[Kelly Griffin]

Bruce,

I don’t know what “X.264” is, but I’ve found that every station here (Portland, OR) can take MOV/H264 just fine, even when they specify something else.

MP4s straight out of Vegas could work fine for you, too. You may just need to make a phone call.

And, yes, I think by “full mixed” they mean same audio on both channels.

–KG

[Kelly Griffin]

Hey Bruce,

Here are my answers to your questions, based on my experience in Portland, OR:

Tone: You should be able to find tone online. You’re looking for minus 20dB.

I’d consider Vegas’ master levels meter a “true” meter. You’ll want peak levels at minus 10bB.

I use volume envelopes, too. Also, John Rofrano was kind enough to set me up a long time ago with a nifty master preset, that keeps audio all tucked in to where it needs to be. I can send you that doc if you’d like to have it.

You should be fine just using the “Broadcast Colors” VideoFX. In twenty years I’ve never used a scope and have never had a spot rejected, so I wouldn’t sweat it too much.

For 16:9 stuff, I’d recommend you ask them their requirements for what they call “safe area”; some stations here letterbox to get their SD 4:3, others do a centercut (which I still find completely frustrating… wouldn’t want to actually be able to USE the widescreen format).

Hope this helps,

–Kelly

[Kelly Griffin]

I’d second that idea…

[Kelly Griffin]

If you want to send me a couple of seconds of the clip (OOPS “video event”) I’d be happy to look under the hood for you.

kelly@kgcreative.biz

–KG

[Kelly Griffin]

Yo Griff–

I’ll betcha donuts to pesos you just have a pixel aspect (shape) issue. The 720×480 frame size is NOT usually square pixel; NTSC standard def TV was in the world of non-square (i.e., taller than wider) pixels.

What that means/meant is/was that if you created an image of a circle that looked correct on a TV display, if you did a frame grab and looked at it in Photoshop that circle would look like a wide oval (and a person would look thick). The 640×480 frame size is a square-pixel compensation (without enlarging either axis) for the difference in aspect.

That doesn’t explain (to me) why you have 720×480 square pixel footage in the first place, but I wonder if your content actually does appear stretched horizontally (?)

–K

[Kelly Griffin]

First thing that comes to mind is to bust it up into chewable chunks, in consideration of both your IT guys and your audience. Of the 2.5 hours, how much do you think someone will want to watch before they want a break?

I think if I had five half-hour segments (or ten fifteen-minute ones) that had names like chapter names, that might be more appealing than thinking of watching and/or scrolling through the 2.5-hour monster…

–KG

[Kelly Griffin]

Stewart,

I have SVP10 and this same thing has happened to me from the beginning. Here’s at least what I discovered as a workaround for you so you don’t have to wait for it:

When the customize template comes up and hangs, move your cursor down to a blank area of the Windows start bar, RT-click, do “Start Task Manager”, but then just close the task manager when it comes up (don’t choose anything on it). Then you can alter whatever you want on the template.

I don’t know why that works, but it always does for me!

–Kelly

[Kelly Griffin]

Hey Allby, I don’t have an answer to your question, but I have a DVCAM question for you if you can e-mail me when you get a chance?

kelly@kgcreative.biz

Thank you!

–Kelly

[Kelly Griffin]

I’d like to know this, too… Someone told me it’s impossible to get Windows7 to default to “List” instead of “icons” (thanks, Microsoft, but I already know that my folder with five hundred video files contains nothing but video files), throughout the file system, so I find myself changing this constantly; then, you boot and you’re doing it all over again…

–K

[Kelly Griffin]

Yes, I think you’re missing something!

Think of a timeline of nested VEGs as “what will be” your final output. Go ahead and tie each of your six sections together as your final, big timeline (I’ll call it “FINAL_VEG”). You can still make all the adjustments you mention, but you do those on the individual VEGs. Meaning, if you need to color correct a portion of the third section (I’ll call it “VEG C”), you do that color correction back on VEG C itself.

Then, when you resave VEG C and then go load FINAL_VEG again, you’ll see your change made. Make sense?

–KG