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Vegas FAQ's
Here you will find answers to frequently
asked questions about Sony Vegas nonlinear editing software.
If you were looking for the HDV FAQ,
click here
Output
Should I render using the
default template of uncompressed? Or should I use a different
template? I'm printing to DV tape, not DVD.
How do I calibrate my
external monitor to correct colors?
What's the best way to print
to tape?
I want to make a DVD,
what's the best way to do this?
I need
to output a television project. What specifications do I need to
meet to get my media accepted and on the air?
How do I connect an external
monitor to Vegas so I can see my video on a real TV instead of on
a computer screen?
Why does my television
monitor look so different from my computer monitor?
What is the best way to prepare video in
Vegas for use in DVD Architect? Encode in Vegas, or DVDA? What
encoder settings should I use?
How can I make my project render faster? Is
there hardware I can purchase that will make renders faster, or
let me preview FX in realtime?
How do I make a Play All button in DVD
Architect 2.0?
What is 24P? Do I need it? Will it make my
video look like film?
Editing
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How can I create the famous
Burns look with my stills/photographs?
My stills are always jittery
and have funny lines in them. They are worse when I use Pan/Crop.
Sometimes
I get a "Low Memory" warning and Vegas locks up for a moment,
particularly when working with graphics. Why? What do I do about
it?
Vegas has lots of color
correction tools. Where do I start? Which is the first tool I
should look at?
How do I use Color Correction
tools to create the "Pleasantville" look where everything is black
and white except one color?
How do I display Timecode
on my video?
How do I change the speed
of my video?
My video looks funny if I use a Velocity
Envelope and make it reverse. What do I do?
Why are there black frames
in my video when I edit MPEG?
How do I copy/paste from one project in
Vegas to another?
Audio
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Does Vegas 5 allow each
audio media to have its own FX, like the way video does? Or are
you still limited to having to assign FX for the entire track?
How do I normalize audio in
Vegas?
How do I access the Graphic EQ
or Compressor that is default on every audio channel in Vegas?
When I want to edit
audio from Vegas in my audio editor, should I open the audio as a
copy in the audio editor, or just open in my audio editor? I'm
opening the file from the Vegas timeline.
How do I move presets from one computer to
another?
Capture
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What kind of files does
Vegas capture? Can I capture MPEG with Vegas?
Why can't Vegas capture
my analog video correctly? It keeps locking up when I press
"Capture Video."
- Why do I drop frames when I
capture?
Some people ask, “How many
dropped frames are acceptable during capture?” The answer is
simple: None.
-
Do I need to defragment my
drives before capturing?
Can Vegas capture HDV?
Can Vegas capture HD? Or work
with uncompressed media?
Why can't Vegas see the video from a file
captured by a still camera? Audio plays, just not video.
General
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Why do I see "jaggies, artifacts, horizontal
lines, or other strange lines" when I watch my video on my
computer monitor?
How do I access the Internal
settings in Vegas?
How do I reset Vegas to
default settings?
How can I capture a still
shot from Vegas? I want to save it as a PNG or JPG file.
The Preview Window has
several different settings. Which one should I use?
Is
Vegas 8 bit or 10 bit processing?
Is
Vegas a 4:1:1 processing application, or does it use higher
sampling rates?
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Should I render using the default
template of uncompressed? Or should I use a different template?
I'm printing to DV tape, not DVD.
- For printing to DV tape, always render to the
NTSC or PAL DV template.
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My stills are always jittery and have funny lines in them.
They are worse when I use Pan/Crop.
- This is usually due to high resolution in
photos. Right click the still photo and choose "Reduce Interlace
Flicker" and usually this cures the problem. Using a
SuperSampling envelope is sometimes necessary on some stills.
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When I want to edit audio from Vegas in my
audio editor, should I open the audio as a copy in the audio
editor, or just open in my audio editor? I'm opening the file
from the Vegas timeline.
- Nearly always open a Copy from the Vegas
timeline, not only saving time, but also saving your audio
application from having to open any associated video, and also
to prevent destructive editing of the file. If you open a copy,
the edited audio will be replaced on the Vegas timeline as a
"Take."
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How can I capture a still shot from Vegas?
I want to save it as a PNG or JPG file.
