Vegas Video discussions from 2003

Edward Troxel · December 26th, 2003, 09:44 PM

Interesting information. Thanks for taking the time to test and to post.

Matt McDermitt · December 27th, 2003, 01:14 PM

HI! Can anyone pretty PLEASE tell if if there is a way to increase the maximum file size when rendering an uncompressed file from the Vegas timeline? I need the answer by tonight if possible! THANKS EVERYONE!

-Matt :)

Glenn Chan · December 27th, 2003, 02:16 PM

What file format system are you using? Right click your HD in explorer and check properties. FAT has certain limits. There are 2 FAT formats which have 2GB and 4GB limits.

2- WHich windows are you running?

3- How big is your uncompressed file going to be?

Bruce A. Christenson · December 27th, 2003, 06:28 PM

Render to an NTFS formatted drive volume.

Edward Troxel · December 27th, 2003, 09:31 PM

Out of curiosity, WHY render to uncompressed? The main time this is necessary is when sending video to something like After Effects and then only small sections are usually necessary.

Depending on the purpose of the file, you *may* be able to use the frameserver software at http://www.debugmode.com

Stuart Kupinsky · December 29th, 2003, 08:08 AM

Assume for the moment that we are editing video destined for those with DLP projection TVs, LCD projection TVs, plasma displays, or front projection TVs (i.e. projectors in the real sense), some at regular NTSC-like resolutions but more often these TVs will be HDTV resolution.

Also assume we're not filming with an HD camera, but are using 16:9 upconverts from 4:3 (still not at HD resolutions though -- such as using an anamorphic adaptor on a 4:3 camera).

What should we use as a good second monitor during editing? No need to worry about legal signals; no need to worry about many NTSC standards? What about a 17in widescreen LCD computer monitor? What calibration tools would you want built into the display?

Boyd Ostroff · December 29th, 2003, 08:59 AM

What you describe is pretty much what I just did. I used a combination of computer animation and real video shot in 16:9 with a Sony PDX-10 (which has native 16:9 which would be comparable to the anamorphic adaptor you mention). We projected the results on a 40' wide screen using a 10,000 lumen Barco SLM-R10 DLP projector. I didn't do any upconverting to HD however, the projector does that internally (it has a native resolution of 1024x1280 I think).

For editing I used a 17" Sony SDM-V72W LCD monitor which is a 16:9 screen with a 1280x768 resolution. When I got it several months ago it was in the $700 to $800 range, but I think they're cheaper now. I really like this screen; it has inputs for VGA, s-video and component video. The s-video looks pretty good, but you get the best results driving it with component. I send DV from FCP over firewire to a Sony RDR-GX7 DVD recorder, and it transcodes to component video.

Now I have to say that the image on the 17" LCD screen was a very good approximation of what I really saw on the big screen with the DLP projector. In fact, we had a good Sony broadcast monitor up in the projection booth for previewing the video, and it really didn't look that much like the image on the projection screen (caveat: I made no attempt to calibrate that monitor). But I think you're on the right track about using an LCD screen for your application.

Just yesterday I was wandering through Best Buy (boy, that was a mistake so soon after Christmas ;-) and saw a Sharp 17" screen that seemed to have good specs, same resolution as the Sony but 600:1 contrast ratio (the Sony is 500:1). The Sharp also had a built-in TV tuner. No idea how good it looks though, but the price was $700.

Sony has just come out with a line of professional LCD screens that look very nice although $$$$. I'm sure this would be the way to go if you can spend a lot of money.

I'm not sure what you're talking about with "calibration tools built into the display"? Do you mean controls for brightness, contrast, color, sharpness, etc? They should all be available. I "calibrate" my display using NTSC color bars fed from my NLE, then used a primary blue color filter to adjust as per these instructions.

