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Offtopicon 7/27/2022
Font size for end credits streaming vs big screen
The OP PM'd me. Not sure why. The answer is: there is no answer. It is entirely up to you, and there are no set rules. As I posted many years ago, there can be issues with smoothness of a title crawl, but if the titles are static, that problem doesn't exist. I don't use the modern versions of Vegas, so perhaps they finally fixed their crawl generator so you don't have to manually do the calculations to make sure that the top and bottom of the fonts line up on each frame with the pixel grid (rather than landing in between the pixels, thus forcing interpolation).
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Videoon 10/11/2021
Possible explanation for some slow renders .. bug?
I finally wrote a script that mutes events on lower tracks if they are covered by events on tracks above. It is similar to what wwaag wrote, but is done with old-fashioned jscript. Since I am still using ancient versions of Vegas, I don't know if jscript is still supported in the more modern versions. The purpose of the script is to significantly reduce render times in certain multi-track Vegas projects. The unnecessarily long renders happen if you have a non-trasnparent fX on an upper track (e.g., Levels, or Color Corrector) and then have complex operations being performed on lower tracks, but which don't show through. For a test case I put three copies of the slowest fX (min/max) on events on three lower tracks. I first soloed the top track and my test render took 9 seconds. I then un-soloed the track, and verified that the video in the Vegas preview display didn't change (i.e., the lower track video wasn't going to be used). I then rendered my few seconds, and the render estimate went from nine seconds to over ten minutes. I'm providing this script as is, with the understanding that it may not work with modern versions of Vegas, if they've taken away jscript support, and also with the understanding that you have to make sure that you don't have any way that the "covered" events on the lower track could show through (see the Notes section in the script for examples). The script does handle event fades and opacity level, but is oblivious to any track operations, and also does not handle any changes made with a compositing envelope. Bottom line: it can be fooled, but for many projects, it can make a massive reduction in render times. /** * Mute video events on lower tracks if they are completely covered by any event on tracks above. * * Written By: John Meyer * Written: October 11, 2021 * * The script mutes events on all secondary tracks which are completely covered by events on tracks above. * The reason for this script is that, under many circumstances, Vegas will needlessly composite video on lower tracks * even if that video is never used. This can cause render times to balloon, often by integer multiples (2x, 3x, etc.) * * For the problem to happen, the upper events must have some non-transparent fX applied or must have a zoom in pan/crop, neither of which should allow * lower events to show through, but both of which cause Vegas to needlessly render lower tracks. Mixing videos with different PARs can also cause problems. * * Discussion about problem here: * https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/possible-explanation-for-some-slow-renders-bug--99410 * * NOTE: * This script will create problems if fX on upper events create transparency that let lower events show through, e.g., the Cookie Cutter fX. * It should not be used when nested tracks are present. * It will create problems if pan/crop causes video to shrink, or if rotation is used, or anything else that lets lower events show through. * Any track-level panning will cause problems * Any compositing envelope will cause problems * **/import System; import System.IO; import System.Windows.Forms; import Sony.Vegas; /** ************************************************************************** * Start of main program * ************************************************************************** **/try { var evnt_last : TrackEvent; var evnt : TrackEvent; var scratch_evnt : TrackEvent; var currenttrack : Track; var eventEnum : Enumerator; var scratchtrackEnum : Enumerator; var ZeroFadelength : Timecode = new Timecode("00:00:00:00");// Add top scratch track var scratchtrack : VideoTrack = new VideoTrack(); Vegas.Project.Tracks.Add(scratchtrack); // Add track. scratchtrack.Name = "Scratch Track ***Delete***"; // Add track header reminder, in case script gets interrupte and temp track remains// Get list of tracks and enumerate the scratch track events var trackEnum = new Enumerator(Vegas.Project.Tracks); var moretracks = FindNextVideoTrack(); while (moretracks) { // Iterate through all video tracks, ignoring audio tracks currenttrack = Track(trackEnum.item()); // Copy all events on current track to scratch track eventEnum = new Enumerator(currenttrack.Events); while (!eventEnum.atEnd()) { evnt = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); evnt.Copy(scratchtrack,evnt.Start); eventEnum.moveNext(); } // End while (!eventEnum.atEnd()// Merge overlapped events on scratch track into one event with no fades if (scratchtrack.Events.Count > 0) { MergeScratchTrackEvents(); } else { throw ("No video events on top video track"); // I'm not sure this can happen, but in case it does ... }// Split events on next track moretracks = FindNextVideoTrack(); if (!moretracks) //Get next video track, if there is one, otherwise exit while loop, clean up, and go home. break; currenttrack = Track(trackEnum.item()); SplitEvents ();// Mute all events on current track that will never bee seen in final video MuteCoveredEvents (); } // End while (moretracks) Vegas.UpdateUI(); Vegas.Project.Tracks.Remove(scratchtrack);} catch (e) { MessageBox.Show(e); }// End of main program // *********************************************************************** // Beginning of functions // ***********************************************************************// Get next video track, skipping audio tracks. Return null if no more video tracks function FindNextVideoTrack() : boolean{ trackEnum.moveNext(); while (!trackEnum.atEnd()) { var track : Track = Track(trackEnum.item()); if (track.IsVideo()) { return 1; } trackEnum.moveNext(); } return 0; }// Merge overlapped events on scratch track, preserving fade on last event in groupfunction MergeScratchTrackEvents () { eventEnum = new Enumerator(scratchtrack.Events); evnt_last = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); // Before iterating through events, fix fade on first event // Shorten first event if it has a fade-in, because fade will allow lower track to show through evnt_last.Start = evnt_last.Start + evnt_last.FadeIn.Length; evnt_last.Length = evnt_last.Length - evnt_last.FadeIn.Length; evnt_last.FadeIn.Length = ZeroFadelength; // Remove first event if it has opacity set to less than 100% if (evnt_last.FadeIn.Gain < 1 ) { scratchtrack.Events.Remove(evnt_last); eventEnum = new Enumerator(scratchtrack.Events); // Re-enumerate after event is removed evnt_last = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); } eventEnum.moveNext(); // Go though all events after first one while (!eventEnum.atEnd()) { evnt = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); // Fades that don't overlap with adjacent event will let video show through, so event must be shortened by fade amount // This "if" handles fade-in, the next "if" handles fade-out if (evnt.FadeIn.Length > ZeroFadelength && evnt.Start >= evnt_last.End ) { evnt.Start = evnt.Start + evnt.FadeIn.Length; evnt.Length = evnt.Length - evnt.FadeIn.Length; evnt.FadeIn.Length = ZeroFadelength; } if (evnt_last.FadeOut.Length > ZeroFadelength && evnt_last.End <= evnt.Start ) { evnt_last.Length = evnt_last.Length - evnt_last.FadeOut.Length; evnt_last.FadeOut.Length = ZeroFadelength; } // Remove events which have opacity less than 1 // Original version attempted to also eliminate events with pan/crop setting. // The following line will also eliminate events containining any fX (replace "if" below) // if (evnt.FadeIn.Gain < 1 || videoEvent.Effects.Count>0 ) { var videoEvent = VideoEvent(evnt); videoEvent.VideoMotion.ScaleToFill = true; if (evnt.FadeIn.Gain < 1 ) { scratchtrack.Events.Remove(evnt); eventEnum = new Enumerator(scratchtrack.Events); // Re-enumerate after event is removed evnt_last = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); eventEnum.moveNext(); evnt = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); //Events are now re-enumerated, but function will start over at first event } //Remove event completely contained within previous event if (evnt.Start >= (evnt_last.Start) && evnt.End <= (evnt_last.End)) { scratchtrack.Events.Remove(evnt); eventEnum = new Enumerator(scratchtrack.Events); // Re-enumerate after event is removed evnt_last = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); eventEnum.moveNext(); evnt = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); } // Merge events which overlap or which are abutted if (evnt.Start <= (evnt_last.End) ) { evnt_last.Length = evnt.Start - evnt_last.Start + evnt.Length evnt_last.FadeOut.Length = evnt.FadeOut.Length; scratchtrack.Events.Remove(evnt); eventEnum = new Enumerator(scratchtrack.Events); // Re-enumerate after event is removed } evnt_last = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); eventEnum.moveNext(); } // End