- Vegas allows you to capture a still image or
single frame from your video source. Place the cursor where you
want the still to come from, and in the Preview Window, set the
quality to BEST/FULL. Now press the small floppy disc icon to
the right of the Preview Quality settings. This will capture a
JPG or PNG file, depending on what you select in the Save As
dialog. PNG's are generally best. If you want to capture the
still to the clipboard to open in a graphic editor, click the
small icon that looks like two overlaid pieces of paper. Then
paste into your graphic editing application.
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How do I access the Graphic EQ or Compressor that is default
on every audio channel in Vegas?
- On each audio track, there is a small button
right in the middle of the track header. It looks like an
upright rectangle and is usually green. Click this button and
the FX dialog box opens. This is where you access the Noise
Gate, EQ, and Compressor that are part of the default settings
in Vegas.
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Vegas has lots of color correction tools.
Where do I start? Which is the first tool I should look at?
- Although Vegas has several powerful color
correction tools, the first tool to turn to in most situations,
is the Color Balance plug-in. This Red, Green, and Blue
controlling plug-in is often all that is needed for basic color
correction. The Color Curves plug-in is the next best thing to
try.
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How do I use Color Correction tools to
create the "Pleasantville" look where everything is black and
white except one color?
- This is easy to do in Vegas 5. It basically
requires dropping the Secondary Color Corrector on a piece of
media, selecting the color you want to keep, checking the Invert
Color checkbox, and then sliding the Saturation slider to 0.
Read a full tutorial
here.
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- How
do I connect an external monitor to Vegas so I can see my video
on a real TV instead of on a computer screen?
- Vegas outputs video over Firewire, and no
other means is an accurate display of the video in the project.
Connect a Firewire cable to your computer, and a camcorder or
converter device to the other end of the cable. The camcorder
will convert the video signal from DV to analog so it can be
displayed on the external television monitor. A graphical
tutorial may be found
here.
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How do I calibrate my external monitor to correct colors?
- Calibrating an external monitor isn't all
that hard, it just seems to be. Vegas can generate the colorbars
you need to do this, and with a piece of blue gel, you're good
to go. Read a full tutorial from Tektronics
here. There is also one from
Bob
Currier from Synthetic Aperture.
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- I
need to output a television project. What specifications do I
need to meet to get my media accepted and on the air?
- (These guidlines are from
the local NBC affiliate.)
- • The tape timecode must be continuous and in
the Drop Frame format. Both LTC and VITC must match. There must
be timecode from the beginning of the tape to at least one
minute beyond the end of program material.
• The beginning of the tape will include at least one minute of
SMPTE color bars along with 1 KHz audio tone on channels 1 and 2
(audio tone should be 0 VU for analog recording formats and –20
dBFS for digital recording formats).
• Program material must be followed by a minimum of one minute
of black. Video levels will not exceed 100 IRE.
• For analog formats, average audio levels should approach, but
not exceed, 0-VU.
• For digital formats, audio peaks should approach, but not
exceed, -10Db. • Audio should be mixed at mono to channels 1 and
2.
• Record in SP (Standard Play) mode only.
Tape Formats: Beta SP, Beta SX, Digital BetaCam, DVCAM
- Video levels for graphics must be between 7.5 and 100 IRE
units.
- • Color Saturation levels must not exceed 200 IRE units.
- • There must be no Gamut errors.
- • Titles and text must stay within the Safe Title Area. No
text can violate the outer 20% of the screen.
- • Font size must not be below 22 scan lines.
- • Lower 3rd titles must not be below the bottom safe title
line.
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These guidelines are from a local cable
station we service:
- Include the following formatting prior to the
beginning of your program:
-
- Bars and tone for ONE (1) minute
-
- Identifying slate for TEN (10) seconds, including:
- Series title
- Episode number
- Program title
- Producing company/group/institution
- Date produced
- Total running length of program to the nearest
second
- Black for THIRTY (30) seconds prior to program start
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What kind of files does Vegas capture? Can I capture MPEG with
Vegas?
- Vegas captures Type 2 avi files and
nothing else. If you want to capture MPEG-format files, then
you'll need to use another device. Keep in mind that Vegas isn't
designed as an MPEG editor. It's fairly weak for MPEG editing,
because it doesn't seek I-Frames. If you need to import
non-copyright protected MPEG files into Vegas, you can drag the
.vob file to the Vegas timeline, but if the audio is encoded to
the AC3 format, then you'll need to convert it. The easier
method is to simply play the DVD in your DVD player and capture
directly to Vegas. It will save time and aggravation.
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What's the best way to print to tape?
