[John Rofrano]

Moving the mask is difficult to get at first. You have to get the Normal Edit Tool (the regular cursor) and then click off of the mask to deselect it. Then either Shift+Click each point on the mask one-by-one until they are all selected or right-click on one point and choose select all. Now you can hover over one of them and they all should light up (highlight) which indicates that you have them all selected and moving any one of them will move the whole mask. (tricky but you get use to it)

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

That’s odd because you used the CineForm codec (CFHD) which Sony Vegas Pro 8 has. Could it be that you uninstalled Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 7 AFTER you installed Vegas Pro 8 and it uninstalled the CineForm codec that Vegas Pro needs? I would uninstall both and then re-install only Vegas Pro 8 and see if that clears up the issue.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

I agree with Mike. If there was a radio in the picture and it was on the left, it might make sense to pan the music slightly to the left to make it appear as if the music is coming from the radio, but in the absence of an obvious source, I would just leave it equal in both. Otherwise our eyes and ears would be out of sync (i.e., the ear would be hearing something that the eye can’t explain)

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

> I’m doing this on the cheap, since I’m not a pro, hence my need for work-arounds.

You missed my point which was the purpose of the trial is to see if you’d like to buy the software. The purpose of the watermark is to keep you honest. Circumventing the watermark is no different than pirating the software i.e, you are using software for which you have not paid.

I would recommend that you continue with Mike Crash’s free plug-in or use VirtualDub which has several free plug-ins for cleaning up VHS captures. If you don’t want to spend any money, VirtualDub is the most valuable tool you can own.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

You can’t. The best you can do is use the first project as a nested project in the second.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

> i’m going to try and speed the video playback up to match the imported CD audio, but i’d really like any ideas about how this might have happened – and how to avoid it happening in future

This happened because the crystals in the clocks that are in cameras and CD players and audio field records are all just a little different and don’t stay in sync. To do this properly, you would need very expensive equipment that uses a common external sync source. So what you are doing is very common and I do this all the time.

> – and if anyone has any other suggestions to match the video to the audio i’d really appreciate them.

I would do exactly as you are doing, leave the CD audio as the master and sync the video to it using Ctrl+Drag to stretch. Here is my workflow:

1. Place both video+audio and CD audio on three tracks above each other (Trk1: Video, Trk2: Video Audio, Trk3: CD Audio)
2. Visually line up the beginning of the song in both the video audio and CD audio so that they start at the exact same time (you will need to zoom in on the wave form)
3. Open the CD audio in the trimmer and drop a marker on every measure. This creates embedded markers in the media.
4. Then open the video with audio in the trimmer and drop a marker at every measure creating embedded markers (you now have markers to serve as visual indicators of the “drift”))
5. Now back on the timeline, split the video at each marker (you will have one event for every measure of the song).
6. Finally Ctrl+Drag the edges of each video event to match the embedded marker in the CD audio for that measure (optionally, you could use the Promote Media Markers script on the CD audio to create timeline markers to “snap” the video to)

You have now time-stretched the video to be “measure accurate” which should be close enough for most time drift. This is the quickest way I have found for matching CD’s to live performances. If you have a script tool like VASST Ultimate S Pro, it gets ever quicker because Ultimate S Pro can extract media makers and split the video events for you with one click.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

> 2. I set the end action of that media to link to a button on one of my DVD menus

You were almost there. You want to set the button on your menu to play the transition and the end-action of the transition to point to the video or the next menu.

> 3. Im supposed to set the button action to play the transistion media, but I dont see where to select that.

Select the button, select the Action tab on the Button Properties, and set the Destination link to the media that you placed in the root.

The flow would be:

[menu button destination] -> [transition media] ->
[transition media end-action] -> [next menu}

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

> 1. How do I animate zooming on something?

Keyframes. If you are zooming with Pan/Crop (and you should be) look up keyframes in the help file and it will explain how they animate the settings for you.

> 2. How do I flip an image (with it still being animated, of course)?

3D Track Motion. If you really mean flip as in 3D flip and not just reverse the image, then use 3D Track Motion. This will allow you to flip/rotate your video in any direction you want.

> 3. Most importantly, how do I cut out an image and paste it over another one (like say I wanted to give an animated figure another figure’s face).

Masks. Use the Mask tool in Pan/Crop to draw a bezier mask around the part of the image you want to keep and the rest will disappear. Place this even on a track above the one you want to cover over. Vegas sees tracks from the top down (i.e., the higher tracks block the lower tracks)

> 4. And most basically, how do I group videos? I tried selecting and pressing “G” (like the help menu says), but in the end I have to drag each clip by hand, which gets particularly annoying.

You did the right thing. There is an option to Ignore Even Grouping (Ctrl+Shift+U). If you have it enabled the groups will be ignored. Make sure Options | Ignore Event Grouping is disabled, then select all of the events and use the ‘G’ key like you have been.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

What codec did you use to render the 720p footage in Movie Studio. Did that codec get uninstalled somehow? That would cause Vegas Pro not to be able to read them. Also if you switched to Vegas Pro 8.1 on Vista 64 there are lots of codecs that don’t work. What else changed about your system?

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

> I have several thousand images batch processed with PS CS3 and downscaled to about 2000px widen each scene ( 6 of them, each from 80 to 700 frames ) turned into video clips in virtual dub.

Just FYI, there was no reason to use virtualdub just to turn the images into video. You could have imported the pictures as an image sequence right into Vegas. (just thought you might like to know for next time)

> Now the problem im facing here is that im not sure what kind of aspect ratio and resolution to start a new Vegas project with.

On option is to work in the resolution of the source video. In the project properties, use the Match Media button (it’s a folder icon on the top right) and navigate to the video file. This will set Vegas to match the resolution and fps of the video from virtualdub.

> I know the wanted final render is quicktime mpeg4 with 720 x 756, and I would prefer it to be 16:9. I have so far been getting letterboxed either on top and bottom or on both sides.

That’s because 720×756 is not 16:9. 16:9 means the ratio of width to height is 16 units to 9 units. If 720 is your 16, then 405 is you 9. If 756 is your 9, then 1344 is your 16. Anything less will have black bars.

> Any suggestions on what res & aspect ratio to start the project, and whether I need to change the aspect ratio and/or res of the individual clips?

If the source video clips are not the resolution of your final output, an alternate approach to my first suggestion is to start the project in the output resolution. This has the advantage that you can use Pan/Crop with the Match Output Aspect option to match you final output perfectly. Since you did say that you wanted to Pan and Zoom, this is probably your best approach.

> Another problem is that there needs to be another low res copy for online use of the video, I suppose this changes the situation with the aspect ratios.

Not sure why the low res wouldn’t use the same aspect but with less resolution?

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com