A little Vegas help please?

[Tim Cee]

I was hoping some one could help me with a couple of questions about Vegas Pro 8.

1- I am using a Canon XHA1 on all footage. I was wondering the best way to render clips for re-use in different projects. In other words? I drag the raw clip onto the time line, I make all the needed edits, then how do I save or render that clip, and where do I save it for re-use in it’s edited form for other projects in Vegas Pro?

2- Is there an FX or editing feature in Vegas Pro similar to the Highlight/Shadow tool I use in PS3 for my still images that works on my video clips? Some thing that brings down the highlights and can also bring up the shadows?

3- Other than the standard issue FX that come in VP, what do you all suggest as an add on set of FX that will easily merge into the FX library in VP along with the VP FX?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Chris Barcellos]

1. Storage of edited material is an ongoing issue for most of us. If it is needed soon, I would leave it on a hard drive somewhere. If not, you might consider rolling it back off to tape. Just personal choices surrounding your particular circumstances to consider.

2. Check out Levels, and Brightness and Contrast FX. Levels is what I use most for that purppose. there are also saturation and gain controls in Color Correction.

3. Really depends on type of work you are doing. Last week, for instance, I finally had a project I needed better keying for, and I tried out New Blues keying program. If you have are dealing with bad sound, a free program called Sound Soap is great. A program called Excaliber provides a lot of benefits for handling repetitive tasks. Neat Video will reduce Noise in badly lit scenes.

I'm looking forward to a day that Colorista II is available for Vegas.

Also, you might want to consider Cineform's Neoscene to use as an intermediate codec, to provide you with a better editing experience.

[Tim Cee]

Hey Chris, Thanks for the reply. I see I was not as clear as I could have been.

1- I was wondering how to go about saving an edited clip for re-use in other projects. My question was after I edit the footage, how should I save it? Do I render it? If so what render settings do I use to have minimum loss for re-use? Then where do I save the edited clip for easy access when needed?
2-I will try your suggestion here.
3- I need more options for video FX or plug ins as they are called, not so much audio.

Anyone else have any suggestions on these questions?

Thanks again,

Tim

[Chris Barcellos]

1. Okay, This is what I use Cineform Neoscene for. I convert to Cineform at capture, edit with it, then output to it for storage and future use. The Cineform codec provides a stable file that will not deteriorate as badly in successive edits and rerenderes as hdv mpg2 does. If you don't use a commercial intermedieate codec, try rendering to Sony YUV HD files under the .avi format. Obviously you can render back to the HDV file type which is under the Sony mpg2 file type in the render selections. That will give a file close to your original structure and size, but will be more subject to loss on successive renders.

3. Frankly, for most purposes, you can do just about anything you want with the FX capabilities on board. Things I have added to Vegas are on an as needed basis, and are readily available for download. There are a lot of free versions of things out there to. DeShaker is one that comes to mind. For commercial type check out New Blue stuff here. Its just a matter of what you really need to do, for your area, and your haven't said much about that.

NewBlue VideoFX | Video effects and transitions plugins for Avid Liquid, Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Corel VideoStudio, Pinnacle Studio, Sony Vegas, Canopus Edius and other video editor

[Mark Stavar]

Originally Posted by Tim Cee

2- Is there an FX or editing feature in Vegas Pro similar to the Highlight/Shadow tool I use in PS3 for my still images that works on my video clips? Some thing that brings down the highlights and can also bring up the shadows?

"Sony Color Curves" are your friend when it comes to tweaking shadows and highlights. I'm confident it will give you what you are looking for.

marks

[Bruce Phung]

To save your edited footage for future projects is best to saved in lossless form (lossless codec). I personally like Neoscene but cost $99. Or you can try the free lossless codec Huffyuv or Lagraith. Lagraith create the small in size but decode is slow. Huffy is larger in file size but much faster in rendering compared to Lagraith. Neoscene is faster and decoding very smooth. My choice of lossless codec. But there are few more others as well.

