New to Vegas, Pinnacle 8 to the curb.

KJerome wrote on 12/23/2003, 2:58 PM
I have been editing video with Pinnacle version 7 then 8 for the past few years. Although it is very easy to use it is very buggy and I was getting very poor video on my DVD's. Occasionally the audio and video would be out of synch. Vegas is much more powerful, but much more complex. I have printed and read the entire vegas manual, produced a 10 minute video using the 5.1 Pan feature and am very excited to learn Vegas. If I can be half as good as Spot, Jet_DV, LiamVegas and a few other regular posters I will be happy.

1. Do people edit with "Ripple Edit" ON or OFF? I seem to get myself into trouble with the auto fade on and ripple edit on. I get video overlapping and occasionally I find video missing or underneath other video. any suggestions would be appreciated in this area. editing is taking much too long compared to what I am used to with Pinnacle 8. In Vegas I drop all the video on the timeline and go through it using the S button to split and deleting the unwanted portion of the video. If ripple edit is off it leaves a hole. Then I have to click on the track to the right of the hole, select all tracks from that point to end and shift over. The "after edit riples" don't work. I must be doing something wrong to make it so difficult.

2. The scrubber in Pinnacle was nice. I have been considering purchasing one of the jog shuttles. Any suggestions?

3. Instead of (1) program to capture edit an burn DVD there are (3) with Vegas. This is a bit confusing, but I am leaning.

4. Is there a way to lock the video and audio together so when working with them they edit as one unit not two?

5. Is there an automatic 2 channel to 5.1 optoin other than panning?

To make sure I understand how to make a DVD with menus from a MiniDV to be played on a 6 x 9 TV using 5.1 surround, I need to do the following.
a. Capture to VidCap under best quality.
b. Edit in Vegas, use the 5.1 panning feature, duplicate audio track after the editing is complete for LFE. Render to MPEG 2 using the 16 x 9 template? Then Render the sound as AC3 using the same filename as MPEG 2.
c. Bring them both into DVDArchitect. Create the menus and chapters then burn to disk?

Is that basically it? When I did that the video does not fill my 16 x 9 TV. There are black bars on top and bottom of the video. Since I recorded in 16 x 9 do I need to use a different template? Is that template designed to take 4 x 3 to 16 x 9? Any ideas?

Lets start with that. Thanks for the help.

Vegas Rocks.....

Comments

Maverick wrote on 12/23/2003, 3:48 PM
Hi

Welcome to the Vegas Forum.

I, too, started with S7 and found the change to V3/4 huge but, with perceverance have got som egreat resukts. In fact, my very first DVD (my parents' 50th Wedding anniversary) was burnt with DVDA and played first time:-)

1. I find that I only use ripple edit when I need as it seems to get oin the way if on all the time.

4. Select the video and audio events and CTRL-G to group them.

I am sure others with better qualifications will hep on the rest.

Stay with - the results are worth it.

Good Luck and a Happy Xmas to all
Cheers.
rebel44 wrote on 12/23/2003, 6:07 PM
If you get frames-mard "do not letterbox".
kentwolf wrote on 12/23/2003, 6:24 PM
(Many people who were disillusioned with Pinnacle have come here, including myself...)

>>1. Do people edit with "Ripple Edit" ON or OFF?

There are times to use both. Usually, I personally use Ripple On. If I am replacing a similarily sized event, I turn it off. Pretty much personal preference at a given time.

>>2. The scrubber in Pinnacle was nice. I have been considering
>>purchasing one of the jog shuttles. Any suggestions?

JKL shuttle keys do nicely. Hitting them muitple times will increase speed forward or backwards. "K" + J or L will give you slow motion in the direction of your choice.

>>3. Instead of (1) program to capture edit an burn DVD there are
>>(3) with Vegas. This is a bit confusing, but I am leaning.

What I perosnnly use to capture if Scenalyzer (See http://www.scenalyzer.com)

It keeps the date/time stamp with the file. It is an excellent program, inexpensive ($33), and should be part of Vegas capture functionality, in my opinion. You can download a free trial. Much better than Vegas' cap app.

>>4. Is there a way to lock the video and audio together so when
>>working with them they edit as one unit not two?

As someone else stated, highlight both the video and audio and hit "G" (group). They are locked/grouped by default.

>>5. Is there an automatic 2 channel to 5.1 optoin other than
>>panning?

I don't quite understand that one.

>>a. Capture to VidCap... Bring them both into DVDArchitect

Sounds like you pretty much have it down. Althought on the editing part, with Vegas, the sky's the limit...

Hope this helps a little.
PDB wrote on 12/24/2003, 12:59 AM
Welcome!

