John Rofrano
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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There is also InfinitiCAM from VASST if you don’t want to go for the price Ultimate S Pro. All of the VASST script products work in Vegas 6, 7 & Pro 8 so no worries about which version to buy.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Add a third track on top of the other two. Make the two original tracks a Child of the top track. Then use the Parent Motion button on the top track to control the other two. The Parent Motion button will only appear on the extreme left when the other tracks and children of it.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
> my last hope is that someone (perhaps you John?) can have a look at this 4 sec clip and try to find the right rendering-settings for MainConcept MPEG-2 in Vegas
Well… it really helps having the file because I figured it out. I looked at the file in GSpot and it said it was in DVD VOB format with AC3 audio. (which actually makes perfect sense since this camera shoots video that can be directly played in a DVD player) Since Vegas can’t output AC3 audio in an MPEG file I knew that we needed to start with a template that didn’t include audio. Then I opened the file in Womble and that confirmed that the audio was AC3 but also told me that the bit-rate was 9.1Mbps Variable. We already knew from using the Match Media button that the MPEG was Upper Field First. With those three pieces of information I was able to create a render template that did not require recompression.
Here’s how:
- Start with the DVD Architect PAL Widescreen video stream template
- Press the Custom… button
- Select the Video tab
- Change the Field Order to Upper Field First
- Change the Maximum (bps) to 9,100,000
- Select the System tab
- Check Save as separate elementary streams (very important)
- Change the Template name to PAL Widescreen (No Recompress)
- Press the Save icon
- Press OK
You should now have a new template called PAL Widescreen (No Recompress) that will render without recompression to a .m2v file. The secret was rendering to m2v as an elemental stream that can be used to build the VOB again for DVD. If you go back and render the audio as AC3 and drop the M2V file into DVD Architect it will act just like an MPG file and create a button with video and audio.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Does your camera really shoot 16:9 or does it just letterbox a into a 4:3 frame? (what model is it?) There were lots of early cameras that claimed to be 16:9 and they were not. They used this letterboxing trick to give you the illusion of 16:9 but they shot 4:3 with black bars top and bottom. If you dropped footage shot this way into a 16:9 project you would get black bars top, bottom, left, and right. (sound familiar?)
When you drop your footage into the Vegas timeline, go into the Properties on the Media tab and see what the Pixel Aspect Ratio is. If the footage is NTSC DV widescreen then the PAR should be 1.2121. If the PAR is 0.9091 then it’s not true 16:9. Which is it? (PAL values will be 1.4568 and 1.0926 respectively)
Finally, as Mike said, is your project set to DV Widescreen (assuming this is a DV camera and not HDV). Dropping DV widescreen footage into a DV widescreen project should fill the frame perfectly with no black bars anywhere.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
> Perhaps people with Mini-DVD:s dont care about editing, but I do. And when the picture quality is not very good from the start, I surely do not want the quality to be worse just because I edit my movies without effects and add some music.
That’s why people who want to edit should not buy a miniDVD camera. I realize it’s hard for you to admit this to yourself, but you purchased the wrong camera for your needs. I’ve been doing more reading on it and apparently, Sony didn’t even try and trick you and ship editing software with this model. They have basically said it’s a “soccer mom” camera. You have to realize that and move on.
I would highly recommend that you buy a cameras that shoots in a format that is meant to be edited. MiniDV uses a 25Mbps data rate and your camera uses 8Mbps. That’s a big difference (3x) and while bitrate isn’t the only thing that determines quality, it is a big contributor.
You could try convert all of your footage to DV Widescreen and edit with that. This might preserve the footage better. You will loose some color information because of the difference in the way MPEG and DV store color but it’s worth a try.
Here is one final thing to try:
- Start a new project.
- Set your project properties to match one of the MPEG files by going into the Project Properties using the Match Media Settings button. (it’s the yellow folder to the right of the project dropdown)
- Drop the same MPEG file on the timeline.
- Then Render to MainConcept MPEG-2 using the Default Template!
The Default Template gets it’s properties from the project. Since you matched the project to the media, this just might use the proper format and not recompress.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Have you added any VST Effects lately? If so, try renaming your VST folder (so that Movie Studio can’t find it) and see if that makes a difference.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
What that says is if the streams match in resolution and bitrate, the source will not be re-compressed. The trick is knowing the attributes of your source MPEG-2 file. I did some searching on the web and one review site said that in SP mode your camera tops out at 8.5Mbps. You might want to try setting the MPEG-2 bitrate to 8,500,000 and see if that helps.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Is the original footage widescreen? What miniDVD camera are you using? Would it be possible to post a few seconds of a file from the camera? Maybe someone here can detect what the correct settings to use are. You might also want to contact the camera manufacturer and ask them for the specs on the MPEG-2 stream that they use.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Go into the Project Settings (Atl+Enter) and click on the yellow folder all the way to the right of the preset drop-down and navigate to your media and select it. This will set the project to match the media. I know, it’s odd that it will set the project to 30.000 fps this way yet you can’t just type it in! Go figure.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Use the Generated Media Credit Roll. Or use Pan/Crop to do the movement. I wouldn’t use Track Motion for that.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com