while( !eventEnum.asEnd() ) // If last event on scratchtrack has fade out, make adjustment if (evnt_last.FadeOut.Length > ZeroFadelength ) { evnt_last.Length = evnt_last.Length - evnt_last.FadeOut.Length; evnt_last.FadeOut.Length = ZeroFadelength; } } // End Function MergeScratchTrackEvents()// This function splits events on the current track at the event boundaries on the scratch track. function SplitEvents () { scratchtrackEnum = new Enumerator(scratchtrack.Events); while (!scratchtrackEnum.atEnd()) { scratch_evnt = TrackEvent(scratchtrackEnum.item()); eventEnum = new Enumerator(currenttrack.Events); // restart enumeration of current track while (!eventEnum.atEnd()) { evnt = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); // This will split events on current track at the begin/end event boundaries on the scratch track if (scratch_evnt.Start > evnt.Start && scratch_evnt.Start < evnt.End ) { evnt.Split(scratch_evnt.Start - evnt.Start) ; } if (scratch_evnt.End < evnt.End && scratch_evnt.End > evnt.Start ) { evnt.Split(scratch_evnt.End - evnt.Start) ; } eventEnum.moveNext(); } // End while (!eventEnum.atEnd() scratchtrackEnum.moveNext(); } // End while (!scratchtrackEnum.atEnd()} // End function SplitEvents// This function mutes the events on the current track which lie under the events on the scratch track // No attempt is made to be intelligent about terminating loops early, etc. function MuteCoveredEvents () { scratchtrackEnum = new Enumerator(scratchtrack.Events); while (!scratchtrackEnum.atEnd()) { scratch_evnt = TrackEvent(scratchtrackEnum.item()); eventEnum = new Enumerator(currenttrack.Events); // restart enumeration of current track while (!eventEnum.atEnd()) { evnt = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); if (scratch_evnt.Start <= evnt.Start && scratch_evnt.End >= evnt.End ) { evnt.Mute = true; } eventEnum.moveNext(); } // End while (!eventEnum.atEnd() scratchtrackEnum.moveNext(); } // End ehile (!scratchtrackEnum.atEnd() }
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Videoon 7/24/2020
Possible explanation for some slow renders .. bug?
relaxvideo, Sorry for the delay, but I never come here any more, but was trying to help someone in another forum find all his posts in this forum that uses very strange non-standard forum software. I answered the question several years ago in this thread, but it is such a long thread that it would have been easy to miss. In any other forum, I'd provide a link to that old post, but this doesn't appear to be possible with this strange forum software so I'll just paste my old reply below. I can't remember if I wrote a script to automate it (I have written over 100 Vegas scripts, and have forgotten what some of them do ...). John ------------------ Could you post your workaround(s) in the form of step-by-step examples, so I can see where I need to start? The complete workaround is easy to describe, but potentially very time-consuming. You look at the events on each track, other than the top track. If there is an event on the top track which "covers" this event, and if you don't have any child tracks, compositing mode set on a track above, or any fX that permits lower tracks to show through, then you delete that media. Save this under a different project name so as not to affect your original project, just in case ...
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Scriptingon 8/22/2019
Copying Pan/Crop keyframes question
Maybe you can find something useful in the following .js script I wrote a few years ago. It takes the pan/crop settings (all keyframes) from the event under cursor on first selected timeline, and copies its pan/crop settings (but NOT fX settings) to all other selected events on the timeline. /** * This script copies pan/crop from event under cursor on first selected timeline * and copies its pan/crop settings (but NOT fX settings) to all other * selected events on the timeline. * * Copyright 2017 - John H. Meyer * **/import System; import System.Collections; import System.Text; import System.IO; import System.Drawing; import System.Windows.Forms; import Sony.Vegas;var evnt : TrackEvent; var dStart : Double; var dLength : Double; var dCursor : Double;try { //Find event under cursor var track = FindSelectedTrack(); if (null == track) // Must select a track throw "no selected track"; var eventEnum = new Enumerator(track.Events); if (track.IsVideo()) { // Track must be a video track dCursor = Vegas.Cursor.ToMilliseconds(); // Remember the cursor position. while (!eventEnum.atEnd()) { // Find selected event evnt = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); // Get the event's start and length timecode, in milliseconds. dStart = evnt.Start.ToMilliseconds(); dLength = evnt.Length.ToMilliseconds(); if ( (dCursor > dStart) && ( dCursor <= (dLength + dStart) ) ) { var selectedevnt = VideoEvent(evnt); var keyframes = selectedevnt.VideoMotion.Keyframes; var keyframe = keyframes[0]; // First keyframe // myKeyframe stores pan/crop info var myKeyframe = new VideoMotionBounds(keyframe.TopLeft, keyframe.TopRight, keyframe.BottomRight, keyframe.BottomLeft); var rotation = keyframe.Rotation; break; // Found first event on timeline under cursor, so quit looking on timeline. } //End if eventEnum.moveNext(); } // End while eventEnum eventEnum = new Enumerator(track.Events); while (!eventEnum.atEnd()) { evnt = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item()); if (evnt.Selected & evnt.IsVideo() ) { // Only change events that are selected var vevnt = VideoEvent(evnt); keyframes = vevnt.VideoMotion.Keyframes; // Get keyframe list for this event keyframe = keyframes[0]; // First keyframe on selected event // The following is optional; normally set to true. vevnt.VideoMotion.ScaleToFill = true; keyframe.Bounds = myKeyframe; // Set first keyframe keyframe.RotateBy (rotation); } eventEnum.moveNext(); } // End While eventEnum } // End If track.IsVideo else { MessageBox.Show("You must select a video track"); } } catch (e) { MessageBox.Show(e); }function FindSelectedTrack() : Track { var trackEnum = new Enumerator(Vegas.Project.Tracks); while (!trackEnum.atEnd()) { var track : Track = Track(trackEnum.item()); if (track.Selected) { return track; } trackEnum.moveNext(); } return null; }
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Videoon 11/15/2018
Slowly introduce video effects (such as gamma) over time.
The Vegas keyframe interface is the "ultimate" way to change fX over time. However, when all you want to do is gradually go from one setting to another, a much faster way which also gives you a lot more control is to cut the event and use crossfades. 1. Cut the event at the point where you want the setting to begin to change. 2. Go to the second of these two events and change the setting to achieve what you want at the point where the change will be finished. You don't need to worry too much about doing this on the exact last frame, as you will see in #3 below. 3. Grab the right edge of the left event and drag it so that event overlaps the second event. The longer the overlap, the longer it will take for the fX (or multiple fX) to change. I use this quite frequently when it is really important to get the start and/or stop point exact. The keyframe interface has always been marginal, and when you try to adjust things down at a frame level, the keyframes have a habit of being off by at least a frame. They sometimes jump as well, as I found out a year ago when trying to keyframe dozens of side-by-side photos. It was a real nightmare. This technique has none of those problems. It also has the advantage that if you are keyframing half a dozen effects (like when you have multiple color and gamma correction modules applied) you don't have to create keyframes on each fX track (i.e., you don't need to enable "animate").
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Videoon 9/10/2017
How to Remove just the background from a Video?
I sent you a PM at the email address you provided, and included the project file and all the media from the difference mask I created a few days ago. I suggest that you continue to post your questions here in this forum because there are far more people here who can answer more broadly than I can, and because I am not going to have much time in the next several weeks, as my daughter's wedding approaches.
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Videoon 9/10/2017
How to Remove just the background from a Video?
P.S. Depending on what you're actually trying to do, you can also just use a simply mask (found in the pan/crop dialog). That's how I did this simple example that I posted in another forum for someone about six months ago: Wow, I just inserted that link, but first looked for a way to embed the YouTube video. Does this pathetic home-brew forum software not even provide for that? Why doesn't Magix just buy some decent forum software, like every other company in the world? This stuff has been around since the days of the BBS (remember Wildcat software?). There are dozens and dozens of really important features, all missing from this bad hack. that really improve the experience for the users who paid big money for this software and expect a professional forum for that expenditure. [edit] It looks like it sort of embedded, although it doesn't play in place like a normal embedded video. Non-standard UI is generally not a good thing.
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Videoon 9/10/2017
How to Remove just the background from a Video?
