Oh, so very confusing - A little help, Please

mjroddy wrote on 6/21/2005, 8:03 PM
I'm trying to hit a Tomorrow Deadline and am running into a couple VERY confusing problems.
The first one got solved somehow, but by accident.
I have a Lightwave animation with a lense flare in it. Actually I have two animations with lense flares. The first one DISPLAYS properly on the timeline (V6b), but won't render (to a WMV or MOV, etc) with the flare. Strangely, the second one renders fine. No matter what I did, I couldn't get that flare to render on Anim1. But I Copied the second anim and "Pasted Properties" onto the first and it "fixed" the rendering. Very confusing to me. I checked the Alpha, the fielding and the project properties. Nothing made sense as to why one would render and the other wouldn't.
But at least I'm past that hurtle.
((Edit: the problem SEEMS to be a bug!! When I copied the attributes from the second anim, as mentioned that fixed the problem. But that also changed the timing on the clip, which I had compressed a bit. Once I sped the clip back up a bit to match the space needed, the flare went away again! So changing the speed on a clip is the problem! AAAA! very weird))
Next problem is I can't SEEM to get 720x480. I noticed when I rendered to a 3Mb file, the preview window shrunk horizontally a bit. So I changed the settings to reflect 720x480 and all that did was add black bars on either side.
Curious, I took a snapshot of a frame. Sure enough, 654x480.
Project Settings are 720x486x32, 29.970i. The media was rendered at 720x480 NTSC 0.9 and matched in Vegas' properties.
Why can't I render full 720x480 without the black bars on the sides?
Thanks for all help and advice.

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/21/2005, 8:19 PM
what were the rendering setting from lightwave? Was the lens flare rendered in LW or is it in Vegas (sounds like both!)

what's the aspect ratio of your LW video while in Vegas. Should be 0.9. You should also render progressive if you have the option (and you rendered from LW that way).
mjroddy wrote on 6/21/2005, 8:25 PM
I just modified my first statement above. You repied very quickly. Please note the "Edit" area for more info.
The settings in LW are not the issue (which was 720x480 MOV with Millions+, High Quality). .9 it is. Thanks, though.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/21/2005, 8:30 PM
I normaly rendered TGA's from LW, but to each his own (shoudldn't matter anyway).

what's the FPS on the video when you right click on it? is it 30 or 29.97? That shouldn't matter eigther but maybe it does.

So in the rendered video file from Vegas you have black bars? Your project isn't wide screen is it?
Coursedesign wrote on 6/21/2005, 8:46 PM
is it 30 or 29.97? That shouldn't matter either but maybe it does.

I had problems bringing in animations at 30P, but 29.97P worked fine (which necessitated retiming the audio, #%$#%).
mjroddy wrote on 6/21/2005, 8:51 PM
"Your project isn't wide screen is it?"
No... 720x480 with media from LW and Boris Red. Both areas of the timeline (from the LW footage and the BR footage) render 654x480x32 when snapshotted. It throws it into the library (after the snapshot) and displays at that bloody resolution!
Then I started a New Project - just for kicks; threw up some Generated Media and took a snapshot of that. Same silly resolution, 654x480x32.
I tried the same in Vegas 5. Same results, so I know it's me.
Last experiment (for the moment): I changed Project Properties to an aspect ratio of 1.0 and then changed the properties of the Generated media to 1.0 and it renders at 720x480.
Maybe that makes sense to everyone - but I'm a little slower than most. The Project is 720x480x32 at an aspect of 0.9. The Media is the same. It displays on the Video Preview properly. But when Rendered, I can't get a clean 720x480 out of it.
Obviously, I'm confused.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/21/2005, 8:58 PM
the reason it does the snapshot at 654x480 is because of the aspect ratio... still to look proper in DV need th be that res. If you have stills at 720x480 then you need to change the aspect ratio.

That shouldn't have anything to do with it.

Try rendering to a new track. See if that works. Also try a non-DV codec, such as uncompressed.
Former user wrote on 6/22/2005, 6:04 AM
Not sure if addresses the problem you're seeing, but LW does NOT include lens flares in any alpha channels you might be using (by rendering the LW scene to any format that supports alphas, like PNG, TGA, etc).

If you have rendered the LW scene as a complete, composited scene, with no "keying" required then be sure that you don't have the alpha channel turned on in the media / properties selector.

If you ARE wanting to use the alpha channels to reveal the lens flare, then you will have to render the lens flare effect as a separate sequence from LW and use a luminous key in Vegas to get the lens flare to composite correctly.

Your second question: Make sure you open the properties settings for the media clip and choose DV aspect. If you have already placed it on the timeline, then you need to make the change there as well. Setting the properites in for the clip in the media tab won't change any media already on the timeline.

