Vegas Video discussions from 2006 (Q3Q4)

[Nate Weaver]

What you're looking at is the result of the D.P.s work, as well as the colorist. Film stock plays a part, but modern color-correction can do an awful lot.

I'm not familiar with the color correction tools available in Vegas, but here's a rundown of what I see in the color work in this vid:

-Midtones substantially warmed up
-Blacks elevated quite a bit, sometimes warmed up as well, sometimes bent towards cyan (band in the bar)
-General desaturation

I'll go out on a limb and guess you can do these things in Vegas.

Realize there's some subtleties of film response (toe and gamma) that have been pretty elusive when trying to make HD from say, a Sony F900, look like bad 16mm. You can get 90% of the way there, but the last 10% is difficult.

One of the things they're emulating in this vid is the look of 16mm transferred on an older telecine...possibly something before the advent of flying spot telecines.

[no jokes about The Killers being from Vegas]

[Josh Bass]

Ok, so I'll start at the beginning. I shot something on the XL2, in 24p 2:3:3:2 mode, in 16:9.

I edited the project on FCP, at a local production company's facilities, with whom I am friends (the purpose being to learn something about FCP in the process).

I exported the final cut to a Quicktime file, with the same settings as the project, and put it on a DVD.

I took said DVD to my house, where I have Vegas 6, and copied the file to my hard drive, the intent being to mess with it in Vegas 6 for my reel, or whatever.

In Vegas, I created a project using the settings of 24p DV Widescreen, and have tried making an AVI with those same settings, as well as Windows Media Player and Quicktime files. It just won't make it 16:9. . .keeps giving me a squished 4:3. I can't fingure out what I could possibly doing wrong. Can you guys help?

The various players all play it back as a 4:3 with the squish going on. How do they make the movie trailers in Quicktime that play in a 16:9 shaped player? why can't I get this to work?

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

[no jokes about The Killers being from Vegas]

Ah Nate, darn you, I was ready to pounce on that one.

Killjoy. (grin)

-gb-

[Rob Lohman]

Most movie players do not check for a 16:9 flag and always play it back at
an aspect ratio of 1.0. What they do with the QT trailers is pretty simple. They load up the footage in a 1.0 aspect ratio project and crop the output to
the 16:9 frame.

[John Rofrano]

Originally Posted by Derek Weiss

Something I'm missing?

Other than audio peaks, I’d say no. they should just appear unless you hit Esc by accident when you imported the media thus cancelling their creation.

Did you try using View > Rebuild Audio peaks (Shift + F5) to rebuild them?

~jr

[Jamie Walker]

I would like to change the layout of Vegas and I cant quite figure it out. I did search the forum and could didnt find what I was looking for. Can someone here help me out? thanks

[Edward Troxel]

Depends on what you're wanting to change. If you want the timeline on bottom instead of the top, that's a new option in Vegas 7 under Options - Preferences. If you just want to move a window around, just click on the dots going up the left side and drag to whereever you want it to be.

[Mike Kujbida]

And remember that you can save and recall up to 10 different layouts.

From p. 309 in the Vegas 7 manual (or p. 30 in the Vegas 6 manual):

1. Arrange the windows and docking as desired.
2. Ctrl+Alt+D; release the keys; press a number of your keyboard (not the numeric keyboard) to save the layout.
3. Alt+D; release the keys; press a number of your keyboard (not the numeric keyboard) to recall the layout.

Vegas 7 added this to the View menu (View > Windows Layouts).

[Phil Gosselin]

Hi all,


Well it had to happen, I had to play with HD content sooner or later so here it is.

I put together a demo that will be shown in a trade show wednesday. Will will use a HUGE 46in plasma tv. The owner told me that I should render my project in square pixel and progressive scan. Since all the files that I have were not shot in HD I had to set them all with those settings. Things are looking good in the preview window.

Now when I attempt to render the render window comes up and automatically the HDV 720-30p template is selected AND the Cineform codec is also selected in the video tab.

When I hit render theses black bars appear on the left and right of all images. Funny thing is that if I choose the NTSC DV codec the bars don't show.

Will these bars be visible when I watch the demo on that plasma tv ? or do I need to use the NTSC DV codec?

Thanks,

Phil

[Richard Hunter]

Hi Phil. When you render, there is an option "Stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox)". I suggest you check that and try the render again.

Richard

[Phil Gosselin]

Well Richard, I can't believe it, it was as simple as that.

Thanks :)

[Josh Bass]

My buddy somehow got it to work with his. . .


http://www.robertsonstreetproductions.com/Santino.wmv

Here's a clip I shot with the XL2, 24p, 16:9.


He has Vegas 5 (I have 6). His magic secret was to start a new project with the 24p DV Widescreen setting, and render a WMV file with the default template. When I try it, I get squished crap. I'm at a loss.

[Andy Entchev]

Sorry for bumping this topic, but I'd also like an answer to Emre's question.

[Marco Levi]

hi i am marco from italy, sorry for my bad english
i have a very important question about my configuration pc for editing to hdv format
with vegas 7.0


now my pc configuration is:

motherboard gigabyte ga-k8nf9 (chip set nforce4) fire wire 1394b (800) on board
cpu amd 64 bit 3200 venice socket 939
1 gb ddr400 2x 512mb kingstone case latency 3
1 video card ati x300 pci express 256mb
1 hd maxtor serial ata 1 160gb rpm 7200 (for program and s.o windows xp prof sp2)

2 hd maxtor serial ata 1 250gb rpm 7200 (for dati audio and video)
power supply enermax 430w


i think this pc configuration is not good for video editing hdv.

i wont more power for my pc

i think to change cpu to dual core amd 2x4400 (cache l2 1mb) or better 2x4800
i refused idea to buy 2x4600 because the cache l2 is only 512mb

i wont buy another 2 module ddr400 512mb

for have a total memory 2gb

the hd for video capture will be configured in raid mode ????

for video capture i will use firewire on my mother board.

what's thinking about my questions ????


thanks a lot marco

[John Rofrano]

Ciao Marco, I think you have the right idea. Adding a dual core AMD to your existing motherboard will definitely boost your performance for HD. I have the Athlon 64 X2 4600+ and it does just fine. 2GB of memory and a RAID will also help (that’s what I’m using).

You can see the specs for my PC for comparison on the PC Equipment page of my web site.

~jr