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Vegas and Printing to Tape
Hello all,
I am trying to print a 30 second commercial to Betacam SP. The video is a green screen shot with Panasonic P2 HD 1280 x 720. I have set the properties of the project to 1280 x 720 wide screen. Everything looks good.
Then when printing to tape I choose custom, then use project settings. I am hoping for a letterbox and the wide screen to sit inside the letterbox. Instead the HD video seems to shrink, exposing the cut off body of the green screen actor as well as maintaining a 4 x 3 window.
Does anyone have experience using Print to Tape with Betacam SP, through a Decklink card? Also have you down converted from HD while printing to tape? Is there a wide screen anamorphic setting that I am not aware of?
Thanks.
Corey Whitley
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6 Replies
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I have not done this but what I have done to avoid surprises like this in the past is to set my project properties to match my output format. If you are going to print to 4:3 tape then set your project to 4:3 and adjust everything to fit and there will be no surprises.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Hi,
Excuse me for butting in, but I also have a basic question. Do you need to render your finished project? I can’t seem to get it to print directly from the timeline like Adobe Premier used to do. Thanx -
I figured out a workaround for forcing letterbox.
First I kept the project settings as HDV 720-30. Then I rendered the piece as an m2t file with HDV 1280 x 720 settings. After the file rendered I dropped it onto a 4 x 3 project and Printed to Tape as normal.
This kept the original aspect ratio of the 1280 x 720 project and then letter boxed it. I found that the render was very fast when Printing to Tape and the quality seemed quite improved. Not perfect, but got the job done.
Thanks for taking a look you guys.
Corey Whitley
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You could have done this in one step without the intermediate render. Just drop the 720p project into a 4 x 3 project as a “nested project” and pint to tape.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
> Do you need to render your finished project? I can’t seem to get it to print directly from the timeline like Adobe Premier used to do.
You can print directly from the timeline. Any unaltered footage that’s already in the correct format will passthru to the tape and anything that has been modified will be rendered for you before printing to tape so a separate render step is not needed.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks Jon,
But I must say I have had really bad luck with nested projects going to tape from Vegas. If, for instance, I have had a set of 3 commercials going to 1 station on 1 tape and I have tried to nest them into a new project following a title slate, there is a strong amount of anti-aliasing which occurs. If I go straight to tape from the time line, I have always found the best results.
And now, I would say that the render to a HDV m2t wrapper first, then put to a new track, and rendered for tape, has actually cut down on render time and ensured a better print to tape quality. Clean lines and no problems with audio sync. I recommend giving it a try.
Corey Whitley
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