[Matt Carlson]

That is interesting that you are using Vegas 12. For me I was using Vegas 13 for quite a while with no problems until a few weeks ago I started to experience the same frame rendering drops.

One more set of stats would be helpful… the specifications of the source video. If you do not have a program called Media Info download it here https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo.

My solution was to split the video and audio. If you are not in the habit of doing this (the process of demuxing and muxing, i.e. splitting apart and recombining the audio and video streams) this might take some time to get you through the process. I have demuxed a 29.97fps in to its video and audio parts and used a program called MP4muxer to build an mp4 file without audio forcing the video to a 30fps. The separate imported audio was now longer (a three second drift over forty minutes) because of the difference in time but Vegas’ elastique time stretch works incredibly well. I just dragged the audio to the same size of the video and everything was in sync. Changing the project properties and rendering at 30fps went perfectly smooth. My source video also had no problems playing in anything but Vegas.

MXF can contain several types of video streams. Is this from a camera? What type? Most likely the stream will be mpg. Finding a mux/demux solution will depend on what the MXF is made from.

[Matt Carlson]

I assume this is Vegas Pro 13? There appears to be a bug that misrepresents frame rates in certain situations. Unfortunately I can not point to a specific codec or situation that defines the problem (and you having an issue with mxf only solidifies the idea that it is not just a single codec problem.) From my experience Vegas 13 is hiccuping with 23.976, 24 fps and 29.97,30 fps. It can’t seem to decide which one to use when and it seems to drop a lot more frames than necessary on random projects. What are your project properties? Are you rendering out to 29.97?

My solution has been to demux the original video and remux only the video stream to mp4 keeping the audio separate (on the theory that reading the audio sync data inside the container is now bugged.) It has worked for me so far. I stopped the hiccuping renders on the problematic projects.

[Matt Carlson]

Although they never talk about the specifics I am guessing YouTube “tweaked” their encoder in the last month. A lot of people have been currently complaining about every manner of distortions of their original video. For me I had a video that I re-encoded several times and uploaded several times that broke in the same spot (during a transition.) It came up on YouTube as black but my original file plays a fade between two scenes just fine locally. What I gathered from my own personal experience is that the new encoder is very sensitive to out of range color data. What I mean by that is the encoder is perceiving data as a “command” and not actual data. Whether it be I or B frame mechanics or just a stricter tolerance on color ranges I am not sure. Since the corporate hype machine will never admit that they downgraded their encoder to the point of breaking it where we go from here is a mystery at this point.

[Matt Carlson]

I see the problem here. The Creative Cow forum is messed up. In order for scripts to show up nicely in a post we are given a code tag to wrap them in. This tag is supposed to keep it nice to look at and not use any of the other filters that the forum posts use. Unfortunately the the code tag is broken it seems. It is filtering out < > symbols. The List lines should read like: new List< TrackEvent > (); These have been removed by the filters breaking the script.

[Matt Carlson]

I answered in the other thread as well… the extension needs to be .cs for the script.

If you want to avoid any copy/paste problems here is a link to the script file

7669_closegapsmultipletracks.cs.zip

[Matt Carlson]

Scripts can either be .js (Javascript) or .cs (C#)

This is done in C# so the extension needs to be .cs

[Matt Carlson]

This script should do what you are asking. The script as written will concatenate all the events in the project. If there are other events not shown in your screen grab that you do not want affected or you just want to do selected events you need to change the line

bool ALLEVENTS = true;

to

bool ALLEVENTS = false;

When set to false the script will only concatenate events that are selected (obviously you have to have selected events for this to work).


// Close Gaps For Multiple Tracks

using Sony.Vegas;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class EntryPoint {

Vegas myVegas;

//Change this to false if you want to affect only selected events
bool ALLEVENTS = true;

public void FromVegas(Vegas vegas)
{
SelectedEvents Selected = new SelectedEvents(vegas,ALLEVENTS);
Selected.SortByStartTime();
for(int i = 0; i < Selected.Events.Count - 1; i++)
{
Selected.Events[i+1].Start = Selected.Events[i].End;
}
}

}

public class SelectedEvents
{
public List Events;

public SelectedEvents(Vegas vegas, bool allevents)
{
Events = new List();
foreach(Track t in vegas.Project.Tracks)
{
foreach(TrackEvent ev in t.Events)
{
if (ev.Selected || allevents) Events.Add(ev);
}
}
}

public void SortByStartTime()
{
Events.Sort((x,y) => x.Start.CompareTo(y.Start));
}

}

[Matt Carlson]

What you want is possible with extension programming. I do not know if VASST, Excalibur, or Vegasaur have this or not but I have programmed the ability to keep notes on each event. With Vegas extensions pretty much any kind of basic information programming (databases, notes, project archiving (although I guess Vegas 13 has added something in this area)) can be done.

How exactly would you want your notes to work? Right here thinking about it I can envision a way to have notes pop up when an event is selected. The way I designed it for myself is less intrusive but may not be immediate enough for most users.

[Matt Carlson]

The short answer is no. One of Vegas’ problems is the lack of pasting specific attributes to events. Over the years I suppose Vegas editors have changed their workflows to do pan crop changes last.

The long answer is yes. With extension programming we have removed this particular obstacle of pasting effects.
Here is a step by step guide to solving your problem.

1) Download 7338_vegasapplicationextensions.zip
Extract the “Vegas Application Extensions” folder to your Windows “My Documents” folder (overwrite if asked.)

2) Start Vegas and go to the menu Tools -> Extensions and choose Vegas Black Tools.

3) Black Tools will open up in a docking window (which of course can be docked where you want) and will start on the “Selected Events” tab which is where you want to be. Select the event with the Gaussian Blur you want to copy and hit the “Copy” button in Black Tools. The first available memory button will turn green. (A small thumbnail of the frame at the cursor position will be added for mouse over identification.)

4) Select all of the events you want to paste to and hit the “Paste” button.

A few extraneous notes about the Paste Memory buttons. You will notice that there are twelve of them. Currently the memory bank is bugged so it will not “roll over” to a new bank if you go beyond twelve. By selecting a memory button (or having one filled by “Copy”) it will turn bright green. This means it is ready for paste. If you click a bright green button again it will turn bright blue. This means instead of replacing effects it will add them to event’s chain when pasting. By clicking a bright blue button it will turn red. This means the “Copy” button will use this button to save instead of the next available one.

Gaussian Blur is an OFX plugin so you will have no problems. The workflow for non-OFX plugins is slightly more complicated and hopefully with Vegas 13 none of this will matter anyway.

[Matt Carlson]

[John Rofrano] “there is no good way to copy a plug-in with it’s parameters intact from the Script API either.”

This is only half true. An OFX plugin can be copied completely and Vegas native plugins are thankfully 85 percent OFX now, even ones that don’t actually look OFX but are like Color Curves. I have already been using a paste of selected attributes routine (including exact copies of a single effect in a chain) in my extension for a year now. If Sony actually defined it’s clipboard object for us I could even remove the need to have a dedicated copy button. With Vegas 13 coming maybe this will all be moot. Seems unlikely though….