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?

Render a composite animation/video
 

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.

Intangible VEGAS advantage
 

<<<-- 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!

wmv
 

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?

Instant Vegas 5 by DSE
 

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. 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

new Vegas 5.0 d
 

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.

Is it possible to mix audio channels to particular level?
 

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.

Vegas scrolling while dragging an event SLOOOW
 

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?

Vegas slow mo killed my project...
 

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..

ive had 3 HDD's fail with Vegas due to copious amounts of rendering.. ive lost 500+ hours worth of work and now im in teh process of recapturing those tapes (lucky i keep my vidcap files..) so hopfully i can reproduce these projects some time..

Vegas is VERY tough on drives.. more so than any other NLE...

install DVDA and register from another machine..

launch the HTML on the instaled system

ive had many people call for support on this one....

this was posted ages ago, you shoulda asked me this when i saw u man!!

One thing about the ram render is that it can cause problems. Its a known issue with newmagic (distributor of VEgas in Aus.. )

anyways... right now, with 1gb ram, u have 895mb to spare for ur ram render..

BUT if u set it full ball, u may inadvertantly kill off ur pagefile allocation as ur ram render cache is higher than ur allocated pagefile for vegas.. then u get stack dump errors during rendering..

ideally for 1gb, 520mb will offer a stable render.. i used to get HEAPS of crashes and wasted alot of time not knowing what the problem was until i took the time to track my pagefile activity....

1gb, drop it to 520 ish.. 2 gb, 1gb ram render should be ok...

im waiting for a render to finsih now, hence the multitude of posts.

I solved the problem quickly by downloading the newest version from sony.

Intermittent problem outputting to external monitor...
 

I've been experience difficulties getting an image outputting to external monitor recently. I'm actually editing PAL footage for once so I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

FYI: I'm outputting to Sony PVM 14 L5/1 production monitor, via a DSR-11 deck (switch to PAL mode).

I have everything up and running my footage on the timeline and I hit the "preview to external monitor button" and get nothing. So I turn the button off- then try again. Nothing again. I go and change the output setting to "Draft (auto)" and try a third time...nothing for about 5 seconds then FINALLY get an image.

Is this nomral. Why am I having problem getting a signal to my production monitor all the sudden. Does the footage being PAL have anything to do with it? I don't recall having this problem with my normal NTSC footage.

Also every so often when I hit the "preview to external monitor" button everything freezes and my cursor becomes an hourglass. The only way to "un-freeze" it is to turn off my device I'm using to output to external monitor whether it be my deck or a DV camera. Is this a known issue also?

Vegas and Sound Forge
 

If I use Sound Forge with Vegas, will it place my Sound-Forge-edited-audio (taken straight from the time line from off of Vegas with the "Open in Audio Editor" function) back into the same position as it was before it was edited? Just how seamless is this process? Hope this question makes sense, thanks.

When you return to Vegas, it will be added as a TAKE to the original audio clip.

Does that mean that it will be added on a new track?

No. It is added as a TAKE to the original audio. Both are on the same track in the same position. You can swith back and forth between them (when it is selected) by pressing "T".

Takes allow you to place multiple items in the same event and easily switch between them.

Ahh, I understand, thanks! I will be ordering Sound Forge soon, because I need to "clean up" my dialogue for my feature.