Multicam: Vegas Multicam or Production Assistant?

[Norman Willis]

Production Assistant does not do multicam, does it?

For multicam I would need either Ultimate S Pro, or Infinity Cam, wouldn’t I?

How much easier/better are these tools than using the built-in Vegas MultiCam?

Thanks.

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[Theo Van laar]

‘or multicam I would need either Ultimate S Pro, or Infinity Cam, wouldn’t I?’

Or Excalibur

https://www.jetdv.com/excalibur/home.php

Theo

[John Rofrano]

How much easier/better are these tools than using the built-in Vegas MultiCam?

It really depends on how much multi-cam work you have to do. The advantage of using Ultimate S Pro or InfinitiCAM or Excalibur over using the built-in multicam in Vegas Pro is that these script plug-ins keep your original video tracks intact. You can always get back to them. That alone could be a huge time saver if you need to change anything on the original tracks and re-run the camera edits. It simply isn’t possible with Vegas Pro alone because their multicam is destructive; once you start you can’t go back.

We do offer a 15-day fully functional trial for VASST plug-ins and I know Excalibur has a trial too. I suggest you try them for yourself and see. Here is a quick demo of InfinitiCAM to show you the workflow:

https://www.vasst.com/images/mp4/infinitiCAM_quick_demo.wmv

Also, if the footage is AVCHD at 1920 x 1080 and I want to crop a lot to keep it interesting, do I keep the project properties at 1920 x 1080, and just use the Pan/Crop tool? Two friends who use Avid and FCP both suggested making the project properties 720p, but that makes no sense to me. Is that an Avid/FCP thing?

No it’s not an “Avid/FCP thing?”. 720p and 1080i are the two standard HD resolutions. The reason they are saying this is because you can’t make something out of nothing. In other words, if you crop 1080 footage and bring it back up to 1080 you are really resizing it to make it larger and this will degrade the image. Using 720p will give you room to crop and still maintain full resolution at 720p. If you are going to deliver 720p for the web, it’s actually a good idea to do it this way.

~jr

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

[Jerry Norman]

John, maybe I can learn something new here. Why wouldn’t you keep the project at 1920×1080 and then render to 720p? IOW, I thought you always set your project properties to your source properties. Not so?

Jerry

[John Rofrano]

Hi Jerry, Good questions:

Why wouldn’t you keep the project at 1920×1080 and then render to 720p?

Because Vegas will upscale the footage to 1080 to match the project and then downscale to 720p so you will go thorough two resizes instead of just one.

I thought you always set your project properties to your source properties. Not so?

There are no absolutes. In some cases when you know your delivery format (i.e., 720p) and you don’t want any surprises, it’s best to set your project to match your delivery format. This is especially true for non-standard formats when you are doing masking and keyframing that needs to be accurate. Most of the time, it is best to keep your project in the source format as you said.

~jr

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

[Jerry Norman]

JR, I sure didn’t realize Vegas upscaled then downscaled in that situation. I thought project settings were only used for optimizing the Vegas preview.

My question to SCS is, why? This pseudocode seems so umm…logical:

Do While Rendering
For each frame
If RenderToSize Not Equal to FrameSize
Rescale CurrentFrame to RenderToSize
END
END
END

Jerry

Jerry

[Norman Willis]

OK, what do I do if I want to upload to YouTube and Vimeo, but also want to make a DVD (and downloadable .iso files)?

If my cameras are a pair of Canon HF-S10’s in AVCHD, do I choose the HDV 720-30p preset, 1280 x 720, and then set the field order to None (progressive scan), 1.000 Square pixels?

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[John Rofrano]

OK, what do I do if I want to upload to YouTube and Vimeo, but also want to make a DVD (and downloadable .iso files)?

Both YouTube and Vimeo support 720p and you can render to DVD Widescreen from 720p so it should all work.

If my cameras are a pair of Canon HF-S10’s in AVCHD, do I choose the HDV 720-30p preset, 1280 x 720, and then set the field order to None (progressive scan), 1.000 Square pixels?

If you choose HDV 720-30p as your project setting, Vegas will automatically change the field order and pixel aspect ratio of the project for you. All you need to do is select the project template. Then just use your source and edit as usual.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

I don’t know for sure if Vegas is scaling in that situation. Maybe Vegas is smart enough to not scale if the crop matches the output. I did some tests this evening and I can’t see a difference so I might be wrong about it always scaling. There seems to be some optimizing going on.

~jr

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

[Norman Willis]

John, I apologize, but I am not really clear as to why 720p would be preferable.

Maybe there is something I do not understand, but if I set project settings to 1920 x 1080p, then if I crop in 25%, don’t I effectively have 1440 x 810 pixels?

So why isn’t the result of blowing up 1440 x 810 still better than setting everything to 1280 x 720p to start with?

Thank you.

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org