Gosh, Vegas can do this. I'm surprised the old-timers don't remember the Vegas "difference mask". If this forum still contained a competent search engine (it doesn't) or if the archive search was competent (it is awful as well) you could find all sorts of great posts explaining how to do this. Basically, a difference mask allows you to use any static background in exactly the same way as a green screen. You can "key" out the static background and replace it with anything else you want. As I understand it, this is exactly what you want to do. The original tutorial on this subject, done by one of the Sonic Foundry engineers, is still up: Two Cat Demo It was really great, in the old days, where the engineers actually used the product and shared their really cool "secrets" with the user base. The "two cat" example is more complicated than what you want to do because he managed to composite two shots of the same cat into the same picture. Here's another example, from my own archive, that is exactly what you want to do. About ten years ago good friend and fellow entrepreneur (he's one of the best I've ever met) rented a function room in Vegas for his wife's birthday and invited a huge crowd. The show "American Idol" was in its 2nd or 3rd year, and at the height of its popularity. He wanted to surprise her by singing Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday" as an AI contestant. He locked down his camera and recorded himself singing in front of a doorway. No decent lighting, no nothing. He sent that to me along with a DVD of the first two seasons of the show. I then went through and found appropriate clips to intercut with his performance. I was able to create a background of the AI set by cloning out a long shot of one of the contestants. I used that as my new background (i.e., it was what I used to replace the walls and doorway in his house). Fortunately, he started the camera with no one in the scene, then walked into the scene, giving me a perfect shot of the background that I wanted to remove. Lacking that, you can Photoshop out the foreground object, but the background is then never quite perfect. Here is a link to my ancient use of a difference mask: American Idol "Contestant" You'll see a few places where the "key" isn't perfect. With enough patience this can be overcome with a combination of the median filter and garbage mask, both of which are explained in the tutorial. There have been a few dozen posts on this in the past, and if you use Google search on the archive of the old forum, you can find them by restricting the search to just that site. The search provided by Magix is totally incompetent and completely broken. If you want, I have a Vegas project file (Vegas 13) that I created just two days ago, using exactly this technique because I needed to remove the watermark from some stock video. I bought the video, but the purchased version didn't perform like the demo, and the company wouldn't fix the problem so, being under a deadline, I simply removed the watermark from the version that worked. I figured that since I paid for what turned out to be a broken version, I should be able to use the demo version, so I don't think I was violating any laws. Just PM me and I'll send the difference mask Vegas 13 project file to you. And, if you want the Vegas project file and all the media used in that Cat demo from all those years ago, I still have that as well. This is a fairly advanced technique, involving parent-child tracks, masks, track compositing, and other features of Vegas that you may not yet have explored. If so, and if you are willing to do the work, you will open up a new and vast expanse of capabilities and creativity that the original engineers loaded into the program, way back in version 4-7, when the program really came of age.
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Videoon 9/8/2017
Strange forum happenings...
Yes, my post got deleted. I have to moderate a neighborhood forum, so I totally respect the Magix moderator's right to remove rants, unhelpful posts, etc. My past contributions mean nothing here, and again, I can't blame them because they have hundreds of posts each month and cannot possibly look up everyone's past to perhaps better understand where I was coming from, or find out that I have a depth of understanding of this product that lets me see things that a "newbie" would not. I won't disrespect the moderator and repeat all the things I said. The basic nature of the post was that Vegas 13 let me down while I was creating the most important video I've ever done, a tribute to my daughter and her groom to be shown at their wedding in two weeks. The essence of my rant (and yes, it was a rant, so I won't even put that word in quotes) is that I would have been finished two weeks ago if Vegas 13 "behaved." But it didn't. I'll leave it at that. For those of you who remember any of my thousands of past posts, I am king of the "workaround" and I eventually was able to get everything done, late last night after five nights with less than three hours of sleep each night. As I said in my original post, it will be my last project because I am too old to learn anything else, and because my heart and soul have always belonged to Vegas, one of the most amazing pieces of software ever created. I don't have anywhere else to go, or any other product with which I could ever be as creative or productive. Thank you all for your support in this thread. I miss the old Sonic Foundry camaraderie, and fondly remember all the things I learned from all of you over the years.
