Vegas Video discussions from 2006 (Q1Q2)

[Gary Kleiner]

Drag your video file from the explorer onto the menu. You can rename the button "Play" if you like.

Preview the disc with Ctrl/F9 to see if it's how you want it.

Gary

[Edward Troxel]

Take a look at Vol 3 #1 of my newsletters. In that issue I show multiple ways to split screen.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by Josh Hausman

Hey all, question here. I'm very new to Vegas 6.0, but my next project is, hopefully, going to have a shot with multiple instances of the same character. I shot several instances of him as a test without moving the camera, but I'm having trouble combining it.

The only way I've discovered so far is to lay down all the tracks of the characters, and then using the cookie cutter effect to cut a circle around a character, replacing the rest of the shot with the next one down. However, these shapes don't leave a lot of room for error, and there's got to be a better way to do this.

Can I get help in easy, layman's terms for a noob?

You can find several methods of accomplishing this at:
http://www.vasst.com/search.aspx?text=split%20screen

[Josh Hausman]

Edward can you please direct me to the appropriate tutorial? I can't seem to find the pertinent information in the link you supplied.

[Louis Meyer]

My brother and I are shooting a feature movie with a Z1 (HDV) , and editing with Vegas. Our immediate goal is winding up with the highest resolution movie possible on DVD.

Should we shoot in 60i, 50i or what to wind up with the highest resolution DVD possible?

Anybody have the experience to answer this question?

Thanks

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

If you shoot 50i/CF25, you'll get the closest-to-film cadence and blur that the Z1 offers. If you know how to shoot with the slower shutter, I'd do that if you're after that sort of a look. Otherwise, shoot at 60i, and you'll have the highest temporal and spatial resolution available to your DVD. Shooting at 50i/CF25 reduces temporal resolution, but again...lotsa people like that look. For many projects, I prefer to do it in post if I'm going to a framerate output different than my acquisition framerate.

[Louis Meyer]

Thanks, Spot, for your prompte reply. We're taking the 60i option. After we finish the DVD version of the movie, we'll show it around and if it is well-received, the next step would be to transfer to 35mm film.

We'll have editing questions for this forum, when we start editing (probably in June.

Thanks again.

[Ray Boltz]

Smooth on my old P4 2.66GHz 1 gig of ram ATI 9500/9700 Sony VAIO.

[Edward Troxel]

In the Newsletter Archive section, load Vol 3 #1. Then look at the article "Ways to Split Screen".

To make life easier, you can download most of the newsletters at once via:
http://www.jetdv.com/tts/tts.zip

[David Newman]

60i is not the best mode if you intend a film transfer. As the 60Hz motion conversion to 24p is tricker than 50Hz to 24p (or 25Hz to 24p is better still.) Also a 60i DVD and 24p film have completely different motion characteristics, normally you would select one look for all your outputs, but I don't know if you project would benefit for the 60Hz motion (sports and reality TV looks do, drama doesn't normally.)

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by David Newman

60i is not the best mode if you intend a film transfer. As the 60Hz motion conversion to 24p is tricker than 50Hz to 24p (or 25Hz to 24p is better still.) Also a 60i DVD and 24p film have completely different motion characteristics, normally you would select one look for all your outputs, but I don't do if you project would benefit for the 60Hz motion (sports and reality TV looks do, drama doesn't normally.)

Most film transfer facilities prefer 60i or 50i because they've all invested considerable research and effort into making 60i/50i transfer well. DFG (Digital Film Group), one of the leaders (and who many major production companies use) have a great white paper on how they prefer media come in. They prefer 60i over 50i, because it's a more common need, but we've done two projects that have been acquired in 50i, and they looked stunning when transferred.

All that said, film transfers for most of us will be a thing of the past very, very soon. More than 50% of the films here at Sundance this year are digital projection, and at the producers summit day before yesterday, aside from the Cinemark dedication to be all-digital over the next 24 months, so are many major chains going to be. They're enthusiastic about it for numerous reasons, but bottom line is...this is where it's all heading. Listening to the discussions, it was almost comical and certainly serious deja vu, as I clearly recall the debates of CD vs vinyl back when the Sony 1630 became so common for master output. It's almost verbatim the same discourse. "44.1 vs 48k=24p vs 60i. Analog has sweet harmonic distortion and pushed dynamics=film has greater latitude and depth of color.

[Ron German]

Ok, supposing I`m interested ALSO in getting a final product in 24p NTSC (besides the 24p filmout), and I opt for shooting 50i and use Vegas (5 in my case), what should be the workflow (with Vegas) to deinterlace the footage edit it and obtain the NTSC 24p printing it to tape?
Thank you
Ron

[Fred Foronda]

Do you guys convert both the video and the audio on vegas time line into cineformavi thats supplied with vegas6? I was thinking of just doing video since it will render less data.

[Josh Hausman]

Wow these are great, thank you sir.

Also it actually wasnt that hard to find the newsletters, I was just a bit not in my right mind last night ;) , so sorry about that.

[Lee Kennedy]

Heya's

I'm a new HC1E owner from Perth, Australia. I have Vegas Studio+DVD platinum. Used to get between 15-25 fps for previews dependent on how many streams are going for SD DV. With HDV the max I'm getting is 5fps on just one stream. I figured my PC might only just make the mark before getting into HDV, and while I'm sure you can edit with 5 fps previews, it will be hard.

So I'm trying to figure out what to upgrade. I currently have:

AMD Athlon 64 2800+ (yes a 2800+ ath 64 did exist)
512mb RAM (Hynix)
128mb Geforce FX5900
1x 80gig, 1x 200gig HDDs (both non SATA)

I've read 3D video cards make no difference with vid editing, so I figure mine should be fine. Hard drives should be fine, though I guess SATA drives might help a little bit.

The cheap way out I thought would be buying another 1gig of RAM. Though I've heard conflicting reports on wether RAM actually makes much diff with native HDV editing. Would getting another gig of memory make the difference I need?

I've read HDV is mainly processor dependent (with all the compression going on), which would mean hefty upgrading if I was to do that (i guess a dual core ath 64, new mainboard...and therefore a new vid card seeing my current card is AGP no PCI-E, and new memory). Almost a whole new computer.

Does this sound like the only option to get usable performance? Am I being unreleastic about editing native HDV without using the best of everything computer wise? Is there any websites with lots of info on real minimum requirements of native HDV editing and what hardware it relies on most?

I really don't want to have to buy and use one of those Cineform plugins as I'd rather use that money towards hardware which would be useful for audio production as well and other applications (while the Cineform plugin just helps HDV editing).

Also...could doing a offline/online situation work. Capture the HDV footage as SD DV, edit it, then recapture the final product as HDV? Would this work in Vegas studio?

Thanks