Vegas Pro 11 still changing aspect ratio

Vegas Filmmaker wrote on 11/7/2011, 10:20 PM

What the hell is this? I'm getting so fed up with these problems. Vegas 8-10 haven't done this.

I have thousands of clips of footage from my three Canon Vixia HF S21s. They're in 1440x1080 resolution and an aspect ratio of 1.33. I use Cineform Neoscene to convert them from AVCHD to AVI.

When I drop any footage into the project media in Vegas 11, the aspect ratio for every clip is changed from 1.33 to 1. Vegas does what someone trying to sabotage my project is doing, and I've been civil about this in sending questions about it to technical support, but I'm getting so fed up since this is my livelihood, and I can't deliver projects to clients because of other bugs that Vegas 10 and 11 have.

Vegas 11 changes every clip-clips that are on my hard drive and in projects that I'm editing on 10, which are in the correct aspect ratio-and changes them. That's quite the business strategy. So if I am to use Vegas 11, I have to go through thousands of clips I shot and change the aspect ratio to 1.33.

To be clear, this is not a problem in the properties of the project. I can change the aspect ratio in the project to anything, and it doesn't fix it. I have the aspect ratio set to 1.33 in the project properties. It's the clips themselves that I have to right click on once they're in Vegas 11 and change one by one.

I got a response from Sony saying that the problem is fixed with the new upgrade that came out, apparently on Nov. 1st. I uninstalled Vegas 9, 10, and 11, installed 11, downloaded the upgrade, and I still have the same problem.

And by the way, I uninstalled Vegas because Vegas 10 and 11 are giving me avi.dll errors as soon as I open projects, meaning I can do no work.

I know, Sony quality is notoriously bad, which is why I won't buy their DVD players. The promise of Sony is that you need to be a computer programmer and keep your editing computer internet free to run it properly, and even then there's too high a chance that, with a clean install of your operating system, you'll have errors, as I've seen people report. I'M GOING TO SPEND ALL NIGHT trouble shooting this mess so that I can try and edit two shoots before I'm off to another one tomorrow.

I know, Sony. Windows is a complicated beast. There's all too many configurations and resource conflicts that are just unforeseen. Many people use Vegas without problems, so it's obviously me.

And I spent $120 on a GeForce GTS 450 to take advantage of GPU acceleration, because the Radeon 6870 that I had wasn't recognized by Vegas, even though it's listed on their GPU acceleration page with exact specs as to how much faster rendering time is.

I know, Sony. Nothing can be done. It's impossible. You did everything you could. This has never happened before. I've got to be my own advocate, spend dozens of hours (done!) and hundreds of dollars, and learn the intricacies of computer hardware and software so that I can debug Sony Vegas. After all, that's what every startup software companies aspires to be-a huge waste of time and money for their adopters.

I really liked telling people how easy Vegas was to use and would recommend it to anyone. But I know, I've got to go fix the problem. Sony's hard at work every day. I've got a completely inaccessible piece of software that I use to make a living because of an avi.dll error. I should sell my three Canon Vixias for cameras that have a file format that works better with Vegas. I should get a codec pack to fix it. I should convert everything to wmv to edit.

If it's not clear, I want to emphasize how baffling it is that Vegas Pro 11, advertised as an upgrade, CHANGES THE ASPECT RATIO OF ALL MY FOOTAGE AND MAKES ME GO THROUGH EACH INDIVIDUAL CLIP AND CHANGE THEM BACK TO THEIR CORRECT ASPECT RATIO.

Why stop there, Sony? Why not go for broke, and replace all the audio from my clips with the sound of a toilet flushing? You only did half the job-really, a quarter, or even a fifth-when Vegas 11 changed the aspect ratio of all my clips. Sabotaging my work is a full time job, and there are plenty of people I can pay to do a better job of it than you. You could just put pop up ads in Vegas, install spyware, change the frame rate of all my footage, remove volume envelopes-I could go on, but you get the idea. There are literally thousands of things you could do to screw up my work, and there are far too many facets of Vegas that seem very simple to not screw up that need unfixing.

Screw you.

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Comments

Vegas Filmmaker wrote on 11/11/2011, 12:12 AM

You said that Vegas wasn't changing the pixel aspect ratio of my footage.

John_Cline wrote on 11/11/2011, 2:16 AM

No, I said that there was no way for Vegas to know the aspect ratio of your source AVI files since the source aspect ratio is not stored in an AVI file. I gave you a method to get Vegas to interpret your AVI files correctly.

HDV and AVCHD files DO store the aspect ratio information within the files which is why Vegas knows automatically.

Vegas Filmmaker wrote on 11/11/2011, 9:15 AM

Great, so I got the first part. And I responded by saying that the only way I could change the aspect ratio was to go into each clip one by one. Your fix didn't work, but now I'm the guy who didn't listen, because you're John_Cline.

mark-woollard wrote on 11/11/2011, 2:17 PM

John Cline's fix worked for my CineForm avi files.

Thanks for taking the time to post it.

