Vegas Video discussions from 2006 (Q3Q4)

[Don Donatello]

20 min is a short not a trailer !

if 3mgs was too big and 500k you don't like quality then try 1mgs ..

does you project have allot of movement ?
try - select 512k then CUSTOM - varible bit rate 2 pass ...then under bit rate change from 512 to 700k

[Don Donatello]

i prefer 24p slo mo vs interlace ..
i assume you are editing in 23.976 time line ..
sometimes slo mo is a bit smoother when you have your vegas preview window set to GOOD (auto or full) ..good/best forces V to resample while preview ( auto/good) does not force a resample .. the difference is resample has dissolves like between frames .. non resample just repeats frames .. i usually look at both and then decide which i like for that section ...note: if you decide you like the non resample then you'll have to either render using Preview quality or you right click on the video in TL - properties - then check the do not resample ...

[Ervin Farkas]

When a software does everything, it doesn't do anything right... sort of like mobile phones taking terrible pictures (take me for example: I upgraded from a 3 year old Nokia to the fantastic MotoRazor... looks sharp, sends multimedia messages, browses the internet, etc, etc, etc... but the audio quality is terrible compared to my ancient Nokia)!

Try a stand-alone compression software like Sorenson Sqeeze. Even the free Windows Media Encoder should do a decent job at 512.

[Dean Orewiler]

so if i'm buring to a widescreen project, I should check "stretch out to rendered media??" And what about the other box stating to save all rendered media box??
Just checking. I'll make sure I click on validate.
thanks
dean

[Seth Bloombaum]

I encode to WMV from Vegas all the time. You're not going to find better quality from Squeeze, Cleaner, etc. They do offer better workflows for various tasks, especially setting up big batchs, etc.

All these are built on the Windows Media Encoder. It's just a question of what WME controls they expose and what filters they add. Vegas exposes almost all of them, has a great set of filters, and allows encoding from the timeline, which I do frequently.

But WMV, as good as it is, is not a magic format. You still need to start with the audience - how will they see your short? Via internet? If so, 3 megabit per second is way too fat for most users to stream with acceptable waiting times.

Most of my work is between 200 to 500 kilobits per second for internet at 320x240 pixels.

But only you can decide what quality works best for your short, your audience, and the method you're using to deliver it to them.

See some WMV on the web you like, view properties and statistics on it (via right-click) and you'll get a better idea of what's working for people and whether you're making any mistakes in creating your renders.

OTOH, if this isn't for web distribution, or if you feel that your renders aren't looking as good as WMV should, give us more info about your content & settings.

[Justin Deming]

Here's another thing to consider. I read long ago somewhere that some burners will write hard to read DVD's if you burn at maximum speed.

I tested this a few days ago by burning 2 copies of a DVD I made, one at 8X, and one at 2X. I looked at the burned side of the DVD's, and on the 8X burned disc I can see rings. The 2X burned perfectly with no rings visible.

I don't know if this really means anything, but to me it indicates the laser was more consistent when it was burning slower.

This may help with players that are marginal, they should have an easier time reading a disc that was burned slower.

Anyone else have an thoughts on this?

[Dean Orewiler]

I want to put a few photos on my timeline - what size should I save them to?? I had 180 resolution on them, but I thought that may be too big....would 72 resolution be better??

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

It's not about DPI, it's about total number of pixels.
You could have a 55 x 100 image at a resolution of 72dpi, and it would look horrid.
You could have a 4000 x 4000 image at 72 dpi and it would look great.
You want to scale/scan the image so you have a minimum of 720h x 480 v for best results, regardless of the inch size of the image. You can over do it too, so shoot for not more than double the 720 value in either direction.

[Pete Peterson]

I'm doing sort of a compilation project, editing from lots of avi's (of which i am frameserving vdub to vegas). The problem is, all of these videos have different resolutions.

I don't know anything about pixels/ratios/square pixels etc, but i know the output video is not going to look like/match the input videos when i do final render. I don't expect perfection in render but I'm just trying to find some middle ground.

Can anyone experienced look at the following and try to figure out a project resolution that might be sort of
an average of the bunch and that will have the final output looking as close as to these inputs as possible.

Here are the resolutions

320 x 240
512 x 384
384 x 288
368 x 272
704 x 576
576 x 432
720 x 496
720 x 576

thanks in advance

[Gian Pablo Villamil]

Originally Posted by Justin Deming

Here's another thing to consider. I read long ago somewhere that some burners will write hard to read DVD's if you burn at maximum speed...

Anyone else have an thoughts on this?

Disks that I burn at 8x or 16x with Nero will play correctly on my own PCs and one of my DVD players, but often don't work on other systems.

DVDs that I burn at 4x play fine anywhere, so far. I only use DVD-R.

[Mark Bryant]

No – no need to stretch the media as it is already widescreen. Just use the widescreen template (e.g. DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen Video Stream). Actually it doesn’t matter if you select that box or not, this only applies when you are changing the aspect ratio (in this case it will either stretch of letterbox depending on your selection).

For your other question: Do you mean the box which says “Save project path as reference in rendered media”? I’ve not used this, but it allows you to return to the source project if you use the rendered file in another project. You don’t need to select this, and it has nothing to do with widescreen

[Jeff Toogood]

I have a clip that I am working on where there is a hair or something on my lens and it shows up pretty bad in a few shots.
The good part is that it is against a solid blue sky.
What is the easiest way to mask this out?

Thanks

[Magnus Helander]

We have successfully linked the Behringer control surface BCF2000 to Vegas using the standard "Emulated Mackie Control Device" setting in vegas.

The BCF is running in Mackie Emulation mode as a USB MIDI device, with no MIDI cables.

We are able to write volume and pan envelopes during playback using Automation Latch mode - (Touch mode seems to revert to 0db if there are no changes for a second or so... ) and the envelopes play back on the motorized faders.

There is a required firmware and USB driver update on the Behringer site.

/magnus

[Emre Safak]

I would use After Effects or Combustion. If you want to look it up, the technique is called rotoscoping. From your description, it should be easy if there is not much motion.

I transcode the video segment using a lossless codec, otherwise the rotoscoping application may use Microsoft's DV codec to render the file rather than Sony's, and the result will not be good.

[Sean Seah]

I swopped my DVD write to a Liteon recently and discovered the DVDs burnt cant be read on a DVD player, only on a PC. I will have to try burning at lower speed.