[Angelo Mike]

I tried recreating the project in Vegas 10 to render to Sony MXF, and while I can change the color to 422, the problem is I can only do it under HD resolution, and this project needs to be 720×512.

And under mpeg2 render settings, no matter what permutations of settings I seem to try, I can’t get the sampling tab to work-it’s still grayed out.

http://www.scenethroughglass.com

[Angelo Mike]

Thanks, John.

[John Rofrano] “Try this: Start a new project, go into Project Properties (Alt+Enter) and set your project for your output resolution (I assume NTSC IMX (720×486, 29.970 fps) since you spoke about rendering to 720×486). Then make sure that Adjust source media to better match project to render settings is NOT checked. This will absolutely mess things up when cropping odd resolutions. That should set your project up correctly.”

I take that back about 720×486. I can render the video in it’s native 720×512 in mpeg2. Aside from that, done.

[John Rofrano] “Next drop your footage into the timeline, click on Event Pan/Crop on the event that it creates and right-click on the frame in Pan/Crop and select Match Output Aspect. This will create a crop rectangle that will be the exact aspect of your project. Move this to crop the part of the video that you want to keep.

Oh boy. The problem I see with this is that it changes the resolution to 690.3×512, and the video has to be 720×512 with a par of 9:10.

[John Rofrano] Finally, render to Sony MXF using the NTSC MPEG IMX 50 template. That will get you broadcast quality 422 MPEG2 video in an MXF container. There is a 422 setting in MainConcept MPEG2 but it doesn’t work for me (renders black video). You might want to try that. i.e., in MainConcept MPEG2 set the Profile to 422 and see if it renders correctly.”

How do I set the MainConcept mpeg2 Profile to 422? The only place I can see where it’s adjustable is under “Advanced Video” and “Sampling”, but it’s grayed out. And in Vegas 11 I have no option to render to Sony MXF, though it’s available on Vegas 10, which I still run.

http://www.scenethroughglass.com

[Angelo Mike]

Thanks, Dave. At this point I may try that. I tried a free trial of Encoder Pro, and I’m waiting to hear from the broadcaster whether the test upload I did at least has 4:2:2 color.

Uh, so how do I implement your method of faking 4:2:2? This video has become increasingly problematic-a client gave me a 720×512, PAR .9841 video that a company they worked with shot two years ago, and I’m having to render it to 4:2:2, along with moving text that they have that’s not in the safe area into the safe area for broadcast. So I’m having to fake everything, really-cover up current text and replace it with text in the safe area, and strangest of all, make this video fit into a 720×512 render.

What I mean by that-and why I’m up at 3 AM-is that on the videos I got, there’s a horizontal black space, like a bar, at the top of the video. So the video itself, without that black bar, is more like 668×400. Everything important is out of the safe area. I may have finally dealt with some of that, but getting the video to 4:2:2 will hopefully be another step closer.

The company that originally shot the video doesn’t have any digital copies of the video itself. Just DVCPro and minidv tapes of their footage, which I’m hoping not to have to go through in order to recreate the entire commercial since that would delay this project even more.

http://www.scenethroughglass.com

[Angelo Mike]

I’m nostalgic for Vegas 8 and 9 just thinking about it (even though 8 rendered incredibly slowly on my older computer compared to 9-11). I think I had one crash in the months I used Vegas 8, which I was pretty surprised to see.

http://www.scenethroughglass.com

[Angelo Mike]

I’ve been using 10e, but with the latest update of Vegas 11, it seems to be stable enough to use for me with GPU processing and NewBlue Titler functioning. Before, NewBlue was completely unreliable and would constantly lock up and crash Vegas.

Even so, I wouldn’t count on it working for everyone. And I still want to test whether I can now use Cineform avi footage, which is important for me.

http://www.scenethroughglass.com

[Angelo Mike]

Yeah, I’m not sure there’s any way I’m buying Vegas 12 when it’s released. People would have to overwhelmingly say they’re pleased with it (not merely reviewers, who seemed to be very pleased with Vegas 11) for me to buy it.

Just keep reporting bugs to Sony, guys. They need to hear about it. In one case for me, they actually said that they were able to reproduce a bug I found and would send it to their software testers or whoever to fix. No idea if they fixed it since it was the bug that made footage with a PAR of 1 automatically change to 1.33 on my Cineform AVI footage, which made Vegas crash as soon as I loaded the footage, anyways. So now I use the AVCHD that comes straight out of my camera. But I’ll test that out at some point and see if that’s changed with the latest build.

http://www.scenethroughglass.com

[Angelo Mike]

Actually, no. After about 8 hours going back and forth with the client and people at the tv station, even if I render the video out to the same resolution and PAR it is now in mpeg2 (which they can accept in lieu of an mov or Pro Res file of the video scaled to 720×486 or 480, I can’t remember), the text at the bottom of the video is out of the safe area.

So the problem basically is that the video, which a different company made for my client two years ago, left with them the wrong sized video for broadcast. So I’ll have to go to their office Monday, collect all the footage and video they have from the video company, and go through it for the video of a different size. Which means more delays, and I can’t even be sure if I’ll find what I need. But I’ll have yet more solutions to suggest if that doesn’t work out, like contacting the video company themselves for different file sizes of the video.

http://www.scenethroughglass.com

[Angelo Mike]

Never hot swap an esata drive. I made that mistake and had two hard drives crash. Shut down your computer, turn off the external drive if you have to, and then switch the hard drive out.

http://www.scenethroughglass.com

[Angelo Mike]

There are programs that let you do that, including Cineform Neoscene. But Cineform converts footage to avi, which I can’t use for this project.

http://www.scenethroughglass.com

[Angelo Mike]

Vegas 11 has improved to where it’s actually functional for me now, with very occasional crashes. But that’s with two builds over the last few months.

I’d say be persistent in reporting bugs, crashes, and in sending emails to Vegas making suggestions. The more they hear about it, the more likely they are to implement change.

http://www.scenethroughglass.com