[Michael Morone]

To say the issue is solved, is probably an overstatement, but at least I identified what the problem was.

If you haven’t seen the picture in my previous post, it’s one of the strangest errors I’ve ever come across, and hope to ever come across.

https://www.twitpic.com/6p9ww/full

From crashing, to missing sound, to sudden slow motion playback, without synced audio… Weird stuff happened.

The problem was not in the software, or my hardware. Instead the problem was with the file; in the file.

I found that Vegas 7 crashed at the same point, when playing a certain file. So… while playing that file in Vegas 9, I noticed a small glitch there in the video & audio. (little squares that appear for a moment; I’m sure many of you know what I’m talking about) That told me, that for some reason, the video, or file was corrupt in some way, at different points in the file.

This also tells me that, for some reason, Vegas 7, and Vegas 9, both handle these files differently; this is obvious in the picture above.

Anyway, I managed to work through this issue, by saving often, and when I came across the parts of the file that made Vegas 7 crash, I reopened, and deleted that portion of video and audio (without letting the playhead cross over the corrupted portions of video).

I also managed to re-render some of the files while having the corrupted files opened on another computer, in Vegas 9, but this did not work in all cases.

All in all, a very strange error, that is extremely frustrating to deal with. As far as possible causes? Perhaps, I taped over preexisting HD footage on the DV Tape without meaning too. Perhaps the import/digitization process had problems. No idea. Sadly, I’m in MD, and the tapes are in CA.

I’ve had similar glitches with DV footage in the past, but it never caused the editing program to react like this. Perhaps the glitches were more severe this time, or perhaps it’s because the glitches are in footage that is HD.

I’m glad I got it sorted though, and I just wanted to post a follow up on the problem, for anyone’s future reference.

Michael M.

[Michael Morone]

Yes I have reinstalled the codec. I really have no idea why the files stopped being recognized. I will uninstall, then reinstall the codec, and perhaps that will help. One thing that will be helpful to me though is to know a little more about how Vegas recognizes different file formats or codecs.

Is there a folder where the codecs or other type of file reside which enables Vegas to recognize different file formats? I can probably figure this out on my own, but it would save me a lot of time if someone knew.

Thanks for all the help,

Michael

[Michael Morone]

Okay, thanks for clearing that up. I just have one more question. Is there anyway I could put these AVI files onto a DVD without losing quality? I tried rendering them in Vegas as an MPEG (DVD Architect NTSC DVD Format), with a variable bit-rate fairly low (the only way I could get the file size to remain similar), and the quality is noticably different.

Is there no way to convert the AVI file to an mpeg of the same size without losing quality?

Thanks for all the help,

Michael

[Michael Morone]

That’s what I thought too. I thought I would be fine, considering that DVDA would actually compress the .avi file, but that does not seem to be what is happening. The .avi file is 351MB on the disk. I am positive of that. Perhaps the answer to my question lies in the kind of .avi file. Here are it’s properties.

Original .avi file properties:
Frame Rate: 24.9967
Field Order: None (Progressive Scan)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.000 (Square)
Audio Attributes: 130 kBit/s, 48000 Hz, Stereo, MPEG Layer-3
Video Format: DivX 6.8 Codec (2 Logical CPUs), 512x384x24

Would any of these properties cause DVDA to have such a huge discrepancy?

I’m starting out with a pretty low quality .avi video. Is the MPEG ‘compression’ creating a “better” file that already exists?

I tried turning the .avi into an MPEG using the DVD Architect NTSC DVD setting in Vegas, and the resulting file size was 1.8 GB.

_______________
Michael M.

[Michael Morone]

Thanks for the quick response.

I’ll try and see if changing the size of the picture would make me redo the event pan/crop keyframes.

If I printed to tape, would the computer automatically render smaller sections? And if I did pre-render parts of the project, would a render use the pre-rendered portions?

Thanks,

Michael

[Michael Morone]

When I first started working on Vegas, I didn’t even know the Trimmer existed, so I edited all of my clips in the timeline. This worked okay for me, but only because I didn’t know what I was missing.

