Questions on Vegas Nested Veg Work Flow

Cliff Etzel wrote on 2/9/2009, 8:52 AM

Scenario: I just completed a short video project for the City's Planning Division on Infill Compatibility. Finished project is 9min 30sec.

The project was edited in Vegas 8.0c, mix of video and stills (stills as 24bit PNG files, 72dpi, 1920x1080). Original video footage is 1440x1080i from my HC7's ingested from tape with HDVSplit.

I broke the project down into separate sections to make editing easier. These separate veg files also helped with transitioning between the topics discussed. Once I had all these sections done, I created a new master time line, embedded the 8 VEG files (they only had minor CC and basic text titles with either straight cuts or dissolves - each veg was no longer than 2 minutes)

Seems straightforward enough - until it came time to render the master time line with the embedded veg files. I set it to render on my quad core desktop to SONY YUV avi to a separate drive and went to bed - of course I awoke at 5am with a sneaking suspicion something wasn't right - sure enough - Vegas was locked up. Had to end task.

Having the presence of mind, I then chose to render out each section as base Cineform AVI's that comes installed with Vegas and then reassemble those AVI's onto the master timeline. Added a watermark, rendered out a master 720p AVI and then encoded two WMV files.

Now my question - are nested Veg's a hit or miss work flow option? Once I rendered out the 1440x1080i footage as 720p Vegas based Cineform avi's and placed those on the master time line to render out - Vegas rendered the final master without issue.

Any thoughts on what might have happened? Is this where using Cineform NEO Scene is applicable for future editing? This was my first time nesting VEG files and now I'm gun shy to do so in the future (I had a tight deadline to meet), but wanted to get some insights from others on what I ran into problem wise. Other than this, the editing itself in Vegas Pro 8 was perfection as far as I was concerned.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | solo video journalism blog

Comments

cold-ones wrote on 2/9/2009, 10:21 AM

I only edit SD Video, but here's my two cents:

I use nested veg files in most projects for graphic elements, host segments, and B-Roll. I like to compartmentalize things like this, especially if there's special filters/chromakeying/etc associated with the footage. That way as I edit my master (which calls out to the nested graphic veg file), whenever I update the graphics veg file the changes are automatically updated in the master.

However, I have had problems where these nested veg files can't locate their own project files---the error message that Vegas gives isn't always the most helpful.

kentwolf wrote on 2/9/2009, 11:49 AM

>>...are nested Veg's a hit or miss work flow option?..

Though I just do SD stuff, I never have a problem and I do exactly what it sounds like you did.

Having sections of a presentation contained in a nested Veg is hugely helpful. Makes things great if you need to change the order of key events. Also makes it nice if you need to swap out nested Veg versions of a particualar part of a presentation.

So, I have been doing what you describe here since nested veg's first came on the scene and I really like it a lot.

When I read of all the headaches folks have with non-SD media does not make me want to move away from SD anytime soon.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 2/9/2009, 12:38 PM

kentwolf said:

I hear ya - I"m about to spring for Cineform Neo Scene just to try and remove the variable of editing m2t files - I never had issues editing AVI files back when I shot with my TRV950's - and I'm sure many will attest to similar experiences from shooting SD format and editing in Vegas. It seems Vegas was rock solid when all there was to edit was straight DV format. Editing Long GOP HDV files has introduced a whole slew of issues that are hit and miss - depending on a users machine.

I have a feeling editing Cineform AVI's is going to be the ticket to resolving what few issues I have when editing in Vegas

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | solo video journalism blog

farss wrote on 2/9/2009, 1:49 PM

I'll put it this way, no NLE supplier seems to recommend editing long GOP as an ideal way to work,

I've had zero problem doing it but I make concessions in my workflow to the issues it raises. I can certainly induce most of the problems that have been mentioned here or can see how they could arise.

Bob.