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Videoon 7/26/2017
Another nasty, latent Vegas rendering bug
--> But John's post is not trying to solve the problem or even present it in how it impacts most users. He also states that it could generate other problems - classic general to specific argument which is almost always wrong. He tone is argumentative rather than supportive... Wow, you clearly didn't read this entire thread, starting with my initial post that was made several years ago. Also, you obviously have no clue about the threads to which I referred where Nick Hope, MusicVid, farss, john_dennis, Craftech, amendegw, and many others tried to get to the bottom of some of Vegas' problems related to deinterlacing, downsizing, and rendering. Here is one of those threads. It has 167 answers: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/interlaced-hd-to-dvd-again-some-test-renders--84017/ Your last two posts are so completely wrong, that you might want to delete them. In particular, if you think that all of us were "not trying to solve the problem or even present it in how it impacts most users," then you clearly are not comprehending what you are reading. I am mentioning that thread, and linking to it, because I already referenced it several times in this thread, and much of the discovery done there impacts what I posted in this thread. You need to understand a lot more about what is going on now, and what has gone on in the past. I've been using Vegas every day since version 4 and posted thousands of times in this forum before giving up, for the reasons I already posted. I am a software designer, videographer, and media restoration fanatic. I am a piker compared to those who I already lauded in previous posts, but I actually do know a thing or two about software and, as most people here will attest, have done nothing BUT try to help people. Do a search for Deshaker Vegas Script, and perhaps you will find some of the threads in this forum where I shared a complex script that completely automated the process of stabilizing footage, long before Sony incorporated a scaled-down version of Mercalli into Vegas Pro. But, if you want to continue to make comments about people, rather than the topic at hand, go right ahead. It won't bother me because I just changed my preferences so I will no longer get emails every time people post. It was that preference that sucked me back into this quagmire, and boy am I sorry I "took the bait," to use your phrase. Sheeshhh.
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Videoon 7/26/2017
Another nasty, latent Vegas rendering bug
--> I hope you will stick around and explain why you say it is "probably at the core of some of the biggest problems in Vegas" OK, one last post. The reason I made that statement in the first post in this thread, and then again earlier today is that Nick Hope, Musicvid, and dozens of other people created some of the longest threads in this forum's history trying to figure out how to get better renders from Vegas when creating DVDs from HD source material. Nick, in particular, uncovered all sorts of issues, but they all seemed to point at how Vegas was handling interlacing. We collectively came up with all sorts of "workarounds" using MeGUI or Handbrake, fed with video that was frame-served out of Vegas and then through various AVISynth scripts. It was great stuff, but hardly what the average user wanted to go through. While some of the issues uncovered pointed to weaknesses in a few of the rendering engines inside of Vegas (Handbrake/MeGUI still do a much better job for low bitrate MP4 encoding, for instance), it was (and is) my belief that some of the problems simply had to do with how Vegas was handling field order changes. I proved this with an example, posted many years ago, where I rendered some HDV (TFF) interlaced material to DVD using the default (at that time) BFF setting, and then rendered the same thing after changing the default field order in the Render As MPEG-2 setting to TFF. The TFF setting (which matched the HDV source material) was noticeably better in every way. To be clear, the issue is not field reversal, something that results in unwatchable, horrible, "vibrating" video, but instead the issue looked like badly-done deinterlacing. I obviously cannot know exactly what goes on "under the covers" inside of Vegas, but it definitely had that feeling. What bugged me at the time -- and still does -- was the glassy-eyed response from Sony who never seemed to have any sense of what was important, and what was not. The vast majority of enhancements in Vegas, from release 9 onward, were to adapt the program to new video and audio formats. Bugs were also fixed, but in a rather haphazard fashion, with many bugs (and this one is a bug) never addressed, or not addressed for many releases. This forum is filled with posts, after each new release, with users amazed that some of the better-known bugs were not fixed. I have run three software companies and so I know about how bugs are prioritized and also know that in a major commercial program there are literally hundreds of bugs on the the "fix it" list that will probably never be fixed because there just isn't time in the day to get to them all. That is just the way it is. However, the difference between a great software company and a lousy software company is the development team's ability to understand what is important, and what is not. It usually comes down to the product manager, and if that person is involved, and if that person uses the product every day, and if that person is passionate about his or her work, then good things happen. On the other hand, if that person is none of those things, the product languishes. IMHO, from Vegas 9 onward, the product languished.
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Videoon 7/26/2017
Another nasty, latent Vegas rendering bug
--> Also IMHO titles to posts often color those who read them and your title does read like click bait and the really helpful and knowledgeable forums members can sense those. Thank you, D7K, for reminding me why, after almost 10,000 posts in this forum, I no longer post here. I expose a bug that is probably at the core of some of the biggest problems in Vegas, some of which you cannot "work around," and you think it is click bait. I only came back because they guy who necro'd this thread emailed me. However, after a pleasant few days re-connecting with some old friends (and temporarily taking my original thread OT) I am, once again, outta here.
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Videoon 7/25/2017
Another nasty, latent Vegas rendering bug
Wow, if I was planning to return on a regular basis (which I'm not), I'd suggest we put together a "wall of fame" for great members, past and present.
