John Rofrano
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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You should be going to Panasonic and asking them why they refuse to let Sony develop software for their camera. Then you should strongly consider why you would want to purchase a camera from a company that picks and chooses who THEY want to allow to develop software instead of giving YOU the choice. Then you should buy a Sony camera. 😉 But that’s just my opinion against proprietary companies who think they know better than me and forget that I am the customer and I vote with my wallet! (and you should too… just my personal opinion)
To answer your question: You need to find a utility that will capture what your camera has recorded and convert it into a non-proprietary format that can be edited by Vegas. I don’t know if Cineform Neo HDV can do this but something along those lines to convert all of your footage into an intermediary that can be edited by Vegas. Good luck. It stinks when manufacturers can’t play nice together.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Things “could” get thrown off but the problem is that the project can’t always match the output format. Take my HD workflow above for example. I render to both Blu-ray disc and DVD so obviously I can’t have my project set for both. I choose to set it to HDV and when I render to SD DVD there are slight black pillarboxes because 16:9 HD does not match 16:9 Widescreen exactly. This is what I meant by “surprises”.
I can fix this problem in one of two ways (1) I can use the stretch option during the DVD render to eliminate the black pillars at the expense of making my video slightly wider or (2) I can drop the HDV project into an DV Widescreen project and crop the aspect which cuts the top and bottom off slightly. Most of the time I do neither and live with the slight black pillars on DVD (but my Blu-rays are perfect).
So if I was not planning on not making any Blu-ray discs, I would choose DVD Widescreen as my project settings so that everything I do fits the final size and aspect. If you output to a resolution or aspect that does not match your project, there is always the element of surprise. It may look great, or it may not. Why tempt fate? If you want to be sure of what the final output will look like, it’s a good idea to keep the project and output in sync. It’s not a hard rule but it’s a good idea.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
If I change the project settings in Vegas, do the media settings automatically change to match the project?
No. Vegas is media agnostic and it will display whatever media you drop in it at the project setting. A general rule of thumb is to set your project settings to match our output settings so that there is no surprises.
Do the project settings in DVD Architect have to match the media settings that are brought into it? (i.e. The Media is Widescreen, but the DVD project settings are not.)
No, I’ve created 4:3 DVD menus that linked to 16:9 widescreen movies. DVD Architect will take any DVD compliant video and simply use it.
Also what is the best way to “downsize” HD to Standard?
“Best” is always “subjective”, but I edit all of my HD shot projects as HD and I render to DVD Widescreen. This allows me to go back and create Blu-ray copies if I need them. So downsizing to SD on output leaves you with the most choices.
You could also downsize in-camera and edit in SD from the start if you know you will never need HD output but even then, there are advantages to always editing in HD regardless of output because you can zoom in and make a one camera shot look like a two camera shot very easily.
I have read on this forum or the Vegas Basic Forum that video brought into DVD Architect has to be MPEG-2. Can anyone explain why?
No because it doesn’t have to be. 😉 You can drop AVI files or any files you’d like into DVD Architect and it will convert them to MPEG-2. What has to be MPEG-2 is what actually gets written to the physical DVD disc. The reason is because the DVD spec states that DVD’s must use the MPEG-2 codec and all DVD playes only have to come with an MPEG-2 decoder. (yes I know there are hybrid players that support DivX but you can’t guarantee that someone who want to distribute a DVD to will have a compatible player since MPEG-2 is all that is required).
People may have told you that you only “want” to use MPEG-2 with DVD Architect because it gives you more control over making the MPEG-2 file and DVD Architect won’t have to re-encode whatever you drop on it into MPEG-2. So by only using MPEG-2 files you save yourself a render and therefore save yourself time and quality loss.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Well… $1000 is not a lot of money for a PC that can handle HDV editing. From personal experience I can not recommend Dell. If you want to go with HP I would select something from their HP Workstation line. You definitely want nothing less than a Quad Core for HDV and from what I can see, the HP xw4600 is the least expensive workstation that supports a QuadCore.