One other thing I noticed. You mentioned that your project settings are 720x486 (which is NTSC standard) but you rendered your LW media at 720x480 (which is DV). Why not use the DV settings (720x480) for your Vegas project?
mjroddy wrote on 6/22/2005, 4:30 PM
Bloody heck! (I'm using MUCH stronger words over on this side of the screen.)
I CAN'T get Vegas to render the lense flare in anything other than a WVM - and only on the 3Mb setting (I haven't tried too many others, but default doesn't work). If I render to print to take, the glows go away. They're frickin' THERE for anything other than a render. Shift+B, they stay with me. Cntl+B, they go. Scrubbing they're there, render and poof, they dissapear. Deadline is now in 3 min and I'm no closer to a solution. I thought that since I had it with the 3Mb WVM, my problems were solved.
Why is Vegas loosing my lense flares on renders and not on the scrubbable timeline?????
Signed - very frustrated and bewildered, agonized and depressed.
Time to take a moment and ... breath...... ahhh... (nope, didn't help.)
poop
mjroddy wrote on 6/22/2005, 4:58 PM
I couldn't afford to miss my deadline (which I did, but only by 25min), so I took all the events from Vegas 6 and pasted them into Vegas 5. Everything worked perfectly there.
I know I was panicing there above, but it was doubly frustrating for me; not only was I letting my sales rep down as well as the client, I was just depressed that Vegas - my favourite software - was letting me down. It's like being let down by a friend.
Fortunately my friend's younger brother, Vegas 5, is still there being my best pal.
I'm still very perplexed, though.
Stonefield wrote on 6/22/2005, 6:41 PM
Just so I understand, a problem you had in Vegas 6 was not a problem in Vegas 5 right ?
mjroddy wrote on 6/22/2005, 9:49 PM
Guess all my notes above can be confusing. Probably why there is no apparent solution.
Yes. There is a problem with my Vegas 6 that does not exist in Vegas 5.
Thanks for asking a direct question I have a hard time being vague with :-)
Liam_Vegas wrote on 6/22/2005, 11:34 PM
This sounds very like the issue that I just encountered with Quicktime MOV files. In my case it is actually the source video frames that appear just fine in the preview window as long as it is set to Draft or Preview quality... but disappear if you use "Good" or "Best" - or when you render.

Very disturbing.
mjroddy wrote on 6/23/2005, 10:03 AM
"Very disturbing."

Agreed. I've never reported a bug to Sony before. Should I do that, or are they aware of the problem?
Liam_Vegas wrote on 6/23/2005, 2:04 PM
Definitely report it to Sony... they will probably find sample Vegs useful... and the "Support/Email Support" link above will allow you to upload files as well I think.
ForumAdmin wrote on 6/23/2005, 3:37 PM
Yes, please send a .veg file + instructions to CS and we'll take a look.
mjroddy wrote on 6/23/2005, 10:34 PM
I just jumped through all the hoops under the Email Support, but at the end I got
"Product Requires Value" error at the end. I double/tripple checked my fields and didn't miss anything I could see.
Please accept this as my entry (I hope this is appropriate):
>>>>><<<<<
Please download the MOV in question from my server.
Go to www.matthewroddy.com/Erase (note the Capitol "E") and grab the big file called earthdive01.mov
If you play that file back at Preview (Full) or Preview (Auto), you get to see the fun little lense flare. If you view it at a higher res (in your preview window, of course), you loose the lense flare - poof!
Also (and more importantly), it is almost impossible to render and keep the flare using any codec. The only one I got to work was a WMV9, 3Mbps preset.
This doesn't happen at all in Vegas 5, only in Vegas 6. Vegas 5 is a hero.
There is no need for me to attach a VEG, since it will happen in any and all projects. Please feel free to contact me if there is any details left out. And PLEASE contact me with a solution.
Thanks.
Liam_Vegas wrote on 6/23/2005, 11:45 PM
Yes... this is definitely "similar" to the issue I had (described above) with Quicktime files... and my "solution" was the same (load the files into V5 and render from there).

The only odd difference is that when rendering you do not end up with completely black frames... just the lens flare you created (jnside the SAME quicktime file) disappears.

The absolutely inexplicable thing for me... is HOW on earth does it somehow render PART of the information that is contained in each frame of the quicktime file?

I do hope this gets fixed soon.
ForumAdmin wrote on 6/24/2005, 8:09 AM
Vegas 6 has higher quality up- and down-conversion than previous versions of Vegas, and this accounts for the render difference between V6 & V5 in the file earthdive01 (which is 720x486 + 30.000fps + par 1 + progressive + QT animation codec, is being converted to NTSC DV).

If, in Vegas 6, you want the rendered DV output to match what you see in the video preview window when set to "Preview" quality (which in your case you do I think), render a DV file of this animation using Preview quality (avi>custom>video rendering quality>preview). Default DV render quality is "Good".
Liam_Vegas wrote on 6/24/2005, 8:19 AM
This is very confusing... WHY... would there have to be such a substantial difference between rendering a quicktime file in preview mode to rendering it in Good or Best.

I can understand a loss of "quality"... but not what is happening here. In my case I lose all of the information (I get black frames)... in MJRoddy's case it is losing an important aspect of the video (the Lens Flare).

It seems counterintuitive to me that rendering quality will have such a disasterous effect on the output. We're not seeing a simple degradation of quality... we're seeing what appears (to me at least) a pretty significant bug.

Are you saying this is expected functionality in V6... or is this a Bug?

UPDATE: For my own issue (SOME quicktime files being rendered black and displaying black in preview monitor with settings at GOOD or BEST).... I have found the problem is related to the version of Quicktime installed.

After updating quicktime on my main editing machine (from 6.1 to 6.5) - my particular problem is now resolved.
Former user wrote on 6/24/2005, 9:16 AM
Liam, I've sent you a private email with a link to a test MOV. Give it a shot and see if it fixes the lens flare render issue you're seeing.

JIm
Liam_Vegas wrote on 6/24/2005, 10:00 AM
Your version without the alpha channel works perfectly.

Thanks for doing that... it clears up that particular issue somewhat... although I'm still left feeling something in V6 is not working quite right.