Vegas Video discussions from 2003

Curt Kay · September 16th, 2003, 11:07 PM

Wow thanks guys, I'll have to try this out right away. Fast response!

-Kay

Curt Kay · September 16th, 2003, 11:11 PM

I know that you can use hardware rendering with premier on clips that have no effects/transitions. Can Vegas do the same? and if so, what card should I buy. Thanks guys for the support.

-Kay

Tor Salomonsen · September 17th, 2003, 01:36 AM

I don't think so. But if you have no transitions or effects Vegas will render very fast and print to tape over IEEE 1394.

Edward Troxel · September 17th, 2003, 07:30 AM

On clips that have no effects or transitions there is NO NEED to render at all! If you print to tape on a cut's only project with no transitions, it will create a W64 file for audio and, otherwise, just start sending the video out the firewire port.

If you to a Print To Tape, ONLY the sections that have been modified in some way will be rendered.

But, NO, Vegas does not use any hardware assistance when rendering.

Edward Troxel · September 17th, 2003, 07:34 AM

Tsunami does nothing to timecodes. However, the timecode is in the original AVI file. If you keep the original AVI and just use segments of it, you WILL be using the original timecode. Then if the project needed to be rebuilt, you just re-capture the one LARGE file.

Tsunami can be found at: http://www.jetdv.com/tsunami

Randall Campbell · September 17th, 2003, 04:54 PM

Thanks Edward. I am working on a Vegas script to do what I want but seem to have found a bug in that changing the RulerProperties.StartTime via the script does not cause the subsquent render to set the TimeCodeIn of the resulting file to the StartTime. If you do this manually, it works correctly, but in the script it does not. I have a UpdateUI command after setting the StartTime, but that does not help even though it does get updated on the screen.

I guess that I need to send a bug report to Sony.

Thanks,

Randall

Glen Elliott · September 18th, 2003, 10:38 AM

I synced up two clips using Excalibur's Sync Wizard tool using a photographer's flash as a reference. As I watch the footage I can tell it's perfectly in sync because further photography flashes line up as well. However by the end of the clip (8 minutes aproximately) I get a one frame offset. Clip A's flash is one frame ahead of clib B's. Now both clips were filmed on different cameras (A DVX100 and a GL-1) What could cause this 1 frame discrepency on my sync?

Edward Troxel · September 18th, 2003, 11:06 AM

Was the photographer standing in a different place? Camera aimed a different direction? Maybe the distance relative to each camera changed enough to account for 1/30 of a second. For one frame, I definitely wouldn't worry about it.

Andrei Petrik · September 18th, 2003, 11:53 PM

Hey everyone,
I just got Vegas Video 4d. And can't sem to be bale to capture from Canopus Storm2 edit bay via firewire slot. It works fine through premiere, but it doesn't recognize anything in Vegas. Although it does list the device under "video" menu in the capture window.

What am i doing wrong here?

Glen Elliott · September 19th, 2003, 06:57 AM

You know I thought about that but tried to put it in perspective....I doubt the speed of light would be that "slow" though it would explain it because both cameras were in different locations/distnaces.

Speaking of....I've been having difficulties with the multi-cam tool, though it could be because it's not meant to do what I'm trying to do with it. Here's what's happening: I have one long clip of the two formal dances (bride/father, groom/mother) from both cameras. The cameras rolled the entire time without any cuts so I chose a basic flash as the sync point between the two clips. After synced I realized there was a large gap between the two dances I wanted out so I cut that section out leaving two separate sections of synced clips. I then added markers to use for the multicam edit tool. When I run Exalibur the first section moves up to the master track with all the edits correctly intact but the second section of clips doesn't lay correctly. It's like the one clip is moved in it's entirety to the master track and the other clip's sections are "punched" in over top of it negating the dissolve I had configured.
What could cause this? Is it because there was a physical gap between the two sections of synced clips and it wasn't contiguous? I even tried to do one section at a time by limiting which clips were selected by using the ctrl+click method but the multicam tool always seemed to work on both sets of clips (maybe because they are from the same original files)?

Glen Elliott · September 19th, 2003, 07:02 AM

The Canopus Storm bay isn't OHCI compliant. Your fire-wire/IEEE-1394 port has to be OHCI compliant for Vegas to use it. Any standard 1394 port built in to newer motherboards should work fine. Even the 1394 on the Audigy 1&2 work as well.

Edward Troxel · September 19th, 2003, 07:41 AM

Possibly. Here's what I do in this situation. At the end of the first dance, place a marker indicating you want to use at the beginning of the second dance. Manually split all tracks at this marker point. Now move forward on the timeline to the beginning of the second dance and manually split all tracks at that point. Delete the unwanted section and move the second dance back to where the marker was placed. This process has worked very well for me. As for the other, I have not seen that happen. BTW, what version of Excalibur are you using?

