Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/28/2004, 6:32 AM
Definately all at once. All the effects in a chain are performed at uncompressed 24 bit accuracy. If you render inbetween effects then the video will be compressed with whatever coded you use and uncompressed again for the next step. Each recompression degrades quality.
melbatoast wrote on 12/28/2004, 7:13 AM
thank you.

BillyBoy wrote on 12/28/2004, 7:41 AM
Also keep in mind that the plug-in chain ORDER you apply the effects, depending on source material and which FX filters you use can have a profound effect on the end result.

There used to be a discussion and image or two in the older Vegas 2 or 3 manual (PRF) and I've played around a lot with this myself. To move the order of the filters in your plug-in chain there is a little sideways arrow, just click and drag a FX filter already in the chain to move its order, meaning applying in sooner or later. FX filters are applied left to right in the order they get added to the plug-in chain.

Sometimes you may see a big difference, other times little difference or not at all. One of the things you got to do trial and error.
RalphM wrote on 12/28/2004, 10:21 AM
Interesting discussion regarding the order of the filters being a factor in the final result. Are there any general rules or does it just require experimentation with the specific clip to be processed?
BillyBoy wrote on 12/28/2004, 12:11 PM
If there are "rules" or guidelines, I'm not aware of it.

Lugging out my well read and dog eared copy of the Vegas 3 manual on page 251 they show a couple illustrations changing the order of Bringtness/Contrast filter with the Black and white FX filter. The difference is striking because of masking. While an extreme example, I've seen worthwhile improvements doing position changes using other filters.

One example would be if you break your project up into multiple events and then apply various filters by event (what I usually do) you can sometimes see a noticeable difference if you use multiple filters and switch the plug-in order around in some events.

While for sure it isn't carved in stone, I tend to apply filters by what I rank the more important and/or elementary corrections first, since these will have the most impact.

So...

If I'm going to do color correction I'll almost always apply either Color Corrector or Color Curves first in the chain. Filters that have less an impact or impact only a certain area like Color Corrector Secondary go further down the chain. Like I said, I try to remember to keep the order event to event. So if I get carried away and apply maybe five or six filters to one event, then only two or three to the next, I try to still keep the ones I do use in order just skipping over the ones I didn't use in some events.

One of my very favorite things I like about Vegas is if you're willling to invest the time, how doing just very minor tweaking with FX filters can bring out purer colors and balanced levels.

I'm for sure almost a psycho when it comes to color correction and especially getting skin tones accurate, because being off just a bit can either make or break the project which explains why I've written as many tutorials on that topic as I have

farss wrote on 12/28/2004, 12:36 PM
Here's a simple example of how the FX order impacts. Applying blur and then the unsharpen mask produces a totally different result if you reverse the order.
Same thing goes with audio FX as well, the default FX chain in the audio track header is a good example of how the FXs need to be ordered.
Bob.