Now I note that you're actually posting this to the Vegas forum. I would think my comments are generally true as long as you're using firewire (IEEE 1394) to send output to either a camcorder or other converter which will feed s-video or component video to the screen. But I really don't know anything about Vegas or other PC software since I'm using a Mac. Seems to me that I've read other posts about colors appearing too dark on the PC screen in Vegas. If that's true then you probably wouldn't want to drive the external monitor with a PC graphics card (unless of course that's also how you're going to drive your projector).

Hope this gets you started in the right direction.

Stuart Kupinsky · December 29th, 2003, 09:08 AM

Boyd what terrific help. Thanks!

Peter Moore · December 29th, 2003, 05:14 PM

There are plenty of reasons to render uncompressed. It might be used in AE or 3DS Max, or something like that. It may be an odd resolution and you want a near-lossless compression but DV will only work at 720x480. I'm sure there are other possibilities.

Glen Elliott · December 29th, 2003, 08:15 PM

Building my first menu-based DVD with DVD Architect. Ran into some snags when I went to "optimize and burn". It's comprised of two clips- the main feature (56 minutes long), and the extras reel (roughly 13 minutes long). Video encoded at 7mb/sec constant, all audio encoded AC-3.

It is trying to recompress the main feature. I know it's compliant because I used the DVDA template to encode it. When I create a new project and just drop the main feature in the menu it's fine and doesn't report having to recompress. However as soon as I go and add a sceen selection- menu, despite still having plenty of room on the DVD it reports having to recompress all the pages of the sceen select menus (assuming it's for the thumbnails) including the original mpg2 it'self.
I went and tried adding the "extras reel" and inserted a sceen selection menu for that (beings it has 3 chapters)- that, oddly enough, works fine. It doesn't ask me to recompress the original clip once the sceen selection pages are up. The only difference between the "extras" and the "main" clip are the extras was encoded using the default bit-rate settings. The "main" clip was encoded at 7mb/sec constant.

Why would adding a sceen selection menu cause the original mpg2 to have to be recompressed?!

Glen Elliott · December 29th, 2003, 08:37 PM

Another thing it messes up on...

I'm using a short 20second video clip as the background for the main menu, set to loop. Tested it and it loops fine. As soon as I add an audio file it stops looping. It hits the end of the clip and goes black as the audio play on.

Is there a way to have a 20 second clip loop as a 3 minute song plays out?

Edward Troxel · December 29th, 2003, 08:51 PM

#1: It's trying to recompress after you add the second piece because the second piece is making it too large to fit on the DVD. Try doing the initial encoding at 6 instead of 7.

#2: The background video and audio MUST be the same length. Otherwise, the video will go to black until the audio finishes. Then they will both start over.

Edward Troxel · December 29th, 2003, 08:55 PM

It just seems that in most cases, people who "say" uncompressed really mean "DV-AVI". Bottom line, with NTFS, the file size limit on an uncompressed file should be the size of the hard drive.

Glen Elliott · December 29th, 2003, 09:21 PM

Ed...regarding #1 thats what I thought. Though if I *only* place the "main" clip on the first menu and only add a sceen selection from that it still looks to re-encode the original clip. Even though I'm only using 89% of the DVD capacity!

Don Donatello · December 29th, 2003, 09:47 PM

if you are out of HD space for those HUGE uncompressed clips you might try rendering out to a QT uncompressed using the animation codec ( at 100% it is 4:4:4:4- less then 100% it is 4:2:2)
20mgs vs 30mgs (uncompressed ) .. for even smaller LOSSLESS 4:4:4:4 clips try out the microcosm codec clip size approx 6-8mgs vs 30mgs uncompressed ...

for more on codec's

http://www.onerivermedia.com/

then click on CODEC resources -excellent info/test on codec's

December 27th, 2003, 01:14 PM	#1772
Matt McDermitt New Boot Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Hollywood, CA Posts: 21	Vegas 4 Uncompressed file LIMIT!! HI! Can anyone pretty PLEASE tell if if there is a way to increase the maximum file size when rendering an uncompressed file from the Vegas timeline? I need the answer by tonight if possible! THANKS EVERYONE! -Matt :)

