entirely different than Final Cut). The sticky at the top of this forum was helpful to me.

Training materials might also help... this way you learn workflows that work and how to do things properly.

Understanding Vegas:
Vegas originally started out as a multitrack audio program. If you know how to use them then it should make sense to you. If not, then Vegas is kinda weird because it is nothing like other editing programs (Final Cut / Premiere Pro / Avid style).

Adobe Premiere 6.x versus Premiere Pro: Premiere Pro is much better and re-designed. It is very much like Final Cut on PC. You might have a better grip on things with Final Cut or Premiere Pro (I like Final Cut better, but if you have a PC check out the demo from PPro; the two programs are similar).

2- Quick basic tutorial on Vegas:

Capturing: Go to file --> capture to get into the video capture tool. Choose Capture Video- this will capture the whole tape and automagically break up clips if you set the date/time on your camera.

Import the footage into your Vegas project (if necessary) and drag clips onto the timeline. You can select the edges and move them left/right to trim clips. You can add dissolves by dragging the top corners of the clips (watch the cursor change). You can also create dissolves by overlapping two clips- Vegas automatically puts in the dissolve.

Enable snapping for clips to snap to each other. Snapping only occurs for one track, unlike other NLEs. You can't snap a clip from one track to the head/tail of a clip on a upper/lower track.

Quantitize to Frames you can disable if you wish to do certain audio work. Leave it on for video.

Read the shortcut keys PDF... it goes over useful shortcuts like mouse wheel up/down = zoom.

Hopefully Vegas makes sense to you. It can be really powerful if you know what you want to do with it.

When I use the pan crop tool my crop guide disappears and I can't seem to get it back. This usually happens when skipping around a clip. I solved this once before but have since forgotten how and the hlp file didn't provide me with a solution.

Also, after importing and trimming in the timeline an audio file I am not able to insert and volume envelope. No option appears in the right click menu. This hasn't happened before.

Any help wold be appreciated. Thanks!

I'm pretty sure I want to go Athlon 64. Possibly Dual. I'm having trouble finding motherboards that will support Dual 64's though. Would it be major overkill to go dual 64's? I'm thinking around 2-4gb Ram, pair of 300gb sata's (to start).

This system is going to be purely for vegas. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

1- Which filters are you using for color correction?
2- What format is your project and source footage? (i.e. NTSC DV)
3- Are you rendering in "good" quality?

Would it be major overkill to go dual 64's?
Check the dual processor thread... dual processors don't help Vegas that much except on:
A- Simple renders.
B- MPEG2 encoding.
C- Multiple instances of Vegas open.
D- ??? Network rendering to your own computer.

On the Sony site's Vegas forum, there are also rendertest.veg results (rendertest.veg is a benchmark). Prescott-core Pentiums seem to be the fastest right now. Canterwood-core Pentiums (6% slower than same clock speed Prescott) and AMD64 processors run neck to neck, although Pentiums are faster at MPEG2 encoding. In real world renders you may also see Pentiums pull slightly ahead by a few percent since rendertest.veg doesn't use hyperthreading (Pentium feature) as much as real world renders do.

I haven't checked the Sony forums in a while so rendertest.veg results may be different.

2- Lots of motherboard support opterons, the server version of the AMD64 processors. There are single, dual, and quad processor models (1xx, 2xx, and 4xx series). i.e. you can 2 opteron 242s and stick em in one of the many motherboards that support them.

3- A prescott-core Pentium is your best bang for your buck performance wise, although there are hidden costs such as electricity and slightly less reliability (Prescotts run really hot).

Dual processors are really pricey for a very marginal increase in speed. You need to get the really high clock speed ones to get a system that is faster than a single processor machine. A 3.2ghz Pentium may/will be able to outperform dual 2.8ghz Xeons on many renders.

4GB of RAM may be overkill and not worth your money if it means buying expensive 1GB sticks instead of 512MB ones. How much RAM you need for Vegas is debatable... you can search on this forum and others.

1. im using the colour correction filter it also does it when i black bar the clips.

2. the footage is all Pal DV 4:3
3. rendering is set to best

I currently am using Pinnacle Liquid Edition 6 and Adobe Premiere. I see a lot of people here are using Vegas and would like to know what Vegas users feel are the key features that make Vegas their NLE of choice over other PC programs such as Premiere Pro, Avid Xpress Pro, Canopus or Liquid Edition 6.