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Videoon 7/25/2017
Another nasty, latent Vegas rendering bug
--> A tear is coming to my eyes. 😀 ...Jerry Me too! For those who don't know Jerry, he is one of the finest nature photographers in the world. Jerry am Ende -- National Geographic Photos He is one of the few people I know who can actually take photos and video as stunning as what you see in the amazing Netflix series, "The Hunt." We've sure had some great talents pass through this forum over the years: Douglas Spotted-Eagle (Spot) with his Emmy-awarded music, and his skydiving videos (which damn near killed him); Nick Hope, specializing in amazing Thailand underwater photography, and who knows more Vegas tricks than the rest of us put together; Bob Grant ("farss") who knows more about film than just about anyone; GmElliott, the finest wedding videographer that I've ever seen; and Glenn Chan, who knows more about video color space than the engineers who designed the NTSC video standard. That's just off the top of my head, from memory. I'm sure I'm leaving out many other amazing talents. In its heyday, the Sonic Foundry forum was the best I've ever had the privilege to join.
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Videoon 7/24/2017
Another nasty, latent Vegas rendering bug
I am truly blessed that I can afford to do that. Me too. I've been shooting HD for twelve years and still have not had my first request for Blu-Ray (or for any other HD format). Amazing. And I live in Carmel, CA which is supposed to be "high end." I did deliver an HD version of those two weddings on a memory stick, just to ease my own conscience. I know the DVD will last longer than anything else, but as good as DVDs can still look, they obviously don't hold a candle to real HD. I'd love to get a 4K camera and use that as an acquisition format, but the workflow is too complicated and slow. I have no interest in 4K to watch (I don't have a big enough living room to get a screen large enough to show off the increased resolution).
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Videoon 7/24/2017
Another nasty, latent Vegas rendering bug
Ah, two familiar, friendly faces. Thanks for the kind thoughts. Everything is fine here. I am still doing lots of media restoration and also still doing event videography. I did two weddings a year ago, with four cameras and an audio recorder with just "moi" operating them all. I gave both productions away as wedding gifts (actually, you could not pay me to do a wedding -- too many things can go wrong). I also taped another Nutcracker, making it thirty-six straight years I have taped at least one production (I used to tape two performances, plus the dress). So, not much has changed here. I hope you two are also doing well. ------------- FWIW, some samples of what I've been doing (nothing earth shattering) I cringe as I watch my wedding music video however, because I remember, back when this forum was great, reading and watching the things posted by "GMElliot" one of the greatest wedding videographers of all time. You can see his current work here: http://www.httcord3films.com/ Wow, wow, wow! To quote "Waynes Word:" I am not worthy. I remember asking him how he got his shots, and they were all hand-held without any post production stabilization. Those are some seriously steady hands. (I tried to provide a live link to Cord3Films, but it kept copying one of the above videos ... great forum software ...)
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Videoon 7/24/2017
Another nasty, latent Vegas rendering bug
I think it was this thread that caused me to give up posting in this forum over three years ago. The total lack of response from Sony (and now Magix) to such a fundamental bug was stunning. The issue wasn't so much whether lots of people were seeing the problem, but rather that it exposed a major underlying problem in the software which was very likely to show up in other ways as well. One example is that many of us spent hundreds of hours (collectively) trying to get better rendering when downsizing from HD to DVD. After months of tests and workarounds, I found that simply changing the field order in the MPEG-2 render so that it matched the source made a huge difference in quality. This explained a lot because, back then, Vegas always defaulted to lower field first when rendering to DVD and, of course, most interlaced HD formats use top field first. Therefore, because Vegas was not properly handling the simple task of changing field order, not only did this field reversal bug happen, but I suspect some of this same bad field code also was at the root of why DVDs looked so soft when rendered from TFF HD material. You will notice that a few versions ago, Sony quietly changed that default in the MPEG-2 (and probably other) rendering templates so the default is now TFF. Of course if you are rendering from SD NTSC sources you will have to remember to change it back. So they put a band-aid on the problem, but did not fix it. Field order should not matter. It is trivial to render either way, if the code is correct (the simplest is to just drop the first field ...). It is a bug, and it should have been fixed. ----------------- Finally, this is my second post using this Magix forum software and boy is it awful!! There is absolutely nothing good about this. The old Sony forum software was also a home-brew, but at least they got the basics right. Why doesn't Magix simply buy some forum software, like every other company on the planet, and use that instead? You could actually have a decent search engine, much better formatting and linking, and ... oh heck, I don't care enough to go on. I still use Vegas every day, and am still writing scripts and discovering cool stuff. Up until Sony sold the software, I still lurked in the forum to read posts by some of the gurus, but most of them have left the building. That's too bad because I sure learned a lot here fifteen years ago when I first joined. Wow, I just looked for the "preview" button so I could preview my post ... there isn't one!! Good grief, how incompetent. I just looked for a "submit" or "post" button ... there isn't one!! In fact there isn't even an actual button ... do any programmers study UI design?? I have to click on some blue text labeled "comment." Comment??? Comments are what you leave at the end of a blog. "Posting" is what you do in a forum. There is a difference. Words matter. UI matters. Field order matters. Grmpphhh.
