Vegas Video discussions from 2006 (Q1Q2)

[Rob Lohman]

I haven't looked at those links, but it should work fine. I've done editing work
on an external harddisk without problems. I would however use the USB2 interface instead of Firewire, this to ensure no problems between the harddisk and the camera when you capture / preview / playback (as I had).

[Mark Burlingame]

I have been using an acomdata 250GB firewire drive to capture video to Vegas from my DVX100a by plugging the camcorder into the drive and the drive into the computer. Works like a charm, no problems or dropped frames. My computer is an Asus p4p800 deluxe with a P4 2.4C cpu. I am using the onboard firewire controller. Mark

[Edward Troxel]

I have an external drive that I've connected via USB and Firewire. I use it firewire for normal usage (USB was when connecting to another machine). I go computer --> firewire --> hard drive --> firewire --> deck. With this setup, I can capture from the deck to the external drive.

[Rob Lohman]

Edward: that's the exact same setup that caused problems with my Maxtor drive and a Canon XL1S. Any reason you are using firewire instead of USB2?

[Edward Troxel]

I've heard that setup does not work well with some cameras - seems to be especially true with Canon. It has worked great with my deck, though, so I saw now reason to go USB.

I picked firewire over USB because firewire needs less system resources (i.e. cpu power) than USB. Plus, it simply worked the way I expected it to work. Capture, print to tape, external preview... all have worked great with my Panasonic AG-DV2000 deck connected piggy-back to the drive.

[Darryl Grob]

Amen. I did, we all did. You will love it. Darryl

The tradeoff with quality and bitrate is heavily dependant on the type of footage you are encoding.. You cannot simply say 8000kbps is good for all things..

If you have a rock band on stage with lots of lights fading up and down and erratic movement i would say 9000kbps + is required to get it looking good. Even then i would be interested to see how it may look on newer TVs which are unforgiving with artifacts..

But if you have 2 hours of the clouds moving across the sky you could probably use 2000kbps and it would look exact same as 9000kbps cause nothing is changing too fast.

[Brian Child]

I am getting a repeated error message when trying to set up an MPEG-2 render in Vegas 6.0(d). I am hopeful that someone out there can let me know what I'm doing wrong.

Here's what I'm doing:

1. Capture native HD 720p at 24 (23.976) fps from the HD100 to Vegas;
2. Convert from the captured .m2t files to .avi files using Connect HD;
3. Insert the avi files to the video tracks and complete the edit per usual workflow in Vegas (I delete the audio tracks as audio is not necessary for this project);
4. It's render time, so I hit the "Render As... " command. I want to render to an mpeg-2 file, so I select that option in the "Save as type ..." window;
5. Oddly (at least to me) the "template" that pops up in the template window is "HDV 720-25p" - but my source material is 24p, so I hit the "Custom" button which takes me to the Custom screens. I change HDV 720-25p" to "HDV 720-24p" which then (properly, in my view) Vegas' description of the project is "Use this setting to create an HD 720-24p MPEG-2 file" - which is exactly what I want. Video rendering quality is set to "Best";
6. I then go to the Video Tab. The settings that appear here (most of which I don't even pretend to understand) are: output type (ATSC) (which I change to "MPEG-2" because that's what I want outputted) which consequently automatically changes all the variable bit rate settings to 9,800,000. The other settings in this tab are Width (1280), Height (720), Frame Rate (23.976), Aspect Ratio (16x9 Display), I-Frames (15), B-Frames (2), Profile (Main Profile), Level (High 1440 Level), Field Order (Progressive Only), Video Quality (15 on the slider);
7. I go to the audio tab and uncheck Audio;
8. I click OK, taking me back to the main rendering window. Having named the file to be saved, I click OK (hoping it will render) - but as soon as I do I get the Vegas 6 pop-up message "An error occurred while creating the media file ... The reason for the error could not be determined".

Any thoughts?

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

The template is ignorant of your project settings, to start with.
Second of all, how are you planning/where are you planning to author the DVD? Currently, DVDA doesn't support HD output, so it will recompress your file anyway.
You are creating (I think) another HDV file when you're choosing these options, but you're violating the specs for the stream. If you are looking for output on a DVD that can be shared with friends, you need to render to a 720 x 480 file using the NTSC 24p template. That'll give you what I believe you are looking for.

