Vegas 11 Quantize to Frames or not

[Ray Turcotte]

Hi All

I have a technical question about Vegas 11 and quantize to frame boundaries on the time line.

I do mostly multi-cam shooting of live musicians and use video from varying video sources, that are not synced together in any way. Up to now I've been snapping to frame boundaries, which is the default Vegas mode of editing.

However, if i turn off quantize to frames, I can exactly match the audio tracks (and Video tracks) together, and produce a much better in sync product.

I read somewhere in the documentation this can lead to problems with rendering and transition effects, which is why the quantize to frame boundaries is the recommended setting.

Has anyone had issues in Vegas 11 when quantize to frame boundaries is off? Is there a better way to match and edit multiple video sources that are not time coded together?

Thanks

[Edward Troxel]

When dealing with video, ALWAYS leave Quantize to Frames turned on!

If you want to adjust the audio individually, that's fine You're not going to see a sync issue of a half a frame anyway. By default, Vegas pro 11 will adjust audio only without quantizing anyway but you would need to unlock it from the associated video.

[Ray Turcotte]

Thanks for your answer thats good to know.

Is it possible to shift the audio track from it associated video track and re lock it to its new position?

I ask this as in the past I've had issues where the audio track for some reason becomes offset from the video (without me realizing it) and it cost me lots of editing time sorting it all out.

[Mike Kujbida]

Originally Posted by Ray Turcotte

Is it possible to shift the audio track from it associated video track and re lock it to its new position?

Click the audio event to select it and press u to ungroup it from the associated video event.
Once it's in position, click it again, shift+click the associated video event and press g to group them back together again.

[Ian Stark]

I'm curious to know a) what the issues are with turning quantizing off and b) if there are issues, what is the benefit of being able to turn it off in the first place? Why would one want to do it if it is only going to cause problems?

[Leslie Wand]

a. you might not cut on a frame edge.

b. you can shift audio sub frame increments

[Nicholas de Kock]

I've always edited my videos with Quantize to Frames turned off to sync them precisely & I've edited hundreds of videos without any issue. Never actually gave it any thought until now.

[Edward Troxel]

Similarly, I've always edited with Quantize to Frames turned ON, synced audio with it on, and never noticed an issue. Who's going to hear a half frame audio difference? Now, a frame or two - you can definitely here - but a half frame (at worse case and should have 1/4 frame or less)? If it averaged 1/4 frame, that's 1/120th of a second!

I have heard many instances where people had video doing strange things. Many times it turned out they were editing with Quantize to Frames turned off and were NOT cutting the video on frame boundaries which is something you definitely do not want to do.

[Ian Stark]

Leslie/Edward - thanks for the explanations. Makes sense. I'm like Nicholas - I've always edited with quantize off and never had a problem, or even thought about it. I completely see the potential risk though so I'll see how I get on with quantize on, just switching back on the odd occasions I might want perfect sync with audio.

[Nicholas de Kock]

Mind you my Vegas crashed quite randomly while I edit, wonder if Quantize to Frames could be a reason.

[Edward Troxel]

Another thing to note: if audio is not grouped with video, it will automatically adjust without "quantize to frames" in recent versions of Vegas. So audio by itself already allows sub-frame adjustments. So if you simply turn on "Ignore Event Grouping", you can move the audio sub-frame without touching the video. Just remember to turn off "Ignore Event Grouping" when you're done.

[Ray Turcotte]

Originally Posted by Edward Troxel

Who's going to hear a half frame audio difference? .

Musicians do! I edit live performances and mix from multiple audio feeds. Having the audio perfectly matched is important when filming fast moving fingers....So this discussion has been a great help to me.

As a followup, I made this 3 take music video here.

George-Painted Corners Video.mp4 - YouTube

I turned off Quantize to frames. and having the switch off, made a difference in matching the parts together. However, there are no transitions or cuts involved. The Veg would render out on my main desktop workstation fine, but would not render out on a laptop, until i turned off GPU rendering. (I lost a lot of time figuring that one out). That experience prompted me to ask this question as most of my projects are more complex than that Video.

[David Jimerson]

Editing with Quantize to Frames off can lead to horrible, horrible resampling of the video.

[Ray Turcotte]

Thanks David, thats the kind of feedback I was looking for..

Could you expand on your statement?

While I know re-sampling can be turned "smart","forced" and "disabled", I have no clue as to what those switches do or problems they cause.

[David Jimerson]

If you don't quantize to frames, your video frames may not match up with the frame stops on the timeline. In order to line things back up for the render, Vegas may have to resample your footage to match. This can mean that instead of rendering whole frames from your video, it may blend or interpolate frames, leading to ghosting or possibly interlace artifacts (all depending on your footage and what you're rendering as).

You can see all this on your timeline; frame edges are marked by triangles in your footage; if they don't line up with the frame markers on the timeline, you may be in the danger zone; it'll be worse the farther off they are.

Keep in mind that all of this can be a particular nightmare if you're throwing ripple edits and mixed frame rates into the mix. Oh, I made a horrible, horrible mess of a project once.