Cropping for idiots

plyall wrote on 1/20/2005, 1:20 PM
Folks -

I just recently started using Vegas again (Vegas 5.0). Not that I was ever great at it, but I have forgotten quite a bit over the period I was focused elsewhere.

I am trying to do a simple task - edit a TV show I recorded with BeyondTV (Medium).

My editing objectives:

1) Take out leading video , trailing video, and commercials.

2) There is a small horizontal line of 'noise' across the top of the screen that I would like to crop out.

I have been successful at 1) above - using the shuttle controls, splitting at the commercial begin/end points, and then deleting those clips (video and audio).

What I now need to do is apply cropping to the remaining video events to lose that 'noise' line on the top of the video.

When I tried to use TOOLS | VIDEO | VIDEO EVENT PAN CROP, it is grayed out unless I select only one event/clip. If I use this approach, it successfully crops THIS CLIP, but the clips that follow are uncropped.

I tried to see if there was a way to rejoin the remaining events into a single even and didn't see a way to do this. Is there a way?

How can I cause the cropping to take effect on the whole group of clips without applying cropping to each individiual clip?

Also - when I do get into the cropping dialog/window, all I want to do is shave off the top first several lines of the video - I don't want to scale it down, affect the aspect ratio, or shrink the whole picture - is there any easy way to do this?


Thanks for any and all help!

Pete Lyall

Comments

Liam_Vegas wrote on 1/20/2005, 1:28 PM
Track motion will allow you to do this for all the clips on a single track. Just zoom in a bit and that top line will disappear from the frame.

Alternatively you can copy the pan/crop settings from one event to all the other events. Select the first event (where you applied the pan/crop) right click the event and select the copy option. Now right click the next event on the timeline and select the option for <select events to end> now right click that same clip and choose the option <paste event attributes>. That will do what you need also.
Former user wrote on 1/20/2005, 1:35 PM
Or you can just MASK the offending lines by using a key or the cookie cutter.

Dave T2
Chienworks wrote on 1/20/2005, 1:42 PM
This doesn't help a whole lot now, but you can crop the entire event as a single piece before you split it up. After splitting the individual sections will retain the crop settings.

A slightly less easy solution to use after splitting is to set the crop on the first event, copy the event to the clipboard, select all the rest, and Paste Event Attributes. This will set the rest of the events to the same crop settings.

To crop the way you want, make sure the "retain aspect ratio" button is turned off in the pan/crop window. This is the button that looks like a smaller blue rectangle in the upper left corner of the larger white rectangle. With this button off, you can crop the top and bottom independantly of the left and right. If the width remains the same then Vegas won't rescale the image.
Liam_Vegas wrote on 1/20/2005, 1:43 PM
Also - when I do get into the cropping dialog/window, all I want to do is shave off the top first several lines of the video - I don't want to scale it down, affect the aspect ratio, or shrink the whole picture - is there any easy way to do this?

Yep... now that I read that bit... you can simply overlay a bit of generated media (black) over the area that you want to remove. Just put the generated media "clip" onto a track of it's own above your main video track. Use track motion to position this generated media so it is merely blocking the portion of the video you need removed. Stretch the generated media clip so that it spans the entire lenth of your video.
Former user wrote on 1/20/2005, 1:43 PM
Create a new video track. Insert a BLACK generated media that covers the whole timeline. Crop off all of the black that you don't want to see to reveal the video you do want to see.

Dave T2
Chienworks wrote on 1/20/2005, 1:46 PM
The problem with using a generated media mask is that rendering will probably take at least twice as long as using Pan/Crop.
Former user wrote on 1/20/2005, 1:58 PM
Okay. Create a black AVI. Use instead of generated mask. You only have to make a few seconds and then repeat.

Dave T2
Former user wrote on 1/20/2005, 2:02 PM
Ignore the black AVI suggestion, then you are back to applying an effect over multiple scenes.

I think the generated black is the best myself. If you scale you will have some pretty long render times as well.

Dave T2