Intermediate 'mixdown' -- or better idea?

Kalvos wrote on 3/12/2011, 5:25 AM

Hi all,

Longtime user from pre-Sony version 1 days, now with VMS HD Plat 10. Most of my stuff is just simple documentary projects with low demand.

As a composer, I think audio. And when I work with audio in Audition or Sonar, I will do an intermediate mixdown of a track that might have hundreds of tiny edits, and then use that mixdown for further work.

This is the first time I've wanted to do that with a video track that was just downright cluttered with hundreds of little edits. I want to consolidate it as a single track before moving on with color correction, to other tracks, etc.

Should I be thinking about a different method in VMS rather than mixing it down to a file and re-opening that file? (I already managed to crash the program trying to re-open an m2ts file that I'd mixed own.) With audio there's no loss, but unless I export video to an uncompressed format (way too big for what I'm doing), I'm not sure how to move ahead.

Am I missing a 'consolidate into one track' feature in VMS that will get rid of all those little slices?

Thanks,
Dennis

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 3/12/2011, 8:04 AM

Have you considered doing this type of work in Sound Forge instead?

It's a much more powerful audio editing/mixing app.

Jack S wrote on 3/12/2011, 8:08 AM

Hi Dennis
I do something a little similar. I edit small projects, for example days out to various places, then render them using suitable settings. I then bring all the rendered videos onto the timeline with the required time gap between them and render them all together to create one large project that I can bring into DVDAS. You will not lose any quality providing you use the same render settings for all the clips and the final project. Of course, to avoid recompression in DVDAS you will have to make sure that the final rendered video will fit easily onto a DVD with enough space left for menus, etc. There are many posts which have calculations for this.
The advantage of this method is that if, when reviewing your final video, you see any mistakes, you only need to re-edit and render the section with the mistake.

Kalvos wrote on 3/12/2011, 8:20 AM

Thanks, Jack -- that's exactly what I want to do -- but I can't seem to create a good-looking output file that will work..

I'm doing 1920x1080 and I can't seem to export a suitable file in that aspect ratio. The only one that will 'take' and look good is m2ts, but it has no audio and crashes VMS if I try to import it and place it on the timeline.

The regular mpg using the Main Concept plugin looks fine but is letterboxed.

What am I missing?

Thanks again,
Dennis

Jack S wrote on 3/12/2011, 8:33 AM

Have you tried checking the

'Stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox)'

check box in the 'Render As' dialog box?

Kalvos wrote on 3/12/2011, 8:55 AM

Yes, I've tried that, but instead of giving me a 1920x1080 output, it gives me a tall 4:3 ratio. If I change the aspect in the advanced render, it really looks blotchy and bad. I'm clearly doing something wrong -- there must be a plain vanilla 1920x1080 output.

Thanks again for ideas.

I'm off for the rest of today ... got a premiere of a new composition for solo viola tonight, and have to head for that.

Dennis

musicvid10 wrote on 3/12/2011, 9:29 AM

Kalvos,
One good intermediate codec for what you want to do is called Avid DNxHD.

Download the Avid LE 2.3.2 codecs. Be sure to scroll all the way down to "Downloads" so you don't get the older version 2.2.1
http://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=372311

Avid DNxHD shows up as a custom MOV format. Use these settings and I think you will be pleased with the output, file size, and render speed.

Best of luck with your recital!