[Norman Black]

It sounds like you have accidentally docked the media generator window into the same area as the preview window. In the upper left portion of the pane are six little dots. Drag those to move the window out of the pane and to your desired position.

You can find more information about docking in the help file.

[Norman Black]

I can open that file and other 4k files. I have VP12. I think VP12 was the first Vegas to support 4K. Simple test. Just go to your project settings and see if you can set a project to 4K dimensions.

[Norman Black]

The thing I would get clear from GoPro is that if must you have the RGB conversion mode in between to get *exactly* what you want to try to do. The article talks about this a bit in the text conversation. Stating that was the “trick”. “The trick is an RGB domain scale”. Maybe the GoPro studio stays in YUV internally.

Vegas does everything in RGB so you can always use Vegas. That might be the AE reference you got before, since AE operates in RGB.

[Norman Black]

Here are the specs for Cineform Studio Premium
https://cineform.com/products/gopro-studio-premium#features

Here is the product comparison grid for all versions
https://cineform.com/product-grid

You will see that premium has the features you want. Specifically the 12-bit 4:4:4 output mode.

I do not see anything in the article that specifically says you need professional.

You don’t need to believe me or anyone out there. Cineform has a free trial.

You can downsample from 4k to your desired 1080 4:4:4 in GoPro studio or in Vegas. Your choice. I would probably just do that in Gopro studio, but maybe you need an RGB mode in between to get *exactly* what you are looking for and Gopro studio does not do that. Vegas does operate in RGB mode, as opposed to YUV.

[Norman Black]

Cineform Studio Premium is only $299 and it says it supports any resolution. You should not need cineform professional.

If you want to edit in 10 or 12 bit in Vegas you must use 32-bit floating point mode. Be prepared for slower performance in 32-bit mode.

That said, you can switch the project format between 8 and 32-bit at will. Do most of your editing in 8-bit and color grade and renders in 32-bit mode.

To render Cineform in Vegas at 4:4:4 I believe you will need the cineform premium license. The free GoPro studio software does not seem to render 4:4:4. Not for me at least. Black screen that says, license error.

[Norman Black]

I did not even know there was a selection tool. I have just used Shift and Ctrl clicks to do multiple selection.

Anyway, while trying this I do see that an attempt at a second range selection with Ctrl pressed does not entirely work as you state it should work.

Note that Sony does not document that this should work the way you state. What they do document is that a single click with Ctrl will add/remove a single event from the selection and this does work reliably as documented.

The flicker seems to be Vegas selecting/deselecting the extra events while the mouse button is held down with Ctrl given the documented mode. Ctrl drag is clearly not supported. Only Ctrl click.

[Norman Black]

[John Rofrano] “Likewise, adjust your volume to be within range and just peaking at -12dB and then add the brick wall limiter to catch any stray transients. Good advice Steve.”

This brings to mind a simple feature that would be nice. Have Vegas do a quick full scan of the audio and highlight/select/mark peaks that go above some user specified threshold.

Sitting there and listening in real time watching the peaks meter is slow, and such a scan could be done as fast as the CPU and hard disk can go.

Once you know the trouble spots, you quickly decide how best to attach them. lower volume level, compress or whatever.

[Norman Black]

What is your nesting structure.

7rushes -> edit1 -> edit2 -> edit3 ?

Something like that? Projects nested into projects, nested into projects, or just one level of nesting?

7rushes -> edit1
7rushes -> edit6

[Norman Black]

John, there seems to be a lot of audio effects in Vegas to compress and limit sound.

ExpressFx Dynamics
Graphic Dynamics
Track compressor
Wave Hammer Surround
Multi-band dynamics

The list goes on. There seems to be a lot of overlap. Vegas has a long history so I am guessing that explains some of the overlap. Things like graphic and multi-band have obvious additional capability over others.

Are there any simple’ish words of wisdom/experience about what plug-ins work best, for what and why? Track compressor by name seems to imply use on a track basis but it can be put on anything. Also, it seems you can limit with the compressors.

[Norman Black]

You probably do have a levels problem.

8-bits is a numeric range of 0-255.
Computer displays use this full range. 0 being the blackest black.

Digital video is all over the map, but studio swing is common. This attempts to mimic the way classic analog video operated. Meaning that the blackest black does not use the minimum video transmission signal. Studio swing uses a range of 16-235. The values outside that range are not strictly illegal but what happens to them is not actually defined. Typically the are clamped. i.e. 1-16 display the same as 16.

The Vegas preview window is a computer display and expects 0-255. If your camera video is in the range of 16-235 then it will look flat in the vegas preview window. This is why some said to you to apply a studio to computer effect to adjust this during playback. Just remember to turn that off for rendering.

It (16-235 video) should look fine in a PC video player since the video player will likely expand the 16-235 to 0-255 for the computer display. Output from your camera to a video device should look fine because they are all use the “standard” video levels.

Note than many cameras record information outside the “video” range of 16-235. You can use the waveform video scope to analyze this. In this be sure to turn the studio RGB video scope option to see a true video of the source material.