[Paul Goelz]

I have noticed that when I select a section of video in the trimmer that Vegas occasionally selects only audio or sometimes only video even if both audio and video were selected the last time I performed the operation. This seems to be random and comes and goes without rhyme or reason.

Make sure that if you are selecting a portion of a clip in the trimmer, that Vegas is set to select both audio and video. I’m not in front of Vegas at the moment but from memory, I believe you select the range you want and then right click in the selection. One of the options will be audio only, video only or audio and video.

Also, make sure that your audio track is not muted.

Paul

[Paul Goelz]

I don’t fully understand the wonderful world of codecs but is there any chance you installed something recently that thinks it can play your t2i files but in fact can’t?

I have had a couple instances where a program thought it could play mp4s but couldn’t. All of a sudden, Media Player would open and play the audio but the screen was black and the ffdshow video codec icon was missing in the accessory tray. Drove me nuts until on a hunch I uninstalled the offending program (a Pinnacle program, of course) and voila…. mp4s played again.

I also had an incident where uninstalling a program also uninstalled the Haali media splitter and produced the same symptoms.

Paul

[Paul Goelz]

Further to this mini-issue…..

I did some digging and found that the MP4 that you can download from YouTube is not the file they use for playback. They apparently transcode to a flash file.

I also was unable to find ANY reference ANYWHERE to the correct levels for youTube upload. The YouTube site itself completely avoids any mention of levels. The closest I got was one person who commented that it looked like YouTube “darkened” his videos.

I uploaded a video yesterday that was done at studio RGB levels and it looks fine. So for now I’ll use studio RGB for YouTube. It is particularly critical in my case because I am restoring and uploading some of my 29 year old VHS videos that were mostly shot in low light with a camera that struggled to produce maybe 30 IRE most of the time in those lighting conditions. So even when I raise the levels and play with the gamma a bit, much of the detail is in the bottom 20% of the range.

Paul

[Paul Goelz]

The oldest version of Vegas I have used is C so I can’t speak for others. But C and D both crash the same way.

Paul

[Paul Goelz]

If your Dazzle is like mine (DT-150 or something like that) it doesn’t present itself as a capture device. For that reason, it does not work with other capture applications or editors like Vegas. It only works with Pinnacle Studio. That said, you only have to deal with Studio to capture to a file. You can then use Vegas to edit. Studio may be an awful editor (I hated it… more bugs than a trash dump) but it actually isn’t bad at all for capturing. I have never had a glitch with it during capture and it is pretty straightforward to operate.

Paul

[Paul Goelz]

Why not put the footage with the good video and bad audio in the trimmer and then select just the video?

Paul

[Paul Goelz]

Update:

I just took a look at a couple older projects I rendered to computer RGB and uploaded to YouTube. They appeared slightly dark, as if the player received computer RGB but was expecting studio RGB. I then downloaded the cooresponding MP4 file that (I assume) YouTube uses for playback and compared it to my uploaded file. The levels were identical. So any level anomalies in YouTube playback would seem to be just that…. in playback. And again, the Min Concepts MPEG2 codec in Vegas does not seem to care what levels you send it. They are simply passed through to the output.

So the preferred YouTUbe upload would appear to be studio RGB since that seems to be what the player expects.

There is still the possibility that there is something in my setup that is affecting the playback levels. I need to check periodically to make sure that the nVidia driver for my video card has not changed its settings….. I have seen it do that occasionally. It can detect if you are playing a video and can use different brightness, contrast and gamma settings for video vs. regular desktop display settings. This can be HIGHLY confusing if you are not looking for it because it undoes all your calibration.

Paul

[Paul Goelz]

Interesting. BTW, while resetting Vegas helped briefly, the problem returned. Your description sounds very much like my issue as well.

In my case, if I just accept the crash and re-open, it usually works fine until I reboot. I had been using a blank project with a couple plugins and some default text as a template for new projects. When I stopped doing this and created each new project from scratch, the crashes stopped.

I have been working with Vegas tech support and so far they have not been able to duplicate the issue.

Paul

[Paul Goelz]

Well, according to my experimentation so far, YouTube seems to assume incoming video is at studio RGB (NTSC with setup?). Their player seems to assume that 7.5IRE = black when playing back, regardless of the actual levels in the file (in other words if it sees video below 7.5% it clips it to black instead of shifting to computer RGB). I downloaded the transcoded MP4s but I can’t remember what the levels were…. I’ll have to do that experiment over.

I have checked several times and the various codecs definitely accept any incoming levels and preserve them in the output.

Since YouTube transcodes the entire file before it displays it in full quality, it is too bad they don’t at least sense incoming levels and transcode appropriately.

I do note that I uploaded an HD clip a while back that was in computer RGB and it looks perfect on Youtube. Not sure what to make of that. Maybe they assume computer RGB for HD files?

Paul

[Paul Goelz]

OK, after some experimentation it looks like I have some answers to my own questions.

1. I tried rendering various levels to three different codecs and then placing the renders on the timeline, looking at the levels and comparing them with the original. Of the three codecs I tried (MPEG2, Sony AVC and DV), all three output exactly the same levels that you input. Computer RGB in = computer RGB out, studio RGB in = studio RGB out. This seems to be in opposition to the colorspace article / tutorial?

2. When I played these apparently correct files outside of Vegas, the levels were shifted downwards and everything below about 7.5 IRE was black.

3. When these files were uploaded to YouTube and then played, the levels were shifted downwards and everything below about 7.5 IRE was black.

4. My local playback error turned out to be because the nVidia driver for my G-210 video card defaults to a setting that either allows the playback application to change the video levels or changes them when it knows a video is being played (can’t tell which is true). This caused much confusion because a frame grab showed the correct levels but actually playing the video in a player shifted the levels downward. When I changed the nVidia driver to use fixed levels for everything and then calibrated those video settings, my playback looks the same as it does within Vegas or as monitored on my second monitor. It also matches the frame grab (a jpeg file).

5. The YouTube level shift seems to be either YouTube or their Flash player messing with the levels. For videos uploaded to YouTube in MPEG2 format, it seems you need to use standard video levels with 7.5 IRE setup (or studio RGB) to get a correct playback.

Since my primary target is both YouTube and DVD, it seems to make sense to use studio RGB levels within my projects and for all renders and render to MPEG2. That way, my renders are compatible with both as-is.

Comments?

Paul