[Peter Wright]

You won’t be able to go out to tape unless it’s a DV avi. If you tried putting a MPEG2 on the timeline and Printing to Tape, Vegas would first have to render it back to DV, and that would lose quality, starting from a compressed format. MPEG2 for DVD, DV avi for Tape.

I don’t know about the cost, but once you’ve successfully burned a DVD you could take it to a local replication business to make the 100 copies.
I’ve burned and printed up to 50 copies, one at a time, and during that process I was doing other work on my laptop, including printing onto the discs and designing/printing DVD cover sleeves, so I wasn’t sitting watching!

I use Ritek 4 x or 8x DVD-R dics and I’ve only had one or two rejections out of hundreds. The solution then was to replace with a DVD+R copy. You can never be completely certain, though – there are such a range of new/old DVD players around.

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au

[Peter Wright]

The quality is kept really good by keeping a DV Master – I used to use these for Tape duplication also, but the demand has almost stopped.

For later DVD burns, I would use either back-up AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders kept on Hard Drive, or a back up DVD to copy – no need to re-author.

If on the other hand, some other version of the project was required, I have the DV Master to recapture and start again.

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au

[Peter Wright]

Let’s clarify a few terms here.

A vidcap file is a CAPTURE file, not to be confused with a .veg PROJECT file. A vidcap file cannot be “loaded onto the timeline”. It can be used in Vidcap to recapture the original footage, provided you still have the original camera tapes and have carefully named them. (This is assuming the original footage was DV.)

Provided you have still got the .veg file, you can “rebuild” your original project this way, but don’t forget you also need any .wav files or graphics such as .jpg or .png files that may have been included.
I would always archive enough data to do this – so on CD or data DVD I would normally have the .veg file, plus wav files and stills, and also keep back up copies of the final DVD data.

Personally, I always put the finished project out to DV tape, even if I’m only going out to DVD. That way I can quickly recapture this any time.

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au

[Peter Wright]

It’s tidier but not necessarily safer. Saving as vidcap file only means you’d have to recapture everything to reconstitute your project, if you had already deleted the original files.

I’m not sure why you need a delay before rendering to MPEG2 – normally if the project is finished enough to save as a rendered avi, it’s also ready for rendering to MPEG2.

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au

[Peter Wright]

Yes – if your rendered avi contains everything you need for later MPEG2 rendering, you can delete and reclaim all that space used by the camera capture.

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au

[Peter Wright]

Sometimes dragging the velocity line doesn’t always stay at exactly zero, so it’s safer to right click and use “Set to” and hit the 0 key.

Before making a still always change Preview to Best (Full).

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au

[Peter Wright]

Yes, it can seem daunting, but once the “penny drops” it suddenly becomes easy – I’ll try and explain.

The Cookie Cutter basically makes a “hole” in one piece of video through which the video on a lower track will show through. This is when the “Method” box is set to “Cut away Section”

When Method is set to “Cut away all but selection” it does the opposite – everything else becomes transparent and only the selected shape will remain.

To achieve what you want you could either:

Use “Cut away section” and apply blur to the bottom video, or

Use “Cut away all but selection” and apply blur to the top video.

There are several sliders in the Cookie Cutter box – for now we need to use

Shape – There are several, let’s use the default circle for now.
Size – self explanatory
Feather – good for blending – try setting at 0.30 for starters.
The Window at the left has a square which will move the selection around – we’ll be doing this, with keyframes …

now, KEYFRAMES

At the bottom of every effect there is a Keyframe timeline – here we’re staying in the Cookie Cutter Window. The left hand end represents the beginning of the Event we’re working on, and the right hand end represents the end of the same Event.

If you click say in the centre of this line, you will see the cursor line.
Click the + sign in the diamond shape beneath. This creates a keyframe.
This keyframe represents all the settings from above, AT THAT POINT WITHIN THE EVENT.

So, if you change the size and position now, the “hole” you created at the beginning will move and change size as you play the event. Watch the preview as you work. Vegas will invisibly write all the intermediate frames, so the “hole” will move gradually from one position to the next. There are ways of varying how it does this, but for now let’s keep it simple.

You can insert as many keyframes as you want to change the settings of that effect over time.

You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in for fine adjustments.

There are more aspects of Keyframes, but for now, have a play and see how you go ….

Remember, what you’re trying to achieve is to move the blurred part of the picture so it always covers that name on the kid’s arm.

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au

[Peter Wright]

Copy that part of video to a track above itself.

Apply blur or pixellation to top track

Apply Cookie Cutter FX of appropriate shape and size to offending name tag.
Adding feathering will help blend rather than sharp edge.

Use keyframes to change position/size if offending part moves within frame.

Tip – temporarily muting bottom clip (R/Click > Switched > Mute will help defining area to be blurred.

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au

[Peter Wright]

There’s no definitive number of times – it can depend on many things, including of course the quality of the original footage.

If all you do is render a DV file to the same DV format, there should be no loss, as you are just copying data. Once you add effects, titles, colour correction etc, though, rendering involves the use of a DV codec. The Sony DV codec is extremely good quality, and there were reports of up to 50 generations of rendering before significant degradation was noticeable, and it compared very favourably with the MS codec. I’ve never tried doing this many, but suffice it to say that whilst you remain in the avi realm you should have no problems with quality.

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au

[Peter Wright]

There are many ways of doing almost everything on Vegas.

If you prefer not to trim on the timeline, you should get familiar with the Trimmer. It uses the same Preview Window as the Timeline. When using the Trimmer, it is like a source Monitor, with the Timeline it becomes Program Monitor.

To use, select a clip, Right click > Open in Trimmer.
The Trimmer is like an individual timeline for a single clip. You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in or out. You can play, pause, move one frame at a time etc.
To select in and out points you can either:

* Hit I to set In, O to set Out, and A to add to timeline at current track/cursor position.

or

* Drag with mouse to select desired footage and drag to timeline. After dragging, Tab key can be used to toggle from Video and Audio to Video only or Audio only.

You can also hit R to create a region and name it. This makes it a virtual subclip which can be accessed and sorted via Vegas Explorer Region View.

There is much more, but try getting familiar with these functions, and feel free to ask more questions.

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au