1) Neoscene ( render fast and playback fast)
2) Huffy ( render fast playback better)
3) Lagraith ( render very slow and playback

[Tim Cee]

Mark, Thanks! I will experiment with that a little more.

[William Boehm]

so chris..if you use deshaker, before you import the cineform into vegas, do you change compression? how do you save the Y color scheme to RGB that virtual dub uses, ? to minimize the least amount of loss to the codec after deshaking? i understand that vegas also uses the rgb color scheme. thanks

[Tim Cee]

Originally Posted by Bruce Phung

To save your edited footage for future projects is best to saved in lossless form (lossless codec). I personally like Neoscene but cost $99. Or you can try the free lossless codec Huffyuv or Lagraith. Lagraith create the small in size but decode is slow. Huffy is larger in file size but much faster in rendering compared to Lagraith. Neoscene is faster and decoding very smooth. My choice of lossless codec. But there are few more others as well.

1) Neoscene ( render fast and playback fast)
2) Huffy ( render fast playback better)
3) Lagraith ( render very slow and playback

Bruce or anybody? Does Vegas Pro 8 have any lossless form of saving an edited clip in it? It seems to me it should. All I want to do is edit a clip then save it for re-use in other projects with little or no loss. Much like in still imaging, saving an image as a TIFF file for lossless re-use.

[Bruce Phung]

Tim,

Vegas Pro 8 does have Cineform but it is an old intermediate codec and lossless, it is a very old codec compare to today new lossless codecs. It is under AVI and drop down down, you'll see it. I don't use Vegas Pro 8 any more, so I don't remember well but I know it is there in V8. Or you can try the free lossless codec DNxHD, it is very good and very fast. Neoscene and DNxHD are my two favarites codecs to use.

[Garrett Low]

Tim, if you really want to preserve the quality you could always save your vegas project (.veg) and bring that into your future project as a nested project. With the exception of a true uncompressed file you will theoretically have some loss in any codec you render to. Most of the good lossless codecs can withstand several generational edits but you will eventually notice a degradation especially if you're doing heavy color correction.

Lagraith is a good intermediate but as mentioned takes more computer power to make run efficiently. Huffy isn't bad but the issue is that both require a lot of storage space (fairly large files will be created with either of these codecs). I've used Cineform for years and find it is a really great product. For me it is well worth the cost. As Bruce mentioned Lagraith and Huffy are free. Huffy is pre-installed with Vegas but I don't think Lagraith is. You can find it by Googling it. If you really don't mind about the size of the file just render as an uncompressed AVI. The file will be huge but it will give you the closest thing to a true lossless file. (For you techno geeks like me out there I say closest thing because in theory AVI files still do some computations based on color space and I don't know if Vegas has the equivalent of smart rendering for AVI's, much like TIFF files take raw data and apply a processing to interpret the raw data).

As for making color corrections I would try Levels first. One of the easiest ways to adjust it is to turn on y our scopes and use the waveform monitor to make sure you stay within limits. Another good tool is to use the Secondary Color Correction. You can select based on a number of parameters and make fine adjustments to the selection. If I just want things to "pop" a little more and I need to do it quickly I will usually use the Color Curves and just create a very slight "S" curve. Again checking the waveform to make sure I'm not blowing anything out or crushing too much. I stay away from Brightness and Contrast as much as possible as this seems to introduce a lot of undesirable artifacts.

A big thing to remember is to make sure you are working in the correct RGB space (computer or studio). Going to this post: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/what-hap...r-monitor.html will get you started on some research into this issue. The article by Glenn Chan is very good and there is a really good article on the CineForm discussion board regarding this too.

A major issue you may encounter if you are trying to raise the shadows a bit is the introduction of noise. Neat Video does a very good job of removing noise from the video and is an invaluable tool for me in these days of HD low light shooting. There is a free noise reduction plug in that I tried once and it did a pretty good job (especially for free!) but I can't remember where I found it. It was on a site by someone who had created a bunch of free plug-ins for Vegas. If you Google it you may find it.

Garrett