Edward Troxel · September 19th, 2003, 07:44 AM

You may also check with Canopus to see if they have a driver that will make it OHCI compliant. However, you will also not get any speed benefits from that card in Vegas.

Andrei Petrik · September 19th, 2003, 07:45 AM

alright, i'll play around with that. thanks

Peter Moore · September 19th, 2003, 10:06 AM

Well Ed is right that there's no way the speed of light would come into effect here, or ever in normal video editing (sound is an entirely different story, but not in play here)

Here's what likely happened.

Since the two cameras are not perfectly in sync, you are manually syncing them. But you can only move the clips by frame increments (33 ms). But the cameras themselves are not off by perfect 33 ms increments, they're actually off somewhere inbetween frames. So when you finally sync the cameras, here's what you get.

A: 111|222|333|444|555|666|777|888|999
B: 112|223|334|445|556|667|778|889|990

A and B are your cameras with "|" designating frames. The numbers represent what those cameras were picking up in real time. The first "2" in camera A (which occurs in frame 2 in your final video) represents the exact same point in realtime as the first 2 in camera B (which occurs in frame 1 in your final video).

If an event (like a flash) occured right after the third 8 on either track, you will see that in camer A, it would show up in frame 9, but in camera B, it would show up in frame 8. As you can see, 2/3 of the time, simultaneous events will appear in the same frame in both cameras, but 1/3 of the time they will not.

If you try moving around either track, the problem will just be worse because you can only move in full-frame increments.

"Quantize to Frames" is useful for synching audio but probably won't work for this problem because I've never tried it with video-video synching. But you can try.

My recommendation actually would be to ignore it, as it will never happen more than half the time (depending on how much the cameras are truly out of sync, which you'll never know) and when it does happen it will never be more than a frame off. For lip synching, it will be unnoticeable because at least 1/2 of the mouth movements will look perfect, and the rest will be one frame off, and that's more than enough to fool the eye.

September 16th, 2003, 11:07 PM	#1081
Curt Kay Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: San Jose, Ca Posts: 50	Wow thanks guys, I'll have to try this out right away. Fast response! -Kay __________________ Fight the power. http://www.curtkay.com I WILL not be held down.

September 16th, 2003, 11:11 PM	#1082
Curt Kay Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: San Jose, Ca Posts: 50	Can Vegas use hardware rendering? I know that you can use hardware rendering with premier on clips that have no effects/transitions. Can Vegas do the same? and if so, what card should I buy. Thanks guys for the support. -Kay __________________ Fight the power. http://www.curtkay.com I WILL not be held down.

September 18th, 2003, 10:38 AM	#1087
Glen Elliott Wrangler Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 2,898	Multi cam editing and sync... I synced up two clips using Excalibur's Sync Wizard tool using a photographer's flash as a reference. As I watch the footage I can tell it's perfectly in sync because further photography flashes line up as well. However by the end of the clip (8 minutes aproximately) I get a one frame offset. Clip A's flash is one frame ahead of clib B's. Now both clips were filmed on different cameras (A DVX100 and a GL-1) What could cause this 1 frame discrepency on my sync?

September 18th, 2003, 11:53 PM	#1089
Andrei Petrik Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Toronto Posts: 45	Capture headaches in Vegas using Canopus Storm2... help! Hey everyone, I just got Vegas Video 4d. And can't sem to be bale to capture from Canopus Storm2 edit bay via firewire slot. It works fine through premiere, but it doesn't recognize anything in Vegas. Although it does list the device under "video" menu in the capture window. What am i doing wrong here?

September 17th, 2003, 01:36 AM	#1083
Tor Salomonsen Major Player Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Stavanger, Norway Posts: 265	I don't think so. But if you have no transitions or effects Vegas will render very fast and print to tape over IEEE 1394.

September 17th, 2003, 07:30 AM	#1084
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	On clips that have no effects or transitions there is NO NEED to render at all! If you print to tape on a cut's only project with no transitions, it will create a W64 file for audio and, otherwise, just start sending the video out the firewire port. If you to a Print To Tape, ONLY the sections that have been modified in some way will be rendered. But, NO, Vegas does not use any hardware assistance when rendering.

