Vegas Video discussions from 2004 (Q1Q2)

[Dan Measel]

Awesome, thanks guys.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Glen, it comes free with Vegas 5, when you register you get an additional 5 "looks." It's not the full Bullet Suite. The product you can buy for 199 is more of the same stuff, just a buncha presets, I think there are 35 more when you buy it for 199.00 No control though.

[Edward Troxel]

Yes I had thought of that. However, I didn't want to add someone else's code to my program. I guess I should ask the original author if it is OK to include in the program.

You can still use the Vegas 4 version in Vegas 5 (I do all the time). Just locate the line that reads:

import SonicFoundry.Vegas;

and change it to read:

import Sony.Vegas;

After this change, it should run fine in Vegas 5.

[Mark A. Foley]

Thanks Edward for the tip!

[Philip Boyer]

Is it included on the Vegas 5 CD or a separate CD? I checked and it doesn't look like I got Magic Bullet with Vegas 5.

[Glen Elliott]

<<<-- Originally posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle : there are 35 more when you buy it for 199.00 No control though. -->>>

Spot, on the site it says it includes the "Look Suite" which...

"The Look Controls component is the most powerful aspect of Magic Bullet for Editors, with 26 different controls you can start from scratch to customize your own video Looks or tweak the included presets to create the mood you desire."

[Jim Lafferty]

Not that I'm actually suggesting this as a matter of practice, but you can edit the looks that exist currently by placing their files in a text editor and making changes.

It's a nice bullet feature (hah), and to my mind little else -- the MB presets are very easy to replicate with Zenote's Glow, a mild s-curve, and the 3-wheel color corrector in Vegas.

The major difference being render times -- rendering Glow/curves/cc takes about one fifth the time that MB takes to render.

I've been matching MB presets and then saving my own as FX packages in Vegas. For example, here's a comparison between my "filmic" and MB's:

See if you can spot which is which...

- jim

[Glen Elliott]

Pretty darn nice if I do say so myself. Yeah- render times is the main reason I stay away from Magic Bullet. There's NO reason why rendering should take that long- it's not de-interlacing it!

[Magnus Helander]

I've had a chance to play around with the Heroglyph titling and compositing program which installs nicely as a media generator in Vegas 5. This program is reviewed in latest issue of Vegas tips and Tricks, and I wanted to share some of my experiences. I'm seriously impressed by this program.

It uses a unique way of dealing with text and elements.
No keyframes. Complex advanced titles, compositing and animation without keyframes.

It takes two days to understand it, first day all confusion and almost ready to Add/Remove programs in control panel.On second day it starts to make sense.

1. It's object oriented - here's the idea: Start with the smallest unit - a glyph/letter or an image/movie clip. Apply effects on this level. Now group your letters into words and images/clips into logical containers. Apply effects on this level. All contained objects (see..) are now affected by these effects. They are "children" and "inherith" stuff (position, transparency, perspective...) from the "parent" object. No need to worry about the "children" - just tell the "parent" what to to and they will follow.

2. Program design/logic assumes that *all* objects (a) enter the screen, (b) stay on the screen, (c) exit the screen. Think about scrolling titles, the letters enters, stays/scrolls across, and then leave the screen. So... basically Heroglyph provides ways objects can enter the screen, how to behave when on the screen, and how to exit the screen. And there are a lot of ways objects can enter end exit the screen in the program, hundreds from what I can tell after two days.

On a 10 second clip you then define, say, "enter screen" as 4 seconds, 4 seconds "on screen" and 2 seconds as "exit screen".
If you create a scrolling title effect you can then define for each line line in the credit roll
- "randomly assemble the letters into words when entering the screen" so all letters come flying in randomly and forming words as each credit line enters the screen. (enter screen)
- Scroll smoothly across the screen (stay on screen)
- Fade out when exiting (exit screen)
Does this make sense? It took me two days to understand....

Want an 8x8 picture-in-picture as a page roll to make your corporate audience go "wow"?
Assemble an 8x8 grid of empty graphics placeholders. Group into container. Assign a separate movie clip (you need 64 of them, but some can be stills and some can be solids and some can be transparent.... ) to each graphic placeholder in the grid. Apply "page roll" effect to the container. Great - now you have a page roll of 64 clips playing simultaneously. (might need overnight rendering...)

