Vegas Video discussions from 2006 (Q1Q2)

[Bill Porter]

I often want to sync a clip relative to another clip in another track, for example, to match up to an audible beat in an audio track or to a visual cue in one frame of a video track. Without being able to "lock" these two clips together, when I edit things, I lose the match-up between the two clips; one stays behind in its same position.

Is there a way to lock them together, one frame staying with another frame in another clip, even if you slide them around, etc?

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

PCM (packaged as .wav files in PC) are by far the best for editing. .wav is the same as uncompressed vid, in that it's an uncompressed audio file, and less costly on the CPU. While a wav can contain compressed information (just like an avi can) it typically is not a compressed file format.
16bit/48K PCM is standard audio for video, 16bit/44.1K audio is standard for CD. High Def audio is still a .wav format, but sampled at 24bit/192k.

[Heath Vinyard]

Hey all.
I'm finally going to move to a 3 monitor PC setup. I have a Dell 8400 with an NVidia 6800 with dual outs (one analog, one dvi) that I use for two standard 19" LCD's. I'd like to add a 3rd HD monitor to the mix, utilizing an NVidia 7600 video card, using the DVI out for an HD monitor. In Vegas, I would use this as the preview window and the other two monitors as workspace.

Using Windows XP Media center, does anyone see a problem with this? The Dell is a P4 3.0 with 2G's of RAM.

Thanks.

Also, anyone know where I can get a decent 19" LCD HD monitor/TV with DVI?

[Edward Troxel]

Sure. Select them both and press "G" to "Group" them.

[Edward Troxel]

There are some limitations but the short answer is yes.

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by 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?

I used Swish and then Swishmax for website development. They have a great product for the price. I hope you can use it with Vegas.

-gb-

[Takis Takop]

look at this tutorial, i think it will help you
http://www.johnrofrano.com/tutorials/swishmax.htm

[Bill Porter]

Perfect-o. Thanks!

If I knew the Vegas terminology was "Group" instead of "Lock" or "Sync" I woulda been able to find that with the search feature and saved ya the trouble!

[Bill Porter]

I spent some time scouring the forums here with the search tool but I didn't really see anything that answered my question on the nose:

Does anybody know (based on statistics) whether more internet users can see .mov's vs. WMV's vs. Flash movies?

I'm wondering which one to encode to, for embedding in a webpage so the majority of users can see it.

[Eric Stromblad]

I had some footage on a DVD that was 2.40 aspect ratio. As you know, this is wider than widescreen (16:9). The result is large black bars generated on a 4:3 TV and small black bars generated on a 16:9 tv. I captured this video from my DVD player through the capture card into Vegas. Playing it at 16:9 (which is the best I can do), it captured the video with the small black bars included.

After editing it and then rendering to WS NTSC video, taking it into DVD architect and exporting a DVD with menu, it comes out the correct ratio, like it should....but....This is a 16:9 video with small black bars built into it. The problem is that when you play it back on a 4:3 TV you see the video, the built in black bars and the black bars that the TV itself renders to fit the video onscreen. TV's render anything from totally black to very grey bars....this clashes with the built in black bars. It's very distracting to see two different tones of bars around the video.

So, I tried cropping the clip from 720x480 to 720x363.63 and adjusting the project settings and rendering a file that size. This works - it renders a file of the correct size and porpotions which houses only the video itself and no black bars, so theoretically if you played it back on a TV - no matter WS or regular it would have to render the bars for whatever area is missing and therefore it would be uniform. Ok, so now the editing process is done correctly....

The only problem is DVD Architect. It freaks out and does not recognize any video which isn't any one of four different sizes (4:3, 16:9, pal or pal WS). It insists on recompressing the video to 16:9 which basically gives it an anomorphic stretch. This is not desirable because it doesn't look good on this footage and I can't afford the recompression time.

Does anyone know how to make DVD architect accept different aspect ratios? Or do I need to use some other authoring software? If so, what software can do this? There must be a way to author in these aspect ratios, because there's a ton of movies with them out there. Thank you so much if you can help.