September 17th, 2003, 07:34 AM	#1085
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	Tsunami does nothing to timecodes. However, the timecode is in the original AVI file. If you keep the original AVI and just use segments of it, you WILL be using the original timecode. Then if the project needed to be rebuilt, you just re-capture the one LARGE file. Tsunami can be found at: http://www.jetdv.com/tsunami

September 17th, 2003, 04:54 PM	#1086
Randall Campbell Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Durham, NC Posts: 69	Thanks Edward. I am working on a Vegas script to do what I want but seem to have found a bug in that changing the RulerProperties.StartTime via the script does not cause the subsquent render to set the TimeCodeIn of the resulting file to the StartTime. If you do this manually, it works correctly, but in the script it does not. I have a UpdateUI command after setting the StartTime, but that does not help even though it does get updated on the screen. I guess that I need to send a bug report to Sony. Thanks, Randall

September 18th, 2003, 11:06 AM	#1088
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	Was the photographer standing in a different place? Camera aimed a different direction? Maybe the distance relative to each camera changed enough to account for 1/30 of a second. For one frame, I definitely wouldn't worry about it.

September 19th, 2003, 06:57 AM	#1090
Glen Elliott Wrangler Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 2,898	You know I thought about that but tried to put it in perspective....I doubt the speed of light would be that "slow" though it would explain it because both cameras were in different locations/distnaces. Speaking of....I've been having difficulties with the multi-cam tool, though it could be because it's not meant to do what I'm trying to do with it. Here's what's happening: I have one long clip of the two formal dances (bride/father, groom/mother) from both cameras. The cameras rolled the entire time without any cuts so I chose a basic flash as the sync point between the two clips. After synced I realized there was a large gap between the two dances I wanted out so I cut that section out leaving two separate sections of synced clips. I then added markers to use for the multicam edit tool. When I run Exalibur the first section moves up to the master track with all the edits correctly intact but the second section of clips doesn't lay correctly. It's like the one clip is moved in it's entirety to the master track and the other clip's sections are "punched" in over top of it negating the dissolve I had configured. What could cause this? Is it because there was a physical gap between the two sections of synced clips and it wasn't contiguous? I even tried to do one section at a time by limiting which clips were selected by using the ctrl+click method but the multicam tool always seemed to work on both sets of clips (maybe because they are from the same original files)?

September 19th, 2003, 07:02 AM	#1091
Glen Elliott Wrangler Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 2,898	The Canopus Storm bay isn't OHCI compliant. Your fire-wire/IEEE-1394 port has to be OHCI compliant for Vegas to use it. Any standard 1394 port built in to newer motherboards should work fine. Even the 1394 on the Audigy 1&2 work as well.

September 19th, 2003, 07:41 AM	#1092
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	Possibly. Here's what I do in this situation. At the end of the first dance, place a marker indicating you want to use at the beginning of the second dance. Manually split all tracks at this marker point. Now move forward on the timeline to the beginning of the second dance and manually split all tracks at that point. Delete the unwanted section and move the second dance back to where the marker was placed. This process has worked very well for me. As for the other, I have not seen that happen. BTW, what version of Excalibur are you using?

September 19th, 2003, 07:44 AM	#1093
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	You may also check with Canopus to see if they have a driver that will make it OHCI compliant. However, you will also not get any speed benefits from that card in Vegas.

September 19th, 2003, 07:45 AM	#1094
Andrei Petrik Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Toronto Posts: 45	alright, i'll play around with that. thanks

September 19th, 2003, 10:06 AM	#1095
Peter Moore Trustee Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Arlington VA Posts: 1,034	Well Ed is right that there's no way the speed of light would come into effect here, or ever in normal video editing (sound is an entirely different story, but not in play here) Here's what likely happened. Since the two cameras are not perfectly in sync, you are manually syncing them. But you can only move the clips by frame increments (33 ms). But the cameras themselves are not off by perfect 33 ms increments, they're actually off somewhere inbetween frames. So when you finally sync the cameras, here's what you get. A: 111\|222\|333\|444\|555\|666\|777\|888\|999 B: 112\|223\|334\|445\|556\|667\|778\|889\|990 A and B are your cameras with "\|" designating frames. The numbers represent what those cameras were picking up in real time. The first "2" in camera A (which occurs in frame 2 in your final video) represents the exact same point in realtime as the first 2 in camera B (which occurs in frame 1 in your final video). If an event (like a flash) occured right after the third 8 on either track, you will see that in camer A, it would show up in frame 9, but in camera B, it would show up in frame 8. As you can see, 2/3 of the time, simultaneous events will appear in the same frame in both cameras, but 1/3 of the time they will not. If you try moving around either track, the problem will just be worse because you can only move in full-frame increments. "Quantize to Frames" is useful for synching audio but probably won't work for this problem because I've never tried it with video-video synching. But you can try. My recommendation actually would be to ignore it, as it will never happen more than half the time (depending on how much the cameras are truly out of sync, which you'll never know) and when it does happen it will never be more than a frame off. For lip synching, it will be unnoticeable because at least 1/2 of the mouth movements will look perfect, and the rest will be one frame off, and that's more than enough to fool the eye.