[Howard Lang]

CC says there is one reply (after this post maybe two). But no replies show when I go to my post. Also, never got a notification. Time to investigate. Anyone have an answer?

[Howard Lang]

Yep John, I think that’s it – just something that can’t easily be done in 8. What’s funny is I was doing some Googling on the terms – sony vegas pro 8 – and the term – dodging – and the top search result was this thread.

I’ll make note of what you said about SVP12 for when and if we upgrade. For now, all the better reason to get it right in the camera in the first place.

This may sound familiar or like a gripe, but sometimes people (knowing I know a little (very little) about computers and such) ask me “what do I click on to [get rid of some problem automatically]”.

They’ve been watching too much CSI on television where the tech lab gets an absolutely unreadable license plate to materialize out of the background, other stuff like that.

As a professional photographer once told me – if it isn’t there, it just isn’t there – best to go back and shoot it over again if you can.

Thanks again John.

___________________
Howard Lang
Sony Vegas Pro 8 user since 2010. Workflow: source files on external hard drive, edited in SVP-8, rendered to MPEG-2, authored/burned to DVD. Format: NTSC DV-Widescreen 720×480 16:9. My background is mostly in audio, electronics, music, home recording and live theatre. I also do a small amount of video scoring, but have more experience with live theatre sound design.

[Howard Lang]

John,

You are correct of course. While watching the movie, I paused when I got to the artifact, so I could change the monitor settings. I was able to “tune it out”, but that also tuned out all other blue hues. The cropped image below is an example of what I am talking about:

The above is a minimal example. When the editor does it in longer shots, the dodging blue effect covers the entire orbital socket area. Sometimes, I need to move my eyes from one of the subject’s eyes to the other and back again to see it.

Although I help my wife sometimes with SVP-8, much of my knowledge of that program comes from Creative Cow. In order to bring some subjects up out of a shot with poor lighting, she has applied a brightening filter to the entire clip, which I think is a compromise.

I’d like to show her how to mask and bring up a selected region in a clip, but I haven’t done enough study yet to know how to do that. When I do, I don’t want to be trading one problem for another. That, and curiosity, is the reason for this post thread.

If you could suggest where I should look in SVP-8 for masking and dodging, or could direct me to where I could read up on it, I would be appreciative.

Howard

___________________
Howard Lang
Sony Vegas Pro 8 user since 2010. Workflow: source files on external hard drive, edited in SVP-8, rendered to MPEG-2, authored/burned to DVD. Format: NTSC DV-Widescreen 720×480 16:9. My background is mostly in audio, electronics, music, home recording and live theatre. I also do a small amount of video scoring, but have more experience with live theatre sound design.

[Howard Lang]

Correction to my above post, 4th paragraph:
“…eye was a bit too much in shadow, by dodging the area. Her upscreen eye was brought “up” a little with what in still photography would be called dodging.”
Should read:
“…eye was a bit too much in shadow. Her upscreen eye was brought “up” a little with what in still photography would be called dodging” – deleting “by dodging the area.”

And in the following paragraph:
“As the scene progresses, in the cutaway, both eyes and surrounding skin are well matched, but back to…”
The sentence should say:
“As the scene progresses, in the cutaway, both eyes and surrounding skin are well matched right and left, but back to…” – adding “right and left”

___________________
Howard Lang
Sony Vegas Pro 8 user since 2010. Workflow: source files on external hard drive, edited in SVP-8, rendered to MPEG-2, authored/burned to DVD. Format: NTSC DV-Widescreen 720×480 16:9.

[Howard Lang]

Thanks for replying. My time has been divided lately. This is an issue I started noticing a few years back when my wife started doing video, or maybe before that. I’m more of an audio guy than video, but I enjoy watching her growth, and occasionally help with technical (computer and camera) things. I also do a small amount of music scoring, but have more experience with live theatre.

For years, we’ve been renting DVDs of all sorts. Mostly feature films, but also documentaries and television series, and it’s hard sometimes not to be carried away (the filmmaker did a good job) and to miss a few things. But now and again, one of us will say “did you see that – let’s go back” and we do. Or, more often “that was GOOD, can we go back and see where the cut was?”

We don’t have cable, but enjoy watching HBO serialized dramas offered on rental DVD. The production values are usually very high, including sound design, Foley, and music score, to my ears’ delight.

