[Luc Enders]

The preset filter would apply then to the entire image? Or I assume you would then limit the range using luminance upper limits? The curves control is certainly better way to go to control reduction but could use an explanation as it’s not quite trivial to do it properly.

Sony could use the shadow/highlight filter from photoshop to make it easier (and that’s still little bit tricky to get transition natural unless it’s slight correction).

The curves control in Photoshop is a combination of both curves+levels. Just noticed to do the same I can create a new point in color curves and then move the corner that way (like a level control).

[Luc Enders]

I don’t know a) but I’ve heard about this issue before.
One thing that should work is to convert the MP3 to a wav file first.

[Luc Enders]

Agree but also a lot harder to do right. Overdoing in a certain range only will cause unnatural contrast (which can be mitigated with adjusting mid-level contrast). So depends on your PP skills.

That said I don’t know how the image looks like so can’t tell for sure which filter is best.

[Luc Enders]

Which avi format? What video/audio format is inside the avi container?

You could install media player classic and then in options select audio switcher. Then select and enable ‘audio time shift(ms)’ and try various settings until playback is in sync. Using that number you could shift audio in vegas.

[Luc Enders]

Sounds like contrast clipping. Try the contrast/brightness filter and reduce contrast first, then try in combination reducing brightness.

[Luc Enders]

I also always use 32bit and that’s probably why I probably see a lot of crashes (in combination with type of AVCHD files). Typically I end up outputting to YUV instead and then use another renderer.

I did yesterday a comparison test with 8 bit and 32 bit output using consumer AVCHD as source and I can’t say I saw any difference. But I just looked at 1 framegrab.

I’m undecided whether I should upgrade to v9. I do see a few more rendering options for MP4 but still no 1080i WMVHD support. Only interesting improvement for me personally might be smart rendering. Otherwise looks more like a 8.2 release than a full 9.

[Luc Enders]

I have a brand new Dell Core i7 with 6GB memory and Vegas also crashes for me on this machine most often when rendering to MP4/AVC with AVCHD 1080i files. I tried 2 other machines and same results.

Sony hasn’t been able to help me in none of these crashes and they always say I need to uninstall and kill any programs. So I spend time installing a brand new OS clean install and have nothing else installed than Vegas. And yet still it crashes with a call stack not showing any other programs. They have the call stack so I don’t get why they won’t commit in fixing the memory bug (which call stack is identical to other users reporting this).

It seems to be a combination of using 32bit color space and project with several AVCHD files rendering to MP4 or also WMVHD.

I did find that Vegas 9 64bit is slightly more stable but I still get some crashes with it. I decided not to spend more money on v9 just because they didn’t fix all issues in v8:-(.

[Luc Enders]

I reported this issue to Sony long time ago and Sony was never able to resolve it so I render typicall first to uncompressed Sony YUV and then use another renderer. Especially since Vegas doesn’t support WMVHD 1080i (only progressive for some unknown reason).
And WMVHD 720p looks bad. The downscale sharpness is not great (even at best settings and no matter what scaling method you choose).

Here are some suggestions from Sony which may or may not help:

– In preferences general: disable ‘enable no recompress long GOP rendering’
– In preferences video: set max threads to 1
– if Vegas crashes at start add vegas80.exe to DEP exclusion list (Windows Control panel, performance, advanced settings).

[Luc Enders]

Typically if you see 1088 it means the renderer added 8 pixels to get even 16pixels blocks for let’s say ‘compatibility’… I’d check the profile/baseline settings if there are such settings in V7 for this codec.

Although I don’t think I’ve seen that with MainConcept but haven’t used v7. At least in V8 you can override the size with the Sony Vegas AVC.

[Luc Enders]

Yeah same problems here. Sony typically responds doesn’t happen on their computers. Couple of things you could try which you might already have:

– Do not use 32bit color space if that’s an option (although be warned that at least with Canon AVCHD files you will get bad color space bug making black gray so you need to add color space conversion filter to entire track (not sure if fixed in v9)
– Set threads to 1 and disable long GOP rendering
– 32bit OS: exclude Vegas exe from Data access protection in system/performance/advanced settings (in case Sony crashes at startup which I’ve seen as well)

But yes even with those settings I get crashes especially MP4 and WMVHD. Typical workaround for me is to render as Sony YUV uncompressed and then use another renderer to render to final output (especially since Sony downscaling is really bad and options are very limited like no 1080i support).

I found Vegas 9 64bit seems slightly more stable but not sure yet if I want to spend more money on an upgrade just to fix their bugs.
The smart rerendering is great in V9 but I wished they would have allowed it for other containers like MP4 (seems to only work with AVCHD).