I have been researching and found some great training info on Vegas as well.

Vasst Training Products (lots of goodies Douglas Spotted Eagle and more)
http://www.vasst.com/training_products.htm

David Jimerson Celluloid & ReelPak-1
http://www.vasst.com/celluloid.htm

Gary Kleiner's Site
http://www.vegastrainingandtools.com/

Edward Troxel Vegas Scripting and Training
http://www.jetdv.com/vegas/


Thanks,

Ray

What do you mean by the "crop guide"?

The volume envelope is TRACK level. To turn it on, just press "V" after clicking on the event.

You've gotten LOTS of answers over the various forums on which you posted this question. The brief summary seems to be:

Audio
Stability
Scripting
Compositing abilities
Logical Workflow
Active/helpful forums
etc...

You're right Ed, and in addition to the features, the forum support and energy is first class. Most vegas users are extremely pleased and excited about Vegas. I can't say that for some of the others.

Regards,

Ray

Can I slighty slow or speed up a Song to match my video? I know if i do to much it will sound funny but i have heard they do this to radio broadcasts to gain more time. Is it possible with vegas 5?

We use to do this with a Ampex VPR 3 and an audio device that synthesized the audio as to match the video. In a 1/2 hr. show you could pick up :30 seconds so that the sales dept. could sell another spot in a 1/2 hr. show

I think this was dun by the VPRs TBC dropping a field of video every second

You can tell if a show has been “compressed” when the camera made a pan left or right as the camera panned the video would seem to skip we did this for a time to some syndicated shows but I think the producers found out about it and threatened legal action

Hold down the CTRL key and resize the clip. This will allow you to speed it up or slow it down.

This morning we released an updated version of Sony Vegas 5 that contains:

1) HDV project templates
2) HDV source file interpretation
3) HDV render templates for Sony HDV-compliant 1080-60i and 1080-50i HDV MPEG-2

The good news here is you can now get your HDV projects back to Sony HDV cameras and decks.

Download the Vegas 5 update here:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/download/step2.asp?DID=496

If you already have Vegas 5, it's a free update. If you don't, you can use it as a free trial.

Of course, it works well with CineForm Connect HD, also available from the website for a reduced price.

Happy New Year, and Happy Editing.

///d@
Sony Media Software

Thought I'd mention that Vegas still (even with this update) does not capture from the FX-1 (or HD10u for that matter), so you still need a capture utility.

Canopus and Ulead are releasing HDV capture capable updates of their software that will lure away those looking to Sony's own NLE flagship Vegas for an integrated solution....and all down to the inability to capture from the cam.

As the capture of HDV is still inoperative in Vegas, I'd also assume writing back to the FX-1 is achieved.....how?

Despite ConnectHD having these capabilities, I'd still much prefer to do it all through Vegas.

On the bright side.... HDV performance seems to be 'snappier'.

By crop fuide I mean the dashed lines with the "f" in the middle that denote the viewing area.

I have Windows XP and there are no large pictures in the project and even more the source files are in MPEG 1 format and I'm rendering the video in the same format. Upon my friends advice I I tried to render the file on other HD (not the one where the source files are kept) and this time it worked fine. I'm still confused I had no such problems with Vegas 4 even when I rendered very complex projects, strange, I do wonder is this characteristic to Vegas 5?

Rendering FROM Mpeg1 TO Mpeg1 *could* be the problem. MPEG is NOT a good editing format. You'd honestly be better off taking the original MPEG file and rendering to a new DV-AVI file, editing with it, and then rendering back to MPEG1.

Render the way you are, every frame must be decompressed and then recompressed - even if you have not affect that frame in any way!

Steve:

Correct, capture and print are done using Connect HD 1.5.2. Of course a future version of Vegas will have integrated capture / print, just like everyone else.

///d@

anyone have any ideas then? im at my wits end.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dennis Adams :

just like everyone else.

///d@ -->>>

I thought Sony was attempting to position itself as a HDV 'pacesetter' rather than a follower?

I'm attempting to render a short video clip which includes an animation and a video, combined together into a single video image. I created a 1/4 frame mask for the video in the lower left corner of the animation.

The animation is a1.1 gig avi which plays very smooth by itself, but when rendered to mpeg format (so I can burn the movie to a DVD for set-top playback) the 1 gig avi is reduced to a 45-60 meg mpeg file. The quality suffers tremendously and the animation plays back with stutter.

