BCC 8 Wild Cards for Sony Vegas Pro

[John Rofrano]

Mike, Here are the steps to make BCC Wild Card video wall work in Vegas Pro just like in AVID:

BCC Wild Card Video Wall Instructions:

1. Create a new Video Track
2. Place the video you want on your video wall on the track as equal length events
3. Add BCC Wild Card as a Track FX
4. Open the Cards section
5. Set the Sample Mode to Coordinated Loops
6. Set the Distribution to Ordered (or anything you like)
7. Set the Frame count to the length of one event
8. Set the Loop Count to the number of events
9. Open the Array section and set the number of cards and XY spacing to however you’d like

BTW, The AVID version of BCC doesn’t have this Looping feature and neither does the After Effects version so I assume that they added it for Sony Vegas Pro and just didn’t document why. It looks like the Boris developers did take into account the fact that Vegas Pro doesn’t allow you to access other layers and put in an alternate method of achieving the same thing so you did not loose any functionality.

Too bad you didn’t bring this to my attention 7 months ago. I could have told you how to do it back then. If there is anything you want me to create a Boris TV episode about, please don’t hesitate to contact me. This goes for anyone reading this. I’m always looking for ideas for new episodes. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Mike Hinkel]

John, boy do I appreciate your efforts. I should have known better to ask you 7 months ago. The reply from Boris was that it could not be done with Vegas at the time so I left it at that. I’ll know just where to ask when I come across some of the other things I found not to work in my experience. I had a list here someplace. I believe that many involved presets in different categories that did not do anything when attempting to use them.

Thanks once again. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Mike

[Joe Mantaratz]

Unbelievable how you figured that one out John. I have tried many different methods with some moderate success but this looks promising.
Sans the info on what the particular functions do and how they are meant for SVP I wonder why the Boris tech I had numerous conversations with was unable
to point me in this direction. I even downloaded the trial version of Avid to get what I wanted but did not relish learning a new NLE just for this effect.

My suggestion to them was to simply make it part of Boris Red but your solution is just as good. Have yet to try it but I will tonight.

Thanks as always John for making life a bit easier for the work we do. Much appreciated….now about that Spell Checker??? 🙂

[Joe Mantaratz]

John I must be missing a step here in the process because when I follow the list and select COORDINATED LOOPS the video goes blank.

All of my events are 4 seconds (120 frames) butted up together as yours are displayed and applied WILD CARDS to the track level but to no avail.

The array is set at the default level so no problems there. Any insight as to what is happening?

[John Rofrano]

[Joe Mantaratz] “John I must be missing a step here in the process because when I follow the list and select ORDERED the video goes blank.”

Are your events at the beginning of the timeline? Does only ORDERED cause them to go black? (do the other settings work?) Can you shows us a screen shot?

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Joe Mantaratz]

Guess you read this after I edited the post…what I meant to say was when I select Coordinated Loops not Ordered.
No the events are not at the beginning of the timeline as the video wall I wanted at the end of the production.

Not sure why that would matter but I will try it now and let you know.
Thanks

[Joe Mantaratz]

It works when I bring all the events back to the very beginning of the timeline. I presume since it is lookging for something to loop from that the blank space causes it to produce nothing.

Bottom line is it works so I guess I have to render out what I want and bring it back in or nest it.

Side Question: I built a high end machine using the higher end limit of Video Guys DIY9. It was listed in a prior post of mine but here it is again.

1 CPU 4930K Ivy Brigde
2 32 Gig Ripjawz 2133
3. Nvida PNY K4000
4. ASUS P9X79 Pro
5. Crucial SSD 960GB (OS/Programs drive)
6. WD Velociraptor 600 GB (Media Drive)
7. WD 160 WD Velociraptor 160 GB (Render Drive)
8. Cool Master Full tower (USB 3/2, E Sata) Huge case
9. Water Cooled
10. Net Gear Wireless USB Adapter
11 Win 7 64 bit Pro
12. Sony 12 Suite..updated to latest build
13. Boris Red
14. Boris Particle
15. ASUS Blue Ray
16. Firewire PCIe card
17. Corsair 850 W PSU

The Wild card effect brings the system to a crawl in the preview. even on draft is it not fluid. The footage I am using is all SD and no effects at all. I have also noticed other times when it does similar things as well. Such as image masking and simple text with drop shadow. Can’t recall all the details of how and why it happens but I can repeat it on a regular basis. I have tried with and without the NVDIA card active but to no avail.

