D. Eric franks
Forum Replies Created
-
I used to do this all of the time, edit in 60i (because that is my camera source and it makes editing more pleasant) and distribute in 24p (because that’s my distribution format [Vimeo, YouTube] – not because I wanted the mythical “film look”, which cannot be achieved by merely changing the frame rate). In order to catch any oddities, I switched the entire project to 24p near the end of the edit and… I always found 1 frame oddities. I’m using all kinds of media at all kinds of frame rates, so I guess it’s not entirely surprising and usually, I’d loose a frame on a still image or animation, so you may or may not have problems, but I just wanted to give you a caution.
Still, absolutely no problems that couldn’t be fixed and fixed very easily, you just have to know to watch out for them.
__________
Even if I set out to make a film about
a fillet of sole, it would be about me.
— Federico Fellini —
https://videopia.org -
Unfortunately, I’ve experienced this problem with Vegas 9 on Vista64 (where I also have v8 installed, which doesn’t have this problem). v9 also occasionally just loses the link to media files while I’m editing. Bumpy road in v9 right now.
-
OK, so it ain’t the HDD (and suggesting 24p to save 20% on the data rate won’t help… dangit!).
DivX might do the trick. Worth a try. For the same data rate you’ll actually get better quality with DivX flavored H.264 than MPEG-2, but if it’s some sort of processing issue, then – because DivX is more computationally intensive – you’ll have more problems. Anyhow, it might work. There are other MPEG-4/H.264/AVC options with an AVI wrapper as well.
There seem to be a lot of video players (most? all?) that will do what you want, but I’m not sure about presentation apps. The church industry has some good ones, like MediaShout (which was my first suspicion on what you were using, because I’ve seen lots of video file compatibility issues with that software over the years).
-
What software? I have some experience with a few presentation apps and maybe there is an alternative. Does the software take WMV?
30Mbps is a (relatively) very high data rate: 7200RPM drives won’t typically choke on that, but 5400RPM laptop drives will be marginal.
Have you tried DivX in an AVI wrapper? There are other MPEG-4 (h.264) codecs that will work in AVI as well, provided both machines have the codec installed.
-
I don’t know about the audio running slow, but the overall stuttering could be a hard disk drive bottleneck. It’s pretty likely that the one on your workstation is faster. Data rate is what will choke the HDD, so you might want to render to a MP4 file format (MainConcept AVC). 10-20Mbps, 2-pass VBR MP4 will look better than equivalent/higher bitrate MPEG-2, with the downside being that MP4 is more challenging for the processor, but since that doesn’t sound like an issue for you, it’s worth a try.
__________
I never enjoyed working in a film.
— Marlene Dietrich —
https://videopia.org -
How are you capturing? If you are capturing from any sort of digital video camera (via FireWire, USB or just copying files off of an HDD or SSD), then what you see is what you get and the apparent darkness is just that: apparent. With digital, you can pull the exact pixels off the camera as-is, so the apparent darkness would then just be a part of the playback device (or your computer monitor). If you are capturing analog video (via RCA, S-Video, component through some sort of capture card/external box), then there may very well be brightness/contrast/color controls that you can adjust on import.
Color correcting and fixing brightness/contrast/dynamic range issues is one of those things that is really easy to do, but very hard to get right. I assume you’ve found the Brightness/Contrast tool? That’s a good start, because it is easy and obvious what those two items do. While the primary Color Corrector seems like overkill (and looks bafflingly confusing at first), start with the Gamma slider: that might be all you need. Bump it up a little at a time and watch the black areas (make sure they don’t turn too gray) and the white areas (make sure they don’t lose too much detail – although in many situations, you can “sacrifice” the brightest areas (lights, windows, sky) in order to get your subjects looking good)). Very deep topic, but easy to get started.
Also, I know some here love a good challenge: post a screen grab of your source and the real experts here might have some more specific advice on your particular situation.
___________
Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.
— Frank Capra —
https://videopia.org -
If your recorded video is clear in one place and the raw files are clear, then it’s not the CMOS sensor. One suspicion is that you are noticing the motion blur in Vegas because you are examining individual frames closely, while when you watch on TV, everything is moving full speed.
That said (and this is universally true), keeping your output format as close to the source will always result in the best quality. So if you are shooting 1080i60 (or 1080p30 or whatever), if you output your project at that identical format, you’ll get the most clarity. On the other hand, Vimeo is 720p24, so you are going to be converting to that anyhow and automatically losing some clarity. To deal with that, I would set your project’s properties to 720p24 (1280×720 @ 24fps, progressive, pixel aspect 1) and render that way so you know what your video will look like before you upload it to Vimeo (I usually crank up the data rate on short videos to +20Mbps 2-pass VBR using Main Concept’s AVC (MP4)). The other thing that might help: right-click a clip with a ton of motion that is coming out blurry and select Disable resample. Since the video is going from one frame rate to another, this will prevent Vegas from blending frames together in some situations. Make sure you toggle the Preview window to display Best (Full) quality, or you won’t see the results of your changes.
___________
Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.
— Frank Capra —
https://videopia.org -
My guess is that you’ve got some form of DVCPRO HD (in a QuickTime wrapper – probably from a Panasonic camera?).
Apple does not include those codecs in the Windows version of QuickTime, nor can you buy them from Apple (QT Pro won’t help).
There are solutions, none of them are fun (Cineform. Raylight… someone posted a newish one the other day – might be time to try that).
-
You can grab the handle on the left side of the Preview window to drag it off of whatever dock it’s on and float it. Then you can resize it to whatever you want by dragging the edges. One neat trick: double click the bar at the top of the window (the part that has the words “Preview Window”) and it’ll automatically size to your project’s dimensions.
__________
Television has raised writing to a new low.
– Samuel Goldwyn
https://videopia.org -
Sure:
right click > Properties – Media Tab – Field order
Which brings up a great point: you can also deal with interlacing on the clip level. For example, I work with a lot of mixed sources on a typical timeline and generally leave the Project deinterlacing to Blend, but I’ll still Disable resample (Video Event tab in the Properties dialog) on some problematic clips (like one with an isolated, distinct high-speed object in it). Again, you can only see the results with the Preview window set to best and only judge the real result with a full-motion preview.