D. Eric franks
Forum Replies Created
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Not a hard and fast rule, but I generally consider 50% slower to be a maximum usable value. (I know it’s a superstition leftover from the dark days of interlaced video, but it’s still a good rule of thumb I suppose.)
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AhHa. Figured it out:
Since the nanoKontrol is an inexpensive ($60) and small controller, Vegas has no idea where a slider/fader is set on initialization. So when you activate a track to receive controller input, it waits until it sees a slider/fader value that matches the current value before moving. So if your slider is down as far as it goes (- inf. dB), but the track volume envelop is set at 0.0 dB, you’d need to move the slider through 0.0 dB to get the envelope to react. Vegas is basically waiting to calibrate the slider before it gets going.
Like everything, it’s a matter of learning to use the tool correctly! I’m still working on that part…
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I’ve seen what you are talking about before (I used to do what you are doing all the time), but not recently and I seem to remember some sort of effect causing it, but I can’t remember what (and it wasn’t an obvious one – just a bug). I know. Real helpful. Sorry!
One other option might be to luma- (or chroma-) key the yellow out and use feather on that to blend. That’s actually what I used to do, with the mask only being for garbage at the edges.
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Are there any effects at all applied to the clip/track that has the mask on it?
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Ah, excellent: you are talking about a lossless intermediary then, where you don’t care at all how big the file is, you just want it perfect. In that case, I’d recommend AVI with None for the codec. It’ll create a giant file that is largely compatible with other people’s computers. If you were doing this for yourself, I’d DL the Lagarith codec and use that, but you can’t expect your sound engineers to have to install stuff on their machines just for you. If they insist on QuickTime (which is fine) and use Uncompressed for the compressor: it’ll work very nicely, but it’s much slower than AVI.
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It is entirely normal for professional monophonic mics to record to only one channel, specifically the left one. You can set the camera to duplicate the left monophonic channel to the right as well, but this is entirely redundant and unnecessary.
As far as the low cut goes, that’s equalization. I’m guessing the traffic noise you get through the wall is low frequency, so a little EQ will improve the situation, but it certainly won’t “fix” it. The noise gate is more complex and might work, but my guess is it won’t. You can set it to make every noise below a certain level go to -inf., meaning that you could set the gate to make the traffic noise go to silence if it’s always below a certain level and leave the voice alone, but, more than likely, this means you get completely silent between speaking and then the traffic noise bursts on when people are talking, like what you hear with voice-activated microphones. Anyhow, apply a noise gate filter and use it gently and you might also see some improvement.
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I would agree with John and take it one step further: 24p is irrelevant. If you aren’t going to be transferring your video to film, there is no point in shooting or rendering to 24p. This is definitely true for any sub-$2,000 camcorder and especially true for pocket cams. (I’d actually love to take it even a step further and say that you can’t tell the difference between non-film transfer 30p and 24p on a Canon 5D Mark II, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough!)
As far as what setting you want in Vegas, well, the final render is many magnitudes less important to quality than the production, but John covered the basics: match the Flip video settings in your project and render. What you really need is boatloads of light, solid support of the camera and professional shooting techniques. Do that and there is no reason you can be accepted into and win a film festival or two with a Flip Mino. Well, that and a great story!
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It is entirely normal for an external monophonic microphone to only record to one channel, so this might not even be a mistake at all. In any case:
Right click the clip on the timeline > Channels > Left Only
As far as traffic noise, well, that’s not really fixable. You can decrease the prominence with a good deal of work, but variable background noise is impossible to fix absolutely and is well worth spending time to avoid during production.
That said, you can use equalizer plugins to emphasize the voice. For men, maybe 80-160Hz, for women, maybe 150-250Hz, for speaking voices anyhow. Of course there are all kinds of rich harmonics, so simply boosting that range and decreasing everything else will sound awful. Low rumbly traffic might be vulnerable to low cut equalization. A very gentle noise gate below a certain decibel level can definitely help. And, when all else fails, don’t be afraid to cheat and drop a music bed underneath to hide the traffic!
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Fade In/Out is more readable than scrolling/rolling (while also agreeing that the fade is impracticable for long end credits).
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Celtx is a neat, fairly comprehensive, collaborative script/storyboard production management environment. It’s free, too.
Now it won’t draw your storyboards for you. I’ve seen a number of clipart, psuedo-3D apps that can graphically represent a scene for you, but I haven’t really used any of those.