Vegas Pro perfect for audio slideshows, still on the fence about video

Cliff Etzel wrote on 3/6/2017, 4:48 PM

I recently completed a couple of personal projects that are an extension of my community visual journalism website LaneCounty360 where I took the project as a stand alone single image and decided to expound upon the subjects story by recording NPR style audio interview material and combining it with still images resulting in a couple of audio slideshows - a medium I find myself revisiting more and more these days.

Here are the 2 projects I recently completed:

Emily Proudfoot - Artist (Vimeo)
Kerri's Neighborhood Bike Shop (Vimeo)

My normal editing experience was using in tandem Adobe Audition CS6 and Premiere Pro CS6. It works, but cutting audio on a PPro timeline is an exercise in patience. What I discovered by testing the waters with Vegas Pro 13 on these personal projects was that the speed in which I could cut audio on the timeline was such a pleasure. I first used Sound Forge 10 to do minor noise reduction and resampling from 96Khz 24 bit to 48 Khz 16 bit and saved as my "working" audio files. Adding still images to the timeline accordingly seemed to go pretty smooth - as long as my images were PNG's. JPEGS gave me weird issues which I believe is known from previous versions.

I'm still feeling a little unsure about doing full on video editing but given the recent challenges I've faced with PPro CS6 not being able to que up timelines sent to it via Premiere Pro CS6 - and apparently no way to resolve this issue, I'm feeling as though the time is becoming right to move straight to Vegas Pro for all my post production. Resolve needs too much hardware specs for my laptop given the nature of my work (Multimedia Storytelling and Micro-Documentaries no longer than 12 minutes in length).

Having said all this - what else can I do to improve my editing experience on my Dell Precision M4500 laptop with a quadcore processor, 16GB RAM and an oldish nVidia Quadro FX880M 1GB GPU? My boot drive is a Sandisk 480GB SSD with a 1TB 7200 RPM HD for storing project files and renders on inserted into the DVD docking slot. My assets are stored on a 2x1TB mini-Raid0 attached via eSata (and backed up to a standalone external HD).

Given the issues of hit or miss on Vegas Pro seeing the nVidia Quadro GPU (I've had both seen and unseen in the recent past), Is there anything I can do to improve the performance of timeline playback since I'm not seeing a way to utilize the GPU for better timeline playback performance? I've tried earlier driver versions with no change in Vegas seeing the GPU. Since I tend to edit native h264 files, I try not to transcode to Cineform unless I have the time to do so. I've read the FAQ regarding performance and applied all that has been recommended but I'm still not seeing much of an improvement - or is this really a matter of the GPU itself not being replaceable on my laptop?

I'm close to ditching the 800lb Gorilla's software but still not sure yet. I'm a one man multimedia production company so the issue of project sharing is not a concern for me. I want ease and speed in getting my projects done with as high quality as possible.

Any advice from more experienced Vegas users?

TIA,

Cliff

Comments

Video_flaneur wrote on 3/6/2017, 5:28 PM

Congratulations on the work. Just a quick comment on the creative side. I know you have spent a lot of time framing your shots, but the occasional and subtle use of pan & crop 'Ken Burns effect' might also help emphasize some aspects of the voiceover.

astar wrote on 3/6/2017, 7:11 PM

"Dell Precision M4500 laptop with a quadcore processor, 16GB RAM and an oldish nVidia Quadro FX880M 1GB GPU"

That laptop is too old. The vegas 11 minimum is a GPU capable of 1500GFLOPs. The FX880 is only capable of 117 GFLOPs. It is possible that Vegas is looking for OpenCL1.2 support and the FX880 only supports 1.1. That might explain why Vegas will not use the device for timeline playback. The AMD 5770, which was the Vegas 11 recommend GPU at the time, supports OpenCL 1.2.

Rendering Vegas should use Cuda for Mainconcept mp4 rendering, but that is about the only cuda enabled codec in vegas. Vegas expects OpenCL support, like Final Cut and now Adobe Premiere too. With only 117 GFLOPs of GPU performance, you will not see much of a noticeable improvement.

It sucks to have to upgrade. But if you want stable Vegas performance, build a machine that is optimized to support what Vegas requires. Most will lean their configuration towards a game they want to play, or some 3D application requirements, then complain on the forums that Vegas does not work as expected. Cater to what Vegas needs if you want to use Vegas.

NickHope wrote on 3/6/2017, 10:28 PM

...I've read the FAQ regarding performance and applied all that has been recommended but I'm still not seeing much of an improvement...

