John Rofrano
3
COW Coins
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Unfortunately there is no easy way for such a basic function. What you have to do is double-click the event to make a selection. Then in the lower right corner of the timeline are three timecode readouts. The third one is the selection length. These can actually be edited so you can type in the length you want and the selection will change. Then drag the end of the clip until it snaps to the selection. A lot of steps for such a simple function but it works.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Hi Lynn,
Let me try and address all of the questions you brought up one at a time:
> What is a volume envelope?
A volume envelope allows you to control the volume over time. It may not be available in the Movie Studio version of Vegas (which I assume you have).
> My latest problem is that I lost all audio between Vegas and Architect. I experimented at first with saving the Vegas output as a .MPG file
It is possible that the MPEG format you used did not include audio. This is because MPEG audio is not part of the NTSC DVD spec. You should render your audio separately in the AC3 format or as a WAV file if the Movie Studio version doesn’t support AC3 rendering.
> … and then went back to a regular .vf file format. Some where the audio got lost.
.vf is not a render format. it is your actual project file that you save using “save” or “save as”.
> I am using 3 tracks for audio and 1 track for video. Audio plays fine in Vegas and audio comes directly from the mini DVD.
Good. This means you didn’t loose the audio in your project. Since you are using the Movie Studio version of Vegas, why don’t you just forget about rendering and use the Make Movie button which takes all of the guess work out of it?
> I hate Sony Vegas and Architect Studio. Trying to take video off a mini DVD from a Sony Camcorder, making edits, and then making a full size DVD takes all day because the instructions are terrible. I still can’t figure our how to get rid of the title “MENU 1” or change its name in Architect.
Click on the “MENU 1” with your mouse to highlight it and press F2. then type the new title.
It sounds like you might benefit from some training. We have an excellent training DVD for Vegas Movie Studio and also a book Instant Vegas Movie Studio that you might find useful. Douglas Spotted Eagle and I wrote the book and Douglas is the trainer on the DVD. It might help to actually see the workflow. I learn a lot more from DVD’s than from books myself.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
What Mike said… especially:
> …make sure your camera moves are as smooth as possible,
Smooth and SLOW! What you can do in Vegas is render your final project to 24p to get the 24p cadence. This will look jittery if you pan too fast. If you had a camera that shoots 24p you would see this jitter in the LCD while filming. Since you don’t, you’ll need to experiment with how slow to pan. Also adding a nice ‘S’ gamma curve with Sony Color Curves FX will help crush the blacks and pop the whites. A little color correction is also in order.
There are plug-ins like VASST Celluloid and Magic Bullet Looks that will also give you more film looks. 24p is only a small part of “the look”.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
> I know I’m opening up a large can o’ worms here
…now where did I put that can opener?
Carl, I was hoping to see a lot of posts too but the silence is deafening. I’m about to buy a Sony HDR-CX12 because I want a memory stick camera that my son can just run around with his friends and shoot movies and not worry about tapes. I have no idea how well AVCHD will stand up to chroma key. I’ve read good things about the Sony HDR-SR12 but that’s out of my price range for what I want. I have read too many horror stories with Vegas not importing correctly from the Canon cameras which is a shame. It seems all AVCHD is not created equal.
I do a lot of chroma key with HDV using my Sony HVR-Z1U and HVR-A1U and the image holds up really well. I’m wondering if the increased compression in the AVCHD format will compromise getting a good key (although I use to pull a pretty good key off of DV if it was lit well) There are a lot of good reasons to stick with an HDV format camera but that means tape and you might not want to mess with that.
I guess the question is really, “is AVCHD a good format for chroma key”. I’ll know once I get mine but I was hoping someone else here would share their experiences if any.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
This was just answered in the Splitting Screens thread.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
You are correct that you need Raylight to bridge the gap between Panasonic and Sony. You shouldn’t have any problems with Vista 64 if you stay with 32 bit applications. It’s only when you try to use the 64-bit version of Vegas Pro 8.1 that you realize that all of your plug-ins are gone and it’s kinda useless standing alone all by itself. So keep using Vegas Pro 8.0 and you should be fine.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
> unfortunately there isn’t a chroma keying plugin available presently for sony vegas
Sure there is. I use Boris RED for chroma keying in Vegas all the time (Boris FX has the keyer as well). In addition to having several matte clean-up tools (including a choker) it has a Light Wrap tool that will wrap the light from the background image around the keyed image which really helps with selling the effect that the subject is really in the scene. It’s an outstanding set of keying tools.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
What version of Camtasia? Are you recording to CAMREC files and then exporting AVI out of Camtasia Studio? I have seen this problem with that workflow using Camtasia 3. I now do all my recording directly to AVI files and have not seen the problem since.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
You did everything correctly and that should have worked. I would contact Sony Tech support. Maybe there is something unique about the stream from your particular camera that they don’t support or it’s a bug in Movie Studio Platinum 9?
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
As Terry said, the size should be half of 1440×1080 which is 720×540. Since Vegas will keep the aspect you only have to change the Width to 720 and the Height will snap to 540.
Placement is a little harder to wrap your head around. Are you ready?
An X,Y position of 0,0 keeps the image centered in the frame. X moves the frame left for negative values and right for positive values. Y moves the frame down for negative values and up for positive values. To move the frame to the left you want to make X a negative 1/2 of the width of the 720 frame so X = -360. To move it up the Y axis you want to move positive half the height of the 540 frame so Y = 260.
Therefore, to move a frame of 720×540 to:
Upper Left X= -360, Y= 260
Upper Right X= 360, Y= 260
Lower Right X= 360, Y= -260
Lower Left X= -360, Y= -260
I bet you wish you had paid more attention in Geometry class. 😉~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com