I have done some small scale editing projects in the past, but recently I decided that I wanted to move on to something bigger. I have a couple of blu-ray movies that I like very much except for a few things, and I wanted to try my hand at some movie editing (for the record, I own the films and this editing will only be for personal entertainment; no redistribution is in order). Long story short, the project has been a nightmare of codec troubles, and I would like advice on how to proceed. I have Movie Studio HD Platinum 11, and I hope I don't have to drop the few hundred extra dollars for Pro.
Here is the situation:
- First trouble was finding a way to rip the blu-ray disc to a format that Vegas could understand, that maintained good quality 1080p video, and that maintained 5.1 surround sound. This isn't a big request, but apparently it is spectacularly difficult to pull off. Eventually, I was able to rip the film to an mp4 container, and Vegas could open it and recognize the video and audio.
- Once Vegas opened the file, I discovered that the audio was precisely 1/2 second (12 frames at 23.967fps) behind the video, even though the original mp4 was properly synchronized. This means that I would have to split the audio and video and realign them later.
- Then I needed to find video and audio formats that would keep the 1080p video and 5.1 audio in tact AND that Vegas could import. It was irritating to find that Vegas could export many file formats that its own importer would not recognize. I only found 1 candidate for video ( .avc ) and 1 for audio ( .64 ).
- After exporting all the video sections that I wanted to keep, I tried to import them again and discovered that I had hit Movie Studio's memory limit when the program locked up.
Crap
- I tried to consolidate the edited video segments with their audio segments by exporting them as .m2v, which was the only format that my computer could read AND that kept 1080p and 5.1 audio at 23.967fps. It turns out that Vegas cannot import the .m2v files it exports.
Crap
- Take 2: export all film audio as .w64, export all film video as .avc, then cut them up with Vegas' trimmer. This approach saved memory, and I was able to cut up the video in the video.
- I brought the trimmed video to the timeline only to discover that Vegas had derped when importing the gigantic .avc file. The orignal mp4 file's video played fine, the individual .avc segments from my first editing attempt played fine, but the large single film .avc did not play fine, so its trimmed segments did not either. To further confuse me, the trimmer played the video just fine, even though the timeline did not. It appears that the same code that previews video in the trimmer is not used in the timeline.
Crap
Well, I am stuck. All I want to do is import a 1080p, 5.1 audio, 23.967fps film to Sony Vegas, cut it up a bit, and render the edited project as a commonly readable container with 1080p, 5.1 audio, and 23.967fps. I didn't think this would be hard, but apparently these three options together are difficult for Vegas to deal with. And for the record, I did try a few customized templates, but Vegas encountered errors a few seconds into the conversion and could not proceed, so I had no choice but to work with the built-in templates.
I will gladly take any suggestions about how to perform a film edit.
Here is the situation:
- First trouble was finding a way to rip the blu-ray disc to a format that Vegas could understand, that maintained good quality 1080p video, and that maintained 5.1 surround sound. This isn't a big request, but apparently it is spectacularly difficult to pull off. Eventually, I was able to rip the film to an mp4 container, and Vegas could open it and recognize the video and audio.
- Once Vegas opened the file, I discovered that the audio was precisely 1/2 second (12 frames at 23.967fps) behind the video, even though the original mp4 was properly synchronized. This means that I would have to split the audio and video and realign them later.
- Then I needed to find video and audio formats that would keep the 1080p video and 5.1 audio in tact AND that Vegas could import. It was irritating to find that Vegas could export many file formats that its own importer would not recognize. I only found 1 candidate for video ( .avc ) and 1 for audio ( .64 ).
- After exporting all the video sections that I wanted to keep, I tried to import them again and discovered that I had hit Movie Studio's memory limit when the program locked up.
Crap
- I tried to consolidate the edited video segments with their audio segments by exporting them as .m2v, which was the only format that my computer could read AND that kept 1080p and 5.1 audio at 23.967fps. It turns out that Vegas cannot import the .m2v files it exports.
Crap
- Take 2: export all film audio as .w64, export all film video as .avc, then cut them up with Vegas' trimmer. This approach saved memory, and I was able to cut up the video in the video.
- I brought the trimmed video to the timeline only to discover that Vegas had derped when importing the gigantic .avc file. The orignal mp4 file's video played fine, the individual .avc segments from my first editing attempt played fine, but the large single film .avc did not play fine, so its trimmed segments did not either. To further confuse me, the trimmer played the video just fine, even though the timeline did not. It appears that the same code that previews video in the trimmer is not used in the timeline.
Crap
Well, I am stuck. All I want to do is import a 1080p, 5.1 audio, 23.967fps film to Sony Vegas, cut it up a bit, and render the edited project as a commonly readable container with 1080p, 5.1 audio, and 23.967fps. I didn't think this would be hard, but apparently these three options together are difficult for Vegas to deal with. And for the record, I did try a few customized templates, but Vegas encountered errors a few seconds into the conversion and could not proceed, so I had no choice but to work with the built-in templates.
I will gladly take any suggestions about how to perform a film edit.