[James Farnum]

Thanks for your prompt response, John.

I think I’ve stumbled upon the solution, thanks to a reply of yours in this thread:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/915092

The file is 1920 x 1080, but the actual 4:3 frame is 1440 x 1080 (which the “event pan/crop” windows indicates when the preset is set to “4:3 standard TV.”

So I have now set the Project Properties to 1440 x 1080 and the pixel ratio to 1.3333 (HDV 1080).

For good measure: Output window: Right click, “Scale video to fit preview window, “Simulate device aspect ratio.”

Now everything works as it should with no need to “event pan crop” every clip (just the ones I need) and no loss in quality. For successful stabilization, the event must be “cropped” in “event pan/crop” by simply selecting the “4:3 standard TV” preset prior to stabilzation.

Maybe this will be of help to others with similar projects.

Thanks again for your help, John. This forum is by far the best and most helpful one I know.

[James Farnum]

Thanks, John, for your prompt answer. I’m not sure if I fully understood your suggestion, but it prompted me to fiddle with some settings, and I think we’re getting closer to a solution. What I’ve tried is this:

(1) Set universal Project Settings to 1440 x 1080, because these are the proportions indicated in the pan/crop event window when I set the pan/crop event to “4:3 Standard TV aspect ratio” preset. Okay, this maintains the proper proportions (people look neither too fat nor too skinny), BUT the frame in the output window is now considerably smaller; there are now black bars on the top and bottom as well, not just on the sides.

(2) If I now adjust the pan/crop event to “4:3 Standard TV aspect ratio” both panning and zooming and even stabilization work as they should. And there are no bars on the top and bottom in the output window anymore. Happy camper? Not quite yet…

Two bugaboos:

(1) The sharpness deteriorates markedly (maybe because the whole image is now much smaller in the output window).

(2) It would appear necessary to apply pan/crop event to “4:3 Standard TV aspect ratio” on every event one by one – even if no cropping or stabilization is intended. Otherwise the events would jump back and forth between “bars on top and bottom” and “no bars on top and bottom.”

I’m hoping the information I’ve provided might help you determine what I’m doing wrong. Maybe together – and with a little brainstorming – we can arrive at a solution. Maybe it’s just a simple universal setting… At any rate, thanks for your patience.

[James Farnum]

Thanks so much, Nigel; that did the trick! “Smooth” is just what I was looking for, and the other options provide useful effects as well.

So what’s the moral of the story? Use your mouse more! If I had right-clicked to delete markers rather than using “delete” on my keyboard, I might have stumbled upon this myself.

Thanks again. And thanks to Mike Kujbida and D. Eric Franks. This is without a doubt the most helpful forum I have encountered on the internet — and I have poked my nose in quite a few.

[James Farnum]

Thanks very much, Mike, for your fast and very useful response. That certainly is a fine tutorial, but for a novice like me, it will take multiple viewings to comprehend fully.

A quick Google search for Mr. Franks brought up this website which might well be of interest to other forum members:

https://videopia.org/index.php/watch/training.html

At any rate, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

[James Farnum]

Gilles Pialat was kind enough to send me a PM with the solution:

“Proxy Stream has its own switch module to replace proxy/source files (see the “Switch” Tab) so you don’t need the batch Replace script.”

Somehow I overlooked this in his “readme.txt”

Great little tool — and so simple to use!

[James Farnum]

I’m just a beginner myself, but I agree with Danny Hays: dragging and trimming the edge is the easiest and most intuitive method I know. Place your cursor on the “in point” you want, then drag the left edge of the event to the cursor till it turns yellow. Place your cursor on your desired “out point” and drag the event’s right edge to the left till it turns yellow. It’s so fast that you can assemble a rough cut in record time.

[James Farnum]

Thanks for your responses, gentlemen.

John, your suggestion does the trick. Thanks. I just feel I’m making it too complicated. Here’s my work flow:

1 Drag the (reversed) clip from the PROJECT MEDIA window to a random spot on the timeline.

2 Mark it to create a loop region.

3 Hit CTRL + M to render to new track using SONY AVC (I’m working with m2ts files).

4 Drag new clip thus created from PROJECT MEDIA window to appropriate spot on timeline (after having deleted old, non-stabilizable clip).

5 Stabilize the clip (as you said, this now works).

6 Delete clip placed on timeline in step 1.

7 Delete new video and audio tracks automatically added in timeline.

I’m wondering if there’s any way to make this simpler. Particularly the two new tracks that are created and have to be deleted in step 7 seem superfluous.

At any rate, it DOES work. So thanks again!

[James Farnum]

Thanks for your reply, George.

I did some more tests and discovered it was not YADIF causing the problem, but the COMBINATION of YADIF, Magic Bullet Looks and Sony Unsharp Mask. That used more than 800 MB of memory, causing total free RAM to dip below 1300 MB. Using YADIF alone, memeory use was a bit more than 600 MB.

Using all three, render time for a two minute clip would have been over three hours! But, of course, rendering broke off after a few minutes.

Do you know of any way to render with YADIF, then re-render with other plugins while still retaining the YADIF effect in the file? I’d rather render twice and get a complete file than render once with three plugins and get constant breakdowns.

Thanks!

[James Farnum]

Thank you very much, George. The script works very well.

One problem I’m having:

Sony Vegas Pro 10.0 shuts down after rendering only a few minutes with a low memory warning — even on short 3 minute clips. Even after restarting my PC and with no other processes running. I have an Intel i7 quad core 920 @ 2.67 GHz with 3 GB RAM (XP Professional). I don’t have this problem even when running processor-intensive plugins like Magic Bullet Looks, etc.

Do you have any idea what could be causing this? (I use your default setting via your script.)

Thanks for any insights.

[James Farnum]

Tried this out in Vegas 10 and it works very well. Great tool!

This might be a stupid question, but is there any way to apply the plugin to the finished, edited clip on the timeline so that the whole film (not just individual files) is processed prior to rendering?
(Selecting all files in the project media bin, right-clicking, selecting media fx… / yadif only seems to process one file, not all of them.

Thanks for helping out a newbie.