[D. Eric franks]

I do this sort of thing all the time (Camtasia > Vegas), but I’ve never seen that problem in a render (although I have seen it with odd video card overlay display gremlins). One thing to check: Change the Video Preview window to “Best (Full)” and make sure you are rendering at Best quality (you can set the Project Properties Full Resolution Render Quality to Best as well). Theoretically, what you see in the Preview window at that point should be identical to the output, at least before it hits the compression. Which raises a possibility: You are rendering out to DV25? What happens if you render out to MPEG-2 (for DVD) or MP4 (for the Internet – this is what I do)?

One oddity in your workflow (that I don’t think is related) is that you are capturing square pixel video at 720×480, right? This will get stretched in a widescreen project. Or are you capturing at 873×480 square pixel?

My workflow (just as a fer example) is 1280×720 square pixel capture and output to the same. Since there’s no pixel conversion going on, the quality is very good.

[D. Eric franks]

Mike’s gotcha covered (as usual!) and I’d only add that I use the waveform to visually line up the syllables as closely as possible, using two tracks (and zoooooooomed way in). Rarely, you might need to do a little time stretching/compression to get it to match, but if the waveforms look the same, it’s almost guaranteed that the lipsync will be perfect.

If it’s just a word, it’ll be really easy. If it’s one word and a common one, you should have no problem at all snip-snip paste. Sometimes it’ll be painfully easy, sometimes you might have to hunt for the right pronunciation/inflection and sometimes you’ll need to re-record.

[D. Eric franks]

Hmm, well, it seems like if a particular A/V clip (say, from a camcorder) moved together in Vegas Movie Studio, that same clip should move together in all versions of Vegas, but in any case:

(1) Select both clips (CTRL+Click or Shift+Click or use the Selection tool).
(2) Press G on your keyboard (for Group – Press U to Ungroup).

[D. Eric franks]

I hop back and forth between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions on a single Vista64 machine, so it should work.

[D. Eric franks]

I’m not entirely sure I understand what you want to do, but have you found the Volume Envelope yet? Right-click a BLANK part of an audio track and select Insert/Remove Envelope > Volume (or press Shift+V with an audio track selected).

[D. Eric franks]

It is very easy to invert a mask, so although a “regular” mask from the days of film and Avid was white (white areas on a piece of film negative would be opaque and black transparent), black is just as common today, if not more common.

As Mr. van Laar notes, the Mask Generator set to Luminance should do the trick, but it’s a tad more complex than that:

(1) Add your explosion to a track.
(2) Right-click the track header and duplicate it. You now have two identical tracks with the same clip stacked one on top of the other. The top one will be our mask.
(3) Add a Mask Generator effect to the top clip (track or clip level) set to Luminance.
(4) Change the compositing mode of the top track to Multiply (Mask).
(5) Click the Make Compositing Child button on the lower track (to make it the Child of the Parent mask track).

A bit odd at first (and second!) glance, but this is fundamental masking in Vegas, so it’s worth learning!
______________
“Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.”
– Shimon Peres
https://videopia.org

[D. Eric franks]

Is it literally 3 dead pixels in the final footage or 3 dead pixels on the CCDs (which might result in bigger blocks of deadness in the final footage due to combining the three sensors, the A/D conversion, post-processor-processing and finally encoding to DV25)?

If it is literally 3 dead pixels, try:
(1) Duplicate the track.
(2) Create your 3 separate 1 pixel masks on the upper track.
(3) Invert the mask so you now have three transparent pixels showing through to the lower track.
(4) Use the Track Motion tool to pop the lower track over a pixel (left, right, up, down – whatever looks best).

This will work for slightly larger areas too, I suppose, up to some limit.

__________________
“Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information
about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.”
— Alfred Hitchcock
https://videopia.org

[D. Eric franks]

Just to reiterate: The right method is the one that works for you, however…

(hehe)

Using the Track Composite Level envelope means at least 4 clicks to create 4 envelope nodes and two drags. (8 if you count double clicks as two and 10 if double click to create an envelope node and then drag it – unnecessary if you can break yourself of the habit of releasing the mouse button after the second click.)

I personally find using the Event Fade offset twice as easy: just 2 drags and yer done. Plus the fades are stuck to your events.

[D. Eric franks]

I can think of two obvious ways to do this, but I think the method you’ve discovered is the easiest (and the way I’d do it). Here are the steps you describe:

(1) Add a second track above the primary video.
(2) Drop and position the still.
(3) Use the Fade envelopes on the edge of the still to fade it in and out.

I assume you are using the Fade envelopes that are actually on the clip, instead of the Track-level Compositing envelope (which will also work – so there are 3 obvious ways to do this!).

The other way, is to ungroup the audio from the video, snip-snip the video and then insert your still. For comparison, I think this is harder:

(1) Snip/Cut a segment out of your video (position cursor, press S, reposition cursor, press S).
(2) Right-click primary video clip and select Group > Remove From (or press U on your keyboard).
(3) Delete the video part of the snipped primary video
(4) Drop the still photo into the gap.

Assuming everything is perfect duration/position wise, you’ll get an automatic crossfade. It probably won’t be perfect, so you’ll still end up grabbing the edges of clips and trimming/extending them (of which you have four edges to adjust in this scenario) and you’ll run into the audio clip that is now orphaned from everything else. This is as opposed to Method 1, where you can simply drag the still photo to reposition it and have only 2 edges to adjust when changing the duration.

Still, to each his own and both methods will definitely work. The one that you find easier/prefer is the right one!
_______________
“One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television,
you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.”
– Kurt Vonnegut
https://videopia.org

[D. Eric franks]

Vegas will automatically stretch at least one dimension to fill the frame, but your 4:3 video should NOT be filling the entire frame: you are seeing black bars left and right, correct? Resizing the video until it fills the 16:9 canvas will, of course, crop top and bottom. If you just wanted your pixels as-is, you can use the Event Pan/Crop tool:

(1) Click the Event Pan/Crop tool on the 720×480 clip (in the 720p project).
(2) Set the Width to 1280 and the Height to 720.

Now you’ll get a little window in your larger project screen.

_______________
“Television knows no night. It is perpetual day.
TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.”
— Jean Baudrillard
https://videopia.org