First, here's a list of things I've already tried or that won't be options:

-I am NOT going to edit VOB files in womble.

-I am NOT going to convert mpg to avi and edit that.

-I know DVD isn't the greatest input source, but that's what I have to work with and that's what I'm going to do.

-I am not going to make a mask for the clip for the black bars. Every TV generates a different color - some black - and some grey and no matter what I do they won't match everyone's tv.

-I already tried cropping the clip down to where there are no black bars and rendering a normal 16:9 file. This is the same problem with the mask....it won't match every TV and everyone's different brightness settings.

-I cannot just adjust the settings on my TV until they match. This product will be seen by hundreds of different people and I can't just tell them to adjust their sets.

-I cannot just make a fake widescreen disc, because I want this to play on both kinds of TVs. I also cannot make two different versions.

-I already tried replacing the VOB of that file with the original MPG of the correct size....that's not going to happen, apparently.

[Dionyssios Chalkias]

All PC and some (many?) MAC internet users can see WMVs. This should be the majority by far.

[Peter Diamond]

David & Douglas, thank you for your responses. Can either of you, or anyone else reading this message, answer my question regarding bit rate:
-
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?
-
Thank you again!

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

The short answer is that if you're not going to do all the things you listed that you're not going to do, you're not going to get the DVD output you want.

you can have anamorphic widescreen.
you can have letterboxed widescreen.

Some television systems correctly read the flag; others don't. Some televisions require a resetting of menu options, others don't offer any control at all.
I know DVD Studio Pro would manage it the same way, so will DVD Workshop. Those two, and DVD Architect are all we author with, so can't comment on Reel, Scenarist, DVDLab, and some of the others. I don't work much with Encore anymore, but it too, would manage it something like DVDA is, based on previous versions.
Maybe someone else has a smarter answer than I do, but I'm thinking you're going to have to give up one of your "nots."

[Sean Seah]

I have attempted to use swish b4 but the outcome wasnt as good in terms of quality.. blufftitler does a better job but swish does have a lot more effects to offer...

[David Jimerson]

There's a workaround.

All anamorphic video burned on a DVD -- and this includes Hollywood DVDs, too -- is 16:9.

If a movie is 2.35:1 or 2.39:1 or 2.40:1 or wider, black bars are part of the picture. This is as true of the "Star Wars" DVDs as it is of the project I just burned yesterday.

The problem comes when viewing on a 4:3 TV. When you do this, most DVD players are set at default to letterbox anamorphic (widescreen) video. That is to say, the player will squish the anamorphic picture down to its proper 16:9 proportion and then add black on the top and bottom to fill the rest of the 4:3 screen.

These bars, at least in North America, are 7.5 IRE to match the NTSC standard of every 4:3 TV. Which is to say, they're a little bit gray and not true black.

If you crop the footage on your timeline to 2.40:1, what you're really doing is reveailing the empty timeline below. That timeline is black, but true black, 0 IRE black.

You render as widescreen, you get a 16:9 image with 0 IRE bars as part of that image.

The DVD player inserts 7.5 IRE bars above and below, and they look gray next to the 0 IRE black. You end up with those black-black bands. They can really stand out.

So, what you need to do is make those black bars -- which you can't avoid having in the picture -- match the bars the DVD player will add. So you have to make them 7.5 IRE.

You can do this a couple of ways. You can use a mask, but the easiest way I've found is to do the 2.40:1 crop, and then go to the Media Generator and lay a solid color UNDER the video. Use a black solid, but then go into its properties and change the R, G, and B values to 16 instead of 0. This is the digital equivalent of 7.5 IRE.

Assuming you're working in a widescreen project, the black card generated will automatically be 16:9. If you're working in a 4:3 project, crop it to 16:9. But it has to be 16:9 in order to fill out the image.

This will increase render time, but it will get rid of the black banding you're seeing.