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Closed captioning???
Hello. I just completed a music video in Sony Vegas 12 and have added closed captioning to it. Now the challenge has been rendering it out the proper way. For starters, there’s a tutorial from Sony that states: “If you’re rendering to XDCAM HD MXF, XDCAM HD422 MXF, or MainConcept MPEG-2, select the Save project markers in media file checkbox.” First of all, I cannot find a template that EXACTLY matches the first two of those, but that’s beside the point. But when I try the MPEG-2 template, the “save project markers in media file” box is grayed out. Same thing when I try templates resembling the first two. It’s as if Vegas is not recognizing the caption markers as “markers” so to speak, so that tutorial has me worried that I am not successfully saving the captions.
Also, here are the required codec specs given to me by the station for HD:
XDCAM HD422 1080i60 CBR
XDCAM HD422 1080p30 CBR
MPEG-2
DNxHD
ProRes 422 1080 30p (Advertising Only)
ProRes 422 1080 60i (Advertising Only)
Video Bit Rate: 50 Mbits/s (ProRes & DNxHD exempt)Out of those, the only options is Vegas that meet those specs (with bitrates adjustable to 50 Mbit/s) are MPEG-2 and, under MXF, the HD422 1920×1080 60i 50Mbps option, which again I don’t know if it’s the same as “XDCAM” since the format does not explicitly say XDCAM on it. (And the ones that do specify XDCAM don’t render up to 50 Mbps.) Regardless, either way when I go to render the project, again the “save project markers” option is grayed out, so I cannot follow Sony’s tutorial to the letter.
The end result of the renders I have done in ALL these formats (or at least the ones that resemble the required specs, if not word for word) is the same. The new file, when I bring it into a timeline, has orange markers with the caption info embedded into it. But when I play it, the captions don’t pop up on the video preview, even with the overlay set accordingly. Add to that the many stories I’m finding of users THINKING they have captions embedded, only to be told by the stations that they don’t, and I’m now at a loss.
Any suggestions on what format (exact wording please) I should use given the options presented by the station? Then any thoughts on why the “save project markers” box stays grayed out? And how can I find out if the rendered files’ captions are working, short of trial & error with the station? (The recording label doesn’t have time for me to experiment.) Thanks in advance for any help!
Bob
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10 Replies
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I’ve never needed to deliver CC, but have you tried the free DNxHD codec from Avid? Install it and it shows up in the Quicktime templates dropdown.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Thanks, Steve. I do have it installed, and I see that that codec is “exempt” from having to be 50 Mbps. It didn’t pop up as a template under Quicktime templates, but I selected the 3Mbps template & tweaked all the settings, then chose the DNxHD codec for rendering. So we’ll see. However, there’s still the same issue of it not giving me an option to save project markers. Is that Sony tutorial even accurate about that part? And I have no idea if it’s going to keep the CC data embedded or how to test it.
Bob
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I’ve never worked with CC before, but have you tried encoding a file in DNxHD or AvcCam, then in a new instance of Vegas, bring it back to the timeline? It the captions are intact, then it worked. Alternately, would the station take the captions in a separate caption file?
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Vegas does generate the .scc files, so I’ll certainly submit those as well & see if the station takes it. I haven’t encoded in those other formats yet. I can try a small section just to see what happens when I bring it back into Vegas. One of my questions is – what SHOULD happen? (Which someone more familiar with CC can hopefully answer.) Are the embedded orange markers enough to show that the CC’s are there? Even if they don’t show on the video preview window? Maybe they’re only supposed to show when they’re being edited? Incidentally, when I run the script to “promote” the markers, the original blue editable ones pop back up where the orange ones are & then I can see the captions in preview. So it seems like those rendered files should have SOMETHING in them. I’m afraid it’s all guesswork until I send these to the station & hear back from them. My client just doesn’t have time for us to go back & forth, so I was hoping someone might be familiar with these CC issues.
Bob
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Hi Bob,
Are you using the plug-in “Caption Assistant” to do your closed captioning?
If so they should show up if you use the drop down next to the preview (auto) button – the icon with the grid. You should see the captioning options on that dropdown and most likely you’d use the one called CC1 Primary.
I’ve given the SCC files to a television stations (2 to be exact) and they use the .scc file. Drop frame or non drop frame is an issue so you need to know which one to use as your time format.
Using Caption Assistant also embeds the captioning in the file itself but it can not be seen just by dropping your rendered file back on the Vegas timeline.
Maybe John Rofrano will chime to the thread. He’s the master on this. I get by but do use captioning all the time for our shows.Roger Bansemer – PaintingAndTravel.com
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[Bob Ridge] “Any suggestions on what format (exact wording please) I should use given the options presented by the station?”
Use Sony MXF with the HD422 1920×1080-60i 50 Mbps template.
[Bob Ridge] “Then any thoughts on why the “save project markers” box stays grayed out?”
Because the instructions are wrong. Just render using that template and the closed captioning will be embedded in the file.
[Bob Ridge] “And how can I find out if the rendered files’ captions are working, short of trial & error with the station?”
Drag and drop the rendered file back into a new Vegas Pro project and see if the embedded captions markers show up in the media (they should). If there is a .scc file in the folder you rendered to, rename it so that you know that the captions are coming from the MXF file and not the .SCC file.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I did not know the captioning files would show up on by dropping the MXF file back into the timeline. That’s interesting and glad to know that.
Roger Bansemer – PaintingAndTravel.com
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[Roger Bansemer] “I did not know the captioning files would show up on by dropping the MXF file back into the timeline. That’s interesting and glad to know that.”
Yes but you have to be careful of what you are seeing. Let me explain:
If Vegas Pro sees a media file and a .scc file with the same name in the same folder, it will load the captions from the .scc file even if the media file does not contain captions. If you really want to check that the media file contains the captions, it’s important that you delete or rename the .scc file to be sure that the embedded captions that you see in Vegas are coming from the media and not the .scc file.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I dragged several of my mxf rendered files that had captioning in the project into a new timeline and no captioning showed up in the preview window. The CC1 primary check box was selected. I do see them on the timeline.
Roger Bansemer – PaintingAndTravel.com
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[Roger Bansemer] “The CC1 primary check box was selected.”
They are not going to show up unless you extract them because they are embedded in the media. You have to use the script that Vegas provides under Tools | Scripting to extract the closed captioning markers. Sorry, I’m on my iPad right now so I can check the exact name but you should see the markers embedded in the event on the timeline (but that might be a preference you have to turn on under the View menu). The script will convert them back to caption markers so that you can see the captions in the Vegas preview.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
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