When you reach the ceiling of what your hardware is capable of (i.e. you're still not getting full frame rate preview after following those suggestions), you're pretty much stuck with either using proxies (point #9 there) or upgrading hardware.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 5/29/2017, 6:53 PM

I ran into an anomaly with the SeMW plug in when applying it as an FX for rendering - it would not keep the setting for "PC". no matter what I did. I uninstalled it, and rendered out again using the Studio RGB to Computer RGB setting and the video rendered via the Vegas2Handbrake script as it should have. It took 5 renders to determine where the issue was... FYI for anyone else who runs into this when rendering out.

NickHope wrote on 5/29/2017, 9:03 PM

I ran into an anomaly with the SeMW plug in when applying it as an FX for rendering - it would not keep the setting for "PC". no matter what I did.

Which SeMW plugin? If you mean "Preview Levels" (part of "SeMW Extensions"), it's for preview only and doesn't affect the render.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 5/29/2017, 9:18 PM

Hmm... When I applied to the Video FX chain the render out to "PC" Levels (Studio RGB to Computer RGB) my renders were lacking contrast. I had applied Levels to each of the still images while working with the PC setting in the preview monitor to get my levels right. When I rendered the timeline, the final video didn't look right. I had to uninstall it and once I did that, It rendered as it should have looked. If I want to reinstall it - what's the procedure for making sure this doesn't happen again? I've finally had some time to trouble shoot my issues with Vegas and I"m beginning to get a sense of how things work - even got my laptop graphics card to be recognized by installing the nVidia Quadro 297.05 driver. Once I did that, Vegas 13 latest recognized my graphics card.

Yeah I know - everyone says upgrade my hardware. That's not possible at this time.

NickHope wrote on 5/30/2017, 1:23 AM

A Studio-RGB-to-Computer-RGB Levels FX increases contrast by the same amount that a Vegas>web/TV workflow will inherently increase contrast (in the vast majority of cases). Such a Levels FX will make it into your AVC render. Usually we are recommending the opposite (Computer-RGB-to-Studio-RGB) to prevent the inherent contrast increase from clipping shadows and highlights in users' full-0-255-range media (such as that shot by Canon dSLRs - see What min/max levels does your cam shoot?).

Setting the SeMW Preview Levels to "PC" also increases contrast by the same amount that a Vegas>web/TV workflow will inherently increase contrast, but it does so only only for preview (you can see it getting disabled during render), so that we can see in the Vegas Preview window how our video will look when it ends up on the web/TV.

Very difficult to explain this concisely and articulately!

Try this workflow. I'm describing it simplistically but should work in most cases:

Enable the Video Scopes window. On a laptop I would put it alongside the video preview, taking up approx an upper quarter of the screen.
Set "All" from the Video Scopes drop-down menu if you have room, or "Waveform" if you don't.
In the settings (cog) uncheck "7.5 IRE Setup" and check "Studio RGB (16 to 235)"
Now anything "100" and over on the Waveform will be white in your final production on web/TV, and anything "0" or less will be black (for the histogram and RGB parade, the equivalent numbers are 16 and 235).
Correct and grade your media as desired, using levels, color curves or whichever tool you want. You will probably find that a simple (XXX-RGB-to-YYY-RGB) FX is often not the best for the job at all, and you'll want to tweak the FX for your particular media.
Set SeMW Preview Levels to PC for a preview of how the video will look on the web/TV. But note that if you are monitoring on a Windows secondary monitor, and you also have "Adjust levels from studio RGB to computer RGB" checked in your Preview Device preferences, then you will doubling up the added preview contrast on that secondary monitor. For this reason I don't usually use SeMW Preview Levels on my PC because I don't need it; only on my laptop.

If you share some of your media I could show you how I would deal with it.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 5/30/2017, 7:48 AM

Hi Nick - Thanks for breaking this down for me in n00b terms. So much of this is added workflow procedures for me hence why I ask so many seemingly simplistic questions. I'm heading out of town for a shoot early this morning and will be back later today to follow up - I have to then edit and turn around the shoot by later this afternoon/early evening as I'm out of town again tomorrow morning for yet another shoot and will need to edit on my laptop ...

Even with all the testing of Resolve, and using PPro CS6 as my standard, I still see Vegas allowing me to edit more efficiently for the kind of work I shoot - it's just a matter of understanding the new workflow. All those talking about moving to Resolve, IMO "The Grass isn't Greener on the other side of the fence". For those of us not able to upgrade to more current hardware, the options are slim but Vegas does do well for my specific needs - once I get the damn workflow process figured out.