[Kelly Griffin]

I had to achieve the same thing last year. I used the “Dent” (or maybe it was the “Drip”) tool in Fusion and got something pretty believable with some soft masking added.

[Kelly Griffin]

(Paul & Vincent) Here’s my best try at answering your questions (I’m in an airport right now):

> Any WAV file I have plays fine in Windows Media Player.

> I have discovered that WAV files from stock audio sites (like PremiumBeat.com, Music Bakery) seem to be okay.

> Any WAV files I get from local audio post houses, from VO talent or from my Zoom H4N are Frankensteins.

> By “Frankenstein” I mean this: If I lay a WAV on my timeline, in most cases it’s just audio “snow” sound and the volume is about a million dB– completely off the meter. If it’s not that, it’ll be kind of “pulsed breaks”, as if you were listening to something and turned mute on and off every second or so. Other times (let’s say I’ve got a VO track) it’ll be a couple words of VO, then cuts to some music from who-knows-where, then some bogus audio of something else from some other project.

> By the way, another issue I’ve had since before this one is that I would open a saved VEG and there’d be portions of the timeline where whole chunks of audio were from some other unused audio elsewhere on my computer. Even when an MXF video event had its matching audio event (right out of the camera), it might play something completely different than what should have been there. This issue seems to be a lot more rare now, but, as I think of it, it might have started becoming rare about when the psycho WAV issue started.

> The only thing I can think of that was MAYBE installed before the WAV issue started was Sorenson Squeeze 7. I use this system for Vegas, Fusion and Photoshop ONLY, and it’s also not connected to the internet unless I need to download something specific.

> As far as I can tell, Vegas seems perfectly happy with probably every other filetype Sony says it can handle.

That’s about all I can think of sitting here in my airport… thanks again, fellers!

–Kelly

[Kelly Griffin]

This has rarely happened to me, but I evidently responded in some way that garnered responses for which I didn’t intend.

I never want to bite hands that help me, so I’m sorry if any of you felt a bite!

I’ll try a re-install and see if anything happens.

–Kelly

[Kelly Griffin]

I don’t know how anyone got the impression I think “Vegas sucks”. I never said/meant anything of the sort.

I simply said that WAVs don’t work on my SVP10 and 12, for whatever reason, and that I’m nervous about meddling too much with all the rest of what DOES work, and might there be a convenient workaround (?)

I’m not complaining. I’m wondering if there’s a convenient workaround because I don’t know how else to troubleshoot something so obscure as why a WAV file wouldn’t work on my system.

–Kelly

[Kelly Griffin]

That would be a better question for one of the Vegas veterans…

[Kelly Griffin]

I did this very successfully in the days pre-DSLR:

(1) Shoot the talking head

(2) Without touching the camera, shoot a couple seconds of same scene, minus talking head.

(3) With compositing software (Fusion or AE), comp “scene with” over “scene without”, and tell it to make a “difference key”; the software will analyze the two clips and make a matte from the difference between the two, which, of course, is the talking head.

(4) Then, just use that generated difference key to comp your talking head over the “blank” background, adding a defocus or blur to the background. I’ve found you can even key the scene over itself sometimes if you don’t get a perfect key, and any troublesome spots won’t look like a seam (because the only thing showing through is the scene itself).

NOTE: If it’s not obvious, this only works with no motion in the background, or at least none where the subject overlaps.

Make sense?

–KG

ps: Even if you didn’t intentionally shoot the background (or forgot to), I’ve been saved by reviewing my footage and either found a moment or two of stuff I was rolling on and didn’t know it, or I was able to comp the background from doing a couple of frame grabs where my talking head shifted enough in their chair to create it after the fact.

[Kelly Griffin]

Hey Jess, I’ve got a slick trick for you, depending on a “yes” answer to this question: Do you have any footage (even one frame) of the background only that’s behind the talking head (without the camera having been moved)?

Or, could that background be created by any shifts your talking head may have made in their position during the shoot?

–Kelly

[Kelly Griffin]

Dang it,Ron, now ya done it…

–KG

[Kelly Griffin]

Hey Steve, this may be a stupid MAC answer, but wouldn’t just an MOV do the trick, with the Quicktime player? Or, by “jump to certain points” do you need something akin to a marker?

–KG

[Kelly Griffin]

You could try going full B&W and then adding a color to make a “monochrome” look, like all grades of brown or orange or blue, whatever.

–KG