Stephen Mann
Forum Replies Created
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I don’t recall, but did I suggest that you use Resource Monitor (start/run/resmon) to analyze the wait chain?
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Why did you buy that Codec pack? Windows has one that is referenced in the Vegas help files: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26829
And it’s free.
Generally Codec Packs give me the jeebies. Most often they replace the good codecs that Vegas installs with inferior codecs optimized for gaming.
Were there any video codecs in that codec pack?
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Don’t you love a challenge?
As I said, the distortion is everywhere. Or as Graham said, it’s a mess.I was kind of hoping that you could perform some spectral Layers magic on it so that I could justify buying the software. Were you able to make any improvement with SL?
(Does any of my long tale of woe post add anything to the analysis?)
Thanks again,
SteveSteve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Out of curiosity – Are the Windows Explorer thumbnails and desktop icons all displaying correctly?
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Yeah, it’s messy.
That’s the most polite way to describe it.
So, Bob, Graham and Roger, I really appreciate the way you all tried to offer help so quickly. This is my second project with this producer and the second time I fraked up his audio, so you can appreciate why I am willing to spend more money to reduce the problem. I don’t have either Izope nor Spectral Layers, so I would appreciate hearing the fix that you were able to effect. That would help me decide which solution to pursue for the other five scenes.
As I said, this was sixteen tracks of audio captured on Vegas on a high school orchestra stage using a pair of Presonus Firepods. I had just purchased the second Firepod to provide the sixteen audio channels and it tested great in the studio. I was excited to be able to record sixteen tracks which meant we could mike each group of instruments. I had been using a single Firepod on the same laptop for years without any issues to record small musical groups for music videos, plays and musicals. This was my first movie soundtrack for this producer and he has another project in mind for this summer. I really want to fix this audio if I can. My reputation is at stake.
Lessons learned:
My setup time was extremely limited. The music director scheduled the arrival of the musicians at the same time as the producer, a small film crew (making a behind the scenes video) me, and my music producer – whom I had just met. I wanted two hours of setup time without the musicians, but we were setting up microphones a 100-ft sixteen channel snake (wow, that’s heavy) and the recording gear around the musicians in tune-up mode.
This was the last and only error out of my control. From there I let the pressure to start recording get ahead of me. As soon as the upstream mix sounded good, we told the music director that he could begin. We recorded music for six scenes then broke for lunch when the producer wanted to hear what we recorded. I moved the headphone amp from the Firepod mix that we were monitoring and plugged into the laptop to listen to the raw files we recorded. You can imagine the horror as I listened to the playback for the first time, and the producer said “what’s that noise”.
Those three words cut deep. I heard nothing like that noise during my checkout of the recently purchased (second) Firepod. It worked great in the studio with ten microphones in various input configurations but my test recording was with the microphones clustered near a television in the studio at normal volumes. But the louder levels of the instruments is where the noise developed. It wasn’t clipping, the clipping LEDs were not flickering and the upstream mix of the Firepods sounded great. Apparently the Firewire port on the PC was overwhelmed by the 16-channels of high level audio data.
Since I can’t buy a more powerful laptop with Firewire, I am going to record one more performance in the queue (different project), but with only 8 microphones (and a lighter 50-ft 8-channel snake) then sell the Firepods on eBay. They are holding a great resale value so the cost to upgrade to current USB2 versions from Presonus is not that great.
Or should I buy a (shudder) Mac laptop?
I would feel so dirty touching a Mac, let alone owning one.
Anyway, that’s my story.
What’s the advice from you guys?
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
I seem to recall that an earlier version of Vegas used an AVC encoder that was written for XP and had a 4Gb limit (FAT32). But, I’ve never seen any problems with either encoder in Version 11 or 12.
I don’t have the Studio versions of Vegas, so I can’t speak for the encoders used there.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
It’s kind of hard to find, but try turning off the Windows Write Cache. In Control Panel/Computer management/Disk Management, right click on the physical drive your saving the project into (not the partition), and select properties. Click on the Policies tab and you can turn off write caching.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Well, last first – Sony has lumped rendering and encoding into the “Render As” menu. I would guess that it’s easier than explaining the difference. (Because to encode, you first have to render).
Render: Each frame of a video is rendered. In Vegas the render engine takes the one frame of the media and the editing instructions for that frame from memory (when you save the project the editing instructions become the veg file). I don’t know the flow but levels, compositing, color, f/x, etc, get applied to one frame at a time. This is rendering.
Encoding: When you encode video, you start with one rendered frame (called the I-frame) then the encoder looks at the next rendered frame and decides how much has changed from the prior frame. If it’s not too much then it creates a P-frame which just contains the changes from the I-frame. (If it’s a scene change then the encoder will create a new I-frame.)
But few, if any of us stop with rendering. Even uncompressed formats like MOV go through the encoder and every frame is an I-frame. All of the delivery formats are compressed (encoded) including AVC, MPEG and just about everything but AVI.
Since encoding needs a GOP of rendered frames to work from, Vegas stores the uncompressed, rendered frames in the TMP folder. After there’s a GOP (Group of Pictures) rendered, the encoder takes over.
So, since every compressed output requires rendered frames, “Render” is technically correct, but “As” is almost always an encoded product.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Sorry, I missed the tools>burn in your OP.
But, I’ve never used this option as I prefer to have control over the encoding parameters in the “Render As” menu.Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
If it’s simple dialogue, I just use Levelator. It’s free and it just works.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com