Comments

rcampbel wrote on 11/9/2004, 6:00 PM
I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but the MultiRender script does load a new project after the render is finished and it will allow you to select any template that you want.

MultiRender is part of the Veggie Toolkit.

Randall
ChrisFontenot13 wrote on 11/10/2004, 10:04 AM
Well, not exactly. We have to trim and render 3-5 minute clips of video (no audio) at about 50 a day. Don't ask me why we're using Vegas instead of something cheaper for this purpose, I used Vegas to make a promotional video for the company and finished feeling like we were using a Saturn V rocket to go to the grocery store and back.

I'm just learning JavaScript and I was trying to figure out how to a) render the entire video selection using our specialized template, then b) close the project without saving (at which point another program I've written will activate and move that mpg and its associated files out to another location) and finally c) either grab the next MPG in line or open the "Open" window to allow me to get it.

Really I think what I need most is a good JavaScript Tutorial. Does anyone know of any?
jetdv wrote on 11/10/2004, 10:52 AM
Lot's of good JScript/scripting in Vegas info here
rcampbel wrote on 11/10/2004, 5:25 PM
Ed pointed you to some good JScript program info.

Are you just batch converting MPG files, or are you manually editing each one after you open it, and then rendering it? The reason that I ask it that there are some tools that will batch convert media files to other formats.

Randall
ChrisFontenot13 wrote on 11/11/2004, 7:50 AM
We open each of them manually. They each need to be reviewed and trimmed before posting to the web. We always render them into the same template with the same naming convention, and take between 3-10 snapshots per video. Believe me, its been tedious.

What I'm looking for is 1) how to use DoRender properly with a specific template and 2) how to tell Vegas to open a new project without saving anything. At that point I'll have enough to write a master script called "Finish" which will render, pull out all the snapshots, and copy them over to an archive so that I don't have to do it all manually, since they all need to be done at the end of trimming and editing.

I've already writted a few scripts (really simple ones) that automate some stuff from Vegas, and thank G-d for Ed's ThumbnailAtMarkers (which I modified a bit to use our naming conventions). There are these last pieces to the puzzle that I am trying to figure out, and let me tell you, with little knowledge of Javascript it isn't easy. The scripting API doesn't help very much because I don't have much of a basic understanding of how the code works, although I can reverse-engineer the syntax for the most part, and I do have some programming experience. If you could point me to some Javascript for Dummies site, I'd be much obliged.
jetdv wrote on 11/11/2004, 8:03 AM
The answer to #1 can be found in the "Common routines" section here

I'll put something there for closing a project as well.
ChrisFontenot13 wrote on 11/11/2004, 8:06 AM
Wow! Your site is great! I lost the link to these newsletters a while back when the site changed and I haven't been able to find them again. I'm printing them out right now. Thanks so much, Ed!

I appreciate all the help.
Sorry if its been repetitive ;)
Chris
ricklaut wrote on 11/11/2004, 6:31 PM
Chris -

I may not fully understand what you're trying to accomplish, but perhaps my workflow could be of some help. When I shoot videos of races, I provide a web site with shots of each of the individual cars in action (perhaps 200 clips or more per race) as well as the best still photo from each clip (event). In my case, each event is between 2 and 10 seconds in length. I encode them in 3 formats and FTP them to the web site administrator. Perhaps some parallels to what you're doing as far as the trimming and the need to work with many individual clips.

I drag all of the clips onto the timeline and trim the heads and tails of each. Then, I place one marker at the "photo point" in each clip and run a script to dump all of the photos into a folder. Next, I delete these markers and run another script that places markers between each event. I run the next script which puts a short fade in and fade out on each clip (video and audio - this is kind of manual since I have to select each event and then run the script). Finally, I run one more script that grabs the video bettween markers (in my case, each event) and the script render it into the three formats (.wmv, .qt and .rm).

By modifying my original workflow, putting them all on the timeline at once and letting the script do the work, I've saved many, many hours of what was tedious work (the trimming still remains, but I'm sure that will never go away :))

Rick