Vegas Video discussions from 2004 (Q3Q4)

[Joe Carney]

Hey Michael, went to your site, looks great. BTW, I too lived in Yalova Turkey (and Karamursel too) as a young boy (11 to 13). Those two years had a profound impact on my outlook on life.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Albert,
In case you didn't see it in the other forum where you asked this:

Select the track you wish to shift.
press the hypen [-] key to shift the pitch down by semitones, and press the equal key [=] to shift audio up by semitones. You'll find you have 2 octaves up and 2 octaves down
Hold down the CTRL key for shifting in cents vs semitones.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Michael, even if the cam was the XL2, it's not going to look just like the DVX. 24p is the cadence, and that's easy to achieve in Vegas. Achieving the 'look' is entirely different. I guess that's why some folks like Sony cams, some like Pannies, some like Philips, some like Ikegami, JVC, Canon, etc.
For straight DV, I love the Sony PD 170, it's got great DOF options, but for 24P, I like the new Canon XL2. Course', I've only had a few hours with one so far.

[Michael Best]

Doug, can you tell me more about achieving that in Vegas.
Your words are priceless, meaning, what if I spent $20k
on stuff and could have achieved the same in my NLE??

[Glenn Chan]

You're probably better off trying to make the XL1 footage look better, as opposed to making it look like the DVX100 (that look may actually be worse for your project). Look at your (artistic) goals and see how you can light and color correct your footage to make things better for your project.

Making video look better:

Lighting: Get a good DOP and give him/her the lights he/she needs. This will make a *huge* difference.

Keep in mind you cannot change lighting in post. Spending money on the right lights can be money well spent.

In post: (I asumme you are using Vegas)

Saturation:
Use the HSL filter and boost saturation that way. You might like the looks you get below better.

Use the saturation adjust filter in Vegas to boost saturation. You might like the look when you make the filter look like a hump with the main portion close to the left side.

Another approach is to use the secondary color corrector. Adjust saturation up in the top controls. In the bottom controls, select the limit luminance box.
Set the minimum something low- maybe from 0 to 8.
Set the maximum to 255.
Set smoothness very high.
This boosts saturation in the dark areas and leaves highlights alone.

You can also do the opposite so that highlights have no or little color in them.

There are many great ideas at http://www.freewebs.com/vegas4/vegas4.htm. I highly recommend you check it out.

"Power windows":
Use the masking tools in Vegas 5 to apply color correction to specific portions of an image. You might want to make faces brighter and not mess with the colors too much so that you get natural flesh tones.

Something else you can do is to add drama to skies. Isolate the sky with a mask and/or the secondary CC. Use curves or a second CC filter so that the sky is a blend of three or more tones. Take a look at the globe at
http://www.mac.com/WebObjects/Welcome
Notice how there are a few different tones in the image:
the hue and saturation changes as it goes from light --> dark.

You can also add a gradient to your skies to get similar results.

[Michael Best]

Wow, thanks for the info Glenn!

[Trey Perrone]

what kind of probs are you having???

my veg5 quit rendering mpegs a little while ago...i posted on it a few weeks back...i tried repair/uninstall but still nogo...so im stuck with letting DVDarch2 do all the work.

when i was rendering my mpeg2s it would start and just stick (on single pass) sometimes only getting a few seconds into the render...other times it would go further but eventially stick

when i did the two pass, it always hung at 50% (when it started the second pass)

im curious to see if your issues are somehow related to mine and maybe I can get mine working...

short of a full uninstall/reinstall im at a loss for now...so DVDarch2 is my fallback.

This makes me nuts: When I burn a CD or VCD, obviously, I have to make an MPG1 file. When I do, the resolution takes a big hit. Okay, I can live with that. But if there's even a moderate pan or any fast moving action, I get stuttering and pixelation.

But I don't when I make a WMV9 file. I get the resolution hit, but things stay nice and even.

One would think the obvious solution is to just make WMV9 files. But unlike MPG1 files, they can't be played on lots of different players.

Any suggestions?

[Steve Crisdale]

<<<-- Originally posted by Charles Newcomb : This makes me nuts: When I burn a CD or VCD, obviously, I have to make an MPG1 file. When I do, the resolution takes a big hit. Okay, I can live with that. But if there's even a moderate pan or any fast moving action, I get stuttering and pixelation.

But I don't when I make a WMV9 file. I get the resolution hit, but things stay nice and even.

One would think the obvious solution is to just make WMV9 files. But unlike MPG1 files, they can't be played on lots of different players.

Any suggestions? -->>>

Why not try Render as > MPEG2 > SVCD.
Most newer DVD stand-alones will play them and the quality is HEAPS better (very close to DVD) on a standard 80min CD.

[Rob Lohman]

It all boils down to three things (in regards to VCD/MPEG1):

1. low resolution (it is HALF of DV/DVD!!)
2. bandwidth (rate you encoded at)
3. quality of your encoder

The first you have to live with. The last two you can change
up to a certain amount. But in the end VCD will look worser,
especially compared to DV or a high quality DVD.

Which encoder are you using with what settings?

[Vince Debart]

Can Vegas 4 do the "Ken Burns" affect i.e. FCP and I movie

Thanks

Vince

[Edward Troxel]

Yes it can. Just use Pan/Crop with multiple keyframes. I have an article in one of my newsletters that discusses this technique. Just click the link under my name.

[Adi Head]

i uninstalled and reinstalled vegas 5 successfully. i rendered project to mpeg 2 and it seems to be fine. it plays on mediaplayer without a problem and i was able to author it to dvd. so it seems reinstalling somehow solved whatever it was that went wrong.

i didn't have any problem rendering, just that the rendered file would make mediaplayers freeze up and fail.

[Simon Wyndham]

Hi guys,

I'm creating a sequence in which a person opens a window and the background ambience has to sound as though this is happening. On the advice I have been given so far I have been able to convincingly recreate the sound of the ambience coming from outside of the window, and then change into a sound sounding like it is now coming through the newly opened window, all of which is in the centre dialogue channel. Hope all of that makes sense!

My problem is that I was advised to add room reverb to the sound coming through the window, since any incoming sound into the room would naturally be affected by the room characteristics (bare in mind this ambience is created from scratch and is not a location recording). I have done this and the effect is superb, except for one thing. I was also advised to pan out the reverb to the surround channels. Only problem is I do not know of any way to pan only the reverb (without the main centre channel sound) to the surrounds with Vegas 5. Does anyone here know of any way to do this?

[Edward Troxel]

Reverb is an automatable FX so you can change the settings over time that way.