December 29th, 2003, 08:08 AM	#1776
Stuart Kupinsky Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Princeton, NJ Posts: 82	Second Monitor; The New World; Tubes-be-gone? Assume for the moment that we are editing video destined for those with DLP projection TVs, LCD projection TVs, plasma displays, or front projection TVs (i.e. projectors in the real sense), some at regular NTSC-like resolutions but more often these TVs will be HDTV resolution. Also assume we're not filming with an HD camera, but are using 16:9 upconverts from 4:3 (still not at HD resolutions though -- such as using an anamorphic adaptor on a 4:3 camera). What should we use as a good second monitor during editing? No need to worry about legal signals; no need to worry about many NTSC standards? What about a 17in widescreen LCD computer monitor? What calibration tools would you want built into the display? __________________ DVX100A/AT4071a/Vegas/After Effects Dual 2GHz Xeon PC

December 29th, 2003, 09:08 AM	#1778
Stuart Kupinsky Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Princeton, NJ Posts: 82	Boyd what terrific help. Thanks! __________________ DVX100A/AT4071a/Vegas/After Effects Dual 2GHz Xeon PC

December 29th, 2003, 08:15 PM	#1780
Glen Elliott Wrangler Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 2,898	Vegas+DVD help! Building my first menu-based DVD with DVD Architect. Ran into some snags when I went to "optimize and burn". It's comprised of two clips- the main feature (56 minutes long), and the extras reel (roughly 13 minutes long). Video encoded at 7mb/sec constant, all audio encoded AC-3. It is trying to recompress the main feature. I know it's compliant because I used the DVDA template to encode it. When I create a new project and just drop the main feature in the menu it's fine and doesn't report having to recompress. However as soon as I go and add a sceen selection- menu, despite still having plenty of room on the DVD it reports having to recompress all the pages of the sceen select menus (assuming it's for the thumbnails) including the original mpg2 it'self. I went and tried adding the "extras reel" and inserted a sceen selection menu for that (beings it has 3 chapters)- that, oddly enough, works fine. It doesn't ask me to recompress the original clip once the sceen selection pages are up. The only difference between the "extras" and the "main" clip are the extras was encoded using the default bit-rate settings. The "main" clip was encoded at 7mb/sec constant. Why would adding a sceen selection menu cause the original mpg2 to have to be recompressed?!

December 29th, 2003, 08:37 PM	#1781
Glen Elliott Wrangler Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 2,898	Another oddity Another thing it messes up on... I'm using a short 20second video clip as the background for the main menu, set to loop. Tested it and it loops fine. As soon as I add an audio file it stops looping. It hits the end of the clip and goes black as the audio play on. Is there a way to have a 20 second clip loop as a 3 minute song plays out?

December 26th, 2003, 09:44 PM	#1771
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	Interesting information. Thanks for taking the time to test and to post.

December 27th, 2003, 02:16 PM	#1773
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	What file format system are you using? Right click your HD in explorer and check properties. FAT has certain limits. There are 2 FAT formats which have 2GB and 4GB limits. 2- WHich windows are you running? 3- How big is your uncompressed file going to be?

December 27th, 2003, 06:28 PM	#1774
Bruce A. Christenson Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Forest Grove, OR Posts: 122	Render to an NTFS formatted drive volume.

December 27th, 2003, 09:31 PM	#1775
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	Out of curiosity, WHY render to uncompressed? The main time this is necessary is when sending video to something like After Effects and then only small sections are usually necessary. Depending on the purpose of the file, you may be able to use the frameserver software at http://www.debugmode.com