I worked on another project using Final Cut Pro, and I found their “Trimmer” was very useful. (You could take each clip and create an in & out point, while having some useful buttons to navigate through the clip before you put the clip on the timeline)

When I went back to Vegas I thought: there must be something like this -and- it would save me so much time. I found the Trimmer, but I didn’t really like it. What I didn’t like about it, was that the in & out points that you could create would often disappear any time I accidentally clicked in the Trimmer window. The in and out points weren’t ‘locked’ very well, and I ended up spending more time re-setting my in & out points, than I should have. Also, there’s no way to play from the in-point, or go to the first frame of the in-point/out-point. The trimmer history also is difficult to work with, and bringing back up a clip that I had already “trimmed” was difficult (and the in&out pnts weren’t always still there). I really found it quite awkward and I don’t use it much anymore.

To answer your question, I went back to editing clips in the timeline directly. I found it easier to use. (Dragging the clips to the cursor, pressing ‘S’, while still being able to go through it at any speed)

If my problems have no solutions (which they probably do; I’m just unaware of them), then I really think Sony needs to re-work the trimmer in Vegas. But please let me know if there’s anything I’m missing in the trimmer.

Thanks,
Michael M.

[Michael Morone]

I recently had to decide what film festivals to submit my film to (also a student film). I was lucky though, and the people I was working with knew a lot about the business. However, they used a book called “The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide”. It is a few years old, but it helped them and me decide which ones would be good choices. I also suggest just searching the internet for film festivals. I am sure that there are some local ones relatively nearby.

Depending on how good the film is, you can try for different tier film festivals. Through books, websites, and the film festivals themselves, I think you should be able to find one that works. If the film is REALLY good, then don’t be afraid to submit it to a top film festival. The worst that could happen is that it gets rejected and you lose 30 bucks.

Just some tips on this process: I really suggest that you (or the students) call the film festival that you plan on submitting to. You should probably ask to speak with the program director, and you can ask whether or not they have seen your film (assuming that you submitted it). You should try and emphasize that fact that this is a STUDENT film, and that it is a GOOD STUDENT film, because that’s something different and special that makes the film stand out. The film festivals would be more willing to accept it with this in mind. Also, if it’s true, and the film festival is nearby, don’t forget to mention that you will try to get as many people as possible to support the film if it is accepted. There are so many films that these film festivals watch; you want to find some way to make this one stick out.

Good luck in your search and I hope that the film gets selected.

Michael M.

PS- It’s always nice to know more about the FF than what you can research, so I don’t want this post to end this thread. Is there anyone who has any knowledge and any suggestions as to which ones are good ones to submit to?

[Michael Morone]

Thanks so much! Everything works as it should now. I was hoping that there was some way the DVD player recognizes the letterboxing. This makes things so much easier.

By the way, I love this forum. I don’t know where I’d be without it! 🙂

[Michael Morone]

I just wanted to add that I’ve had this exact same problem.

I took a piece of music, and to fit the video better, I cut up the piece of music, and repeated portions, cut pieces out etc. After spending a lot of time making each beat go along with the video, it works perfectly, and the music sounds like it was always that way. Then a few minutes later, the music is off, and all the work I just did is for naught. It was extremely frustrating. What happened was what you just described: each clip of music was a few frames off. (I had done nothing to change it) What I did to try and make my life easier was pre-render the music, and then edit it. Doing this every once and a while helps to edit the sound that you know is going to be the output from the project.

This is a really big problem for Vegas, and I really hope they fix it for future versions.

[Michael Morone]

I was interested in your problem, so I decided to start playing around with clips. I did not find a great solution, but it might work for what your doing. Unfortunatley I don’t know enough about compositing, to come up with an answer, but this should work.

What you can do is put the ghosts on the top track, and the family on the track underneath. Then, make the bottom track a compositing child of the top parent track. Then, change the compositing mode of the top track to “Overlay”. Then, make sure that the child track’s compositing mode is “Source Alpha”. Then play with the opacity of the top track (The ghosts).

I know this isn’t exactly what you wanted, but I think it works somewhat.

Hope all goes well,

Michael M.