Vegas Video discussions from 2004 (Q1Q2)

[Rob Lohman]

What is the framerate of the movie in the AVI since you IVTC'd
it? I assume it is 24 (or is it 23.976??) fps? What is the project
setting in Vegas? To what is the footage properties set when it
is in the timeline?

My feeling is that it is converting the footage somehow. That
should still not yield a black frame, but perhaps we can eliminate
it. Probably a bug that might need reporting to Sony.

Can you give us as much detail as possible about the file and
the project settings? (resolution, framerate, interlaced etc.)

[Rob Lohman]

Free fonts are hard to come by I think, Dylan. That's because
font libraries like to make money with the fonts they have and
sell. Personally I haven't looked at too much font libraries so I
can't really help you get underway in that depertment.

Ryan is correct: as long as it is a truetype font and you have it
installed it will be available to you. Keep in mind that a lot of
DTP packages (and some other text/graphics applications) can
install additional fonts you can/may use as well. So you might
already have some extra fonts on CD and not know about it.

[Rob Lohman]

No that doesn't work. I'll explain why.

Frameserving is used to transfer large amounts of data from one
application to another without actually writing a very large file
to disk. The way this works is that they construct a special file
(the frameserving file) which contains a reference to the application
instance that is serving the file.

The opening program loads the file and then contacts that instance
of the program for the requested data. If you open this file over
the network it tries to open this instance on the local computer
where it is NOT running. So it fails there.

I'm not sure whether this "standard" supports files over a network
or not.

What you might try to do is not write the file to your local disc.
So you turn the tables around. Let me explain.

You are now frameserving the file on computer A. You are also
writing the file frameserving.avi (for example) to this machine.

Then you go over to computer B, browse to computer A and open
the file, right?

Do it the other way around. So when you are starting the frame-
server in Vegas browse to computer B and write the file there.

Then go over to computer B and open the LOCAL file that you've
just remotely written to that machine and see if that works.

If that doesn't it might just simpy not support it or you may need
to do some manual stuff. How large is the AVI file that is written
to disc (the frameserving file)?

[Glen Elliott]

Font libraries are incredibly expensive- have you ever priced any of the adobe offerings?....Highway robbery. Thus I get lots of my fonts from those little font discs you can find in your bargain bin at a software store. Usually pay a few dollars a disc.

[Peter Moore]

The source huff file is 720x360, 23.976p. The Vegas project is 720x480, 23.976p, 4x3 A.R. The footage settings in the timeline are not otherwise changed except to indicate the 4x3 A.R.

The vegas project settings don't seem to matter though. The frame drops are somewhat random as far as I can tell, although they do show up on the time line (it's not just at the final render). The reason I know it's vegas is that they don't show up in Media Player or other NLEs. I also thought maybe it was my hard drive, but it also doesn't matter what drive I'm on.

It could be a bug with huff, I suppose, that causes Vegas to reject certain frames.

[Jim Quinlan]

This also happened to me recently !!!!!

I'm glad to hear someone else having the problem. I was suspicious of another software program (Ultra from Serious Magic) but I only saw the occasional single black frames in Vegas. I was using clips from Ultra that were rendered with the Huffy codec.

I had to chop the single frames out to get my final render to work without that ugly black frame. I found about 6 of them on a very large project recently.

I believe it happened when I was running Vegas 4 and don't think it's happened since I installed 5.0. Sorry I don't have more details because I'm not sure which project it happened in (I had about 40 small ones I was working on last month) .

[Peter Moore]

Unfortunately I can confirm it happens in Vegas 5 as well. :(

The solution, for me at least, was to use uncompressed AVI from VirtualDub, instead of HuffYUV. The file size is thus doubled but at least I can rest easy. The other saving grace is that huffyuv output from vegas appears to have no problem.

[Jim Lafferty]

Damn -- I've been using HuffYUV and VDub with Vegas 4 and haven't noticed this problem yet -- now you've got me worried :/

- jim

[Peter Moore]

The part about it that sucks the most is having to blink with alternating eyes because I don't want to miss a dropped frame! :)

[Bob Cantrell]

Try this site for free fonts.

http://dafont.com/en/

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Very welcome, Nick. Hope to see you in one of the VASST cities down the road. We're now in San Francisco. Hope to meet a bunch of you at the Sony Showcase or at the VASST training event!

[Rob Lohman]

That would be hard to find out whether this problem is related to
the codec or Vegas. Perhaps its due to both. Perhaps you can
shoot the Sony guys an e-mail or something so they can start
testing this themselves?

[Graham Bernard]

Yes Rob . . I agree .. too important for it not to go "upstairs"!

Grazie

[Glen Elliott]

Wow- thanks a million Bob...great site!

[Lars Siden]

Hi Edward,

Many thanks for your reply! The link you provided was very good!

I've created a very :-) complex script now:

var MediaEnum = new Enumerator(Vegas.Project.MediaPool);

while ( ! MediaEnum.atEnd() )
{
var media = MediaEnum.item();
MessageBox.Show( media.FilePath );
MediaEnum.moveNext();
}

I'm getting the hang of the Vegas objectmodel now - one thing though: How do you design your dialogs? Do you use some visual tool like Visual Studio or similar and writes down the Position X and Y values? I'm so spoiled using .Net - you know, building an UI takes 5 minutes :-) with point & click!

// Lazze

ps. Out of curiosity: Have you written the Script-obfuscator yourself or is it an open product? ds.