- There are two ways to print to tape with
Vegas; the first is to use the Print To Tape tool found in the
Tools menu, which will automatically start your DV camcorder or
deck in record mode when it's done preparing the media for
printing to tape. The other is to render the entire file as a
finished avi, and then use the Video Capture printing feature to
send the media back to tape.
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How do I display Timecode on my video?
- Drop the Timecode filter on the Preview
Window to show timecode for the entire project, based on the
Timeline's timecode/position. Drop the Timecode Filter on video
in the Media Pool if you want the Timecode to display the
original video timecode.
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- Why
does my television monitor look so different from my computer
monitor?
- Because there is a HUGE difference in
computer gamma and television gamma, and your computer monitor
is also a higher resolution than the television monitor can be.
This will change over time, as HD becomes more common. Further,
your television display is interlaced and your computer monitor
is progressive scan.
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The Preview Window has several different settings. Which one
should I use?
- Generally, you'll want to use the
Preview/Full setting, particularly if you are using an external
monitor. This displays the modified video at reduced resolution
so that your CPU isn't seeing a huge load. Unmodified video will
show at full resolution. Vegas recompresses edited media on the
timeline, allowing it to be seen externally, but if the Preview
setting is too low, then the external monitor will not look
acceptable.
- With regard to the technical differences in
the settings, this is what Sony officially explains the
differences to be:
- Quality: Best
Scaling: bi-cubic/integration
Field Handling: on
Field Rendering: on (setting dependent)
Framerate Resample/IFR: on (switch dependent)
Quality: Good
Scaling: bi-linear
Field Handling: on
Field Rendering: on (setting dependent)
Framerate Resample/IFR: on (switch dependent)
Quality: Preview
Scaling: bi-linear
Field Handling: off
Field Rendering: off
Framerate Resample/IFR: always off
Quality: Draft
Scaling: point sample
Field Handling: off
Field Rendering: off
Framerate Resample/IFR: always off
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How do I change the speed of my video?
- Vegas can produce some of the
best slow motion available. You can create slow motion in a
variety of ways. These are the two most common:
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-
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- The simplest way to slow
down an event is to press and hold the Ctrl key, and then
drag the edge of the event to make it longer. You will
notice that the cursor changes shape to give you visual
feedback that you are not trimming the event (which is what
would happen if you didn’t press and hold the Ctrl key).
-
- A more elegant way to slow
down motion is to apply a velocity envelope. Right
click on the event and choose “Insert/Remove Envelope” and
then click on Velocity. You will see a green line across
your event. You can move the entire line UP to speed up the
event, or DOWN to slow it down. If you move the line down
far enough, it will reverse the motion so that the event
plays backwards.
-
- The velocity envelope can also
be used to vary the speed of the clip from one point of
the event to another. To do this find the point in the event
where you want to change the playback speed. Right click on the
envelope and click on Add Point. Do this at each point in
the event where you want to change speed. Drag each point up or
down to increase or decrease the speed of the clip at that
point. The playback speed will gradually change between the
points. If you right click on the line between any two points,
you can change the rate at which the playback speed changes. Back to top
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- Slow Motion Quality
-
- Most people want to create slow
motion like they see on sports programs. Unfortunately, that
quality cannot be duplicated because they use cameras that take
far more than 30 frames per second. To create slow motion when
Vegas only has 30 fps to start with (or 25 fps for PAL), it must
create new frames of video to fill in the time between each
original frame of video. Vegas does this by blending the
adjacent frames. The result gives the illusion of fairly smooth
slow motion, although, because the intermediate frames are the
combination of adjacent frames, they are somewhat fuzzy. Thus,
you can get smooth, but slightly blurry video.
- If you want crystal sharp slow
motion, you can right-click on the video event that has been
slowed down, select “Properties,” and then click on the “Disable
Resample” setting. This will tell Vegas to simply play back the
original frames, but at a much slower rate. The effect is
identical to what you get when you slow down a movie projector.
As you make the playback slower and slower, you begin to see
just a series of still images, one after another. Each frame is
exactly as sharp as the original, but it gets very “jerky” as
the motion is slowed.
- There has been much discussion
of other settings, such as supersampling, best mode rendering,
and setting project properties to “interpolate frames” instead
of “blend fields.” These don’t make the motion look any
smoother. If you find that your slow motion exhibits flicker,
you can enabling the Video Bus track (in the View menu), adding
a Motion Blur envelope, and setting it to somewhere between 2-4.