I've tried adjusting the CBR and VBR settings, reducing the I-frame interval, set the "Video Quality" slider to "High", de-selected "Allow field-based motion compensation", and altered the "DC coeficient" up to 10-bit. All settings render out with poor results.

Any idea what settings would optimize the render of an animation?

I can imagine resolution might be a factor in this as well. If you are
not watching the preview in full resolution some interpolation is
going on etc. What happens if you render at the preview resolution
(shown underneath the preview screen), ofcourse this will lower
your movies resolution... but if you want it to look bad that is okay
I'd presume.

Have you upgraded to the latest version of Vegas 4 or 5 (depending
on which you are using)?

MPEG rendering is a difficult art, please use the search button
above, select the vegas forum and enter MPEG as keyword to
find lots of threads on the topic.

Although the quality of the MPEG-2 encoder bundled with Vegas
is good, there are better encoders out there.

I have no idea what you are getting at with this 1/4 frame mask,
but I would take this 1.1 GB (I presume uncompressed avi?) file
and load that into a new project. Then create an MPEG-2 file from
that, see how that looks.

Also make SURE all your settings are correct and the same, this
includes your project settings and your export settings. Make
sure interlaced/progressive is especially correct.

Yes, I am running 5.0b, I'll try upgrading to "d".


The audio envenlope problem seems to have only been for that one project, but I am still having issues with the pan/crop system.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ray Sigmond : You're right Ed, and in addition to the features, the forum support and energy is first class. Most vegas users are extremely pleased and excited about Vegas. I can't say that for some of the others.

Regards,

Ray -->>>


I agree wholeheartedly, Ray. And regarding that support and energy, here's to Edward Troxel (and Rob Lohman). The resonsivenss and quality of support in this forum is high even by DVINFO standards. Sony should declare these guys as an asset on their Balance Sheet. Thanks guys!

Hello. I don know why when working in PAL and exporting to wmv if i touch any settings i cannot use 25 fps.

I mean, if i take for exaple the 256 setting and render the project it looks ok. But if i do minar changes as changing audio mode to mono for exaple, and i come back to the frame rate setting it moves automatically to 30 fps. Writing 25 would not fix the problem because as you move bacj 30 fps are again selected.
Anyone has notice this? how can i fix this problem?

Have you tried changing the zoom level in the Pan/Crop window? Perhaps you're not seeing it because it's too big to fit in the window at that zoom level.

The animation codec works well, if not the best to output files

Which version of Vegas are you using? Did you upgrade to the
latest version 4 or 5 of Vegas?

Would you happen to have an exported frame that shows this?
If you can't host it you can e-mail it to me. This sounds weird. I'm
assuming you are up to date with the program?

I just ordered this book today from amazon.com. When you check out, there's a featured called "Share the Love" which entitles the recipient to an additional 10% discount. So I emailed myself, received the Share the Love URL and am posting it here for the benefit of the DVInfo community.

So, if you want to save 10% on any of the following 3 books, click this link (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=love102-20&path=stl/MQQ0VPA3VNRU). The discount expires Jan 18, 2005.

Instant Vegas 5 by DSE
How Not to Write a Screenplay: 101 Common Mistakes Most Screenwriters Make by Denny Martin Flinn
Learn the Nikon D70 Camera for 5 Bucks by Stephen Gregory

Hi,
today I have found that new "version" of Vegas 5 released...
they call it 5.0 d... i had 5.0b and I could not find out why they jumped the 5.0c :)
does anybody know why? and what is the main difference between "b" and "d" ??
thx..

If you look at the release notes, you see:

Notable Changes/Fixes in Version 5.0c

A bug has been fixed in the MPEG plug-in that would prevent saving markers to MPEG files.

Notable Changes/Fixes in Version 5.0d

HDV™ project and rendering templates (AVI and MPEG-2) have been added.

To capture and print HDV video, use the CineForm ConnectHD tool, which you can download from our Web site. For CineForm support, click here.

*HDV and HDV logo are trademarks of Sony Corporation and Victor Company of Japan, Limited (JVC).



I do not recall seeing a notice for 5.0c.

Edward, I just ordered it 2 days ago from amazon.co.jp - why you didn't write this earlier? ;)

Nice try edward, but only one person can claim the discount, and it is gone.

