[Corey Whitley]

Here is a jpg of the masks without the track matte. I’m wanting to feather or blend the edges of the smaller circles. Can this be done?

Corey Whitley

[Corey Whitley]

Thanks all. I will play with your suggestions.

Corey Whitley

[Corey Whitley]

I’m thinking it is the Quicktime update. I looked back at some old .veg files in which I applied the same method for retrieving audio files and they would open fine, but listed the audio elements specific to iTunes as missing.

I am going to attempt to uninstall Quicktime and see if this works.

Thanks for taking a look.

Corey Whitley

[Corey Whitley]

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

[Corey Whitley]

I think there is a 64 bit update on Sony Vegas website.

Also I had some crashing issues on long render projects. Someone told me to change a preference that is automatically checked when packaged.

Under general preferences, down at the bottom, un-check the “Enable no-recompress long-GOP rendering”.

I also started to disconnect from the internet when rendering and make sure all of my open windows were on the same monitor if using a dual monitor setup. Anything to put less pressure on the cpu.

Hope this helps.

Corey Whitley

[Corey Whitley]

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

[Corey Whitley]

Not sure if I can help, but I will try.

Did you say you are shooting in HD? Is it native 16:9? If so you may wish to change your project properties to HD 16:9. Also I would render using a default HD setting instead of 720 x 480.

Not sure if this will improve things but it seems like you may not be using the right settings for your export.

Corey Whitley

[Corey Whitley]

WOW!

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you fine and now lifelong friends, but the deadline was demanding.

First of all thanks! To everyone for all of your input. If it wasn’t for a combination of suggestions I don’t know that I would have been able to figure things out.

Not sure if I mentioned this in the original post but on Friday I was attempting to render at home. All of the renders from work had crashed and I figured something was wrong with the system there, so why not attempt at home. If it takes longer who cares as long as it renders. Well it wouldn’t.

Thanks to Don, I unchecked the enable no-recompress long-GOP rendering at the bottom of the Options>Preferences>General Tab. Not sure why this helped but I think it has.

Then under the Video Preferences Tab I lowered Dynamic RAM Preview to 24
and the Maximun Number of Rendering Threads to 1

Then upon everyone’s advice I stopped almost all of my startup programs, unhooked the internet, and changed the power options and gave it another go. Fully expecting to break my computer. But an hour and a half later I was still rendering with no hick ups. I called my boss and had him perform the same functions with the work machine and give it a go.

When I got in on Monday we had a fully rendered 30 minute piece to show to the client. Unfortunately it looked like crap. Using the default DV NTSC codec for .avi produced a ton of ghosting, blur and no definition in any of the Vegas, Photoshop or AE text and graphic elements.

Then I tried a straight print to tape using Decklink HD for the Beta Deck. This produced a very crisp result. Not perfect! But easily the best quality I have seen out of Vegas. As I am typing this the work computer is rendering for a straight print to tape again with 3 nested elements dropped into the time line to see if it will work. Here’s to experimentation under the gun!

It is still taking a long time. 30 minutes is running about 9 to 10 hours on the quad core. A 3 minute element took an hour and 40 minutes today. But the video looks really good.

Now I realize most people, myself included, do not have the luxury to print to Beta, so any and all rendering templates people have found that work should be displayed on the COW somewhere. It would be awesome to have a quick reference to some settings that really work for people. I hope the simple hints people here have given me over the last couple of days helps others out. And thanks again to all.

Keep this thread going if there are any other questions, or better yet answers.

Corey Whitley

[Corey Whitley]

It didn’t, Steve. I will keep trying things though.

Corey Whitley

[Corey Whitley]

I have since taken every track except video tracks off of the time line. The last render attempt produced a crash after a 96 MB file was created. The computer is crashing now! This is with the computer restored to last Friday before the Matrox Codecs. I am getting worried about my machine now. What an unfortunate mess.

I will attempt to render just the video tracks (3 total) in 2 minute increments next. Here’s to Friday night next to the warm glow of the computer screen. lol.

Thanks again peeps. Any ideas are welcome.

Corey Whitley