You can also try right-clicking on the event, select Properties,
and click on reduce interlace flicker. Don’t do either of these
things if you don’t have to, because they both can slightly
degrade the video’s crispness, and Motion Blur substantially
increases rendering time.
Another easy method is to right
click, choose Properties, and then set the playback speed to the
desired setting. A speed of 4.00 is four times faster than
normal. A speed of .500 is half the normal rate of speed.
Read a
full tutorial here.
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Why can't Vegas capture my analog video correctly? It keeps
locking up when I press "Capture Video."
This is likely due to DV Devices being
enabled in your Capture Preferences. Disable DV Devices (and
Scene Detection) when capturing from analog sources.
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Why do I drop frames when I capture?
Some people ask, “How many
dropped frames are acceptable during capture?” The answer is
simple: None. If you are dropping frames during capture, here
are the most likely causes, starting with the most likely.
- DMA stands for Direct Memory
Access. It is a feature of all modern computers that lets data
go from one device to another without having to pass through
the CPU, thus freeing up the processor for more important
tasks. It must be enabled for each disk drive on your
computer.
- If DMA is not enabled, you
WILL drop frames. It’s as simple as that.
- To check whether DMA is
enabled:
- In Control Panel,
double-click on “System.” Then, click on the Hardware tab, and
then on "Device Manager." Expand the "IDE ATA/ATAPI
Controllers" branch. Double-click on the "Primary IDE Channel"
(unless your drive is connected to the secondary drive, in
which case you double-click on that). On the "Advanced
Settings" tab you will find the setting you are looking for.
Also, the current mode will be displayed. What you DON'T want
is PIO Mode. If you have any form of DMA, you will be fine.
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- If you have an Intel
motherboard, especially one from Dell, you may need to change
DMA settings by using the Application Accelerator utility that
comes with the Dell. If this utility is installed, you will
find that you cannot set DMA using the above procedure, and
that you must use the utility. If you cannot find it on your
Start menu, then you will find an Intel folder in your Program
Files folder, and you can navigate to the EXE file from there
and start the application.
- Once started, click on the
"+" mark next to the "Primary Channel," and then click on the
Master drive. In the right pane, you will see various
settings, most of which you cannot change. The only one that
you can change that relates to your problem is the "Transfer
Mode Limit" parameter. That should be set to "No Limit."
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- Background processes
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- Even if you have no other
programs running, you will still have dozens of
processes that are doing things in the background. These
include anti-virus programs, fax/modem software, various disk
utilities, and much more.
- If you are running Windows XP,
you can find out what processes are running by pressing
Ctrl-Alt-Del. If you have closed all your programs, you will
find that the “Applications” tab shows nothing running.
However, if you click on the Process tab you will see several
dozen processes running. This is normal.
- You can use the Startup tab in
the MSCONFIG utility to temporarily disable any process that
you suspect might be causing a problem. To start MSCONFIG,
click on the Start button, then on Run, type MSCONFIG and then
press Enter. Look at the list of startup programs, and remove
the check from the checkbox for any process you don’t think is
needed. You have to re-boot after disabling a process using
MSCONFIG. If you later find that this process is needed (for
instance if you get an error message from some application),
you can simply run MSCONFIG again and re-enable the check box.
- There is an excellent list of
all the common Windows XP processes, and which ones can be
disabled, at this site:
- http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
- One example of a background
process that WILL cause dropped frames, is HPHA1MON. This
background software is installed if you have an HP printer
with a built-in card reader. You definitely do not want this
process running during video capture.
- Another nasty background
process is the Microsoft Indexing Service. Very few people
even know it exists, but if you have Microsoft Office
installed, this beast cranks away in the background, indexing
every document on your hard disk. To disable the Indexing
Service go into "My Computer", right-click on all your hard
drive letters one at a time. Left-click "Properties". Then,
uncheck "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast
file searching". Select "Apply changes to subfolders and
files". If any files can not be updated select "Ignore All".