To keep within that price you’re going to have to be willing to buy peripherals like more memory and 2nd hard drive, etc. separately and install them yourself. For example, HP wants an additional $356 to add a 500GB hard drive and you can buy a Western Digital 650GB hard drive from NewEgg.com for only $85!!! That’s a big difference.
The same is true for memory. On the HP xw4600 they give you 2GB of memory but want an additional $160 to bring that up to 4GB. You can by 2GB of Corsair memory for around $60. What’s even better is if you scale the 2GB they give you back to 1GB they take $160 off the price. So $160 off plus saving $160 is $320 saved. You can buy 4GB for around $120 and save yourself $200!
That’s the problem with not building yourself. You get killed on the price of peripherals with Dell/HP/etc. and for HDV editing you need a beefy machine with lots of memory and hard drive space. Otherwise you will need wait until you have around $1500~$1800 saved up if you don’t want to add things yourself.
As far as what specs to look for:
CPU: Intel QuadCore 2.4GHz or better
Memory: 2-4GB (4GB preferred)
Hard Disk 1: 160GB
Hard Disk 2: 500GB
Firewire Card (or on motherboard)
Operating System: Windows XPThis is kind of meets minimum. You can see the specs for the computer I built for HDV editing on the PC Equipment page of my web site.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
It is certainly perplexing. The reason the QuadCore is only at 40% is probably because the WMV encoder is only using two threads (one for video and one for audio) and therefore only two of the 4 CPUs. But the strange thing is that the QuadCore is rated at 2.5GHz and the DualCore is rated at 2.4GHz so even at two cores the render time should be the same.
Now I know that AMD always had a funny numbering scheme because their clock speed could not be compared one-for-one with Intel because their pipeline was shorter and therefore they ran faster at the same clock speed. If this is no longer true for their QuadCores it could be that a 2.4 AMD DualCore has faster processors than a 2.5 AMD QuadCore. I’m just guessing here.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
A quick SEARCH of the forum for “black bar” reveals this thread:
Grrr, Vegas Pro 8.0 windows – black bar in track width!
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
What you want to do is not going to be possible in any DVD authoring application. If I understand you correctly you want to draw a triangle and then have video loop appear within it, then draw another triangle and have another video loop appear. This is video editing work. You are compositing multiple videos with overlays and this needs to be done in an NLE and then use it as the background for the DVD menu. You will have to learn how to do it in Avid if that’s all you have. As we have already said, this is simple to do in Vegas.
If you just want to create a new frame, just drop an existing frame onto the menu and look in it’s attributes to see what files were used to create it, the mask, and the highlight. Then find those files on the file system and open them in Photoshop to get an idea of what you have to do to make your own. Then make your own and change the properties to point to your versions.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I would try the one button copy and see if it works. I really don’t know.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
The ProType Titler Collections are a bit touchy about how you replace the text. What I find works best is to scroll the CTI all the way to the right where the text is fully visible. Then double-click the text and press Ctrl+A to highlight all, Paste the new text and Press Esc. This seems to preserve the settings.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
If they have Vegas Movie Studio then you might have DVD Architect Studio. I don’t think the Studio version of DVD Architect supports using Photoshop to make menus. If you do have a copy of DVD Architect that supports PSD menus I can tell you that it’s not easy to create them (or at least I don’t find it easy and so I never use it). The instructions would be in the help file if you search for PSD. It involves creating layers and naming them a special way so that DVD Architect knows what to use each for.
If the three looping videos are going to be buttons, just drag and drop them onto the menu and set them to animate which will create the looping. If they are just playing as part of the background, then I would make them part of the background video. This is why I suggested using Vegas but you can use Avid if you’d like.
Just to recap, make the looping video as part of the menu background video and create the buttons and other overlays with Photoshop or DVD Architect itself. DVD Architect also has the ability to create a menu overlay image to highlight the buttons if you don’t use Photoshop.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com