[Brian Child]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

The template is ignorant of your project settings, to start with.
Second of all, how are you planning/where are you planning to author the DVD? Currently, DVDA doesn't support HD output, so it will recompress your file anyway.
You are creating (I think) another HDV file when you're choosing these options, but you're violating the specs for the stream. If you are looking for output on a DVD that can be shared with friends, you need to render to a 720 x 480 file using the NTSC 24p template. That'll give you what I believe you are looking for.

Douglas, thanks very much for your reply.

The project will never be authored to a DVD and it will be used as an MPEG-2 demo on my (and possibly other) computer and also uploading it for web access. In short, Vegas' decription of my choice of settings in the "project description" box is exactly what I want - an HD 720-24p MPEG-2 file.

I suppose that I could render the project as an .m2t file, but that would limit me in being able to burn the file to a disk and dropping it into another computer that only had Windows Media Player installed and not VLC media player or equivalent.

Please bear with me here, because I'm very new to the HD100 and editing its product in Vegas.

[David Tyler]

Is there any way of displaying the original date and time of clips on the timeline in Vegas 6.0d? I've been used to seeing this automatically in Windows Movie Maker but can't find any reference to this info in either clip properties or media manager. I convert the original caputed .m2t files into avi for edit purposes by the way, (replacing later for final render).
Thanks

[Rob Lohman]

I've written about this before for DV, not sure if it works with HDV. Give it a try?

A friend of mine found out that you CAN see the original date and
time your footage was recorded (from the DV file) if your camera
saves this! As some may know besides time code extra information
like date and time (which is used to automatically split files during
capture for example) is also present inside DV files.
To view this information in your project do the following:

1. go to your media pool

2. select views -> details (the little icon above the media pool with a little grid and an arrow pointing down, click on this little arrow)

3. now the mediapool will change to a column view.

The third column from the end is "Date/Time Stamp" which is the
date/time the DV camera gave to the file.

Came from this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=20830

(it is a sticky thread in the SD Vegas forum)

[Peter Diamond]

Hello fellow Vegas geniuses (I’m actually still an amateur though),

I have a couple of questions regarding sound. I understand that mp3 formats compress the sound files and that there are other formats that don’t. This naturally results in some quality loss after each render. Here are my questions:

1. Which file format is best for editing? I have been told that avi is best for video, but what is best for audio?

2. I noticed that most programs typically render mp3 files at a constant bit rate instead of a variable bit rate by default. I have been told that variable bit rate is more efficient that constant bit rate for mpeg and I assuming that it is for mp3 as well. It just puzzles me that most programs don’t select “highest quality” for the mp3 files by default but they select constant bit rate. Is there some big disadvantage to variable bit rate?

I appreciate your valuable time to answer my questions. Please feel free to leave me any additional information that would be useful or links to sites that you think would help educate me better in this area. Also, do not hesitate to add a response even if someone else has. The more responses I have the better.

Thank you so much.

~Peter Diamond

[David Jimerson]

"Best for editing" can mean a number of things.

Highest-quality native editing would be the native format of whatever you're editing. For DV, best quality will result from editing in DV.

An AVI file can be DV, and Vegas captures DV as AVI. But AVI is just a file format; it's not a codec or a standard. An AVI can be highly-compressed or uncompressed.

But if you're working with HD, editing in HD might not be "best," because your computer might not be up the challenge of moving all of that information around. In these cases, it's often "best" to work with an intermediate codec so that you can preview in real time, or even play the timeline at a frame rate above 4 at all.

As for audio, use the best-quality codec/format (sometimes it's both) you can. WAV files are typically far less compressed than MP3s, if at all, so WAVs are typically superior.

[Kevin Crockett]

I was looking for a simple and inexpensive way to do nice title effects when a friend mentioned swish max.

My question is does Vegas 5 support flash files made with swish and if it does do you just place them on the timeline like any other piece of media?