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- Adware and Viruses
- While relatively few computers
get infected with viruses, a huge number are now infected with
“Adware.” If you find that your computer displays annoying
pop-ups, you may have Adware installed on your computer. This
background software usually gets installed as a result of
downloading and installing some “shareware” or “freeware”
program. The authors of these programs often cannot make
enough money from the sale of their products, and so they sell
advertising space in their programs. When you run their
programs, ads are downloaded from the web and displayed. If
this were all that happened, it would be no big deal, because
virtually every web site you visit has some sort of
advertising displayed. However, unlike ads displayed on a web
page, these ads are downloaded and displayed by a program
running in the background. Further, the companies that produce
the adware are not content to merely display banner ads, but
instead often also tracks what you do on your computer. This
is obviously a major invasion of privacy. However, the real
killer for video capture is that these adware programs are
usually very poorly written, and many of them completely kill
the performance of your computer. In some severe cases, the
mouse even ceases to be responsive.
- To find out if you have a
problem, download, install, and run an adware or “spyware”
removal program, such as Adaware from Lavasoft:
-
www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/
- or Spychecker:
-
www.spychecker.com/
- Install the 1394 (Firewire)
patch
- There are a variety of
problems with the 1394 driver in Windows XP. These are
described in this Microsoft Knowledgebase article:
-
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;329256
- While the problems described
in this article primarily relate to connecting and
disconnecting 1394 devices, many users have reported capture
problems have been solved after installing the patch
recommended in the article. Since this patch is made by
Microsoft, and since it can be uninstalled if you don’t like
it, there is little downside to trying it out (although any
external Firewire drives will transfer at a slightly slower
rate). Here is the link to the driver:
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http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=9E8DF3F3-CD0C-4EDB-936A-5F0043E88BB2
- XP’s Service Pack 2 includes
this driver fix.
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- Capture to a different
physical hard disk.
- This is especially important
for slower computer (less than 1 GHz). In general, it is a
good idea to put data — including video — on a different
physical disk than the one used for your program files.
- Power Saving
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- This is definitely a problem
on some, older laptops. You usually get only a few, widely
spaced dropped frames. The solution is to change the options
for powered operation so that it never turns off the
screen or the disk drive. The strange thing about this problem
is that the dropped frames will happen long before either the
screen or drive power down.
- Other problems
-
- The solutions given above are
the most likely problems. Here are a few other things to
check.
- Drivers
- It is amazing how much damage
a poorly written driver can do. Video drivers are usually the
worst culprits. Bad drivers can screw up the entire system. Go
to your computer manufacturer’s web site, or the vendor that
makes your graphic card, and download the latest drivers.
- Firewire drives
-
- Some external Firewire drives
seem to have a design flaw that causes them to interfere with
streaming data on the Firewire cable. Some older Western
Digital Firewire drives definitely can interfere. Therefore,
if you are dropping frames — whether you or capturing to the
Firewire drive or not — try disconnecting the Firewire drive
and then try the capture to a drive inside your computer.
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- Unlikely causes
- Here are some other things
often recommended to solve dropped frame problems:
- Defragmentation
- Perhaps it is possible to get
a disk fragmented to the point of dropping frames. If you have
exhausted the other previous suggestions, go ahead and
defragment if you want to -- it won't hurt anything, except
for the several hours of time while your disk grinds away.
- IRQ settings
- Modern "XP computers" are
designed to share interrupts. Many tutorials on dropped frames
recommend eliminating shared IRQs, but in a modern XP
computer, this is unlikely to make any difference. One thing
for certain: If you try to change IRQs, you will end up taking
a pretty wild ride. Things might actually get broken in the
process.
- BIOS
- Most modern BIOS are pretty
well debugged. The updates usually address pretty mundane
issues, like handling a peripheral device that didn't exist
when the BIOS was first created. Updating your BIOS is
unlikely to help.
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How
do I access the Internal settings in Vegas?
Hold down the SHIFT key. Go to
Options>Preferences, and you'll note a new tab in the
Preferences dialog. Be CAREFUL, as if you generate wrong
settings, you could cause Vegas to not function.
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How do I reset Vegas to default settings?
Hold CTRL+Shift while starting Vegas. This will reset ALL
parameters to their factory defaults, so if you have any
preferences set, presets saved, or templates saved, they will be
deleted during the restart.
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- Do
I need to defragment my drives before capturing?
- It's a good idea to defrag drives before
capturing. Capture can be fairly demanding.
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- I
want to make a DVD, what's the best way to do this?
- DVD requires MPEG-2 video. Vegas can render
to MPEG-2. DVDs can hold approximately 4.5 gigabytes of
information, or about 90 minutes on what is called a DVD5.
In Vegas, you can render an avi file that can be imported to DVD
Architect, and DVD Architect can fit your video to the DVD, or
you can use a
bitrate calculator to figure out the correct bitrate.
