[Cosmin Gurau]

I have found a way to bypass the 60 second limit!!!!!

Go to “C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\Adobe\Premiere Pro\14.0\Profile-USERNAME” and open the file “Adobe Premiere Pro Prefs” with notepad. Search for “postroll” and modify the 60 value with whatever high value you want (I set it at 6123 and it worked). If you enter the Playback settings in Premiere, it will still say “60”, but don’t worry, it works. Be careful, tho. If you click OK, the value will be reset to 60, and you’ll need to re-edit the file. It SUCKS SO MUCH that we need to resort to such workarounds just to have a VERY basic feature. I swear, sometimes I feel like those Premiere users that never used Vegas have been forced to eat soup with a fork, and never knew it.

[Cosmin Gurau]

Was this problem solved? I am experiencing the same issue.

[Cosmin Gurau]

I wholeheartedly agree, I feel like I am locked in a purgatory as everybody is abandoning Vegas including its developers and I simply HATE Premiere’s interface. One exception though. The copying of effects between clips… I feel like that was a major failure for Sonic Foundry. But you would think Sony could have fixed it in … 14 friggin years?!?!

[Cosmin Gurau]

I personally am extremely disappointed. Vegas needs an overhaul. Maybe even a fresh start. BUT all the GOOD things must be kept. I’ve been getting HEAPS of sh*t over the years from everyone I worked with for being “that guy” who edits in Vegas. I have been adamant in my total refusal to join the Premiere club (Windows guy here), for obvious reasons (us Vegas users KNOW why). But because I always do the job (and better than anybody else), I’ve been left alone. But frustration grew inside me. SCS have done SO LITTLE in trying to actually improve this great piece of software (Did you guys ever try Vegas 2.0 – it was incredible for the time and is still very much 80% of what Vegas is today – great for Sonic Foundry, not that great for SCS) SO many things can be improved. Man, when I heard that SCS is building a new editor, I thought they finally understood. Watch out, Adobe! There’s a new Sheriff in town!

Vegas. With a new name. With a modern sleek look (finally!!!). With all the functions we love and use daily, both generic and those for the power users. With all the fixes and changes that anyone who used Vegas and another NLE knew that had to be implemented (eg. the infamously lacking copy just one effect, or a selectable amount, or select multiple regions of clips while holding ctrl with the select tool, etc), ROCK steady performance (oh how we wanted that), actually good GPU acceleration to rival Mercury, its own Quicktime processing engine that puts a twist on chroma subsampling (just like Adobe)… Oh how I dreamed about this. Finally, I said to myself, all those posts on NFS would include Sony in the list of PRO NLEs they always talk about.

And then the Catalyst demo came out.

Gentlemen, Catalyst Edit is possibly the worst joke ever pulled by anyone in recorded history. It’s like a lite version of iMovie. I didn’t even know that they offer “upgrade” discounts for Vegas users. That’s like topping the worst joke ever pulled by anyone in recorded history.

[Cosmin Gurau]

I have. Zero benefits in this situation…

[Cosmin Gurau]

I’m starting to think that these forums are pretty useless… It’s my third post and I have yet to actually receive any real help…

[Cosmin Gurau]

I did not assume it’s 4:2:2. I KNEW it was 4:2:0.

I wrote “it’s AS IF it’s a different camera. With 4:2:2. But I assure you, it’s not.”

Please, Sorin, READ what I write before replying. Please.

In the meantime, ANYONE? Any ideas on how to replicate this behavior in Vegas? This “chroma dithering”, if that is indeed what Adobe/MPC-HD/VLC are doing, how can it be achieved in Vegas?

[Cosmin Gurau]

This is the footage from my Nikon.

General
Complete name : C:\Users\Cosmin\Desktop\DSC_0865.MOV
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : QuickTime
Codec ID : qt
File size : 17.0 MiB
Duration : 3s 378ms
Overall bit rate : 42.3 Mbps
Encoded date : UTC 2014-10-23 21:07:21
Tagged date : UTC 2014-10-24 00:15:25
NCDT : NCTG

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 3s 378ms
Bit rate : 40.5 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.814
Stream size : 16.3 MiB (96%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2014-10-23 21:07:21
Tagged date : UTC 2014-10-23 21:07:21
Transfer characteristics : BT.470 System M
Matrix coefficients : BT.601

I don’t really understand what you mean, but I must mention that any Adobe application opens the file and displays it beautifully, like in the examples provided. After Effects, Premiere, Media Encoder. In fact, even MPC-HC, with its Enhanced video Renderer is almost just as good. VLC too, but not on DirectX, on OpenGL.

Quicktime player, however, displays it with the same blockiness. And from what I saw, Vegas uses Quicktime, whether it’s compoundplug.dll or qt7plug.dll.

Also, it’s probably worth mentioning this, from hurlbutvisuals.com blog:

Yes, H.264 is definitely not considered a finishing codec, but to be clear, Premiere Pro does not use it in that way. The H.264 is read natively by Premiere and once it is decoded into the app. it “resides” internally in a 32 bit float extended color space that is unmatched for color fidelity and dynamic range. Your tests at Laser Pacific have proven that. There is no need to transcode to Pro Res, although if one prefers to work with that type of intermediate, the Adobe workflow can handle it just fine…ProRes is a great intermediate codec, but depending on the original content, some information might be lost compared to how Premiere Pro decodes the same file. For a full explanation, please refer the poster to my longer explanation below:
Adobe CS5 reads the H.264 files natively into Premiere Pro and After Effects at the highest possible quality. Our color gamut and dynamic range for tonal detail from shadow to highlight is unsurpassed. There is even support for over-brights beyond 100% in After Effects. i.e. in plain English, we squeeze more out of these files than anything else out there! Shane Hurlbut’s filmout tests at Laser Pacific have verified that our interpretation of the H.264 is the smoothest and most filmic representation available. The magic comes from the use of proprietary interpretation algorithms and I might also mention that we bypass QuickTime for this process, which avoids the whole gamma conundrum. Once the file is living inside our apps on the timeline or project, we deal with the image information at the 32 bit float level. Now that is not saying we can make an 8 bit H.264 DSLR video capture look like perfectly shot IMAX footage scanned at 16 bits, but what we do offer up is the ability to edit, apply effects and color corrections within our apps. at an unprecedented level of quality.

So yeah, maybe that’s the reason Adobe’s decoding is far superior. Still, if VLC or MPC-HC can do a better job (not as good as Adobe, but still) than a professional, time-tested editing suite like Vegas, we are dealing with a rather SAD issue here.

Again, maybe there is a solution. Other than transcoding all my footage through Media Encoder to Lagarith, because I just don’t have the time and the space.

I’m still hoping. Anyone?

[Cosmin Gurau]

Sorin, my probably Romanian friend, you are showing me export render settings. That is useless, sorry. I can render to Lagarith (mathematically lossless) and still get the same problem, because the maximum quality image that vegas produces, that will be rendered into any choice of format – is the problem. If the horrible red channel blocky-ness is there, then it will be burned in the export, no matter what setting I use.

I’m looking for a way to get Vegas to DECODE my h.264 footage as well as After Effects does. That’s where the problem is.

[Cosmin Gurau]

I still don’t think it’s got anything to do with levels. It’s about how each softwares’ decoder works with the chroma subsampling. Here’s an extreme example I just recorded. No grading this time, just imported the video file and saved the first frame, from each software.

Sony Vegas:

After Effects:

This is unacceptable. The fact that, on no render setting can I obtain a high quality image from a proffessional software is just insane. Maybe there’s a workaround? Something I haven’t tried? Any sollution?