Recently, during our viewing of the True Blood first season discs, and only on certain episodes, and then only for the female lead, I’ve seen what I believe is the post-production attempt to fix a shot where the woman’s “upscreen” (from the theatre term upstage, correct me if the term is wrong) eye was a bit too much in shadow, by dodging the area. Her upscreen eye was brought “up” a little with what in still photography would be called dodging.

As the scene progresses, in the cutaway, both eyes and surrounding skin are well matched, but back to the CU or ECU, and the shadowed eye often has more noise, less distinct focus, is a bit greyed-out. On our monitor, the “noisy fog” overlay actually has a blue cast to it.

Tonight, when we watch, if I see it again, I’ll stop and mess with the monitor settings. Steve had suggested posting a screen shot, but I’m not sure I have enough posts yet to be allowed to do that. Thanks for your time and your responses.

Howard

___________________
Howard Lang
Sony Vegas Pro 8 user since 2010. Workflow: source files on external hard drive, edited in SVP-8, rendered to MPEG-2, authored/burned to DVD. Format: NTSC DV-Widescreen 720×480 16:9.

[Howard Lang]

Thanks for the reply Angelo. Updating is not an option for the videographer. If it happened all the time, it would be a major issue, but it is only on certain clips, say once every 10 or 20 clips, the aspect ratio doesn’t come down the firewire with the video. And I asked, the tapes are new, no previous program material on them, and I don’t think she striped them before using them, just unwrapped them and loaded them in the camera would be my guess.

Howard Lang

Sony Vegas Pro 8 user since 2010. Workflow: source files on external hard drive, edited in SVP-8, rendered to MPEG-2, authored/burned to DVD. Format: NTSC DV-Widescreen 720×480 16:9.

[Howard Lang]

This problem is now solved. Here is the problem, quoted from Jeff, who said it better than me and in fewer words:

“…he rendered on computer “A” and burned on computer “C”, everything is normal. When he renders on computer “B” and burns on “C” it fails. So, I think there is a problem on computer “B”, the new one. …”

And the problem was as he guessed, I had installed a codec pack that put lots of crapware on the computer. When that was removed, the problem was solved.

I first started by seeing what did work, that is, rendering to AVI, WMV, etc. When those worked, I knew it was a trashed MPEG-II codec. The good part was, I didn’t need to reinstall SVP-8, just remove the crapware and start from scratch building my custom template.

Thanks to Jeff and all those on the forum who have helped me solve problems months before I made my first post.

Howard

[Howard Lang]

Worked on the problem computer yesterday. The third-party codec pack had installed some toolbars and other things, in spite of my selecting custom install and de-selecting all but the codec pack. I removed the nasties. Still, I had the problem of not being able to seek/rewind within a chapter on a burned DVD.

So I tried rendering out to AVI and WMV, authoring from those (which required the authoring program to transcode/remultiplex of course, which took time, but I had time*). Those DVD discs worked just fine. So I next started with the DVD NTSC template, made custom settings for higher quality, saved that template, and rendered from that. The DVD discs burned from that render worked fine as well.

*Since I had limited time, I had made a short (less than 3 minute) project to use for testing purposes. I will next (probably the middle of the upcoming week) use the new custom template to render the longer program I was having trouble with in the first place. I need to do that before marking this problem solved. I do think I am making progress, and I thank Jeff for suggesting I look beyond SVP custom settings for the solution.

Howard

[Howard Lang]

Thanks Jeff. At least I know it isn’t a browser setting. I will wait and marked it solved then when it is solved.

Looking forward to working on that computer again probably tomorrow. If your solution proves correct, it probably means a re-install, unless I can fix it by uninstalling the codec pack that may have corrupted the Vegas ones. Or maybe I can download and replace just the corrupted MPEG-II template and associated codecs, but I have not been successful in my searches.

The Sony Creative Software website has only the 8.0c bug fix available for download for SVP-8, but I might as well re-install the 8.0 I have if it comes to that, before I muddy the waters with an update on top of corrupted codecs (if it turns out that truly is the problem).

Howard

[Howard Lang]

Hi Andrew, and thanks for the response. Jeff has it right. Why couldn’t I have simply stated it that way from the beginning?

Rendered on computer “A” and burned on computer “C”, everything is normal. Rendered on computer “B” and burned on “C” it fails. So, I think there is a problem on computer “B”. Process of elimination.

BTW: I don’t see an “edit” button on my original post, or I’d add the above paragraph to avoid confusion.