- NEVER encode your MPEG at a bitrate faster
than 8 Mbps. If you do, the MPEG will most likely skip on DVD
players.
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How do I make a Play All button in DVD Architect 2.0?
- 1. Drag all the videos to your Project
Properties window.
- 2. Place the first one on the workspace as a
button.
- 3. Set the end action of the first file to
open the second file, and so on. Set the end action of the last
file to return to the menu.
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- How
can I create the famous Burns look with my stills/photographs?
- The Pan/Crop tool is used for this. By using
keyframes, you can create the illusion of a tracking camera
moving on the still image. Read a full
tutorial here.
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- Can
Vegas capture HDV?
- Not at this time. You can capture HDV with
whatever application came with your HDV camera, or you can do a
file transfer from the HDV camera to the hard drive. Drop the
M2T files directly on the Vegas timeline, and they'll open up
and can be edited. Output to Windows Media HD.
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- Can
Vegas capture HD? Or work with uncompressed media?
- Vegas cannot capture HD right now.
Black Magic
has been
working with Sony on the Decklink card for Vegas, but Sony has
not officially endorsed it. You can currently capture with the
Decklink capture utility, edit in Vegas, and print back to tape
with the Decklink tools.
- Vegas can edit and output HD in 720p, 1080i,
and 1080P formats, in uncompressed (if you have the disk space!)
or in Windows Media HD, which is currently only 720p.
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- How
do I normalize audio in Vegas?
- Simply right click the audio event and
check the "normalize" checkbox. Vegas will normalize the event.
If you have several events to normalize, copy the first one
after normalizing, then select all other audio, right click, and
use "Paste Event Attributes" to normalize all other audio. There
is also a script on the
VASST
scripting pages to accomplish this.
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- Is
Vegas 8 bit or 10 bit processing?
- Vegas is an 8 bit processing application.
By definition, DV is an 8 bit format. Vegas also renders to
4:1:1 (NTSC) or 4:2:0 (PAL) when rendering to DV. However, Vegas
does have 4:4:4 resampling processes when applying keys and
other processes. This is done to assure the best possible
quality. All DV is 4:1:1 (NTSC) or 4:2:0 (PAL) Vegas can
upsample video remarkably well, particularly when dealing with
odd aspect ratios.
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-
Does Vegas 5 allow each audio media to have its own FX, like the
way video does? Or are you still limited to having to assign FX
for the entire track?
- Yes. Right click the event, choose Insert
Non-Realtime effects. You simply can't drag an audio effect to
an audio event like you can with video. When you run this
operation, you'll create a take, rather than destroying the
original audio.
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My video looks funny if I use a
Velocity Envelope and make it reverse. What do I do?
- If you use the velocity envelope
to slow a clip, and you eventually put it into reverse motion,
Vegas (incorrectly) reverses the fields. If the event is in
reverse for its entirety, you can reverse the fields for that
event, but if you have both forward and reverse motion, you have
to "patch" things up by using Supersampling at level 1 or 2.
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Why do I see "jaggies, artifacts, horizontal lines, or other
strange lines" when I watch my video?
- This is ALMOST always related to DV
(interlaced) footage being displayed on a computer monitor.
Computer monitors are progressive scan where one full frame of
information is drawn at a time. Televisions are interlaced, and
only drawn half a frame in two sequences at a time. Chances are,
if you watch your video on a television, or if you burn a DVD
for playback on television, you'll not see these artifacts.
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- Why
can't Vegas see the video from a file captured by a still
camera? Audio plays, just not video.
- Most digital still cams use an MJPEG codec to
compress the media. You'll need to install an MJPEG codec.
Visit:
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http://www.matrox.com/video/support/ds/software/codec/home.cfm
(freebie)
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http://www.morgan-multimedia.com/
http://www.mainconcept.com
http://www.pegasusimaging.com/picvideomjpeg.htm
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http://www.softpile.com/Multimedia/Video/Review_10792_index.html
- to find an MJPEG codec/decoder.
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What is the best way to prepare video in Vegas for use in DVD
Architect? Encode in Vegas, or DVDA? What encoder settings
should I use?
- Both Vegas and DVD Architect can take video
in various formats and encode that video into the MPEG-2 format
required to make a DVD. Both use the same encoder. However,
there are advantages and disadvantages to doing the encoding in
one product vs. the other. Here are a list of those advantages
and disadvantages.