See if I can help a bit...
1. Ripple edit:

I MUCH prefer post ripple edit ( I can take a breath and see what is happening...) Basically press "f", Control + f or control + shift + f depending on what needs moving - the blue little arrow on the top bar on top of the timeline iss pointing you (escuse the pun) to what the ripple edit will move things to basically...
2. scrubbing: j,k,l work great as has been pointed out. The contour products are also recommended (contour shuttle pro and the shuttle express (http://www.contourdesign.com/ for reference...)
5. as far as 5.1, I don't really get what you are saying...I take it you have set the project properties to a 5.1 in the audio settings in file/properties/master bus mode ? If so, all audio by default will be a 5.1 channel - each and every track...

By the way, one of the things I have found after using vegas for almost 2 years is that it really pays to get to know the keyboard shortcuts for the most used tasks...I recently discovered a "shortcut" to "select events to end" function: place mouse pointer over left most event needed, right click and press "n"...Silly really, its been staring at me for months and I never thought of it....

Good luck!

Regards
Paul.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 12/24/2003, 4:27 AM
I would highly recommend getting the book "Vegas 4 Editing Workshop" by Douglas Spotted Eagle. It will take you from the basics right through to compositing. Douglas also has an outstanding 4 DVD set on the same topic. Just sit back and have him teach you. The DVD set is the quickest way to learn Vegas IMHO; especially if you learn by visual teaching rather than reading. I own both and I came from Pinnacle Studio 7/8 too.

~jr
busterkeaton wrote on 12/24/2003, 11:29 PM
If you want a jog shuttle device, check out the Countour Shuttle Pro.
KJerome wrote on 12/25/2003, 4:18 PM
Thanks so much for all the help. I began using JKL and it works very well. I don’t think I will spend the money on the shuttle at this point. Thanks Kent Wolf,

KentWolf – What is the advantage of having the date/time stamp with the file? Also how about the video and audio quality of Scenalyzer compared to Vegas?

PDB – The Post edit ripple works well for me too now that I understand it.

My 5.1 Question didn’t make sense to anyone but me. Let me try again. When the audio is recorded into the DV Camera it is in 2 channel (L/R). When I create the 5.1 in Vegas (I.e. two audio tracks, one with panning and one with LFE) how does it separate the (2) channels into 5.1? Does it take the right channel and send it to the right rear and right front speakers? Does it only send it to the front until I Pan? Is the sound out of the right two speakers exactly the same? Here is an example I am working with right now. The people in the camera shot are talking to somebody behind the camera. How would the sound come out once I render and put on DVD? Would I have to create two audio tracks and pan one of them to the back when the person behind the camera is talking? Thanks again.

Korey
jetdv wrote on 12/25/2003, 6:25 PM
Also how about the video and audio quality of Scenalyzer compared to Vegas?

No difference
farss wrote on 12/25/2003, 6:52 PM
Without wearing myself out typing on boxing day :)

Say you've got a stereo pait but you wantto workon them as two tracks. Create two instances of them on the timeline. Right click each and under switches select one as left only and the other as right only. Now you can add pan and vloume envelopes or use the controls in the track header to adjust each of those as though they were separate tracks.

If you're doing it into 5.1 much the same deal, except there's no pan envelope, only the header gives you control from memory. So if you only want the original camera left track to end up in either LF or LR then you'll be sweet, just need two tracks and you can move the left between LF and LR and right between RF and RR. Except I suspect you'd also want to have some stuff go into centre, so I'd suggest you create a LR to mono mixed track witha volume envelope panned to centre. Then you just use the volume envelope to bring up the sections you want in the centre.

I'm certain there's more ways to do this, once you've got the general idea of how it works you'll need to play around a fair bit with it to find the way that works best for what you're trying to do. I'd be inclined to create a seperate track for each of the 5.1 channels and then cut and paste the bits I needed there from two master tracks from the camera and use volume envelopes to control each of the 5.1 channels. I'd find that less confusing myself.

BTW make use of the label in the header, just so you know what's what.
kentwolf wrote on 12/25/2003, 8:09 PM
>>KentWolf – What is the advantage of having the date/time stamp
>>with the file? Also how about the video and audio quality of
>>Scenalyzer compared to Vegas?

I am a big-time documenter (I work in an R&D lab for a living). I really like to know what happened when. With the Scenalyzer file name convention, you have the date and time of the clip. This is extremely usefil if you are trying to get clips in chronological order or for making date titles for clips.

Using the Vegascapture app, if I remember correctly, it does actually show the date/time right after the actual capture, but once you exit the capture, all that is lost. I don't know of a way to tell from there on out. I would really expect this to be fixed/changed in Vegas 5, but we'll see. I have used Scenalyzer for all of my video capture, analog and digital and have been very, very pleased.

...and as stated, there is no quality difference between capture programs with respect to quality. A digital clip is a digital clip...which is a nice thing coming from analog...

Hope this helps.