Matt Crowley
Forum Replies Created
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Jeff is right – Movie Studio cannot open Vegas Pro (*.veg) projects, so if you need to open your old Vegas Pro projects then you need to get a version of Vegas Pro. Vegas 6 is pretty old now, but if you had a genuine registered copy and activated it online, then you might be able to see your code/serial via the Sony registration website.
You still get a respectable set of plugins with Movie Studio HD Platinum, but not the advanced features like scripting, video scopes, compositing modes etc.
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Subclips won’t appear in the Explorer view as they are not separate files. However, you should see them in the Project Media window, for example if you create a subclip from an event that uses the 00001.MTS clip, you’ll get “00001.MTS – subclip 1” in the project media window. You can rename that. If you create a subclip by selecting a part of a clip in the trimmer, you’ll be asked for a name. I believe the subclip exists only within the project.
You can drop that subclip onto the timeline just like any other piece of media, and change the playback rate, stretch it and loop it as normal.
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It’s possible that your DSLR footage uses the full 0-255 colour range and Vegas is using this as-is. After Effects might be changing this to 16-235 either during processing or during output encoding, so you end up with less contrast on your processed footage when you import it back into Vegas.
Try using a different output format as Jeff suggests, or look for AE output options related to colour space, or apply the levels plugin with the “studio to computer” preset to the relevant media in Vegas.
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It could be a font corruption issue. Normally the font used for menu and dialog box text is Tahoma or similar, but it looks like you have the System font instead. Try resetting your Windows theme or manually selecting Tahoma as the font for menus, message boxes etc.
To check if the Tahoma font is corrupt, try using it in Word, or Vegas or any application. If you can’t use it correctly, then you may need to refresh your copy of the font file – the fonts can be copied across from another working Windows PC.
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Pan/Crop has a resize limit of 12.5% (8x smaller). You need to use “Track Motion” if you want to decrease the size of large graphics more than that.
Put your logo or other image on a new track and use Track Motion to shrink it down as much as you need, and also position it wherever you want on the video.
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Ah, sorry, that was a typo – it should be “The menu text should be fairly easy to read.”
The standard Vegas colour scheme has lower menu contrast than standard Windows themes (especially the greyed out inactive items), so if your monitor doesn’t have particularly good colour reproduction, or has poor viewing angle, then the menus and other text labels on the Vegas interface may be harder to read.
I don’t have any trouble reading the Vegas menus in their default colour on either my desktop PC (it has a decent monitor) or my elderly laptop, which also has a good screen (Dell Inspiron with 17″ 1920×1200 LCD).
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Unless you have a specific need for the other ruler formats, just use “Time & Frames”. That will automatically show you the correct time divisions for whatever video settings you use (particularly framerate).
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You can’t add a folder to the project media bin, but you can drag/drop multiple files to it from Explorer, or select multiple files in the Import Media dialog box.
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I don’t know about other versions, but in Movie Studio Platinum HD 10 there is an option to use Windows colours instead of the Vegas grey colour scheme. I guess the default Vegas scheme is designed to be neutral and not too bright so it doesn’t affect your perception of the video colour.
Options > Preferences > Display tab > Use Vegas color scheme
Un-check that and Vegas should the colours from your Windows theme (ie same colours as other apps).
If you can hardly make out the menu items (and you don’t have any eyesight problems) then you might need to check/calibrate your monitor colour/gamma. The menu test should be fairly easy to read.
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If your 1024×768 source is 4:3 aspect ratio, then changing the pixel acpect in Vegas will simply stretch the frame from 4:3 to 16:9, which usually looks strange.
The correct way is to either leave the source pillarboxed (if you need to see the entire frame), or do as Jeff says and crop the source to match the output format. You will lose a bit off the top and/or bottom of the frame. To do this, just open the pan/crop window for each 1024×768 event, right-click on the frame in the pan/crop window and select Match Output Aspect.
Also make sure your project is set up as 16:9 widescreen if that’s what you are going to render at.