Vegas multiple on-screen videos

Pilotwings_64 wrote on 3/19/2008, 7:43 PM

Basically what I want to do is compare the results I'm getting with 4 different codecs. I have a single avi file I'm starting with. I want to divide the screen into four parts and simultaneously display a small, magnified portion of the video as produced by each of the 4 codecs.

I know how to crop the video with Vegas, but I don't know how to move the cropped image to the corner of my choice. It just stays where it originally was on the screen.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Even key words or phrases I could lookup. Since I don't know what to call what I'm trying to do, finding results has been difficult.

Thanks

Comments

Eugenia wrote on 3/19/2008, 8:45 PM

I wouldn't do the comparison via a video. I would take screenshots of a frame that has motion of each video, and post zoomed-in screenshots.

If you do want to use the video, use the pan/crop tool to make videos small and place them on specific places in a certain screen.

Chienworks wrote on 3/20/2008, 2:49 AM

Pan/Crop will let you select a small portion of each video, as you've already discovered. Track Motion will let you position those portions where you want them in the frame.

abelenky wrote on 3/20/2008, 12:49 PM

I did this same codec comparison, primarily by using Chroma-Key.
I think I posted this description before, but I can't find it in the archives, so here it is again.

On the timeline, I put my original source material, and a PNG image that covered 1/2 the clip in bright green. I rendered this in one of the codecs I was comparing. (Clip#1)

In a new project, I rendered the original source material again in the second codec (full screen, no green-box) (Clip#2)

Then, in a a new project, I put Clip#1, applied Chroma-Key special-effect to make the green-half transparent, and put Clip#2 below it, so it would show through the green, and effectively have the same movie running, with the left-half in one codec, and the right-half in the other codec. I rendered the finished product in a very high-quality/high-bitrate codec, so that all the render-artifacts were from Clip#1 and #2, and not very much a result of re-compressing multiple times.

The end result was pretty nice. I could see clearly how one codec resulted in blocky JPEG artifacts, while the other codec was smooth, but had notable color-bands and a clear shift towards the blue-side of the color spectrum.

This Left-half/right-half project took 3 VF projects, but was mostly straight forward.
Doing a 4-way screen split will be a little more involved, and if you're not careful, you may end up recompressing the same clip multiple times.

G'Luck!

Pilotwings_64 wrote on 3/21/2008, 10:26 AM

Thank you to all of you for your help, and thank especially to Chienworks. Your answer was very clearly worded, and it was exactly the information I needed.

My problem is solved.

Thank you.