Vegas Video discussions from 2006 (Q3Q4)

[Magnus Helander]

I'm the owner of a Decklink Extreme PCIe, and have done some research in the area

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/for...ssageID=489694

Hi Hanz,

Thank you for your email which Victoria forwarded to me.

You asked, "Why Are these things impossible for the Vegas but the
Adobe Premiere is able to manage them? If you support the Vegas
also, you should make a new drivers which would be able to manage all
that."

The answer is that Premiere Pro 2.0 has a plug-in architecture and
Vegas 7.0 does not. In other words, when we update our drivers to
include new features, refinements to features or bugfixes, we are
able to provide compatibility to Premiere Pro so that it can
immediately take advantage of these enhancements.

By contrast, Sony Media Software do not provide a plug-in
architecture to Vegas 7.0. It is a closed system and they have
specifically written Vegas 7.0 to use our DeckLink 5.6 drivers which
have now been superseded by several driver versions which might or
might not work with Vegas. We have no control over how Vegas 7.0 uses
the DeckLink drivers and that is why you can only capture to an 8-bit
YUV movie and not to other formats such as DV or our new Motion JPEG
support. We introduced Motion JPEG support in our DeckLink 5.7
drivers and were able to ensure it worked in Premiere Pro. However we
have no way of adding this new feature to Vegas 7.0 and so the only
solution is for Sony Media Software to update Vegas 7.0 to take
advantage of this new feature.

Sony Media Software have announced that they support SDI capture and
playback with DeckLink cards using DeckLink 5.6 drivers and Vegas
7.0a. They have also verified the use of analog video monitoring.
However they have not verified the ability to capture via analog
connections and we do not believe this works well. Unfortunately we
cannot help to add analog capture support as the architecture of
Vegas does not enable us to do that. The export to tape issue is
another one that is outside of our control.

It's great that the Vegas team have included SDI support in Vegas
7.0a using DeckLink cards but unfortunately that support is limited
and there is nothing we can do to enhance the experience for Vegas
users given the closed architecture of Vegas 7.0.

It is for this reason that we have been lobbying the Vegas team to
adopt an open plug-in architecture. This would require a substantial
change to Vegas but, if Sony Media Software were prepared to do it,
we believe we could offer Vegas and DeckLink users a greatly enhanced
experience with many more features to make your workflow easier, more
flexible and fun.

I would encourage you to contact Sony Media Software with your
observations and let them know you would like Vegas to automatically
take advantage of new DeckLink driver features by adopting a plug-in
architecture. If enough people request the same feature, hopefully
the Vegas team will implement this most desirable change in a later
version of the software.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Ted Wiersmaa]

Hope I am in the right area here.
I have footage that I added sound to in the audio track. Between each narration that I added, I put a blank 2 second audio clip to give it some break so I did not sound like I was rambling. Which I do anyways, but then relized that 2 seconds was not enough. So I created a 4 second blank audio clip to replace all the 2 second ones in the timline.
The problem I am having is, when I select all the events in timeline (The Blank 2 sec clips) and replace with the 4 sec one, the name in the project media file changes to the new 4 sec clip, but the time in the audio track still plays 2 seconds. Is there some type of adjustment button that allows the new 4 second clip to adjust the audio timeline or something to allow the full 4 seconds to play.

Dang, hope not confusing everyone here...

thanks
ted W

[Matti Remonen]

To my understanding you'd need a script to do this. When you replace the material, Vegas shows only the length of the take it was originally. Material is there, but only 2 secs worth is shown.

[Ted Wiersmaa]

So then when I compile it should pick up the 4 sec breaks I put in. When I play back at this point, the 4 seconds is not there when I listen to it.

Do you think I should somehow go in and replace each one individually ?

Thanks
Ted W

[Mike Kujbida]

Besides Vegas, I've only used one other NLE (dpsVelocity) so I can't say whether they all have this same feature (top track priority).

Since your needs appear to be somewhat limited, you may want to look at Vegas Movie Studio+DVD. It's only 4 tracks of video and 4 tracks of audio. More info (and a comparison to the full version of Vegas) is at http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/Pro...FeatureID=8357

If you feel that you need the extras provided by Vegas (unlimited tracks, scripting, 5.1 surround sound, advanced colour correction, etc.), there's an upgrade path available.

(30 day?) trial versions for both are available. With the help of other folks here, I don't think your learning curve will be steep at all. I use Vegas at the community college I work for and I can have students up and running with only a few hours of instruction.