My dynamic ram is set to 200…I played around with it changing it but it made no difference. Thought it might be the cause.

I thought with a high end machine like this I would breeze through these issues, it must be something I am missing in my setup

[John Rofrano]

[Joe Mantaratz] “It works when I bring all the events back to the very beginning of the timeline. I presume since it is lookging for something to loop from that the blank space causes it to produce nothing.”

Yes, since you had to add it as a Track FX, it is looking at the beginning of the track for the media. This is why you are seeing black because you have no media at the beginning of the track.

[Joe Mantaratz] “Bottom line is it works so I guess I have to render out what I want and bring it back in or nest it.”

You need to learn to think different when doing special FX. Without BCC in Vegas Pro you would have used a program like After Effects. In AE it is extremely common to make Compositions within Compositions. In fact, “Make Comp” is a menu item. This sort of “nesting” is required for special FX work. Luckily Vegas Pro has this too, it calls it a Nested Project but it’s just like a nested comp in AE.

That means you need to make nested projects in Vegas Pro a common occurrence in your workflow when using BCC. Whenever you need to do multi track compositing, think nested project. Whenever you need to do motion tracking, think nested project. Whenever you need to do match move, think nested project. After a while it will become second nature to create these more complex elements in a nested project. It also keeps your main timeline a lot cleaner.

[Joe Mantaratz] “The Wild card effect brings the system to a crawl in the preview. even on draft is it not fluid. The footage I am using is all SD and no effects at all. I have also noticed other times when it does similar things as well. Such as image masking and simple text with drop shadow. Can’t recall all the details of how and why it happens but I can repeat it on a regular basis.”

Wow, that’s very similar to my system and I don’t have any problems like that. If you watch my last Boris FX Live Webinar when it comes on-line, you’ll see how fluid BCC8 runs on my computer and I had he preview set to Best (Full). Make sure that your Quadro graphics drivers are up to date. I’m currently using the Quadro ODE Graphics Driver 331.82.

Does your project match your media? Having your project settings different than your media settings causes Vegas Pro to convert your media to match the project settings on-the-fly. This can cause very slow responsiveness.

Is there anything else running in the background? There is a program called EndItAll2 that will kill every process on your computer except essential OS processes. Try using that first, then run Vegas Pro and see if there is any difference. That’s the only thing I can think of.

[Joe Mantaratz] “My dynamic ram is set to 200…I played around with it changing it but it made no difference. Thought it might be the cause.”

Dynamic RAM is probably the most misunderstood parameter in Vegas Pro. It only affects when you press Shift+B to create a dynamic RAM preview. It has no other purpose and it steals memory from the rest of Vegas Pro so it should normally be set low so as not to rob the rest of the program from the RAM it needs unless you need to use RAM Preview (Shift+B) a lot. 200 is a good setting (that’s the default).

[Joe Mantaratz] “I thought with a high end machine like this I would breeze through these issues, it must be something I am missing in my setup”

Like I said, here are my specs: Intel Hex Core Video Editing Workstation and yours is very similar. You should be seeing smooth previews with a Quadro K4000 (I only have the older 4000).

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

[Joe Mantaratz] “Not sure why that would matter but I will try it now and let you know.”

It matters because you are using BCC Wild Cards as a Track FX so it’s looking at the beginning of the track for it’s media. 😉 This is only because you told it to loop so it loops from the beginning of the track.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Joe Mantaratz]

JOhn, I am currently out of town but I have a large project to film when I get back and I wanted to at least keep the info flowing as best I could. The system I built only has the following installed and nothing else.

WIndows 7 Pro 64 bit
Boris Red and BCC
SVP 12 suite
Wondershare Ulitmate Video Converter
VLC video player
Quicktime

All updates have been turned off for all software. The test footage I tried with the Wild Cards FX was all SD and the project settings matched. That is the first step I do when I import any footage and so just to be sure I tested the FX with only SD footage and nothing else in the project. I have not checked the latest drivers for the video card but I will when I get back.

I thought something was wrong with my system when the render kept hanging up and then ultimately crashing with that FX on the timeline.
Prior to crashing however it would effect any other window open such as IE by totally distorting the page. Even if I opened the task manager the problem was the same and it rendered it totally unreadable. It did render when brought into its own timeline.

I tried turning the Video card on and off in the preferences just to see if that would have any effect. It didn’t.

Sorry this is a jumble of info I am squeezing work during a family vacation on the sneak. LOL No doubt you understand.