You can use the Pixel Tracker in Bauhaus Mirage to lock a pixel down and motion stabilize your footage. I’ve used this on HDV footage and it works quite well. Here is a link to the pixel tracking tutorial on their web site. This is just a fraction of what this tool can do.

~jr

1. I dunno, I can't help except that maybe you've selected Manual Post-Edit Ripple and the system is waiting for you to do something it can Ripple and then it will highlight the button to let you Ripple. Vegas manual page 110.

2. See Edward Troxels' Newsletter and page 285 in the Vegas manual. The Newsletter Index is here.
Vol 1 #02 - March 2003
Creating a PIP using Track Motion – Part 1
Vol 1 #03 - April 2003
Creating a PIP using Track Motion – Part 2
Vol 1 #04 - April 2003
Creating a PIP using Track Motion – Part 3

3. Add a Volume Envelope to the Audio track, create two points at the beginning of where you want the volume to ramp down and two more at the end where you want the volume to ramp back up. Then just pull the Volume line down between the center two points. Page 163 in the Vegas manual.

these all look complicated.

i bet you can create a cheaper alternative john! =). doesn't vegas itself have some rudimentary motion trackings?

Tracking is not a rudimentary task at all! It's an important branch of compositing and rotoscoping. An art unto itself.

thank you!
 

really appreciate all of you taking the time to answer
cheers
Q

Boyd,

Which DVD recorder do you use?

Monitor Preview always 4x3 ?
 

I mostly (always, really) do 16x9 projects. Everything works fine in Vegas 6 except that the preview monitor on the desk top squezzes it to 4x3. I have a dual monitor set up, display 1 is a 19" Sony LCD, display 2 is a 17" Sony CRT. If I have the preview on "external monitor" toggled on, it displays on the 17" crt monitor - but in an exagerated wide format, soomething like stretching 16x9 to 2.35 or more. What is more interesting is that if I undock the Vegas monitor and move it to display #2, it displays in correct 16x9 format. Both monitors are operating at 1280 x 1024. Project properties are NTS DV Widescreen 720x480, Pixel aspect 1.2121 (NTSC DV Widescreen). Any one else have this problem?

Heroglyph or BluffTitler
 

I'm in the process of trying to decide which one to purchase. Is the video quality of one better (jaggies on text) better than the other? Any advice from anyone who has used these pgms would be appreciated.
thanks in advance

Try right-clicking on the preview monitor and checking "simulate output device aspect ratio".

Have you tried them both? It would be best to find which one works best for you/matches your workflow. For example, Heroglyph integrates directly into Vegas while BluffTitler is a standalone. As for quality, they should both do a great job for you.

hdv to HD for Vegas Movie Platnum?
 

I've been admiring the works of Nicholas Bartlett on the FX-1 forum.

It's amazing what he is doing with his FX and his Kona LH card. Check out http://www.pixelloft.com/akala.htm. I like the video and the way he shoots for his FX-1. You can check out his 3LFlex music video for "behind the scenes" shots to get a better understanding of lighting for a camera.

This got me to thinking about working in the HDV format...

If everything I've heard of and read about is correct. It's easier to work in HD format than in the HDV format. It should be easier to edit in Vegas 6.0, as well. How about on the Vegas Movie Platnum? Is there a work around to work in HD on the Movie Platnum version? The comparison chart for Vegas shows that only the Pro version supports HD editing. Platnum only supports HDV.

Using my ATI Radion X900 card which supports HD component in, I should be able to record HD content.

While this would not be a Kona card, should it work about the same for capture? I mean compression wise, 4:2:2 color, etc...

Again, I have only used Vegas Movie Platum to edit HDV content, once. Right now, I'm just working in Standard DV with the system and I don't have access to 6.0 and don't want to install a demo version to test this.

24P DVD's Don't Play
 

I'm in a delima here. I decided to buy DVFilm Maker in order to convert the 60i footage shot with my PD170's to 24P. I'm not doing this for the love of 24P or anything. I like 60i fine but I need to pan and scan on some footage I have in a current project and DVFilmMakers conversion of interlace to progressive was the best I've seen for the price. Plus I get the added advantage of faster render times. (If you don't take into account the conversion process :-))

So I converted all my footage and rendered out a MPEG-2 for DVD Architec 24P. When I get the final DVD burned it won't play at all on Sony PlayStation or any of the the other stand alone dvd players I have here at the house. The menu comes up and you can select scenes but when you start the video it runs a second or two the pauses about 3 to 5 seconds and repeats. The 60i NTSC version I rendered doesn't do this. I can run the 24P dvd off my hard drive or computer dvd drive. Am I wrong in assuming normal DVD players can handle 24P? I guess they have to be progressive scan?

I have had problems with stuttering 60i DVD's before but found if I burned them at the slowest speed available (2.4x) they would play normally. I burned these on -R's and +R's of three different brands (Maxell, Memorex, and Sony - they all probably came from the same manufacturer in Taiwan.) and there was no difference in the stuttering on the 24P version.

I'm whipping out a 60i MPEG-2 version of the 24P project to try now. It is projecting more that 12 hours render time when the 24P went for 2.5 hours.

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong???

Vegas 5. DVD Arch 2. LiteOn 812s with a firmware patch up to an 832S now. I tried new firmware but it made no difference.

Add to Media Generator?
 

I have a PNG "lower third" graphic I use all the time. Instead of using the Explorer and navigating to it for each new project, I'd like to make it a permanent part of the Media Generators tab. Is this possible? I'm using Vegas 5.

All Hollywood movies are laid down to DVD in 24p, so the 24p isn't the problem. This has been the case since the early days.

Maybe you just had a bum render when you tried the 24p version? Could have been a glitch somewhere? Can you try rendering the project from DVDA again?

Maybe it was a bad burn? Did you try burning the 24p project to a different disc?

Maybe it was a defective disc?

Unless you deleted it, you should still have the prepared 24p project on your HDD, so you could try another burn.

HDV is a form of HD, so the question is whether you'd benefit from converting to some other HD codec. If your video card has HD component in then you'd have to know what format it uses to capture and edit HD video, and that might not be any better than working directly in HDV.