- Encode in Vegas
- Advantages:
- 1. There are more settings and controls in
the MPEG-2 encoder in Vegas, so you can “tweak” your encoding.
For instance, if you want to use 2-pass encoding, which can
significantly improve video quality when encoding at low
bitrates, you have to encode in Vegas, because DVDA does not
provide this feature.
- 2. Chapter markers are easier to insert in
Vegas. The Vegas editing facility is more sophisticated, and
lets you easily and quickly find the exact spot where you want
to insert markers. These markers are put in a file that DVDA
reads.
- Disadvantages
- 1. You have to do a separate encode for the
video and for the audio. There are scripts available that let
you do both encodes with the press of one button, but it is
still two separate processes.
- 2. You have to use a bitrate calculator to
determine what bitrate to use so that your video will fit onto a
single DVD. Even with this calculator, your video might not fit,
because Vegas has no way to know how much space the DVD menus,
subtitles, and multiple audio channels may take.
- 3. The “Default” MPEG-2 template will create
terrible video, yet whenever you select MPEG-2 as the encoding
format, it is always selected as the default (i.e., the
last-used template is not remembered). As a result, it is rather
easy to create a terrible-looking video if you forget to select
one of the DVD Architect templates. (Note: ALWAYS use one of the
DVD Architect templates as a starting point when encoding video
to put into DVDA.)
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- Encode in DVDA
- Advantages
- DVDA has an “encode-to-fit” feature that
chooses the best possible bitrate so that you can be assured
that your video will fit onto on DVD.
-
- Disadvantages
- If you decide to make changes to anything in
the DVD, even something as simple as changing the spelling on a
single menu or subtitle, you must re-encode the entire project.
This can take many hours, whereas just simply preparing the DVD
from audio and video that has already been encoded in Vegas can
usually be done in about fifteen minutes, even for a full DVD.
- What is the best bitrate, and what are the
best settings to use when encoding MPEG-2 video for making a
DVD?
- Encoding at higher bitrates results in better
quality, but you cannot fit as much video on a DVD. You should
not encode at an average rate higher than 8,000,000 bps. At the
other end of the scale, you can reduce the bitrate, in order to
fit more video on a DVD, but as you approach 6,000,000 bps
average, you will probably start to see a degradation in
quality, especially if you started with high-quality DV video.
If your video is mostly “talking heads” or other video that
contains relatively little motion, you can sometimes reduce the
average bitrate down to 5,000,000 or even 4,000,000, especially
if you use 2-pass encoding.
- When encoding video in Vegas, another
important consideration is to ALWAYS select one of the DVD
Architect templates. The default settings for these templates
usually provide excellent results, and there is seldom any need
to change from the defaults. By contrast, if you use the
“Default Template” for MPEG-2 encoding, the results will look
HORRIBLE because this template uses settings that are more
appropriate for streaming video.
- Once you have selected the proper template,
you should always click on the Custom button and set the average
bitrate to match the length of your video. Once you have clicked
on the Custom button, click on the Video tab, and then enter a
new value for “Average (bps).”
- If your DVD will have just one audio track
and few, if any, motion menus, then the average bitrate to just
fill a 4.7 GB disc can be calculated approximately with this
formula:
- Average bitrate (in megabits per second) =
590 divided by project minutes
- This calculation assumes that you are
encoding your audio using the AC-3 encoder, and using the
default “Stereo DVD” template, which encodes at 192 kbps.
- So, if your Vegas project is 80 minutes long,
then you should encode at no more than 590/80 = 7.38 megabits
per second. Since Vegas expects you to input bits per second,
not kilobits per second, you would enter 7,380,000 for the
average bitrate in this example.
- You can also use a bitrate calculator. There
is a handy one available here that can be downloaded or used
online:
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http://www.dvdrhelp.com/calc.htm
- Once you have rendered the video, you need to
then render the audio. Set “Save As Type” in the “Render As”
dialog box to “Dolby Digital AC-3,” and select the “Stereo DVD”
template (unless you have created a 5.1 project, in which case
you should select that template.
