[Andrew Lenczycki]

See Francois’ post which has a lot more technical info as to why your “MXF” files may not working. I see you are using Vegas Movie Studio. I have been using Vegas PRO (13, 14, 15), which has the ability to create the MXF file format from within Vegas. My guess is that Movie Studio doesn’t have that option. Francois suggests using Handbrake to “transcode” (convert) the video. I’ve never (had to) use Handbrake, but from all the times I’ve seen it mentioned in the Vegas forum, it must do the trick, because everyone swears by it. I believe it’s a free download. Below is the screenshot of my Vegas Pro 15 File|Render As dialog box:

Andrew Lenczycki

[Andrew Lenczycki]

Sorry, I did forget to mention that since you are shortening or lengthening the event, you will need to manually adjust each clip length. The good news here is that if you sped up the event (i.e. changed the playback rate to something greater than 1.0), then a small “V” notch will appear somewhere along the top edge of the event. If you grab the right edge of the clip and drag that edge towards the “V” notch, it will “snap” to the notch. This will then make the clip the correct length for the sped up event. If you slowed down the clip playback (i.e. changed the playback rate to something less than 1.0), then you will have to grab the right edge of the clip and drag to the right until the “V” notch appears at the top, signifying that you again have the “whole event” back on the timeline. Hopefully this is clear enough to follow.

Andrew Lenczycki

[Andrew Lenczycki]

Easy. You can use the context menu for an event (right-click) and select the Paste Event Attributes function.

How? Set the playback speed for your 1st event, then right-click the event and select Copy.
Now holding down the CTRL key, select all the other events you want to have the same speed. When you’ve selected the last of them, right-click again and select the Paste Event Attributes option. Keep in mind that this is going to paste other attributes from the 1st clip as well, so you should do this before you start applying any FX, keyframes, etc. to the 1st clip.

Andrew Lenczycki

[Andrew Lenczycki]

That is a particularly frustrating problem. Have you tried to render it in two halves by setting a looping region for the 1st half, then render with the checkbox “Render loop region only” setting enabled, then doing the same for the second half. If you watch the bottom of the Preview Screen while the rendering process is going on, you should see:

Project: 4000x3000x32, 29.970p Frame: 294
Preview: 1000x750x32, 29.970p Display: 387x290x32

The specific values will be different for your video. Watch the Frame: number as you approach the 14% render where it has an issue. If you can determine what frame number the program has an issue at, then you can approach that frame number on the timeline and see if there is anything that could be causing this (i.e. the start of an event or effect or the end of and event or effect on the timeline, for example).

NOTE: In one instance, I found that I had a Sony video FX applied to my event and that the only thing I could see was that the video effect has a keyframe at the problematic frame. When I checked the keyframe, I found it was set to 1.00 (full on, whatever the effect was). I found that when I changed the value to .999 everything worked OK, including the render. I also found that if I applied another keyframe for the effect earlier or later in the event, it would cause the render to fail if the effect value was set to 1.000. I notified Sony of the issue at the time and I believe it was eventally fixed. I am still on Vegas Pro 13, but this should be virtually the same as V14 in this respect. Let us know if that helps determine the source.

Andrew Lenczycki

[Andrew Lenczycki]

How many tracks do you have? Do you have multiple tracks of virtually the same event or “clip” stacked directly over one another? It appears that the smaller picture you see is coming from an “upper” track that is “in front” of the video behind it (and below on another track). The reason you are seeing it around the edge seems to be because you have set the “Track Motion” for the upper track to “3D Source Alpha” instead of the default “Source Alpha”. Putting that track into 3D Source Alpha mode allows you to resize and move that event around on the viewing screen. One thing you may want to try is to select the left-most keyframe for this track (located towards the bottom of the Track Motion dialog box), then at nearly the top, select the Preset dropdown list and select Default. See picture describing all this below.

Andrew Lenczycki

[Andrew Lenczycki]

I have used Vegas Pro since version 6 Pro. I have, but never installed V11 Pro. I have but haven’t used V14 Pro – I currently use V13 Pro. All I can say on the nesting of Vegas project files is that the only time I’ve had a problem was when I had a high number of QuickTime file imbedded. I think I’ve had projects with about 30 nested Vegas files without any issues (as long as they didn’t contain the QuickTime format segments within). Don’t know that this proves anything one way or the other, just thought I would let everyone know it hasn’t been an issue for me, and getting the QuickTime format segments out (by rending them as MXF) has worked for me.