December 29th, 2003, 08:59 AM	#1777
Boyd Ostroff Wrangler Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Mays Landing, NJ Posts: 11,801	What you describe is pretty much what I just did. I used a combination of computer animation and real video shot in 16:9 with a Sony PDX-10 (which has native 16:9 which would be comparable to the anamorphic adaptor you mention). We projected the results on a 40' wide screen using a 10,000 lumen Barco SLM-R10 DLP projector. I didn't do any upconverting to HD however, the projector does that internally (it has a native resolution of 1024x1280 I think). For editing I used a 17" Sony SDM-V72W LCD monitor which is a 16:9 screen with a 1280x768 resolution. When I got it several months ago it was in the $700 to $800 range, but I think they're cheaper now. I really like this screen; it has inputs for VGA, s-video and component video. The s-video looks pretty good, but you get the best results driving it with component. I send DV from FCP over firewire to a Sony RDR-GX7 DVD recorder, and it transcodes to component video. Now I have to say that the image on the 17" LCD screen was a very good approximation of what I really saw on the big screen with the DLP projector. In fact, we had a good Sony broadcast monitor up in the projection booth for previewing the video, and it really didn't look that much like the image on the projection screen (caveat: I made no attempt to calibrate that monitor). But I think you're on the right track about using an LCD screen for your application. Just yesterday I was wandering through Best Buy (boy, that was a mistake so soon after Christmas ;-) and saw a Sharp 17" screen that seemed to have good specs, same resolution as the Sony but 600:1 contrast ratio (the Sony is 500:1). The Sharp also had a built-in TV tuner. No idea how good it looks though, but the price was $700. Sony has just come out with a line of professional LCD screens that look very nice although $$$$. I'm sure this would be the way to go if you can spend a lot of money. I'm not sure what you're talking about with "calibration tools built into the display"? Do you mean controls for brightness, contrast, color, sharpness, etc? They should all be available. I "calibrate" my display using NTSC color bars fed from my NLE, then used a primary blue color filter to adjust as per these instructions. Now I note that you're actually posting this to the Vegas forum. I would think my comments are generally true as long as you're using firewire (IEEE 1394) to send output to either a camcorder or other converter which will feed s-video or component video to the screen. But I really don't know anything about Vegas or other PC software since I'm using a Mac. Seems to me that I've read other posts about colors appearing too dark on the PC screen in Vegas. If that's true then you probably wouldn't want to drive the external monitor with a PC graphics card (unless of course that's also how you're going to drive your projector). Hope this gets you started in the right direction.

December 29th, 2003, 05:14 PM	#1779
Peter Moore Trustee Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Arlington VA Posts: 1,034	There are plenty of reasons to render uncompressed. It might be used in AE or 3DS Max, or something like that. It may be an odd resolution and you want a near-lossless compression but DV will only work at 720x480. I'm sure there are other possibilities.

December 29th, 2003, 08:51 PM	#1782
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	#1: It's trying to recompress after you add the second piece because the second piece is making it too large to fit on the DVD. Try doing the initial encoding at 6 instead of 7. #2: The background video and audio MUST be the same length. Otherwise, the video will go to black until the audio finishes. Then they will both start over.

December 29th, 2003, 08:55 PM	#1783
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	It just seems that in most cases, people who "say" uncompressed really mean "DV-AVI". Bottom line, with NTFS, the file size limit on an uncompressed file should be the size of the hard drive.

December 29th, 2003, 09:21 PM	#1784
Glen Elliott Wrangler Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 2,898	Ed...regarding #1 thats what I thought. Though if I only place the "main" clip on the first menu and only add a sceen selection from that it still looks to re-encode the original clip. Even though I'm only using 89% of the DVD capacity!

December 29th, 2003, 09:47 PM	#1785
Don Donatello Hawaiian Shirt Mogul Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: northern cailfornia Posts: 1,261	if you are out of HD space for those HUGE uncompressed clips you might try rendering out to a QT uncompressed using the animation codec ( at 100% it is 4:4:4:4- less then 100% it is 4:2:2) 20mgs vs 30mgs (uncompressed ) .. for even smaller LOSSLESS 4:4:4:4 clips try out the microcosm codec clip size approx 6-8mgs vs 30mgs uncompressed ... for more on codec's http://www.onerivermedia.com/ then click on CODEC resources -excellent info/test on codec's