Vegas Video discussions from 2003

[Bruce A. Christenson]

I'm using the external monitor preview function via my camera (firewire to camera to monitor). My project was recorded using a regular 4x3 camera, but I shot protected for 16x9. I set my project properties to NTSC DV Widescreen, and used 'match output aspect ratio' in the clips' pan & crop settings, and placed the 16x9 window where I wanted it for each clip.

When I view the footage on the external monitor, I see the anamorphic 4x3 view of the footage, not the letterboxed 16x9. Is there anyway to view the footage letterboxed 16x9 using external monitor preview?

Thanks
[bac]

[Glenn Chan]

Use the motion/cropping controls and apply letterboxing. Use that as a guide for taping some black stuff to your monitor. No rendering...!

[Bruce A. Christenson]

I restarted Vegas, and now the external monitor shows the letterboxed 16x9. Maybe it was a glitch?

[Brian Maier]

Ok, so im trying to encode a mpeg 2 to burn to dvd. It is 2 hours and 5 minutes long. After trying a few different bitrates i have gotten the file down to 3.7 gb and it still will not fit on a 4.7 gb dvd what is the deal with that?? Does anyone have some suggestions for settings to get 2 hours on a dvd. Im using the regular Vegas 4 without dvd architect.

[Edward Troxel]

Check out my newsletter at http://www.jetdv.com/tts. One of the issues has a bitrate chart.

[Peter Jefferson]

consider that a constant bitrate of 6000kbps is 1hour and ten minutes flat which fits directly to a DVDr.

then u can calcualte from there...

i also use this bitrate calculator, however nothign is trully accurate when you consider that you also have the file system config to fit, as well as motion menu, audio etc etc...

for optimal video at this long duration, i would suggest u use ac3 stereo at 384bps, one hour and 10 mins will be less than 300mb

[Peter Jefferson]

oh and here is the calculator


http://www.dvd2dvdr.com/Files/bitrate/BitrateCalc/BitrateCalc2.html

[Brian Maier]

"for optimal video at this long duration, i would suggest u use ac3 stereo at 384bps, one hour and 10 mins will be less than 300mb"

AC3 is just the audio right? Do you encode ac3 seperatly from the video and put them together later or is it all done at once. I havent had a chance to play with it since i only have the regular version of vegas.

Thanks for the links guys i have a better idea now of what i need to do.

[Edward Troxel]

You render TWICE in Vegas: Once for the video (to MPEG2) and once for the audio (to AC-3). The DVD authoring program will then use both of those files.


As an alternative, you can render to a standard DV-AVI file and import that into the authoring program. Then it would be up to the program to render the video to MPEG2 format and the audio to AC-3 format.

2 hours 5 minutes with AC-3 audio and reasonably simple menus would need an average bitrate of about 4,600,000 to fit.

[Brian Maier]

Thanks for the help!

[Edward Troxel]

Take a look at Issue #7 of my newsletter http://www.jetdv.com/tts for the full bitrate chart and more info on using Vegas and DVD Architect to create DVDs.

[Brian Maier]

Yah i found that after a little googling but the reason i was asking here was i dont have dvd architect or ac3 encoding(without plugin upgrade). But i just ordered dvd architect so no worries. thanks again.

[Kevin King]

I'm looking for a quick way to create a blur / censorship box to overlay a video track (in this case used to blur a licence plate). I need to be able to pan the box around with keyframes as the subject moves in the frame.

I'm getting pretty good at basic editing in vegas, but haven't tried any effects / masks / parent-child frames or any of that yet.

There's got to be a tutorial out there for this as it's a pretty common effect - just haven't had any luck finding one.

oh, it's Vegas 4 if it makes any difference.

Thanks.

[Josh Bass]

Oooh oooh. . .I know this one! Okay. . .I'm a little rusty, so hopefully my comrades here will fill in the wrong or missing info, but:


Whichever clips you want to do this effect on, copy the video layer, and paste it on another track above itself, so that you have two identical clips one above the other. This is where I get a little hazy--

You'll now want to apply the cookie cutter effect to one of the two duplicate clips, and a blur (or pixellate or whatever you're using to censor) to the other--I can't remember which goes on the top and which goes on the bottom. The way it works is that the cookie cutter allows the blur to "peek" through, and by moving the cookie cutter shape around, you move the censor blur. Make sense? I've done it before---not for a while though.

I'm sure there's other ways, but that's how I would (and have) done it.

[Tor Salomonsen]

Josh is right. Put the blur on the top track.