Vegas 9 and Red

switchvert1 wrote on 5/13/2009, 3:57 AM
Hi

I just tested out the new Vegas 9 with RED. You can literally edit in 4K...if your machine can handle it. You can also drop the .R3D file onto the timeline. What's also great is that instead of using proxy files you can just set your vegas project into a smaller more managable project 720p and get a smoother play back. So no more proxy files....yay. You can place a colour effect on the timeline clip or any pluggin and still manipulate the RAW file values and see the results immediately. Quite an impressive workflow if you ask me. Now...the bad so far...I'm sure there'll be more as I start to play with it properly. The default colour is more "purply" than the original .R3D. I actually called up the file from RedCine and Vegas and the results are drastically different. One awesome thing though is that if you are editing a 2K project you can crop the original 4k on the timeline. No painful import export. So in terms of workflow...this would be incredible to be able to manipulate any size RED file on anytimeline and access the RAW data and then still adjusting the RAW data while checking it directly on your time line with all the your added effects on.

The beauty about the 4K option is that you actually have a 4k option. You could literally set your project to 720. Edit the whole thing and when your ready change it to 4K and push out the project as needed. Vegas also cleverly handles any file size on any time line. i.e. 4K on DV pal. The crap thing about Vegas unfortunalty is that is struggles to downscale...If you take a HDV project and render it out to a smaller resolution it really comes out squashes small squares out instead of good clean FCP quality...it seems a little dodge. Like I said early days yet...Firstly if I could figure out how to get the colour exact...or maybe they could even release a patch. Anyways, I could post some screen shots so you can see what i talking about, but that is also to assume that anyone would care to use Vegas. I use FCP and Vegas and honestly prefer the speed of vegas literally 4 times faster to edit that FCP but like the quality of image that FCP delivers...so this is my journey.

The difference in pics can be found here...
http://www.switchvert.com/vegas/Vegas-Output.jpg

The tread on the red forum is here...
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=30293

Comments

farss wrote on 5/13/2009, 5:18 AM
I can't comment too much on the r3d decode color issue other than to suggest it might have something to do with the colorspace and how it's being mapped.

"If you take a HDV project and render it out to a smaller resolution it really comes out squashes small squares out instead of good clean FCP quality...it seems a little dodge"

You've got to be doing something wrong here. One of the reasons I don't jump ship is because Vegas is so superior to everything else in this regard. FCP and Ppro users of XDCAM are still having issues getting clean SD downconverts. That said you do need to tweak Vegas's default settings or you will get really horrid results.

Bob.
switchvert1 wrote on 5/13/2009, 6:13 AM
Hi

You are preaching to the converted. I've been using Vegas since version 3. Unfortunaley I do get better results using the conversion methods in FCP..I normally export from vegas to fcp using Black magic and make all the dvd and SD conversions there. You normally see those squares in the eyes. You need look closely.

Anyways...i wish it was a colorspace issue but as you can see in the jpg...they are both up on the same color space with different results. I'm hopeing the team would look into this and also provide a graph for manipulating the xy values of the RAW format like those in RED Alert too. I'm still stoked that I can actually use R3D files directly...freegin amazing.
Marco. wrote on 5/13/2009, 6:20 AM
How did you set your decoding parameter?

-> R3D Decoder

Marco
farss wrote on 5/13/2009, 6:46 AM
"You normally see those squares in the eyes. You need look closely."

Trust me, I look very carefully and I've never seen them. Then again I always edit in HD and render to the target SD codec directly to gain the best chroma sampling. If you're in NTSC land rendering to DV and then encoding to mpeg-2 could explain your problem.

Both Vegas and FCP use the same downsampling algorithm, precise bicubic. Both can hit problems with downscaling interlaced footage with line twitter.

Bob.
switchvert1 wrote on 5/13/2009, 6:49 AM
i just tried clicking on Clip default ...and even factory default. I could compare the values between REDCine and Vegas to check if they are exactly the same...But I assume factory default should yield the same results as clicking defaults in RED Alert.
ingvarai wrote on 5/13/2009, 7:19 AM
>What's also great is that instead of using proxy files you can just set your vegas project into a smaller more managable project 720p and get a smoother play back. So no more proxy files....yay.

Hm.. Can this be correct?
Working with high res copmpressed files means that Vegas need to recompressed the source media, and recompressing proxy files ought to be much faster than recompressing, let us say AVCHD files, shot with a high bit rate. When resizing the procjet, I suspect all kinds of problems will occur, in case you use track motion, event croppiing, 3D track motion, plug ins who position objects at certain coordinates and so on.

Until I have this confirmed from a second Vegas user :-), I will continue using proxy files.
ingvarai
Yoyodyne wrote on 5/13/2009, 10:01 AM
Thanks a bunch for this post switchvert1. I'm really curious about RED and Vegas, would love to hear more about your work flow in detail (raid set up, machine specs, etc). I'm going to try and do a few RED tests this month, just waiting for you hard working early adopters to sleuth out all the bad news :)

About the color issue. I see that you are comparing to the Vegas Edit window and not to an external preview window. I'm wondering if the color space settings on the external monitor preview would correct for the "purplish-ification"? External preview seems to have more "handles" to control correct color space conversion.

Thanks for all the hard work and info!
switchvert1 wrote on 5/14/2009, 11:24 PM
I wish i could check but i need to wait for Blackmagic Design to bring out a driver for V9...had to wait quite a while for version 8. I'm not too sure if that will solve it though. The screen is not totally accurate but fairly close. If i render the file out and play it in V8. I get the same results..harder and purpler image. Still looking for a work around.
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 5/15/2009, 1:40 AM
Hi Switch,

you might check out MattWright's workaround for the BMD card drivers seen in this thread 8th post down.

Dave
switchvert1 wrote on 5/18/2009, 1:06 AM
Perfect worked like a charm...the image looks terrible still...I'm trying to sort it out.
switchvert1 wrote on 5/18/2009, 3:32 AM
Ok..I'm nervous about changing the actual RED Metadata all the time as the problem lies in trying to edit huge amounts of files...to adjust each one would be crazy. So I have created a timeline to help so you can drag and drop your RED file onto that timeline and get better results immediately. I used the scopes and waveforms of each individual colour. The blue is what seems to be most off. Secondly the colours also seem to run wild in the high range. This is a quick fix but the image still seems to be digital and I can't seems to get rid of enough greens. The softness of the image is better but still "crap".

i adjusted each level seperately as you will see there are 3 levels and then i had to use colour correction to manage the offset gamma and saturation. Like I said, I'm still not happy with the results but this is a better result.

Please feel free to tweak and change and send me updates too....

http://www.switchvert.com/vegas/RedTest.veg