Vegas Video discussions from 2003

[Bruce A. Christenson]

OK, here's what I'm doing. Tell me what I'm doing wrong or why this is happening.

1) Import clip onto timeline. Clip was not captured with camera 16x9, it's just a regular 4x3 clip.
2) Use pan & crop to crop using 16x9 preset.
3) Render, select DVD MPEG-2 for DVD Architect, NTSC preset.
4) Go into custom settings for preset, set aspect ratio to 16x9.
5) Render MPEG-2. While it is rendering, it looks 'squashed' in the preview window (but that's OK, because preview window is 4:3), and there are very thin black bars on the left and right.
6) Watch MPEG-2 in PowerDVD DVD viewer software on the computer, and there are those pesky, very thin black bars on the left and right.

Why are these bars there?

Thanks
Bruce

[Josh Bass]

Have you tried selecting the material you want to print, then goint to Tools/Print Video to DV tape? I've never used the capture utility to print.

[Tor Salomonsen]

This is a topic in the Sonic Foundry Knowledge base, item # 1418

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/support/...9&DetailID=879

I usually render to an .avi first and then print that to tape with the capture app. It works very well.

One problem many people have reported (myself included) is that Vegas does not appear to "see" the camera or device at the end of the IEEE 1394 cable. To this day I don't know exactly what was wrong. A couple of re-installs and some throwing out of applications (that I suspected might have laid undue claims on the link) did the trick.

Oh, there should be absolutely no difference between printing to tape from the timeline or via the capture app. But if you plan on doing it several times, having the .avi rendered on your drive will save time, naturally.

[Edward Troxel]

Were the bars there when looking at the 4:3 clip straight? Probably. I know my XL-1 has black bars on both sides of the image - about 4 pixels on each side.

[Josh Bass]

Could you email the "digits" for your 16x9 preset? I never even thought of that--I've been laying a premade .png file over the video. Does your preset squash the video, or just lay black bars on top of it?

[Bruce A. Christenson]

I right click on the clip, select the pan & crop, a new window opens up. From the pull down menu, there are a few options, default, 1:1, 4:3, 16:9 (widescreen), and 1.85(?):1 (academy). Also, you can hand enter all the height/width numbers, to create your own preset, but I'm not doing that.

In the DVD MPEG-2 option, when you hit custom, there's another pull-down menu on the Video tab that has 4:3, 16:9, and 2.35(?):1. In this menu, there are no other options.

One thing I don't understand is why there is no 1.85:1 option in the DVD MPEG-2 encoding option menu, but there is one for the 2.35:1 option.

There aren't any black bars when I just put the 4:3 clip on the timeline and render that way. Only when I crop to 16:9.

I'll do some more experimenting tonite and see if I can figure out where these bars are coming from ...

[Bruce A. Christenson]

I think I figured out the thin bars problem.

I had to go to the project properties and select NTSC Widescreen for the project.

Then, when I go to set my crop for the clip, I have to right click on the picture and choose 'match project aspect ratio' (it's one of those options) and that gives me the right 16x9 box.

What I'm still confused about is why the 16x9 preset in the pulldown box is different than the 'match aspect ratio' option when the project aspect ratio is set to 16x9...?

[Bill Ravens]

not sure but this could be the "problem". NTSC and DV are not precisely the same format. DV isn't exactly 4:3. There is an overfill area on an NTSC monitor that you won't see except on your computer monitor because the image overfills the TV monitor and gets cropped off. When you make a 16:9, the overfill area changes. Many cameras, like an XL1s, generate thin black bars in the image knowing that these black bars will be "cropped" off when displayed on a 4:3 NTSC monitor. Problem is, you see them on a computer monitor and you "render" them when compressing. If you select "match project aspect ratio", V4 will stretch the image to eliminate those bars. Unfortunately, what you get is a distorted image frame to do this.

[Bruce A. Christenson]

Ohhh... so maybe when I convert to 16x9 from my 'regular' DV, I should not match the aspect ratio, I should just use the 16x9 preset rectangle...

[Alex Knappenberger]

Hey, I think i've been using the crappy Microsoft DV codec instead of the sonic foundry one, how do I know which one is in use? When I go to capture video in Vegas video, it says "microsoft DV and camera" for what I capture with from my camera. Uh??

[Edward Troxel]

Options - Preferences

Two check boxes relating to codecs

"Ignore 3rd party codecs" and something else. (Can't think of the two names off the top of my head.)
Make sure they are checked properly.

[Peter Moore]

I found something odd with Vegas. With certain large (greater than 4 GB) files, it seems not to want to read anything past the 4 GB mark. Is this normal? Is there any way to fix this? It does not happen with every large file either, just certain ones (apparently ones that came out of Adobe Premier).

Thanks.

[Alex Knappenberger]

First off, what OS are you using?

Adobe Premiere uses the Microsoft DV codec by defualt, and Vegas 4.0 uses Sonic Foundry's DV codec by defualt, usually theres no problem mixing the two between NLE's (I do it all the time) but there could be for some reason.

[Dan Measel]

I'm trying to change the pitch of only one audio track in a project to make it faster. For some reason even when I go through and add the pitch effect throught the tools tab it doesn't apply the effect. It works if I apply the effect to the "master" control under Mixer, but I don't want it in the whole project. What am I doing wrong?

[Peter Jefferson]

im actually doing an edit as i write this.. the file is 18gb... using XP pro and vegas4...

have u configured vegas to be able to create files alrger than 4gig? Also are u running NTFS or Fat32?

u shoudl be running NTFS if u want to work with larger files