<<<-- Originally posted by John Galt : Nice try edward, but only one person can claim the discount, and it is gone. -->>>

Oops, I didn't know that. Well, I hope at least the one claimant benefited.

I have a wedding I am editing and on the one channel was my shotgun mic and the other was my wireless mic.
Is there an easy way in vegas to mix the two channels so it is 80% wireless and 20% shotgun?

First of all, copy the audio to a second audio track. Now, right click one of them and choose "Left Only" and set the other one to "Right Only". Next, using Volume Envelopes adjust the mix as desired.

All of the sudden tonight I noticed dragging an event across the timeline is incredibly slow. It's faster dragging to the left than it is to the right, like usual- however much slower than usual.

In other words draging an event to the right on the timeline so it beings scrolling- it scrolls so slow it's not even worth dragging it. What could cause this?

heres somethign interesting..
Long rant, very emotional and from someone whos reached his tether with this program..
Apologies in advance.. i need to blow off some steam right now..

i usually shoot in 25p, progressive and switch to interlace for a shoot im planning on slowing down...

now the way i use vegas is that i prerender the parts ive done for that day.. saves having to wait forever for a final render...

now, ive shot in interlaced many times and have switched to 25p progressive for the project, imported and no problem.
so in effect, im running a "frame mode:" in post.. which is ok, coz it allows me to blend my interlaced footage with my progressive..

NOW..

the problem lies in the fact that even with supersampling, im gettin really REALLY choppy slow mo.. so from interlaced video to frame mode to slow mo.. obviously im losing frames....

now ive bought this issue up before and irrespective of how u set that slow mo up (velocity, cntrl and drag or %) it still looks shite..

now what i needed to do to fix this was switch the whole project to interlaced and set the blending to interpolate. as i need to get rid of this choppiness.. i need frames and blending the fields will give me stupid flickers..

so.. whats the deal with vegas slow mo??
I mean sometimes its perfect.. in fact most of the time it is.. this time however its completely killed my project...
On top of that, rendering in interlaced is a nightmare and i no longer wish to put my HDD to that much strain.. i kid you not.. a 2 hour wedding took 33 hours to render and al i had was a widescreen mask, and my basic film bleach bypass, effects being colour curves, sepia, glow and corrector.

its strange, i mean when i was previewing the project it didnt look choppuy, when i rendered, it was unwatchable.. it flickered and jumped so much, it looked like it was dropping frames..
Totally unwatchable and unpresentable.. what is called in teh Dept of Fair trading legislation as being "of unmerchantable quality"

Now ive been a big mouth here in Aus with Vegas and have been pushing it and converitng people to it..
but when i work 80+hrs on something and render for 33 hours and hit play.. i want the bastard to look good, as good as it looked in preview at least..

I mean if one sets the deinterlace field blending to blend as opposed to interpolate, shouldnt it then have to redraw the fileds... redraw these gapped frames and recreate the interlace??
Blur..gausian (asymetrical)_ seems to be ok.. but i dont want blur... i want a clean slow mo.. like the one u find in every other bloody NLE..

If im interpolating in progressive, shouldnt the software draw in the blank frames based on the previous and future frame??

i mean im REALLY pissed off.. and in all honesty, for in every project i have created with Vegas, i have had different issues.. From the dodgy "simulate device" in the preview panel, which blows out your aspect ratio and introduces vertical scanlines to your render, through to Dolby encodes with corrupted metadata which dvda2 blows out to a distortion of phenomenal proportions.... dvda1 doesnt have that problem though so it works fine...so does every other ac3 app like Encore.. hmm...

Theres a myriad of other issues with it, such as output files only allowing a playback of up to 4 minutes and 37seconds.. irrespective of the output file type, if i wanted to encode in another app, such as procoder, forget it..

i doubt its my system, as ive run prem pro, edius, and liquid on this and i have not had issues with them..
I just dont like their workflow..
I stuck with vegas out of faith and history with Sonic Foundry.. but now im rethinking my decision..

i like the interface, i like the filters, i like the power and flexibity behind it, I like the compositing, but to tell u the truth, the fact that i have rendered and re-rendered, prerendered, supersampled, motion blurred you name iiit, i tried it.. ... tryin to resolve this issue has wasted a whole fortnight.