John_Cline wrote on 11/11/2011, 6:05 PM

"but now I'm the guy who didn't listen, because you're John_Cline."

You're the guy that apparently didn't read pages 286-289 of the Vegas v11 user manual and understand what's going on and how to deal with it. I occasionally work with HDV 1.3333 PAR files which have been converted to Cineform AVI and the first time I dropped one on the timeline in V11, I noticed the PAR was incorrect, I got into the clip's properties, changed it to 1.3333, clicked the disc icon to save the attributes and now all AVI 1440x1080 files load with the correct PAR.

Regarding the error you're getting when you click the disc icon to save the attributes, are you running Vegas as an Administrator?

@TLF, if you happen to be referring to my personal web site, I don't list or discuss my corporate and broadcast clients.

Serena wrote on 11/11/2011, 7:10 PM

>>>I know I can change the aspect ratio to 1.33 by right clicking on media, and when I tried to save it, I get an error message that says, "An unknown error occurred while trying to create your video profile."<<<<

Out of curiosity I just re-tested this and found no problem. Right click/properties/media/ pixel aspect ratio=1.333, left click "floppy disk", left click OK. Works fine for me.

Grazie wrote on 11/11/2011, 10:42 PM

@TFL: A support forum where you're not allowed to seek support without being slated... What a curious interpretation of 'support'.

I've learnt to toughen-up and doggedly carry on seeking further and further illumination on an issue. If my first attempt has brought me a more than technical response than my brain can handle I ask in a different way. Just 'cos we've got professional film makers here WITH major understandings of the complexities of this craft, doesn't mean that they aren't also incapable of communicating that same understanding, badly? After all, they're human too.

Fundamentally, and at this deeper level, sometimes it's real hard to get a grip on this complex discipline of video editing. It's even harder to get across support of that same complexity. And THEN, we stubbornly attempt to do it in a text-based Forum??? It's amazing that we EVER get a conclusion at all!!

When Vegas is hurting my workflow, here is my first stopover for research. Ive been doing that since 2002. I've no reason to think I'll change that in the next 10 years either.

Cheers

- g

Grazie wrote on 11/12/2011, 4:23 AM

TFL, you've got some major issues going on. Please inform SCS. I'm sure they'd want to know. I'm glad you've voiced your technical issues. Let's work together and continue feedback to SCS. I know I do.

TFL I've just read your system specs. I'd be posting these to SCS and ask them to crawl over them too. Is VISTA a good enough OS for VP11? Is it?

Cheers

- g

Serena wrote on 11/12/2011, 6:49 AM

No, when someone says they can't reproduce a problem it doesn't follow that the software is fine. The first thing to determine is that the same procedure is being followed. It is very difficult to debug a problem that isn't consistently reproducible; errors that appear to be random are the worst. Hence the support staff always ask for "procedure that generates the reported behaviour".

Grazie wrote on 11/12/2011, 6:57 AM

Lol!

Good to see you haven't lost your sense of playful humour.

Cheers

- g

Dach wrote on 11/12/2011, 7:36 AM

This thread has gone several directions. This is just an observation, of forums and how people interact in general in the "social" network and that is more and more people (trolls) are are expressing themselves with a total disregard for civil and constructive criticism.

Examples

"Staring at the wreckage that is VP11"

"They possess an unhealthy religious fervour, and are ready to stone to death/crucify/behead/execute anyone who does not worship with them." (Almost thought this person was refering to Apple's fan base.)

An example of irony: "Vegas is a tool. It's broken. Use a new tool." I just completed a project with a broken tool.

"Despite the hellish shortcomings in VP11"

Perhaps the most offensive. "Vegas is working for me, but perhaps this is the problem and possible solution..."

Lastly, my attempt at sarcasm this morning. "Damn the 1% that Vegas is working!"

- Chad

Dach wrote on 11/12/2011, 9:09 AM

I agree that there are areas for improvement, while encouraging people to beware that the possibility of resolving a potential issue might lie outside the software being used.

For example, I was finger pointing at Vegas when I had a RAM issue and after several weeks of discouraged outcomes I came to my hardware solution.

Here's to hoping that a percentage of people's issues are addressed if not corrected in the next release.

- Chad

Serena wrote on 11/12/2011, 7:10 PM

It's true that some people develop a fervour in favour of particular products and gadgets (Apple, for example), but I doubt that many of those inhabit this forum. The demands users have of Vegas vary very widely, from those doing simple cutting to a few doing feature length projects involving many tracks and FX. Obviously complex projects are more likely to show up any software defects and I'm not surprised that not everyone is having difficulties.
Having at times been thoroughly convinced that Vegas was behaving badly only to discover that it was me, has calmed my tendency to shout my displeasure and work to implement advice given. One ongoing problem (since V9) is the "clips/frames/tracks going black", and this hasn't been fixed, appears to be random, is difficult to reproduce, doesn't get much SCS attention, not many users encounter it, and is a real nuisance; I'm living with it because that is easier than getting a new NLE with its new problems. But I don't see much profit in criticising users who never get clips going black.