- If you need to encode at bitrates lower than
6,000,000 bps in order to make your video fit onto one DVD, you
might want to consider enabling “2-pass” encoding. This is only
available when encoding in Vegas, and is accessed from the
Custom button in the Render As dialog. Since the quality of the
video decreases when fewer bits are used to encode each frame,
Vegas can encode low-motion scenes with fewer bits, and then
uses the “extra” bits “saved” from this process to encode
fast-motion scenes with more bits, thus avoiding the problems
with low bitrate encoding, which are usually most noticeable
during fast motion. This is called “variable bitrate encoding”
and is the default with all the DVD Architect templates in
Vegas. The “2-pass” encoding takes this one step further by
making a complete pass through the entire project, analyzing the
motion in each scene, and then using that information to make a
much more intelligent assignment of bits to each and every frame
in the project. The downside of 2-pass encoding is that it takes
exactly twice as long to encode a project.
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- How
can I make my project render faster? Is there hardware I can
purchase that will make renders faster, or let me preview FX in
realtime?
- Specialty hardware was required in the early
days of video editing because the CPU in the computer was
neither fast enough nor did it contain the specialized
instructions needed for video operations. Modern CPUs are fast
and now have the instruction set needed for video, so
specialized hardware is used less and less. Vegas is built for
this modern environment and therefore does everything in
software. It does not need any specialized hardware, nor will it
use any.
-
- Thus, if you want to render faster, you can
get a faster computer, or you can use Vegas 5.0’s network
rendering to distribute the rendering among several computers
(see Network Rendering FAQ).
- However, even with your current computer,
there are several things you can do that can significantly
reduce rendering times.
- The most important thing to do is always
render to a different physical disk from where your original
video resides. If you render to the same disk, then that disk
cannot read anything while it is being written to, and vice
versa. By contrast, when two disks are used, the computer can
read from one, while simultaneously writing to the other. When
your render consists of simple things like transitions and title
overlays, using two disks can sometimes cut rendering time
almost in half compared to doing it all on one disk.
-
- If you are building your computer from
scratch, the absolutely ideal situation is to have each of these
disks on a separate IDE channel. However, most computers put the
first two hard drives on one IDE channel and your CD-ROM and the
DVD burner on the other IDE channel. This is the correct
configuration, and if that is what you have, don’t change it.
-
- In general, any background process that
monitors disk activity will slow down your computer. While most
people are not comfortable disabling their anti-virus software
(and we are not going to recommend doing that), you can get some
performance improvement when this is disabled. Two other
processes that can reduce performance are:
- Microsoft Office Indexing
- Microsoft Messenger
- Disabling these may help. Also, if you share
any of your drives on a network and someone else is writing to
them, this can degrade performance.
- Finally, do not set the Video
Rendering Quality to Best. (You’ll find this setting when you
click the Custom button in the Render As dialog box.) This
setting is intended for still pictures, and if you don’t have
still photos in your project it will not improve the quality of
the render, but it will slow it down substantially.
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- What
is 24P? Do I need it? Will it make my video look like film?
- No, 24P will NOT automatically give your
video the "Film Look." The number 24 refers to the number of
frames per second. In the film world, film is usually shot at 24
frames per second.
The "P" refers to Progressive scan, which is similar to how film
takes pictures. It shoots the entire frame at one time, rather
than shooting half-frames like interlaced media does. With a few
exceptions like the new Canon XL2 and the Panasonic DVX 100/30
models, there are no DV camcorders that shoot a true progressive
scan image at full frame rates without degrading the image in
some manner.
24 P is pretty well intended for those seeking the "film look"
from their DV productions. It offers less information for the
shot, requires additional knowledge of how to use the camera.
These aren't bad things, only different things.
Cameras seem to be gravitating towards 24P, but the real value
is in HDV, which may or may not be available as 24P media. Vegas
has a great ability to convert any 60i media to 24P. (60i is
what nearly all DV cameras shoot and what the better HDV cameras
will shoot) You can read a
Film-look tutorial here if you're interested in knowing how.
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Sometimes I get a "Low Memory" warning and Vegas locks up for a
moment, particularly when working with graphics. Why? What do I
do about it?
- Usually, this is due to a page file not being
large enough or the system not having enough RAM or both. You
can enlarge page files. Here is a great article on how to do it,
and why you should or shouldn't do it.
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- How
do I move presets from one computer to another?
- Use the Sony Preset Manager to move presets
from one machine to another. Download it
HERE.
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How can I copy events from one Vegas
project into another project?
- Open Vegas a second time (by
starting the program again, after you already have one copy
running). Open project A in the first "instance" of Vegas, and
open project B in the second instance. You can then copy and
paste between the two projects.
Thanks to John Meyer for his input on this extensive
FAQ.
Got an FAQ idea? Let us know!
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