Preserving Markers in Vegas 5

gbohn wrote on 6/13/2004, 12:40 PM
I'm trying to figure out how to preserve Timeline markers when rendering a project to a DV .AVI file, and opening this .AVI back into Vegas 5.

I created a project, added markers, and set up various Video Track FX. Rendering this takes about 15 hours/hour of source, so I want to render this to a .AVI file first, which I will later Render to .MPG for DVDA-2. (It looks like doing a 2 Pass VBR MPEG render right from the timeline would re-render the 15 hour part twice otherwise...)

So, I rendered a project to .AVI, and specified 'Save project markers in Media File'. If I add this resultant .AVI media file in DVDA-2, it appears to see the markers o.k. (hurray).

But, if I drop this .AVI media file on the Vegas 5 timeline (of a new project), I don't see the markers that were saved with the media file.

So, I'm missing how to recover the markers that are apparently in the media file and get them back onto the project timeline.

I think I need these markers, so that when I render this .AVI to .MPG, I will be able to carry the markers (with the .MPG media file) into DVDA-2.

Thanks;

-Greg Bohn

Comments

Rosebud wrote on 6/13/2004, 1:12 PM
Menu View > Event Media Markers
gbohn wrote on 6/13/2004, 3:04 PM
> Menu View > Event Media Markers"

Since I'm new at this, I guess I don't understand what this is supposed to do. If I go under the main Menu 'View', I see an entry 'Event Media Markers'.

Clicking this I get the 'two flag' symbol to toggle between having the surrounding box, or not. But, I don't notice any immediate change to the timeline.

I still don't see any markers (or the associated lables) above the main timeline like I had when I added them with 'M' in the original project.

I created a new project, and just dragged the 'new' .AVI file from the Vegas 'Explorer' window to the main timeline. Was I supposed to do something else?

If I open the 'new' .AVI media file in the 'trimmer' (which I've not really used before) I can see the markers.

I originally thought I somehow needed to convert/copy the 'media markers' to become 'project markers' on the main timeline, but now I'm really confused.

Could you elaborate on what I'm actually supposed to be doing to get this to work?

Thanks;

-Greg Bohn
GaryKleiner wrote on 6/13/2004, 3:55 PM
> I'm missing how to recover the markers that are apparently in the media file and get them back onto the project timeline.<

You would save your Vegas project and reopen it when needed.

Gary
gbohn wrote on 6/13/2004, 5:01 PM
I now see that this shows you the locations of the media markers, but without the associated text.

I guess I still haven't figured out how to 'promote' these to the same type of 'project markers' I set up in the original file.

-Greg Bohn
Grazie wrote on 6/13/2004, 10:22 PM
. . .this sounds familiar ...

Grazie
Cheesehole wrote on 6/13/2004, 10:27 PM
It sounds familiar because we asked for the media marker "promotion" capability it when Vegas 4 came out. I wonder if they can be accessed thorugh a script...?

There IS a way to see the marker names though... open your clip in the Trimmer.
farss wrote on 6/13/2004, 10:36 PM
I think Gary just gave me a clue how to do this.
After you've rendered out to the new AVI, open the original project, save as with new name. delete all media and drop new AVI file onto timeline. That should do it. I know, hardly elegant.

Bob.
PeterWright wrote on 6/13/2004, 11:10 PM
Another way is to render to new track, which places the new avi above the others with the same markers, then the new track video and audio can be soloed to exclude all other tracks when doing further rendering.
Grazie wrote on 6/14/2004, 12:08 AM
So, Peter, the idea here would be that the "old" markers, with their text names, would remain over this new Render to New Track. I would then create my DVD from this veg and have Text Marker info follow? Is that the deal? Seems like the thing to do. . .. I'm not trying to nick this thread, but the idea of having marker text follow into DVD creation is what I've been after. In my thread SonyEPW (?) has proffered a method. I'll get on the case with that today.

Must remeber that this INTER render to new track - WTHOUT - the origination edits would mean I would like to preserve the original veggie, just in case I need to re-visit my work - yeah?

OK:

1 - Do edit

2 - Sprinkle with Markers and names [ ie, for Chapter Naming for DVD ]

3 - Save veggie as NEWproj.veg

4 - Render to NEw Track the piece

5 - Delete [ hence the need to save as NEWproj.veg ] everything other than new track and the markers+text

6 - Use this to produce the DVD/MPEG2 file/s for DVDA

... not too inelegant I suppose. . .. . and part of the Vegas workflow logic too! - Must be a script for doing this? - Okay, no "must" about anything in Life - eh?

Grazie

farss wrote on 6/14/2004, 12:43 AM
You've got it. Peter's idea is just as good except for two minor things.
First one is mostly due to my slackness at times (os is it haste), if you're not careful you'll endup like I do at times with New Track-1 to xx which can be a tad confusing later on. Secondly I seem to be noticing that Vegas runs slower with multiple tracks even though they're muted, maybe if the tracks you want are soloed it's different.
Grazie wrote on 6/14/2004, 12:51 AM
Great! Understood!

Grazie . .

ps . . wanna see my new thread on reversing Bezier Masks?
gbohn wrote on 6/14/2004, 8:07 AM
> ... not too inelegant I suppose. . .. .

Well, other than the fact this workaround wouldn't be necessary if there wasn't a basic feature/capability missing in the first place.

If you have a system to save the markers in/with a media file, and vegas can read them (as seen in the trimmer), what is the reason NOT to have the ability to 'promote' these to the project timeline?

Having to do extra work just to make up for the lack of this ability seems to point out that this is a basic deficiency (apparently one pointed out way back in Vegas 4).

After reading forum entries on Network rendering, it sounds like non-distributed Network rendering needs to be done to an intermediate .AVI before MPEG encoding (since the render only machines can't do MPEG encoding).

This would be another case where this feature would be useful (so that the intermediate files markers could easily be flowed forward through to the creation of the MPEG file and then to DVDA-2).

As it is, I ran into this same need because I was trying to avoid a 'feature' in 2-pass VBR MPEG encoding by using an intermediate .AVI render...

-Greg Bohn

Cheesehole wrote on 6/21/2004, 7:50 AM
If you have the original markers in a VEG you can use the Edit Details panel to copy / paste the markers from project to project.