Working faster with Vegas pro 12 ?

DiDequ wrote on 1/21/2014, 2:23 AM
Hello.

Timeline Tools from Gary James is useful (Thanks Gary) for moving still pictures, and more, but I would like to know if I can work faster with Vegas pro 12 using many still pictures:

1 addind picture to the timeline WITH video effects at the same time
( I add pictures, select all of them, move to the video effect tab, choose 1 effect, add it, choose another one, add it)
I have not found any video effect preset selection tool to be added automatically.

2 selecting a still picture WITH their effects at the same time
(I select the picture, then click the effects button, because just selecting the picture is not enough - Otherwise, I can alter some settings of another picture)
Of course I can click the effect button without selecting the picture first, But I prefer having the item I am working on highlighted.

Thanks in advance.
Didier.



Comments

videoITguy wrote on 1/21/2014, 4:54 AM
You are struggling unnecessarily. The goto solution for slideshow management and a perfect companion piece to VegasPro used in creating pro productions - is a product called Photodex ProShow Gold - it will ease your pain guaranteed!
DiDequ wrote on 1/21/2014, 6:44 AM
videoITguy, I do not want to make a slideshow,, but a blueray, with over 50000 pictures, 1920x1080 res, without sound.
My pictures are inside folders, year by year, starting with my grandparents in 1935.

Subfolders when necessary for each year.

I did it with DvdA pro, but computing time is too long. Doing small changes -> long to make a new iso file ( 23.735 Gb !)
Now, I do a .veg project in each folder, render the video inside it, replace the file in Dvd A project in corresponding submenu.

I'm half way, and would be happy to be able to work faster with Vegas. I can do the whole work the way I'm doing...

I shall not add music to this family blueray. No effects, No crossfades, just photos with nice and easy menus (more than 200 menus/submenus)

A special submenu too : "the best of X, Y ,Z" (20 pictures max to resume the life of each family members)
Because children of the 3rd generation after me will not be interrested by all those photos !
I suppose a blueray will be still OK in 2050 !
Every 10 years, they will make a new copy of the blueray -
well, I do not know how long a blueray can "survive" it might be 20 years or more instead of 10.

Before, I used a database to manage my pictures.
But computers change a lot, - not sure what I did will work in 2050 - even with free software.

In vegas, pictures play at 0.8" each - long enough to see and pause the film and watch a still picture as long as we want.

Using DvdA is interresting, adding buttons to swap from a person to a year, etc...

Didier.
TeetimeNC wrote on 1/21/2014, 8:43 AM
DiDequ, if you are adding the SAME video effects to each photo, add them to the track instead. So your workflow would be:

1. Set the default event length to .8 seconds in preferences.
2. Select all photos for the veg and drag them as a group to the timeline. They will each be .8 seconds long.
3. Add your video fxs to the track so they will be applied to all photos.

/jerry

Chienworks wrote on 1/21/2014, 9:19 AM
And if you have a small group of differing effects that get added to different groups of pictures, use multiple tracks and put the pictures that all get the same effect on the same track.
ritsmer wrote on 1/21/2014, 9:36 AM
Sorry if I have misunderstood your project - but...
50.000+ pictures at 0.8 sec equals some 11+ hours watching more or less totally random pics shot everywhere.... any light, any situation, any family members ...
Do have mercy with the viewers.

If you want to make such a many-years-family-history-video from the plenty pictures you luckily have got - then another way to do it is to chose just THE few hundred pictures which can be grouped into some continuous stories.
It takes only 5-10 well chosen pics to tel about uncle Pete going to Harward and 5-10 well chosen pics to tell about about granny's visits once a year at your place.
1935 to 2013 is a long time - and no harm is done if you show granny's developments in steps of 5 or 10 years - main thing is telling a story rather than irrigating the viewer with an incomprehensible amount of pics :- ))

When you edit, it - then maybe let the grouped stories get entangled in time - the 30' the WWII, the late 40' the 50' etc etc.
... and if it is for family use cut it down to max. half an hour or so.

Just my 2 cents...
Dan Sherman wrote on 1/21/2014, 9:51 AM
Eleven hours of photos is cruel and unusual punishment.
Violation of the Geneva Conventions?
DiDequ wrote on 1/21/2014, 10:14 AM
50000 pictures, yes. A bit more.
All of us have shot pictures and films (8, S_, etc...)

This project is only about pictures. I shall do another one for all my family films.

This does not mean I shall keep all of them. I choose once on the timeline, and suppress some.
Then, each picture gets some color correction if needed. So, I cannot get a setting per group of pictures.

And with the menus, you navigate where you want : if you just want to see pictures from year 1985 : you will do 2 on screen selections. And will see 5 events that year, choose the one you want.

I do not want people watching 11 hours video.

The best viewing method inside a menu, is to use the slow down function of the remote control, and the pause button to stop on the one you enjoy.

This is a kind of encyclopaedia : you do not have to read all the words inside.

As mentionned before, I started with a database, filters, spreadsheet and template. Well : this will not survive in few years.

Question was : how to save family pictures for next generations, pleasing the existing ones, without boring the others...

Best of galeries are for next generations... I enjoy wathing ALL pictures of some events... not always of course.
knowing this is possible on a Tv is "rassurant" !

Didier.
ritsmer wrote on 1/21/2014, 10:30 AM
Thank you for the explanation. Now I understand better.

The only technical problem is that one such family blueray consequently will have a very low resolution per picture.

Theoretically 11 hours+ squeezed onto one blueray.... Just try to do the math :-)

I would suggest other ways of storing/ indexing these family treasures (being a devoted family man myself I do understand the value of such a project) - where the pics are stored and indexed as jpg's or whatever rather than as 0.8 secs video sequences.
DiDequ wrote on 1/21/2014, 11:52 AM
I made a blueray iso, 16mb/s - this is the setting I am using with Vegas Pro.
Quality is OK. above 23 Gb, menus (1" each ) included. No sound.

I have to change things, and generating the Iso takes more than 12 hours. Probably because of all cropped images, color corrections...

This is why I switched to Vegas, rendering as many films as needed. I'm half way _ not too bad !
Compiling such a blueray will take approximately 2 hours.
Doing corrections will be easy. -> just 2 hours to re compute the iso file ...

I do not know how many pictures the iso I made with DvdA contains.
Opening the project under DvdArchitect takes 10', and my computer is rather fast.
I should open each gallery compute the total of photos inside to know the total number of pictures.

Before, I considered the database : it is not a solution for a family purpose.
Some use Windows, others Linux, others Osx, my mother does not use any computer, my grand parents are all dead, the daughter of my daughter is too young...

I tried a website, using coppermine and a .htaccess to paswword protect it. It worked. But it is not fast enough, and you must be connected on the internet. I prefer a stand alone solution.

This is why I am trying the blueray solution.

If someone has a better idea, I would very probably use it.

What I want is :
- ease of use
- be able to use it in the futur ( difficult to imagine what futur will be)
- fast
- Tv or computer viewing possibility.
- quality

i can tell you that the longest part of this project was to use a scanner for all the paper pictures.
I've worked so long with scanners,calibrating them and explaining to customers how to use them ! : I knew how to get the best quality of those devices.
I also used a Konica Minolta DImage ScandualIV scanner for all the slides shot by my parents. This scanner is not fast !

Several hundreds hours of scanning time. ( Plus satefy copies)
But all this work is done. I'm doing the last part of my project. 2014 will not be included in it : my daughters will be in charge of the future.

Didier.