Vegas Video discussions from 2004 (Q3Q4)

[Mike Moncrief]

Hello,

Is there a Title Safe type overlay available when viewing the video preview within Vegas 5 ? I realize that when you go into the add some text using the text generator from withing Vegas, it does show the title safe area.. But I am looking for something to turn on and off on the Preview.. for Text or graphics that i import into Vegas. (If this is not an available option, then it may be a good suggestion for V6)

Thanks and Happy Thanksgiving !!
Mike m.

[Harris Ueng]

In your preview window, there's an icon that looks like a blue grid sitting right next to your preview quality drop-down menu. That's the overlay on/off switch. Click on the down arrow to bring up your overlay options and select "safe areas". When you turn on your overlays, the inner box is the "title safe" area. Oh, btw, the overlays don't appear if you're outputting to an external monitor through firewire, but only show up on your computer monitor.

Happy T-day to you, too!

[Edward Troxel]

It's the one that looks kind of like "#" - but it has several different modes. Make sure you have "Safe Areas" chosen.

[Sam Houchins II]

Setup: I've removed an unwanted section of video that transitioned to the next section with a window flying / zooming in from the top right of the screen.

Attempted Solution: i used the pan / crop option to track that incoming clip, frame by frame for 19 frames to crop out the outgoing clip.

Problem: In Vegas 4 slow mo, frame by frame playback; full speed playback; and post rendering playback on the computer from file, excellent results. But when played back from DVD or SVCD, each keyframe has severe fluttering as if not panned properly. Each of the 19 frames seem to start off cropped adequately, but panned incorrectly (mis-positioned), then jumps to the corrected, edited position 19 times. I'm at a loss why it's doing this, and why it doesn't show either while editing or on playback (with Windows Media 10) from rendered file, but only on playback from burned disc.

In case it matters, a new 3d blinds transition is used going into this clip.
Any suggestions appreciated.
Thanks,
Sam

[Rob Lohman]

There are no easy answers to your question. It is far to broad.

High quality for what? It all depends on your input signal, your
ability to work with Vegas' tools and your output format (and
encoder you will use).

Also the PD150 does not offer 24 fps progressive recording, so
it does not make much sense to export out of Vegas at 24p. Have
you tried to export with one of the 24p templates to see what
happens and how it looks like?

The best judge of high quality is you and the easiest (and usually
the best way to learn/remember stuff) way to learn it is to go out
and play with the equipment, try the workflow, fiddle and see
which does what.

[Rob Lohman]

Well, you are working with two different encodings (I believe). I
assume the disc you are talking about is a DVD disc and thus it
has MPEG2. So you are looking at a WM10 encode versus an
MPEG2 encoder. That's not good.

But first things first, which EXACT version of Vegas 4 do you have?
Are you running the latest version from the Sony site?

What I would do to try and pin down where the problem occurs
is to do the following:

1. output your timeline to a DV AVI file (like the ones you capture). Play this in windows media player to make sure the problem is not in the file.

2. start a new project in Vegas and load up the DV AVI file and compress that to MPEG2

== OR ==

2. start a new project in your DVD authoring application (I assume DVD Architect?) and load the DV AVI file in that and have it transcode it to mpeg2 for you

MAKE SURE that withing Vegas and your authoring applications
ALL THE SETTINGS are correct, especially on interlaced versus.
progressive and such!!!!

Make sure you try both ways (from above) if one still produces
this problem. If the problem is in the AVI file as well then something
else is going wrong. Otherwise it must be either the MPEG2
encoding or the playback on your player.

[Mike Krum]

Whats the difference between vegas 4 and 5 i own 4 and tryed 5 and the only thing that was different was the interface. am i missing somthing.

[Mike Moncrief]

Thanks guys ! I learned something new !!

Happy Turkey Day !!
Mike m.

[Mike Krum]

When i go do export my footage out of vegas in 24p and play it back the audio and video skips. is this normal. is this what 24p is? if so i don't know why everyone likes it. it f***s up for video. plese help if im doing somthing wrong!!!

[Edward Troxel]

Click the newsletter link below my name and look at the April 2004 newsletter. There are LOTS of differences including:

1) Bezier Masking tools
2) 3D Track Motion
3) Saving and recalling up to 10 different layouts
4) Automation Envelopes
5) Keyboard remapping

and many other things.

[Rob Lohman]

Yes, you are missing a lot. A small look around the Sony Vegas
site had pointed you to the new features PDF (I found it in under
30 seconds):

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.co...ewFeatures.pdf

Among the many many changes are:

- Enhanced track motion tools
- 3D motion and compositing
- Video track nesting
- Keyframable bezier masks
- Improved MPEG2 support
- Subtitle export to DVD Architect
- Automation
- ACID loop support
- Film-style 5.1 surround panning
- External surface control
- Oh yeah, and network rendering

[Rob Lohman]

Mike: I'm going to say this again, do not start multiple threads
on topics. This thread already had a discussion on 24p and
rendering, so I've merged your new thread here.


Back to your question. As you can see from my original response
your camera has no 24p mode so what you are doing is converting
from 60i (interlaced) to 24p. I'm not at all suprised the video is
choppy. You are throwing away 6 (!) frames per second which
results in a choppy video. There might be better tools out there
to do the conversion, but it will never be as true captured 24p
(like the DVX or the XL2 cameras can do).

[Danny Santos]

I recently downloaded the trial version of Vegas 5 and having considerable hard time with it. I was able to capture videos from my camcorder and also able to bring in other video (AV) files from my HD into Vegas 5. What I don't know is how to trim and create (render) the trimmed video. That's all. I just want to get the feel of using this software before I buy it.

Any quick and dirty manual out there I can buy before my trial date expires? Thanks.

Danny

[Edward Troxel]

Danny, click on the newsletter link beneath my name and read through the "Beginner's Corner" articles beginning in issue #4.

[Rob Lohman]

To futher help you along, there is a thread here on DVi with a
quick reference PDF and some other goodies:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=20830

Just to give you a real quick start, the 's' key (on your keyboard)
splits a clip on the timeline (you can then delete a part to get
a trim), ofcourse there is also a full blown trimmer.

Output is done through File -> Render As

Enjoy!