[John Rofrano]

Use the Split Screen view (the button is 4th from the left above the preview window) and enable FX Bypassed with the Select All option. This will allow you to quickly toggle the video FX on and off.

~jr

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[John Rofrano]

I would go with a firewire interface and yes it takes the place of your traditional sound card. The M-Audio Firewire Solo is not too expensive (it’s basically half of a Firewire-410). The PreSonus FireBox is also good as is the Echo AudioFire 4.

I see that PreSonus now makes the PreSonus Inspire 1394 FireWire Audio Interface which is only $150USD. That might not be a bad option. I would look for reviews and see if it’s any good. PreSonus usually makes great stuff.

I have an M-Audio Firewire-410 and a PreSonus FireStudio and they are both great audio interfaces. USB would be my second choice it has requires more CPU overhead but USB is also good in a pinch. Just make sure that whatever you buy has XLR inputs with 48v Phantom power for your Sony ECM mics.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
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[John Rofrano]

Set your preview window to Good (Full) to see what the output will really look like when rendered. Then tweak the FX to look the way you want at Good quality. I’ve seen big differences with some FX between preview quality and good quality.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

It is better to work at the resolution of the footage (HDV) so that all of the titles and other generated media are created at the same HDV quality. Then just render the project for DV Widescreen and the titles should look better than if you created them in a DV project to start with because they are coming from higher quality source. This has the added advantage of giving you the option of producing an HDV version in the future should the client ask for it.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

> First off, my apologies if my questions are a bit naive. I’m self taught in terms of video (like many of you I’m sure), but can’t seem to get my head around a few video format issues in Vegas.

Don’t be ridiculous. This is how we all learned. You ask as many “seemingly” naive questions as you want because there are probably dozens of people reading these posts who are afraid to ask the very same question. Ask away…

> HDV projects are 1440 X 1080 using square pixels and an aspect ratio of 1.33 making the project 16X9 format.

This is not correct so let’s start here. 1920×1080 HD uses square pixels. 1440×1080 uses non-square pixels. Here’s how you tell: If the Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) is 1.0000 the pixels are square. If it’s anything else, the pixels and non-square. So you correctly pointed out that 1440×1080 uses a PAR of 1.3333 which, by definition, is non-square. (1440 x 1.3333 = 1920 x 1.0000)

> 1) If I open a 720X480 NTSC DV project in Vegas and create text, import graphics, HDV footage, DV footage, and render my footage out choosing the UNCOMPRESSED AVI setting, is the resulting footage compressed additionally? I know that the DV and HDV footage are compressed initially when shot. But is my text further compressed? I believe that the answer is no. That the text would be completely sharp and totally uncompressed with a native resolution of 720X480.

Yes, you are correct. The text will not be compressed. Uncompressed means exactly that. No compression algorithm will be used (i.e., no CODEC will be applied).

> 2) Broader question: Are Vegas projects best understood as simply pixel dimension specific until rendered? Let’s say I create a project with the dimensions of 4000 X 3000 for a super large screen size if you will. And the text could be huge and super sharp…And NTSC DV video would either be small on the screen or if I stretch it to fill the screen, it would appear fuzzy looking. The HDV footage would look sharper because it’s native pixel dimension are larger. Is this correct? If so, what “format” is this 4000 X 3000 creation? A non standard one?

Vegas won’t let you make a project that large. The largest allowed is 2K so that’s 2048×2048. All of your generated media like text will have this resolution. DV will be blocky/fuzzy and HDV will be kinda OK. The “format” would be non standard.

> 3) If I shoot in HDV and want to get the best possible quality for a 4:3 output, how would I do this and what setting would I choose? My gut says 1440X960 and either letterbox or scale the video up and lose the sides of the 16X9 HDV image…. is this correct?

If your camera has 4:3 bars I would turn them on. This will ensure that you frame your 16:9 shots so that you keep the action in the 4:3 area. Then when you edit, use a 4:3 project setting and go into Pan/Crop and crop the 16:9 footage to be 4:3. You can use the Match Output Aspect option of Pan/Crop to do this easily and accurately.

> If I went larger, 2880X1920 the HDV footage would need to scale up, smaller 720X480 , the hdv footage would need to scale down. Us this correct?

There is no advantage to going larger than HDV if your final output is SD. That will be plenty of resolution to work with.

> My final outputs are 400X300 on the web…. But the concepts above are important to me in understanding how Vegas works 🙂

If you are outputting for the web, don’t forget to deinterlace the footage because web output should be progressive for the best possible viewing on all devices.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
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[John Rofrano]

Steve, You’re very welcome. I just made a post about it here at the Cow so others will know that it’s available. I’m glad you’re finding it useful. That’s what’s so great about Sony Vegas; that we can extend it with new commands. It is such a powerful concept and, in my mind, is what puts Vegas out in front of all the other NLE’s for me.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

DX plug-ins are registered with Windows. They usually come with their own installer that does the registration for you. If not, I beleive you can drag them onto the Vegas interface and it will register them.

VST’s can be anywhere you’d like as long as you tell Vegas where to scan for them. The default location is: C:\Program Files\Vstplugins\

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

It sound like you have done exactly what I was going suggest next which is contact SheerVideo’s technical support and explain to them that you purchased their codec explicitly because a client of yours is requesting video in SheerVideo’s codec with a resolution of 720×486 but the codec is throwing errors when you try to do that from Quicktime Pro. This sounds like your best course of action. Good luck.

~jr

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[John Rofrano]

They are stored in the Windows registry and I don’t think you want to hack them out of there ‘cuz it ain’t pretty.

The proper way to move them is with the Sony Preset Manager 2.0 which is a separate download. You must add your FX presets to an FX Package in order for them to be seen by the Preset Manager (yes. this is NOT intuitive at all and the Preset Manager is really only meant to be used with audio presets but you can get video presets saved by adding them to a package) Then save that package to a file and import it using the Preset Manager on the new PC. Then you have to apply the package and save the preset manually to get the preset back. Like I said, it’s not intuitive at all.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
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[John Rofrano]

Yea Sorenson Video 3 is definitely not the “sharpest tool in the shed” anymore but I was just looking for what was most compatible with acceptable quality given that the customer is not being very specific / cooperative about what they need. I agree it’s a tough place to be.

~jr

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