Image quality superb, manual not very good.
Highly recommended and a lot of fun.

Integrates with vegas timeline - but the video from vegas
is not available to Heroglyph, so you can't see the background your compositing against.

/magnus

[Edward Troxel]

Plus, subscribers to the newsletter got a special price.

[Magnus Helander]

<<<-- Originally posted by Edward Troxel :
Plus, subscribers to the newsletter got a special price.
-->>>

I didn't know if that was topsecret eyes-only area 51 exclusive information, so I didn't mention it....

[Doug Turner]

Vegas might be resizing using Bicubic resampling... I have no idea if this is correct or not.

If I render out to HD 720p (WMV9 or MPEG-2), will this be lossless?

[Glenn Chan]

I think MB processes in 32-bit floating point while Vegas does not.

To check this:
In Vegas add 2 filters which are opposites of each other. i.e. HSL adjust
50% luminance and 200% luminance

you should see horrible banding show up.

[Edward Troxel]

Just good incentive to become a subscriber. If anyone wants to know about the special offer, just subscribe within the next few days and mention you would like to know about the offer where you can enter other information.

[Edward Troxel]

Different conversion algorithms are used for the different video rendering quality options, (which you choose from
Render as>[format]>custom>project.) You'll have the option of draft, preview, good, best.

Quality: Best
Scaling: bi-cubic/integration
Field Handling: on
Field Rendering: on (setting dependent)
Framerate Resample/IFR: on (switch dependent)

Quality: Good
Scaling: bi-linear
Field Handling: on
Field Rendering: on (setting dependent)
Framerate Resample/IFR: on (switch dependent)

Quality: Preview
Scaling: bi-linear
Field Handling: off
Field Rendering: off
Framerate Resample/IFR: always off

Quality: Draft
Scaling: point sample
Field Handling: off
Field Rendering: off
Framerate Resample/IFR: always off

------------------------------
Scaling:
------------------------------

These methods come into play when conforming sources that differ from the output size. They are also used when
panned, cropped or resized in track motion.

Bi-Cubic/Integration - Best image resizing algorithm available in Vegas. Quality differences will be most noticeable
when using very large stills or stretching small sources.

Bi-linear - Best compromise between speed and quality. This method will produce good results in most cases.

Point Sampling - Fast but produces poor results.


------------------------------
Field Handling:
------------------------------

This refers to the field conformance stage of Vegas's video engine. This includes Interlaced to Progressive
conversion, Interlaced to interlaced output when scaling, motion or geometric Video FX and Transitions are involved.
Skipping this stage can sometimes result in bad artifacts when high motion interlaced sources are used.


---------------------------------
Field Rendering:
---------------------------------

When the output format is interlaced, Vegas will internally render at the field rate (twice the frame rate) to
achieve smooth motion and FX interpolation.

---------------------------------
Frame Rate Resample / IFR (Interlace Flicker Reduction):
---------------------------------

Frame Rate Resample:

This kicks in when speed changes are made through Velocity Envelopes and/or event stretching. In can also be used
when up-converting low frame rate sources. This only kicks in if the resample switch is turned on _and_ quality is
set to good or best.

Interlace Flicker Reduction:

This kicks in if the event switch is turned on and quality is set to good or best. See Vegas' documentation for a
description of this switch.

Vegas will bypass any or all of these potentially expensive processing stages if the resulting output won't be
affected by the process (e.g. no-recompress pass-through, field render bypass when settings don't change and so on
...). Differences in the output between different quality settings may not always be noticeable, but that largely
depends on various attributes of the source media being used. If you want to see some of these differences first
hand, trying using extremely large or small sources or high-motion interlaced shots with extreme pan/crop operations.

Please note that you should never render your final project using anything other than good or best when interlaced
sources are involved unless the project only contains cuts. If preview quality is used, the resulting video will vary
between acceptable to disastrous depending on your project and its media content.

-----------------------------------------