Save me from R.S.I....

[Gerald Webb]

Hey people, Ive been doing a few longer projects and a few things are really sapping my time, and cramping my mouse hand. Im hoping someone has some better ways.....
1. CC. Say you have a multi cam project, one of your cams is 10 files (spanning, turn on turn off, or whatever). This cam needs a general adjustment, say a bit brighter to match the other cams.
I thought I was onto a solution by nesting the whole cam in another project , then importing the veg and CCing just once to the veg. It worked a treat,
BUT,
come render time it was hideous, Cineform 1080p rendering at 3 to 4 frames a second compared to non nested being almost real time.
I cant believe I cant copy and paste CC in the BIn, you have to go through and do each file individually. Best I could do was save each cams CC as a filter package, then apply that to each cam file in the bin.
Is there a way to apply FX to all files in one bin? Do one, copy, highlight all then paste.
Is there a plug in to do this?

2. Titles made in After Effects, saved as Lagarith with alpha channel.
Every one when brought into Vegas has to be right clicked, properties, media, etc..... 7 mouse clicks to change alpha channel to straight from none. 7 click isnt a big deal just once, but 40 times is painful.
Tried saving in properties, but because its for an avi, it doesnt seem to work.
any helpful ideas are really welcome.

[David Jimerson]

1) Put all of those clips on the same track and apply the FX to the track.

2) No way around it. I do almost all of my titles in Vegas itself and rarely come up short.

[Edward Troxel]

1. Track FX don't work in multi-cam mode. You need to apply the FX to the MEDIA on the Project Media tab instead. Or you can apply it at the event level and use a 3rd party multi-cam option such as Excalibur or Ultimate S.

2. Select them ALL and then use a script (once again, such as Excalibur or Ultimate S) to change the alpha channel mode on all of them at once.

[Edward Troxel]

In fact, here's "AlphaChannelAllMedia.js" which will change the alpha channel on ALL media in the project to the desired setting:

/**
 * This script will modify the alpha channel in the current
 * project's media pool.
 *
 * Written by Edward Troxel - www.JETDV.com
 * Revision Date: Dec. 16, 2005
**/
import System.Windows.Forms;
import Sony.Vegas;


//var AType = VideoAlphaType.None;
//var AType = VideoAlphaType.Straight;
var AType = VideoAlphaType.Premultiplied;
//var AType = VideoAlphaType.PremultipliedDirty;

try {
    var mediaEnum = new Enumerator(Vegas.Project.MediaPool);
    while (!mediaEnum.atEnd()) {
        var media = mediaEnum.item();
        // only add the effect if the media object has a video stream.
        if (media.HasVideo()) {								
		var mediaStream = media.Streams.GetItemByMediaType(MediaType.Video, 0);;
		mediaStream.AlphaChannel = AType;
        }
        mediaEnum.moveNext();
    }

} catch (e) {
    MessageBox.Show(e);
}

[Gerald Webb]

thanks guys,
Ive been pretty happy with the built in multi cam, but this is prob the deal breaker. Which one is better Edward, Ult S or Excalibur? :)
Titles in Vegas are fine, but there is just a whole other world of options in AFX. Ive said it before and Ill say it again, Where is the Sony version of AFX that works with Vegas, would be so good to jump between the two like AFX and Premiere.
Is there a way to turn off auto keyframing of track FX? It would be much better if it worked similar to Project media FX, The way it is now, every time you tweak an FX at track level you have to delete the other keyframes made before if you just want a general adjustment.
With that script Edward, I cant choose to apply it to an individual track only? Would there be a prob in trying to activate the alpha channel on premultiplied video clips? or not.

[Edward Troxel]

You're asking me which one is better.... I'm not exactly unbiased since I wrote Excalibur... :-)

That particular script will do all media in the project but it could be modified to work with only selected tracks or events. I think you could just run it an all would be fine anyway! Load one of your projects, run it, and and see if it affects anything other than the clips you expect it to affect. If the clip doesn't have an alpha channel, there should be no change anyway.

[Leslie Wand]

gerald,

they're both great plug-ins, but it's rare you get an almost instant reply from an author!!!!

personally excalibur gets my number one vote, with ultimate a very close second ;-)

[Gerald Webb]

Originally Posted by Edward Troxel

You're asking me which one is better.... I'm not exactly unbiased since I wrote Excalibur... :-)

I knew that, I was just playing.
Thanks Leslie, I guess thats 2 votes for Excalibur.
:)