Andrew Lenczycki

[Andrew Lenczycki]

Charles,

I went back into the forum and did a search for my name, which I found multiple times. If you want to read the whole thread (which is quite long) you can start here: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/962269#962298

If you skip down the thread to John Rofrano’s March 11, 2013 6:44:52 am response, I believe this explains the real PROBLEM.

Here is another part of a different thread where I’m referencing the use of the Sony MXF file:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/985931#986048

I can’t find the specific spot where John Rofrano was recommending that I use the Sony MXF format, but it’s essentially a “lossless” format that is used as an intermediate in your project. What I had were all these 30 second nested Vegas files that were created by another software (Digital Juice Vegas Templates), which used QuickTime file format in each. So each time an instance of QuickTime was encountered, it would open a new instance of QuickTime to try and display the 30 second event. By rendering each of these segments to Sony MXF, it was “hard coding” the video which was then no longer relying on QuickTime.

To render something to the MXF format, (I am using Vegas Pro 13.0 right now) select File|Render As, then in the dialog box that comes up, in the Output Format section, select Sony MXF (*.mxf), then the particular template for the type of output you want. At the time I was doing this, I was outputting for DVD, so I selected the “NTSC DV Widescreen” format. Recommend that you render the MXF files to a subfolder in your project folder, maybe called “MXF Intermediates”. Then you would just select the MXF file you just created (rendered) and place it on your finish project timeline. This causes you to do an extra step, but for me it completely cured the problem I was having.

Hope this helps you.

[Andrew Lenczycki]

How many individual “clips” or events do you have in your project? John Rofrano helped me to figure out that having many “.mov” clips that require QuickTime to display will cause this problem. I was using many (30 or more) short events that were in the “.mov” format. QuickTime attempts to open an “instance” for each event on your timeline, and with many clips, it gets overwhelmed and causes the “black screen” preview. How John helped me around this was to “render” the “.mov” files to an intermediary format of “MXF”, then put the MXF clips on the timeline. I don’t know for sure whether that is your problem or not, but you could try to render some of your clips as MXF then replace them on your timeline with the original QuickTime event.

Andrew Lenczycki

[Andrew Lenczycki]

Right-click the first keyframe and select “Fast” then select a second keyframe later. This will have the affect to move “fast” more quickly than linear but as it approaches the second keyframe it will automatically “slow” down. You can tweak this by adjusting the Keyframe Interpolation Smoothness and by separating the two key frames from each other by shorter or longer distances (amounts of time). For “Ken Burns Style” of movement over a still photo, I either use the “Slow” or the “Fast” keyframe type. The “slow” starts out slower then picks up speed toward the end (good for when you are zoomed into a particular spot on the photo and then are moving out to reveal more of the photo), while the “fast” starts out fast and slows down towards the end (good for when you are zooming in to a particular spot in a photo, starting from the full photo view).

Andrew Lenczycki

[Andrew Lenczycki]

Eric,

After two years without any development from Sony, it’s GREAT to hear of the Magix acquisition. I already own some of the Magix products and have had good luck using them. It sounds like you have a “ready made” team of people familiar with the Vegas product (including Gary Rebholz). I know how the acquisition thing can potentially kill a product and development by the “suits” that make their pronouncements regardless of what the market is telling them. It sounds like with your already assembled talent and by LISTENING to what your customers are telling you, it should be a profitable business for Magix and you will continue to grow the base of users as you move forward. If you have monitored this site at all, you can see how DEAD SET most everyone is against the “ransomware” model that Adobe and others have been employing to extract payment from loyal customers. If you have provided a good product that the customer wants, you won’t need to resort to ransomware. I applaud you decision to steer clear of that method of corporate enrichment.

I am just a consumer user, not a professional, yet I’ve purchased EVERY update of Sony Vegas from 6 forward. I love the product and what it can do without requiring me to be a professionally trained editor. I don’t do this for money, I do it for the sheer enjoyment I get from starting each and every project and trying to “stretch” my skill or knowledge with each project. I’ve had luck with green screen and sports video presentations, with sound effects and music beds. Next I’d like to try some basic voiceover to see how that works on a project.

I’ve found the Creative Cow site to be “trolled” by people of expert knowledge in a variety of areas in connection to the Vegas product and I have learned a LOT by just perusing this site each day, to see what people are trying to do or trying to get help with. I am reinvigorated with the news of the Magix acquisition of Vegas!

Andrew Lenczycki