Russ Froze
Forum Replies Created
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Yes windows Movie Maker does support fire wire, I have also has success with some usb capture devices. Now this begs the question. I’m under the impression that a Camera or Deck with Video Pass through is feeding a firewire output. Am I mistaken in that assessment? If so please clarify or paraphrase the question for that might lead to a different answers.
Russ Froze -
Now don’t get annoyed but the questions needs asking. Are you certain the files reside on the D:\ drive?
Russ Froze -
Or you can export Quicktime .mov with the animation setting. Then there is the old school .avi uncompressed with alpha setting.
There are choices of image sequences that are the preferred method for more complex renders that take minutes or even hours per frame. The reason is mostly due to errors in a render. Say it takes 3 days to render an animation but something went wrong in lets say frame 394 or the power went out. It is quicker to render 1 frame or pick up from where the sequence was truncated. Also an image sequence render can be spread over multiple computers reducing the render time.
Image sequences that support alpha come in all sorts of flavors and png is an acceptable format there are other formats that support alpha but they also carry a great deal more information so they tend to be much larger. Also compositors will ask for passes of different layers and or elements from the CG department/artist. This is to facilitate relighting or blending the element into live footage without having to go back to the CG render which may have taken several days. Spectacular highlights, occlusions, shadows, depth of field are but a few layer that a compositor would request.
So best practice is to render an image sequence to give to a compositor who will pass it on to the editor. Even if that happens to be one person, which in this case is yourself.
Russ Froze -
[Kevin McCarthy] “I simply use a firewire camera or deck with a pass-through feature”
In that case your best bet, believe it or not is Windows Movie Maker. Choose the avi / DV setting. Vegas does not do well without time code from a tape. So yes Windows Movie Maker will do the job.
Russ Froze -
I’m afraid that Grazie is correct, the only absolute certain way for Vegas to capture video is via firewire. I have had fluke success with products such as Black Magic Intensity Pro or Deck link devices but they are hit and miss for me.
Arming the audio track is not the way to capture video, the way to capture video is through it’s own window which can be found under
File,
Capture Videoa new popup window will appear. From there you can choose from a limited selection. If you can get something to work in the popup window then you have a chance to capture with the Vegas Capture utility.
Vegas capture program can also be found in your Vegas installation folder usually named vidcap60.
Russ Froze -
[Philippe Gosselin] “Yes the 60p is for slow motion purposes”
Remember you have to tell Vegas to use the file at the desired output frame rate. Just for simplicity lets say you final project will be 30P. By default Vegas will drop every other frame and deliver the footage 2 x as fast. I have forgotten the best approach to achieve the desired frame rate for slow motion so perhaps a new post asking how to get slow mo from over cranking, I can’t think of a good way to phrase the question right now so I leave it to you.
Russ Froze -
Yes that droves me nuts or it used to. And yes that is moire which does not become apparent until there is movement in the image. Do some pixel peeping and likely you will see odd artifacts in the still image at intersecting lines in repeating patterns.
To combat this issue one might add a slight vertical blur as John has suggested.
Also 1440 x 1080 is a trick invented by clever engineers to cut down the data rate and file size so as to allow tape and SD cards to handle data. The pixel aspect ratio is not exactly square. The same formula was used on DV footage for both square (TV) and 16 x 9 (widescreen). Pesky engineers fooled us again like they did with interlacing. The famous 720 x 480 pixel (TV) which had an aspect ratio of 0.9091 or 16 x 9 widescreen aspect ratio of 1.2121.
The 1440 x 1080 is even more out of square at a whopping 1.3333 pixel aspect ratio. The math is incredible and as you might know anything divided by 1/3 can not be reconstructed. There is always a shortfall or excess. Pixels need to be mathematically square or the leftovers will case problems. Now compound matters by adding rotation or skew. Just imagine the formula needed to work it all out with pencil and paper.
I have been creating banners via video editor since Macromedia created the flv codec. Before that it was flash animations only for the web. At that time is was explained to me that whatever the dimension the pixels need to be square. If there is half a pixel or two left over they have to be crammed in somewhere. Use even numbered font size, stay away from odd numbered fonts like 11 or 13 and lo and behold your flash animations will come out crisp and clear.
The same holds true for digital video, the pixels must be square and divisible by 2 in order to attain a crisp clear image.
I understand it’s a complex issue and will garner a great deal of debate but, that is what has worked for me.
Russ Froze -
Have you tried the secondary color corrector? A color range can be chosen and then modified. This might be of use for the flesh tone problem.
Russ Froze -
It couldn’t per chance be a moire pattern introduced by the camera(s)?
https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/11909/what-is-moir%C3%A9-how-can-we-avoid-itRuss Froze
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Ahh Win 8. Ok so which version of Vegas?