[Doug Jackson]

I find the mask tool one of the more confusing things to work with in Vegas.
But the key to what you are trying to accomplish is to remember “Clicking a mask handle will toggle it from a Bezier curve to a straight line.”

This applies to the ‘Anchor Creation Tool’ (the Fountain pen) and the ‘Split Tangent Tool’ (the Arrow pointing up to the left).

To create a mask with straight lines, click on the Anchor Creation tool, then click and release in the scene. Move the cursor to where you want the next point to be and click and release the mouse — a straight line appears. Continue until you have the polygon you want and the click the original starting point to close the mask.

Mouse over any of the handles and click to toggle to Bezier curve if needed.

What about moving handles then? Hold the Ctrl key down and then click and drag the handle.

Regards,
–Doug

Dell Precision T5500
2x Intel Xeon DP E5620 @ 2400MHz; Memory: 22528MB; Chipset:Intel 5520;
Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
HDD: Crucial_SSD1 (256GB);WD(1000GB);WD(2000GB)
OS: Windows 7 Pro SP1 (64-bit)

[Doug Jackson]

I was using NewBlueFX ‘ImageMapper’ to do the PiP because the physical screen was not rectangular due to perspective. With ImageMapper, I could stretch each corner to match the physical screen. I also had the PNG at slightly less than 100% opaque. (Transparency compositing takes a lot of processing)

But your comment about track motion gave me the idea to try that to rotate in 3D the PNGs of the replacement slides. I also applied a mask to the wide camera shot for the projection screen and put the replacement PNG on the track below. Not only did the render to MXF intermediary take far less time, the results look better.
Thanks for the suggestion, albeit indirect!

And all of the MXF files I’ve made so far have no ‘glitches’.
We are back to being pretty pleased with the whole scene.

And the new AMD R9 290x card arrived today. Now, where was that thread on the Cow about properly swapping an NVIDIA card for an AMD?

–Doug

Dell Precision T5500 (0CRH6C)
2x Intel Xeon DP E5620 @ 2400MHz; Memory: 22528MB; Chipset:Intel 5520;
Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
HDD: Crucial_SSD1 (256GB);WD(1000GB);WD(2000GB)
OS: Windows 7 Pro SP1 (64-bit)

[Doug Jackson]

Thank you, Aleksey!
That will work great. I can see I will have to spend some more time within the Vegasaur UI to see what else I’m missing in this great tool.

Regards,
–Doug

Dell Precision T5500
2x Intel Xeon DP E5620 @ 2400MHz; Memory: 22528MB; Chipset:Intel 5520;
Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
HDD: Crucial_SSD1 (256GB);WD(1000GB);WD(2000GB)
OS: Windows 7 Pro SP1 (64-bit)

[Doug Jackson]

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for the feedback.

Yes, based on previous threads here, I knew one recommendation would be to ditch the NVIDIA in favor of a AMD R9-290x or better. And I have one on order.

I appreciate your thoughts on the workflow. I am well on my way on this project with my current method, editing ‘complete’ on more than half of the talks, but no rendering. So, I’ll experiment with getting the separate camera tracks to a MXF with NR and color correction applied and then move on to a final render stage of the multiple tracks.

And oh yeah, I think I’ve discovered one serious bottleneck in the one file previous mentioned above. I have a wide static shot of the stage where the screen with the projected slides is quite overexposed. I’m doing a Picture-in-picture with PNG of the presenter’s slides mapped to the stage screen. Trying to create a MXF intermediary of those 2 tracks is taking forever to render — 6 hours overnight and nowhere close to being finished. The media for that camera is .mov(QT). We’ll rethink the approach to that shot angle.

BTW, what version of Quicktime is recommended these days? I have 7.7.6 (1680.95.31).

–Doug

Dell Precision T5500
2x Intel Xeon DP E5620 @ 2400MHz; Memory: 22528MB; Chipset:Intel 5520;
Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
HDD: Crucial_SSD1 (256GB);WD(1000GB);WD(2000GB)
OS: Windows 7 Pro SP1 (64-bit)

[Doug Jackson]

Well, we know that MP4 is just a container and the guts of the files can vary.
Hope you find a workable solution.

[Doug Jackson]

Scott,

Hmm, a quick Google search returns:
https://suggestionofmotion.com/blog/panasonic-gh4-memory-file-size-limit/

which suggests using “MPEG Streamclip”…

[Doug Jackson]

Scott,

Although I have the GH2 and it creates split .mts files, I think what you are looking for is the “Device Explorer” in Vegas.
https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/webhelp/vegaspro/12/ENU/Content/The_Device_Explorer_Window.htm

Although the instructions say that you have to connect your camera via USB, you can also ‘browse’ the SD card if you have a card reader in the computer (or have copied the entire SD card to your HDD) Has to read the ‘native’ file structure of the SD card.
I’m not on my Vegas system at this time, but I think you right-click the left pane of the Device Explorer window and choose Browse from the shortcut menu.
Upon selection, the importing function knows how to merge the split files.

Regards,
–Doug

[Doug Jackson]

Once again, Mr. Rofrano to the rescue! Looks like the “Apple metadata” was the culprit!

Thanks, John!

[Doug Jackson]

John,

File size estimate for ProRes 422 exporting from FCPX?
~1 GB per minute?

Regards,
–Doug

[Doug Jackson]

John,

Thank you for the response!

The error occurs when I “Prepare” DVD from DVD-A and it seems like it is at the very tail end of the VOB creation process. I most always separate the prepping and burning.

You may be on to it with the ‘metadata’ — we’ll give your suggestions a try.

Regards,
–Doug