I've always found Vegas users to be very helpful and more than willing to help other users so feel free to ask any more questions you may have.
Good luck with your decision.

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Lynne Whelden

(For example, as I recall from FCP, when you drop an insert onto the time line, the replaced video isn't "seen" anymore. I don't like that.)

You can do it any way you like in FCP...the insert shot can live on a track above the "base" track, or you can insert it on the same track as the other cuts.

Putting the insert shot on the same track as the others facilitates faster editing because you can then use ripple/slip tools to trim thing to your liking in one step...not the multiple steps it would take if you're using 2 tracks.

But honestly, whatever works for you is what you should do :-)

[John Huling]

Does anyone have a good recommendation for a laptop setup for Vegas 7.
I have a Sony 1.8 Centrino from last year Single chip. Pretty darn slow at rendering etc. HD. I have a 2.5 duo mac from Jan of 2005. It is fast.
Would a duo core Sony Vaio 2 mhz make a significant difference? I am not sure but I think the RAM limit is 2 Gigs. on the Sony and 3gigs on the new Mac laptops

[Lynne Whelden]

Again--wow, I appreciate getting this sort of "inside" look at Vegas. And thanks for telling me about the various offerings besides the full-blown suite.

Regarding the inability to ripple when an insert is parked on another track, is that the case for both Vegas and FCP? I think I'd accept the extra work over not seeing the video. But on the other hand, in a long program with many many inserts, that could become a nightmare after awhile.

[Torrance Colvin]

Whenever I attempt to load my .veg file, it gets to 6% of opening the project, freezes for a while, and then I get an error message indicating: "vegas70.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

The only thing I can pinpoint is that it happened after I downloaded a trial version of Cineform ConnectHD 3.3. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Vegas. I also reverted back to the Cineform 3.01 codec. Nothing seems to work.

I can open Vegas and save a new .veg file and reopen it without any problem. The .veg file I am having problems with is 1,441KB and includes roughly 90 minutes of edited footage. The majority is Cineform converted files. A few clips were the actual m2t files.

I also tried to restore windows back to a previous date. It went through everything, rebooted, and then indicated that I was unable to revert to that previous saved date. Now it only allows me to reboot back to today.

Any suggestions?

[Enrique Orozco]

OK... I need to mix & edit HDV 1080i clips (Sony FX1) with 720-30p clips (JVC HD100) to obtain a NTSC-widescreen (normal) DVD.

Is it just drop the clips on my timeline and work with them ?
What settings are recomended for my working project ? Can be NTSC-widescreen as the final mpeg2 render will be, or Do I have to set properties to any HDV template (720-30p maybe in this case) and then render to mpeg2-widescreen ?
What if I want 24p final DVD (I know how with DV clips, but not sure with HDV) ?

Regards

[Carl Downs]

If I have a Region on my timeline how do I find out exactly what the total "time" of that region is? Ive tried right clicking, menus... can't find anything that tells me the total time of the Region. Best scenerio would be if I right clicked the region and it said, "this region is 00:00:10:23 long" I need to know for scoring music...

[Matt Setnes]

is there anyway to disable video preview in the timeline...not the video window. I 'm speaking of the trims in the timeline. I do believe if I could disable this, it wouldn't chuckle once in a while

UPDATE:
Fixed. Ctrl+Shift+W And it increased my preview performance

[Mike Kujbida]

Double click above the timeline in the area between the region markers.
Look at the far right of the 3 timing windows (just above the preview window). It's called "selection length" and will tell you what you're looking for.

Originally Posted by Sean Seah

Holy smokes.. it took me nearly 48hrs to render 110min of m2t.

That feels about right. Hour long HD videos (Vegas 6) rendered to Real were taking about 18 hours on a SCSI P4 2.8 GHz (.wmv's went a little faster).

Switching to a dual-dual-Opteron (four 2.6 GHz cores) dropped the time (Vegas 7) to 100 minutes. I'd kind of given up on HDV until the new machine. The faster chips restored editing responsiveness as well (no debilitating lags). Some of the difference could have been Vegas 7 Vs. 6, but it was probably the chips.

Vegas may be limited to four cores (can't get the "render threads option" to go beyond 4 on 6 or 7).

[Edward Troxel]

You can also go to "View - Edit Details", select "Regions" as the item to show, and it will show all details for all regions.