clips in question are basic dv avi's. Slowmos are of of anything from 90% through to 47 %.. funny that the 47% will worrk fine on one clip but not another.. even though the same settings are used on the camera.. (dvx100 shooting in interlaced in this case)

so now, what im up to is that ive rendered the same project 4 times.. then re-rendered the "choppier" parts of it from the originall.. and blended the 2.
Rendered THAT out to an AVI and its worse..

start again..
this time change the blend option to interpolate and export as dv avi interlaced.... using asymetrical gausian blur..
a little better, turn on supersampling and its a lil nicer..
maybe presentable..
so so.. not good enough in my books, but i have to deliver.
Made my DVX obsolete and my progressive shooting now looks like home video due to the interlacing.

so i throw the file into mainconcept standalone encoder which converts almost anyting to mpg2 at about 35fps.. faster than realtime. Procoder 2 is a lil slower (30fps) in 2 pass VBR.. a lil cleaner too.. but worth it..

but my vegas clip wont go over 4 min 37.. ???
So whats the point.. ??
i have to render in vegas or dvda2 now..

so i set the encode myself in vegas.. guess what.. 8 hrs for a friggin 2 hour video..
couldnt afford to wait for a 2 pass or Best and if it looks shite.... so be it.. I dont get paid enough to deal with software weaknesses, but i do have to subsidise the inferiro prodcut to the client..

In a real world scenario, when deadlines need to be met, and extensive work needs to be done to match different cameras, lighting, aspect, and colour..... Vegas fails dismally.

Put it this way, if i have a client who wants shot today delivered tomorrow with video overlays, titles, subtitles and watermarkings, Theres no way Vegas can deliver.

Simply for the rendering thats involved..

Dont tell me about network rendering.. i can get faster results on a matrox... I get network rendering from Fusion.. I get network rendering from Avid..
why would i want to invest in a whole new system coz Vegas renders like a pile or cow dung...

Slow motion is a sporadic hit and miss as has been observed by many users.. i get smoother results with Studio... even Manin Concept main actor 5.2 gives better results, works like vegas and offers background rendering without the need of the dodgy pinnacle database installation which comes from Liquid...

Hell bring background rendering to Vegas FFS....
If mainconcept and Pinnacle can do it, why cant Sony.. ???
Dual Processors or HT my ass.. my audio only takes 40 minutes. what happens when "cpu 2" has finished its job??

Bring out a realtime card like a matrox, and then were cooking, but until then, Im putting Vegas back on the shelf until i need to work a 5.1 project or i cant be bothered using after effects...

It IS a kick ass system, the filters are incredible.. but what the hell are sony doing with the fact that i can do most of all this and output in realtime (not just preview, but have a product ready for delivery) for the SAME PRICE if i get an RTx10..
If i only wanted an effects box, id use After Effects..

Vegas 6 better be good... else i wont be investing any more energy in promoting it.

please enlighten me with regard to slow mo and rendering, as im totally disheartened with Vegas right now.. hell, i been rendering a straight avi to mpg2 for 4 hours now and im on 45%...
maybe i should have outputted to tape and recaptured in Studio9 as a direct mpg2??
makes one wonder which app has more rendering/transcoding grunt.... so called Professional or consumer?? you decide...

Ive posted many good things about vegas, and i do like it.. but it has its weaknesses as do all systems..
Its such a shame that Vegas weakness is so profound..

End of rant.. end of screaming into pillow.. end of endless cups of coffee and cigarettes...

im over it..

another trick is to set a pan for whatever range you like..
now combine the channels.. :)

yup, i hear ya..

i have to scroll up with the wheel to shrink my view, then drag..

for big projects, this doesnt work, coz the view is so damn small that ur mouse isnt fine enough for u to click on...

I thought it was caused by the gfx card, but i do this with prem pro (software only)and it zips through it..

whats ur preview RAM set to???

I had many issues with Vegas craching during huge renders when i set the maximum amoun to the suggested "highest number"

a 1gb ram system gave me 895mb to ram preview...

i dropped that down to 520mb, and i havent had that problem since..

If ur getting a stack dump error and rendering stops, it seems ur page file may be overlaoding..
Ur page file is the full amount, plus half ur ram..

ive had some latency issues with vegas running audio about 50 frames off centre..

im unsing an dSBLive Audigy with Asio Drivers and runnign asio within the application for my surround.

Latency is usually non existant, expcept for some random dodginess as described above... but it could be ur problem..