Matt Crowley
Forum Replies Created
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Kelly, have you got “Adjust source media to better match project/render settings” enabled in the project properties? If yes, then disable that and try the renders again. This option re-frames (crops) some source media to fit the render settings, and seems to only affect some video events for me, not stills – that might explain why you see some media showing through the mask edges.
Alternatively, try enabling the “Stretch video to fill output frame…” option in the render dialog. That will prevent extra letterboxing by cropping the output video slightly as necessary when you render to a format that’s different to your project settings. There’s a slight quality hit due to the resize, but that’s probably OK for approval/proof videos.
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As a quick alternative to making a still image letterbox mask, you can use the Checkerboard media generator to make the mask.
Just drop a Checkerboard media generator onto your top track, and set the parameters like so:
Width: 1
Height: 0.75
Edge Blending: 0 Horiz and Vert
Color 1: transparent
Color 2: Solid black
Grid Position: X=0, Y=0.125Save that as a preset once you’ve tested it, and stretch it out to the duration of the project.
Those settings also work for PAL – basically any 4:3 to 16:9 letterboxing I think.
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Yes, it’s to do with non-square pixels. Even if the project uses non-square pixels (DV/DVD formats), the snapshots get saved with square pixels.
See this thread for the details. There are plenty more threads discussing the same type of thing.
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/900211
By the way, if this is a DVD project then it should probably be 720×480, not 720×486.
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This is a quirk of the pan/crop tool, but it can be overcome by right-clicking on the image in pan/crop and selecting “match output aspect”.
This forces the pan/crop rectangle to the output video proportions so that you don’t end up with black bars or the next track showing at the edges.
This also applies if you are cropping the image so you only get a piece out of the middle.
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The Device Explorer is really designed for “capturing” footage from cameras that record to hard disk or memory cards – typically AVCHD, I’ve only used for AVCHD camera, and it expects to see the original file/folder structure that the camera creates. It won’t work if you just have a folder of MTS files. My main gripe with it is that it seems to put all files into a specific folder, and you can’t select where to put the imported files.
One workaround I’ve used is to batch rename the files to include a date/time in the name (much as camera import utilities do). I use Renamer and a rule that adds the “file modified” date/time, but you can also try BulkRenameUtility. They’re a bit complicated but powerful.
It’s very easy to get confused with multiple AVCHD files that have the same name (00001.MTS, 00001.MTS etc) so get into the habit of renaming them or using an import utility that gives them a timestamp in the name.
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I discovered this a while ago. It’s a bit of a hack workaround but seems to do the trick:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/913841
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[Junya Wright] “The field scene at 23 seconds is clear. But the field scenes at 29 seconds and on are horrible looking.”
The first shot has relatively little camera motion, so there’s not much motion blur. But look at the guy’s fingers – they are quite blurred.
The later shots of the same scene have lots of camera motion, and the motion blur is obvious. It’s the same with the single shot with the guy in white tee walking along a path.
The light was probably too low for the camera, and it’s also having trouble auto-focussing as Stephen pointed out. The sunlit shots are clear and sharp. Maybe you can drop these shots and use some of the other better takes instead if you have enough footage.
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I use Movie Studio Platinum 10, but my projects tend to be fairly simple and shorter (less than 30mins) and only output to DVD, although my sources are AVCHD camcorder and DSLR stills. I’ve had no issues, apart from the inevitable sluggish previews on a relatively modest PC. The only HD output I’ve done is short clips for testing and demos, so I can’t really comment on HD performance.
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What exact format are you rendering to? How much free disc space do you have? One mistake is to render to uncompressed (or low-compression) AVI formats, and this gobbles disc space like crazy.
If you’re rendering for Bluray or youtube/vimeo/etc, then use the Sony AVC codec and choose an appropriate preset from the Bluray or Internet presets.
Do your renders always stop at the same place? And what sort of failure is it? Does Vegas actually crash or just display a message? Try a simple project with a known good video clip, no effect, etc, and see if you get more reliable renders.
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If you’re going to be embedding videos in a webpage, then you probably need to find a way to stream them from an embedded player applet (often Adobe Flash based), in a similar manner to how video sites like youtube and vimeo do it (but hosted on your own server). That’s something you need to ask your webmaster about, and will determine what size/format you need to render your videos to. Probably something small will be fine, like 360p (640×360) or even smaller like 320×240. They don’t really need to be HD if it’s just quick profiles for clients to view.
If you’ve shot and framed the videos as widescreen, then it might be best to keep them that way. If you need to change to 4:3 to fit them into the site layout, then just start a new project at the desired resolution (like 320×240 or whatever), drop your media on the timeline, and apply pan/crop to each clip and “match output aspect”. That will crop them exactly to the project aspect ratio.