Vegas Video discussions from 2004 (Q3Q4)

[Rob Lohman]

I doubt this is going to work with the current workflow since you
still need to capture/convert the HDV footage outside of Vegas
for the moment. But as always, test this workflow yourself to see
if it works or not.

[Rob Lohman]

Personally I don't think you need much tweaks these days
anymore, XP with current hardware is operating damn good.

Some thoughts:

- make sure your harddrives are running in (U)DMA mode
- do not put other devices on the same IDE channel with your harddisks
- it is better to have seperate partitions/drives (drives = even better) for your video footage (=data/content) etc.
- make sure resource hungry programs (typically anti-virus software!) is temporarly disabled when working on your (video) projects
- regularly defragment your drives to make sure information can be retrieved/written efficiently
- make sure your partitions are formatted in the NTFS filesystem to make sure no data is easily lost and you can support the large drives out there today
- make sure all of your drivers are up to date etc.
- try to keep extra stuff of this installation/PC to make sure you don't get virusses/spyware/performance issues or other not enough diskspace etc.

I'd say that's about it <g>

[Rob Lohman]

As always there is no one correct way and people generally use
different formats:

- QuickTime (.MOV)
- Windows Media
- MPEG1 (not used often these days anymore)

The whole idea behind putting video up on the web is to make
some balanced sacrifices to get it acceptable both in quality,
size (and thus downloading speed/times etc.).

Most people do the following:

1. output at 1.0 square pixel aspect ratio. DV (NTSC) per default is 0.9091 (see your project properties)

2. output at 50% resolution. For 720 x 480 (DV @ 0.9091 PA) this would yield 320 x 240 @ 1.0 PA

3. keep in mind that if your footage is widescreen or you have added a letterbox (black bars on the top and bottom) you should really crop (remove) these (unneeded information) so you can
use the valuable bits and bytes for something important (your actualy content)

4. output at a lower framerate (usually this is 15.0 frames per second which is also "progressiev")

5. expirement with filetypes and codecs

Some people like to put up both QuickTime and Windows Media
versions to make sure most people can see it. There is a third
standard which is Real(video), which a lot of people seem to
dislike (the player that needs to be installed, not the file format).

Now if you are going with Windows Media (8 or 9) you are using
the Windows Media codecs usually as well and those should
provide a good enough quality (experiment with both video and
audio bitrates).

With QuickTime a lot of people seem to be using Sorenson (3) or
the MPEG-4 codec. Here you need to expirement with bitrates as
well (these decide how compressed the file will be and thus the
resulting size).

In the end it usually takes a while for you to master this new
technology (for you). The best things you can do is experiment
to see how everything comes out (both in quality and filesize).

Good luck!

[Fred Finn]

It's shaky playing it back on a regular monitor. The problem is new. It didn't exist, then bam one day it did. Not sure why. Was hoping somone else had experienced it and then found a solution.

[Rob Lohman]

You are going to have to give us tons of extra information, like:

1. which operating system

2. what are you using to play this file with

3. if you are playing it on something else than Vegas in what exact format did you export

4. what is a shaky .avi? can you elaborate on what you are seeing?

[Thomas Kendrick]

I'm sure this is easy, but I'm not getting it to happen:

In the timeline I have a video track, an audio track and a video overlay track.

I want to add a short intro (Title card with music under) to the very start of the project and move everything that's already there to the right.

I'm trying to ripple edit but I'm only getting the added material to move the video track, not the audio and overlay tracks.

I'm using Movie Studio+DVD. Can someone point me in the right direction?

I found a ripple edit 'tutorial' a couple of weeks ago, but, of course I didn't bookmark it and now can't find the hard copy I printed.

Thanks in advance and sorry for the elementary question.

Tommy

[Edward Troxel]

Since you're wanting to add it to the very beginning of the track, just press CTRL-A to select all (I'm assuming that works in Movie Studio) and then simply move it to the right as needed.

[Thomas Kendrick]

<<<-- Originally posted by Edward Troxel : Since you're wanting to add it to the very beginning of the track, just press CTRL-A to select all (I'm assuming that works in Movie Studio) and then simply move it to the right as needed. -->>>

Well..it doesn't get any simpler than that. Thanks. That does indeed work in MS+DVD.

Tommy

[Brian Mitchell Warshawsky]

What's the best way to recreate the look of graduated filters from within Vegas?

I have had no luck achieving this look with the standard fx tools.

Brian

[Rob Lohman]

You need to make a graduated mask in a paint program. However,
keep in mind that our little DV camera's have a not so great dynamic
range (difference between black & white) so skies might blow out
if you properly expose a car. No post graduated mask will help in
that case. Ofcourse if you can get everything within the dynamic
range you can certainly do effects that way.

But you might want to look into a graduated ND (grad ND) filter
for your camera to help it sample the sky and the rest of the scene
within the dynamic range.

p.s. the thread I linked to has a screenshot which clearly shows
some graduated masks being used.

[Brian Mitchell Warshawsky]

Rob,

Thanks for the tip.

At this point, my footage is in the can. For some reason, I thought achieving this look was as simple as throwing on a Magic Bullet type plugin.

Any thoughts on existing graduated png files and masks which may be freely floating around?

Might be something we can add to the shared effects category on JetDV.

Brian

[James Millne]

I would like to add an artificial vignette to my wide shots using vegas but am completely clueless how to go about it. I heard that the magic bullet plugin for vegas had this feature but after downloading the demo i can see the "misfire" plugins aren't included in the Vegas package.

Any ideas?

[Gary Kleiner]

Vignette, as in encircling the image with a soft-edged darkened area?

Apply the cookie cutter FX with a feathered edge.

Gary

[James Millne]

Thanks, so simple yet so been annoying me all night :) I can now get on to more important things.

Thanks again!

[Glenn Chan]

If you post up some stills, I can play around with them and see what's possible.

Anyways...
1- Shooting skies:
You likely want to use a polarizer filter. In the right orientation, they will darken skies and bring out the saturation in them. Skies will not overexpose into a big white blob this way.

You can use graduated ND filters... but you can get better results in post.

If you do get a big white blob, you can try the following (Vegas):
Duplicate your video onto itself.

Top:
Use the secondary color corrector to isolate whites. Set limit luminance/high to 255, and luminance/low to something close to that and adjust smoothness. Set alpha/transparency to 0 or something close to it.

Mask out non-sky areas.

Bottom:
Delete the video and apply the gradient generator. Go from blue to white gradually. You may wish to do multitone coloring. Have three colors in the gradient:
white
a dark, saturated blue
a lighter, less saturated blue that is cooler/warmer (shift the hue)

Haven't tried this but it should work. An alternate method is to superimpose a gradient generator on your footage. Do the multitone coloring if you like. Use a mask (or cookie cutter) on the generator to knock off everything except the top edge/portion.

2- If your video is not a big white blob:
Superimpose a gradient generator and use the masking tools to shape the gradient's limits. You might want to do an upside down U to get close to the Top Gear look. You may need multiple masks in the masking tool to do this.

Or...

Isolate the sky with secondary color correction. Eyedropper the sky, drawing a rectangle around the part you wish to isolate.

Use the (secondary) color corrector to mess around with gamma, hue, and saturation. You can have three or more tones where you vary hue and saturation. Varying these things adds a lot more depth to the image.

3- Top gear also uses a lot of vignetting. Use the cookie cutter to add vignetting.

If you superimpose a black generator, you can use the masking tool or cookie cutter on the generator. This is necessary if other color corrections require layers.