Struggling to get smooth transitions

novice wrote on 8/14/2003, 2:03 AM
Hi all,

I’m a real novice in video editing; hope that my ‘entry-level’ questions will find quick answers from Vegas experts.

And my first problem is to get smooth fades. Any selected fade type or transition applied (e.g. tried ‘Fade Through Black’ dissolve) gives me distorted, low-pixel-like video.

Is there something wrong with initial video settings? But the original video looks fine…

And another related question: is that possible to manipulate initial settings for Automatic Crossfades?

Thanks a lot

Comments

theigloo wrote on 8/14/2003, 3:36 AM

When your cpu can't do the fade in real time, it starts to drop frames. You can see the frame rate at the bottom of the preview window. Crossfades are ussually so easy they can be done in realtime. Something fancy, like a page peel, will take some juice and Vegas will drop the frame rate so that it has time to render the frames you do see at the quality you selected.

To get real time, you have to "RAM render" your fade. Highlight it and hit Shift+B. It'll crank away for a bit and then show you the fade in real time.

If you changes something, you only have to re-render the frames you changed - so it's very fast.
BillyBoy wrote on 8/14/2003, 8:11 AM
The bottom line is any pixelation and bumpyness is only in the preview relative to your CPU horsepower and the complexity of the project. Once rendered, it shouldn't be there.
johnmeyer wrote on 8/14/2003, 11:36 AM
Directly above the preview window, you will see a button that says either "Draft," "Preview," "Good," or "Best." Change it to "Draft" and your transitions will look smoother. The display won't be quite as sharp, because Vegas renders far fewer pixels in the lower quality modes, but it will let your computer keep up.

Even with a really fast 2.8 GHz computer, my real-time preview doesn't always keep up in the better quality modes.

The previous posts are correct about pre-rendering. If you want to see what something will look like, and you want to preview it in "Best" mode on an external monitor, then by all means do a pre-render.

You should also check the header on each track and make sure you don't accidentally have track FX applied that you didn't intend. I just recently posted a problem where Vegas was insisting on adding three audio FX to every single audio track, even after quitting and re-starting Vegas. (I still have no idea how the Vegas defaults to add FX to the audio track got set). A

lso, go to the view menu and show the Video bus track and make sure you don't have any envelopes applied that you didn't intend. These envelopes can really slow things down.
novice wrote on 8/15/2003, 12:30 PM
Thanks a lot guys, this is it!

temporary happy (until another problem arises)
novice