How to nest multiple vegas files? Mixing DV & HD?

omar wrote on 7/9/2008, 12:58 PM
I have multiple sequences I want to put on one Vegas file. I tried dragging and dropping using explorer, but it does not retain all the tracks. I want to be able to edit each file in the one main vegas file... It only maintains one video and one audio from the nested file.

Also, the video in the video preview appears in a smaller square when I nest a standard dv project in a vegas file with hd video project settings? How can I keep the two on one project?

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/9/2008, 1:18 PM
> I tried dragging and dropping using explorer, but it does not retain all the tracks.

That's right. Dragging and dropping project files will nest the projects as if they were a single piece of media. The problem is you are "nesting" and you don't wan to "nest" (i.e., don't drag 'n drop projects)

> I want to be able to edit each file in the one main vegas file...

To do this you must open two instances of Vegas and cut-n-paste between them. This will not give you what you want if you added track level FX because only the media will be cut and pasted over. You will have to manually add any Track FX back. This is a lot of work. Why not just leave them and work as nested projects?

> It only maintains one video and one audio from the nested file.

Technically all of the tracks are still there. They are just represented as a master video and audio track. You aren't loosing anything. If you right-click on the media you can edit the project will all of the tracks and any changes you save will be reflected back in the Vegas timeline (which is pretty slick!)

> Also, the video in the video preview appears in a smaller square when I nest a standard dv project in a vegas file with hd video project settings? How can I keep the two on one project?

Well... the aspect ratios are different for SD (4:3) and HD (16:9) so you are going to have to decide what aspect you want to deliver your project in and crop one or the other to fit the final output aspect. This is very easy if you nest the projects because you can crop an entire project by cropping the nested media file. Just use the Pan/Crop tool and use the Match Output Aspect option.

~jr
omar wrote on 7/9/2008, 4:47 PM
Wow, thanks! Everything is clear. I didn't know you can right click the nest and edit the original tracks! One question about the HD and SD mix.

The HD footage was shot natively in widescreen. The SD footage was shot 4:3 but cropped for 16:9 in Vegas. I want to render as 16:9, which I've already cropped the sd for.

The only problem is in the timeline the HD footage remains widescreen with no horizontal black bars on the top and bottom while the SD footage is widescreen but with horizontal bars.

How can either add the bars in the HD footage (while retaining resolution) or removing the bars from the sd footage and keep it cropped for widescreen?
JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/9/2008, 7:52 PM
You should not crop the SD for 16:9 in the SD project. Leave the SD 4:3 in it's own project and crop it when you drop the nested project on the timeline. By cropping it in the project but leaving the project SD 4:3 you have effectively "burned in" the black bars.

Alternately, change the project settings to DV Widescreen for SD project that you cropped for 16:9. This will make the SD project itself 16:9. Now when you drop it into the 16:9 HD project it will be widescreen and match.

~jr
omar wrote on 7/9/2008, 8:14 PM
I changed the project settings in my SD files to DV widescreen since I've already cropped; it looks good but it leaves these very thin vertical bars on the left and right for some reason...?

Also, how should I have my project settings in the file that has both HD 720p and SD 480p footage?
video777 wrote on 7/9/2008, 10:06 PM
Wait. Can someone clarify this for me? Is this similar to "timelines" in Liquid? One of the few things I miss about Liquid is the ability to have multiple "projects" or "timelines" within one project. Any guidance on this would be appreciated. Right now I'm opening Vegas twice (which is a pretty cool feature and neither Liquid nor Studio can do that; in fact you can't even open the two simultaneously).
farss wrote on 7/10/2008, 4:30 AM
I don't think nests are the same as timelines / sequences.

When you nest a project the output of the child project feeds into the the parent, rather like a pipe or frameserve. This is very usefull for doing things that cannot be done within one project and avoids having to render out a file and then bring that file into a new project.
Another way I've used nesting is where onlya small section of the project needed to be rendered at Best. Rendering the whole project at Best would have slowed things down a lot. So setting up a project for the complex titles with the project set for Best and nesting that into a project set for Good saved a lot of time rendering.

Bob.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/10/2008, 5:44 AM
> it looks good but it leaves these very thin vertical bars on the left and right for some reason...?

Yea I was going to mention that and forgot (sorry)... This is caused by the resolution and pixel aspect ratio of DV Widescreen and HDV are not exactly the same. DV Widescreen with it's 1.2121 PAR is a bit "less wide" than HDV.

To fix this, go into Pan/Crop on your nested 4:3 project and right-click the frame window and select Match Output Aspect and it will crop the black pillar boxes out. I do this all the time when rendering HDV for DV Widescreen.

~jr
omar wrote on 7/10/2008, 11:12 AM
Before I got your response, I rendered a master vegas file with nested HD vegas files and nested DV cropped for 16:9 vegas files. For the master vegas file and all of the nested files I used DV widescreen 720x480 project settings for both HD and SD files as opposed to HD720p.

I noticed a slight change if I used HD720p project setttings when SD footage was in the mix it would make the SD footage look slightly soft. Was I correct with using these project settings?

I burned onto DVD and watched on a widescreen HDTV and those little vertical bars weren't there actually? Nice! But they appeared when uploaded to youtube...

I went back and took a look at the source SD footage vegas files. I noticed that your trick removes those bars in Vegas truly, only when done to each source nested vegas file not to the one nested file in the master file.

Is that just something that appears in the video preview only?

Also, how do you copy and paste the match output aspect feature to all your clips when they have different pan/crops positions and variations in color correction?

I know I'm all over the place; all of these issues came up however while trying to nest for the first time :)