John Rofrano
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Do store bought widescreen DVD’s play back in widescreen?
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
SoundForge 9 is primarily an editor but it does come with some audio restoration tools and it also comes with Sony Noise Reduction plug-in so it’s a great way to get an audio editor and the noise reduction together.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
SoundSoap 2 does a great job on this kind of noise. Of course, start with the Equalizer because it’s free. There are also tools like iZotope Rx that are incredibly good in these situations but they are a lot more expensive.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Obviously you must install the Lagarith codec first. Then open Vegas and load your footage onto the timeline and select File | Render As… and choose Video for Windows and press the Custom… button. On the Video tab select the Video Format dropdown box and choose Lagarith lossles codec.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Having the LCD calibrated makes a big difference. You can get a hardware LCD calibrator for as little as $69. The ones in the $100 range are even better. I use a Spyder3Elite ($220) but I probably could have gotten away with a Spyder3Pro ($149).
The small LCD on a camera will usually look better and brighter. It is important to calibrate that little LCD as well. If the camera can generate color bars I would use that. If not, you can use Vegas to generate color bars and print them to tape. Then play the tape in your camera and adjust the brightness of the LCD. You want to use the three bars in the lower right (called the pluge) to set the brightness (which is probably the only thing you can change on a camcorder LCD). When the brightness is all the way up you should see three distinct bars, the left one will be 3.5 IRE, the one to the right next to it will be 7.5 IRE, and the one on the right will be 11.5 IRE which looks more like a lighter gray.
Adjust the brightness control until the middle (7.5) pluge bar is not quite visible (i.e., the two left bars are indistinguishable from each other). The lightest bar on the right (11.5) should be barely visible. If it’s not visible, turn the brightness up until it becomes visible. This will at least set the brightness of the camcorder LCD to the proper level.
You are correct that connecting the camera directly to a TV and comparing that with the LCD is another good way to judge the footage.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
LCD’s usually have several color temperature settings that they can use and they have settings for movies and internet and other things so it’s quite possible that the LCD is affecting how you see things. It’s just something to be aware of. Some graphics cards come with calibration software that simply use your eyes to determine levels. At a minimum I would look to see if your graphics card has one and use it just to be sure.
I’m not sure why you said you rendered several different types. You should not be rendering at all. Aren’t we talking about the DV AVI file from your camera? Isn’t that what looks bad?
As for Camtasia, it has a video capture component and Vegas is just saying that it can see it. If you had a web cam, that would be listed too. If you’re not seeing your DV device then it must not be plugged in properly. Vegas is just enumerating all of the capture devices it finds.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
If you are capturing via firewire, DV capture is just a file copy. Bit-for-bit it is exactly what was on your camera. Is your LCD calibrated correctly? Have you set the Vegas preview window to Best (Full) when evaluating quality? Vegas has an extremely good DV codec so you should not be seeing any difference in quality because of something Vegas has done (at least I have never experienced this).
How to the files look outside of Vegas on your PC? How about if you drop one into DVD Architect and burn a DVD directly from the AVI file? Does that look bad on your TV? I doubt the problem is with capture but you could always try a different capture program like Scenalizer and see if it makes any difference.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I believe that Vegas will always use it’s own codec for the formats it knows about. There is an option in the preferences to use 3rd part DV codecs but that was useful back when everyone was editing DV. Perhaps Sony needs to extend that concept to include other 3rd party codecs more generically.
The AVISynth processing you are referring to is called “frame serving” and it’s a very powerful way to transfer video from one application to another (or back to itself) without having to render it first. I don’t know the magic incantation to make this work for you but maybe someone else here who uses it can.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I believe you’ve uncovered the core problem. Vegas cannot use DirectShow codecs; it only supports the older Video For Windows codecs. You can’t change this behavior (Sony has to). If you don’t want to re-encode the video from your camera then you need to find another editing program to use.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
These types of cameras are notorious for using formats that cannot easily be edited. You probably need to re-encode the video from that camera into a format that Vegas can edit. If you don’t have the CD that came with it, I would just download the correct software / drivers from the manufacturer instead of loading rouge software and then trying to figure out why it doesn’t work. BTW, Vegas cannot edit Xvid or DivX so don’t use those formats. Try Quicktime H.264, WMV, or even Lagarith which is lossless.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com