[Rick Mac]

[Raiderneal] “When comparing my footage (Canon XH-A1) with what I see on TV, film, or other DVDs, I notice one major difference: the video looks a bit harsh.”

The first tip I would give you is light your scene like the pro’s do. Good Lighting is key #1! Proper expossure is key #2. Go by VASST.com and pick up their book on on lighting.
It will show you how to “light it right”. In fact, I think that is the title for the book.
Lihting can make or break you.

Regards, Rick.

[Rick Mac]

Visit VASST.com and pickup the Absolute Training Series for Vegas. This will get you up to speed fast.
I still keep my VASST DVD’s and books in the edit bay for quick reference.

Regards, Rick.

[Rick Mac]

1) EQ: Apply a 3 band eq ( parametric ) and remove all frequencies below 400 hz. Works best with shelving type curve. Then boost the midrange aroung 1000 hz (1K)peaking curve to taste. Then reduce the the top end by about 3-6 db starting at about 6khz shelving curve.

2) Apply a light distortion filter.

There you go.

Regards, Rick.

[Rick Mac]

Very slick tool Edward.

Thanks!

Later…Rick.
I feel a friendly round coming on.

[Rick Mac]

First check your preview quality settings. For graphics to look good on preview you should be set to best/full.
If set lower they will look soft.

A trick that has helped sharpen text in the past, and I think it should also translate to Vegas 8 Pro, would be to double your resolution settings when you create your graphic.

Your graphic resolution settings will defualt to the same resolution as your project settings. However, you can force the titler to increase the resolution for your graphic. For a DV project set your graphic resolution to 1440 by 960. After that it will look much better.

Let us know if this helps.

Regards, Rick.

[Rick Mac]

OK, for noise reduction tools for humming camera and noises, I would reccommend Adobe Soundbooth or Adobe Audition. I have booth Sound Forge and Adobe Audition (soundbooth has many of the same tools as Audition minus multitrack). I like the noise reduction tools best in Audition. You can tell Vegas to make Audition your default audio editor to send audio events to it for processing. Soundbooth is more user friendly than Audition. It is designed more for video editors. Audition is a full fledged do it all program.

If you are going to need multitrack audio I would go with Audition instead of Soundbooth. Sound Forge is a very good program but if noise reduction is your thing, I think Audition has an the edge.

Hope this helps ya.

Regads, Rick.

[Rick Mac]

Clay,

In answer to question 2:

[cladsco] “2 – I have never used DVD Architect. I don’t think I will have issue. My question goes back to the Audio. It will have the 5.1 mix, but what if the user does not have 5.1?”

Your 5.1 mix will be downconverted to stereo or mono by the playback device.

Now on to question 1. Let me ask this question.
Why do you want to take content that is stereo and put it into surround? It seems to me the better solution is to mix in stereo and export your stereo mix as a Stereo AC3 file for DVD Architect to author with. As I understand your post, you do not have elements that you are using to try and create a surround mix with. Perhaps I have missed somthing.

If what you have is stereo content and you are not adding surround elements that will be presented in a surround sound space, why create a 5.1 surround project? Why are you trying to go 5.1 with it? If it’s stereo now, and your not adding surround elements, keep it stereo.

Regards, Rick.

[Rick Mac]

Welcome Mike!
Great to have you onboard.

Regards, Rick.

[Rick Mac]

How did you import it? What method?
Did you rip the music from a CD from within Vegas?
Explain what type of file and it’s history.

Eample: Ripped from CD in Vegas, opened in Vegas.
Eample: MP3 Download, (normalized in application other than Vegas) then opened in Vegas.

If you ripped it from a DVD within Vegas, the waveform will be identical to how it was mastered (which is usaually pretty hot). Once in Vegas you do have indivual track volume slider as well as master volume slider. If the music itself is pretty hot, almost any added volume level at either the track level slider or master level slider will cause clipping.

What you could try is to go into your preferences in Vegas and select the audio tab. Set the normalize level to -1db, then click on OK. Go out to the timeline and right click on your music waveform. Go down to switches and select normalize.
This will set the volume for the track so that the loudest peak is -1 db. Make sure that the channel slider is not adding volume. Do the same for the Master Slider. Play the track and see if it is still clipping.

Regards, Rick.

[Rick Mac]

Great to hear.

Happy Editing!

Regards, Rick.