[D. Eric franks]

Could it be that the color correction is happening twice? Meaning that you are applying color correction at the track (or project level), then taking a snap shot and adding it back to the same track (or the project level color correction is hitting it a second time)?

Also, are you doing this so you can get a freeze frame? This is a good way to do exactly that, but I prefer to just snip off the very last frame of a clip, right-click > Create Subclip and drag that for as long as I need the freeze. Not necessarily the “right” way to do it or even a “better” way, just a different idea – whatever works for you!

[D. Eric franks]

OK, that helps: rendering to host on your own website (as opposed to YouTube/Vimeo).

WMV is probably fine. Nothing wrong with QT MOV using Sorenson 3 either. Since you are using a smallish frame size, I think you can get away with a bandwidth-friendly 1 Mbps. The only thing I’d change would be to go with a 16:9 widescreen aspect, say:

320×180

-or-

480×270

but maybe you’d want to bump the datarate of the larger one to 1.5 Mbps.

[D. Eric franks]

Well, I hate to say it, but you have really identified the problem: If you need to collaborate with other professionals, you’ll need FCP and a Mac. Collaboration is an utter pain in the butt, not just for Vegas users, but for anyone on a Windows system. My biggest hassle has been the fact that QuickTime on Windows lacks DVCPRO HD codecs. You think it’s a coincidence Apple doesn’t support that on the Windows end? (And, no, the $30 QTPro version doesn’t have them either, so don’t bother wasting money on that.)

Yes, yes, I know, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether you cut your film in Vegas or with razor blades. And I don’t for a second believe that FCP is inherently “better” than Vegas: it’s not. But facts is facts, and unless your shooter is sending you raw tape, they’re gonna send you a drive with QT MOV files Vegas won’t read. And you are going to need to pay attention to edited footage you send off for finishing, because the Mac is even pickier about what files it likes.

Now, that said: FCP is also a great tool. It ain’t perfect (far from it) and despite what the Macheads tell you, it’s got it’s own set of quirks, frustrations and (yes) it hangs and (gasp!) crashes. But if someone offered to buy me a new $30,000 dual-nehalem Mac workstation with FCP, I’d take it in a heartbeat.

[D. Eric franks]

First, yes, it is ALWAYS worth the extra time to get a better render, in my opinion!

WMV is definitely fine and will work with PowerPoint and other MS apps, so it can be the best choice, in some situations. Personally, I like MainConcept’s AVC (MP4), 2-pass VBR, etc., but lots of folks here like Sony’s AVC (MP4) encoder as well. This all certainly depends on your playback device: You using a computer? iPod? DVD player? PSP? Internet?

Without more info, a pure guess might be:

1920×1080@29.97
2-pass VBR
Max: 20Mbps
Average: 15Mbps

This is way high for most distribution, but your camera is shooting 19Mbps, so 20Mbps max is pretty good, although “best” would be if you didn’t need to convert at all and could playback the raw MTS files (like on a PS3), so, again, it depends.
______________
A lot of modern directors and their movies are influenced
by the flat lighting and textbook cutting style of television.
— Roger Ebert
https://videopia.org

[D. Eric franks]

Good deal. Yea, “speed ramping” sounds cool in principle, but even when you see it in commercials or films, the “ramp” always seems to be zero frames anyhow. Still, always great to have options!

[D. Eric franks]

I’ve never really liked Velocity Envelopes for speed “ramping,” for exactly the reason you list (i.e., it’s not precise enough). Personally, I just snip (press “S” on your keyboard) on the frame where I want the speed change and then CTRL+Drag and squish the clip that needs to be faster (up to 400%). If I need it even faster, then I’ll use a Velocity Envelope to bump the speed up even more (up to x300% or 1200% total), but I rarely “ramp” it and just kick the whole thing up with a flat envelope.

______
Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.
— Martin Scorsese
https://videopia.org

[D. Eric franks]

Good one John. Here’s what I typically use, just as another “fer example”:

Render type: Main Concept AVC
Frame size: 1280×720
Profile: Main
Frame rate: 24
Field order: None (progressive scan)
Pixel aspect: 1.0000

Variable bit rate: Two-pass
Maximum (bps): 50,000,000
Average (bps): 30,000,000

Audio: 48kHz/192Kbps

Some notes:
(1) I use Main Concept AVC because the Sony encoder was unreliable on my system (Vista64, Vegas 8 32-bit). When it did work, it was fine (never noticed any quality differences).
(2) I use 24fps for Vimeo which, the last time I checked, was distributing 24fps. I thought YouTube was too, could be wrong, could have easily changed in the last year. In any case, matching your frame rate to whatever YouTube is spitting out these days is the “right” frame rate to render at.
(3) 44kHz might make more sense for the audio, since I think that matches the distribution format as well
(4) Kick the bit rate up as high as you can. My segments are typically 5-10 minutes long, so I can get away with super-overkill-unnecessarily-high bitrates (although there’s some invisible ceiling and you can’t actually get 50Mbps). Longer clips will need lower rates to squeeze in under the upload file size limit.

__________
Nobody seems to know yet how television is going to affect the radio, movies, love,
housekeeping or the church, but it has definitely revived vaudeville.
— Edgar Bergen
https://videopia.org

[D. Eric franks]

First, the easy bits. Yes, you can “do it by the numbers” by double-clicking them and entering a value. You can also improve the precision of a mouse-drag by holding down the CTRL key while adjusting just about anything in Vegas, from sliders to envelope nodes.

Now if I may paraphrase my favorite Duke Ellington quote “If it looks good, it is good,” I do want to suggest that using the track level is the “wrong” technique here. What you are essentially doing is making the track a little more transparent to the black background, which can definitely be useful for lots of reasons (esp. when combined with the Blending Modes), but it’s also going to make your white areas grayer (which might be exactly what you want sometimes).

I hesitate to call this the “right” way (because I am decidedly an amateur at color correction), but the Gamma slider on the Color Corrector is how I’d do it, again, with the end of the discussion ultimately being that if you get what you want, that’s the right way. The tricky part is learning what you want, I suppose!

And thanks, Norman: I love producing those videos and get most of my ideas for topics from patrolling around here and seeing what people are interested in.

__________
You know what your problem is? It’s that you haven’t seen enough movies.
All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.
— Steve Martin —
https://videopia.org

[D. Eric franks]

Generally, you can use levels or gamma or gain to fix things up (provided it’s not completely blown out and digitally clipped). A more specific solution would be to use the Secondary Color Corrector: use the eyedropper to select your face, toggle the Mask view on and adjust until the face is selected (this is easier than it sounds) and then use the gamma/gain on that. Honestly, the whole-image adjustment is probably the better way to go.

[D. Eric franks]

What is underneath the video (one track lower)? If there’s nothing there (i.e., no other video clip), then what you are seeing is exactly what is supposed to happen.