[John Rofrano]

[Don Scioli] “For an intro price of $49, this is a real time saver for me.”

+1

Ditto for me. I just picked it up and it worked great on a presentation where we couldn’t get a mic on the talent. It really cut down on the reverb from the room.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

Is it a tape-based camera or a file-based camera? If it’s file-based there should be an eject icon to the right of the camera name in the Import window (you can also eject it via the Mac Finder). If it’s a tape-based camera, you need to tell the camera to disconnect from the computer via the camera’s menus.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

I see no one has replied yet and you said that you were up against time so I can tell you what I see, but I’ve never used FCP 5 so I can’t give you step-by-step instructions (sorry).

I noticed that all three source videos are Anamorphic but your timeline is not. I’m guessing this is the reason that your video is squashed. I assume you need to create an anamorphic timeline and then the videos will show properly in widescreen as they should.

All three videos are PAL DV which is interlaced so I don’t see why only one camera would give you trouble but I would check to see if it’s the third camera because that one was processed with iMovie which is an opportunity for something to go wrong.

Also the third video has 44.1 KHz audio (which is incorrect) and the others have 48 KHz audio which is the right setting for PAL DV. So that third file that went through iMovie isn’t the same as the others.

Hopefully this gives you hints at where to look.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

I agree with Shane but the question is: Did you render as interlaced or progressive? …and if you rendered progressive, it sounds like you didn’t deinterlace the footage properly. If you rendered interlaced then it’s more than likely what Shane said, a computer can’t display interlaced video properly but it will be fine on a TV. (but it’s probably the former and you need to deinterlace the footage properly).

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

The capture is going to be at the screen resolution so it does matter. if the delivery is in a standard format (i.e., 1920×1080 or 1280×720) then your capture is going to get resized and probably look blurry if your screen capture isn’t at the same resolution. It’s best to capture at the same resolution that you will deliver in. All of my Boris TV episodes are screen captured at 1280×720 and delivered at 1280×720 and the delivery looks as good as the live screen. When I do a Boris Webinar, I have to run the capture at the full resolution of my display and it definitely comes out blurry when delivered at a lower resolution.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[leonardo barone] “there is something of wrong with my green screen ? It’s cheap but look good.”

Sorry, but your green screen does not look good. It’s very poorly lit. You need two sets of lights. One to light the green screen evenly (preferably with soft-boxes), and a second set to light the talent that is separate form the green screen lights. The talent should be a few feet in front of the screen to avoid spill and you should also iron out the wrinkles.

Pulling a good key is all about lighting correctly to begin with. There are plug-ins that you can purchase to make even a bad green screen shot look good (like Boris Continuum Complete Chroma Key Studio) but the Chroma Keyer in Vegas Pro requires a well lit shot in order to work best.

[leonardo barone] “I tried to add some blur, but it’s a poor solution, there is some trick for get rid of aliasing ?”

Actually you were on the right track. Place the Chroma Blur BEFORE the Chroma Keyer and set it to about 1/2 way in each direction. That should clean up the aliasing quite a bit. But the best thing to do is light the green screen evenly and bright.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

I can’t speak for Wayne, but I’m guessing that recording a new 1 minute clip and uploading it would be the most useful. This way we can see what’s coming out of OBS.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Travis Rhoda] ” So, lets say I set it to 30.”

You really want to set it to 29.976 which is the NTSC frame rate for video.

[Travis Rhoda] “However, the Bit Rate is variable up to say 1000kb/s. Is that effectively saying that the Frame Rate is also variable? Would increasing/decreasing the Bit Rate make my rendering slower/faster?”

No. The frame rate controls how many frames per second. The bit rate controls how many bits will be used for each frame. If you want to maintain quality, you need to keep the relationship between these the same. For example 50Mbps at 30fps is the same quality as 100Mbps at 60fps. i.e., if you double the frame rate, you should double the bit rate to maintain the same quality.

[Travis Rhoda] “The other side of the coin is that MANY YouTube people use OBS. They swear by it and the bulk of them use some version of Sony Vegas. I, being new, obviously used their suggestions and settings and have the results I do now.”

Well… unless they are keeping some secrets from you, you are not using the same settings because it works for them and doesn’t work for you. I would go back and ask them exactly what their workflow is. Maybe they are transcoding to a different format before editing and not telling you?

[Travis Rhoda] “So, as per the suggestion, re-rendering my MP4 into what format? MP4 again or MPEG2 or AVI?”

You can try MP4 again and see if it works but it’s harder for Vegas Pro to edit MP4 than MPEG2 or M-JPEG AVI.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Rob Cioffi] “The move to Premiere reminds me of my move from Pinnacle to SVP.”

So you are OK with the subscription model and the fact that you pay annually for new releases whether you need the new features or not, and when you stop paying the software stops working and you can no longer open your projects? So if you were coming the other way from Premiere to Vegas you could not, for example, go back 6 months later and make adjustments to a Premiere project unless you paid Adobe more money for the privilege of doing so. And you have no problem with that? (‘cuz I can agree to being held hostage like that regardless of how good the software is.)

[Rob Cioffi] “The biggest decision factor is that SVP 13 is probably the last major release of Vegas.”

So if Sony came out with Vegas Pro 14 this year you would stay? (just asking’ ‘cuz NAB is just around the corner and that’s when new releases usually happen)

[Rob Cioffi] “The nail in the SVP coffin was hearing today that the Coen Brothers cut “Hail, Ceasar!” on Premiere.”

Well… the Hollywood feature film Focus was edited on Final Cut Pro X, and the A&E documentary O.J. Speaks: The Hidden tapes was cut on Final Cut Pro X, and the Emmy Award winning Harlem Globetrotters documentary was cut on Final Cut Pro X and according to this video (at 4:50), Final Cut Pro X is 5x Faster than Premiere Pro on the same hardware. So why not Final Cut Pro X? …at least you “own” if forever! 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

Yea, the bottom line is that the video needs to have a fixed frame rate (if the problem is a variable frame rate) and if you have to transcode it to get that then so be it. Unless you can make the video compliant for editing to start out you will need to re-render it.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com