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Scriptingon 7/10/2017
Cuts-only editing scripts
Actually, these scripts do something quite different than anything Vegas has ever provided. I've used Vegas since version 4 and, unfortunately, the "core functions" have not been upgraded much since then. As a result, these scripts are still quite valid, useful and, in my experience, will let you get through a "cuts-only" editing session, using a single timeline, in about 1/5 the time it would take using Vegas' native editing. I haven't posted here in three years because of Sony's neglect of the software and, more recently, because this forum software is so awful (why the heck didn't Magix just purchase forum software, like every other company??). I am only posting now because I got a PM asking for the scripts. Here is a link to the latest versions which, unlike those I posted years ago, will now ripple markers as well as events. Cuts-Only Scripts As I described in my various earlier posts, which you probably can't find because of this forum's incompetent search capabilities (grumble, grumble), these scripts are designed for the simplest situation of doing cuts-only edits on a single track of video and its associated audio. All operations are based on the current location of the cursor and do not depend on which event is selected or not selected. All deletions and trims are also based on the cursor location, thus eliminating one problem with the Vegas UI which, under many scenarios, will give you the surprise of finding that you deleted an event that was selected from a previous operation, but no longer in the current timeline view. That can't happen with these scripts. These three scripts are useless if you have a multi-track editing project. -------------- (Wow, I wanted to preview this post, to make sure the link works and that the formatting is the way I want, and realized that there is no preview feature. I've been doing online forums since dial-up BBS and, later, Compuserve and AOL. This forum software is a joke!! What button do I click on to post?? OMG, I click on "Comment?" Really? The word "comment" is a noun as well as a verb, so it is an ambiguous and incompetent choice. Is there a problem of using the word "submit," like most other forums? Also, neither "comment" nor "cancel" are formatted as buttons and therefore the user has to rely on the text color to know that it is something that should be clicked. Obviously, once you know, you can get it to work, but why throw out twenty years of UI convention?) After I quit posting three years ago, I still read the forum almost every day, but after Magix took over and installed this incompetent forum software I quite doing that because the formatting, flow, and topic selection is so goofy and stupid that I can't quickly scan and determine what to read. What is really sad (for me) is that I can no longer find anything that I wrote in my 7,000 posts, nor can I easily find posts from the great gurus from the past who wrote wonderful things that I often want to find in order to remember some insight or trick. Oh well, I've moved on and have figured out how to make older versions of Vegas work great with modern video, so I can still get lots of work done.
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Videoon 5/16/2015
This is simply sensational !!
Very cool: a selfie drone. However, lack of obstacle avoidance would, I think, make it impossible to use for a large number of situations.
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Videoon 5/16/2015
So OT: A Grammar Question
This takes me back to 7th grade (early 1960s) and diagramming sentences. Both sentences are grammatically correct, at least as far as subject/predicate noun/verb agreement: "loss" is singular and requires the verb "were," and "losses" is plural and requires the verb All other parts of the sentence are qualifiers and can be ignored. "Net" has nothing to do with anything because adjectives don't affect (not "effect") the noun/verb agreement. Finally, if you are concerned about whether "net loss" or "net losses" is correct, that is not a grammar question but instead depends on what you are trying to say. If you are describing the sum of all losses of a single type (like a profit/loss statement), then it would be "net loss." If you are describing multiple independent losses, then "net losses" might be more appropriate. Most situations would probably be better covered by using "net loss." [edit]Atom12 posted while I was writing, and I agree with his "loss" vs. "losses" statement.
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Videoon 5/11/2015
correcting overdetailed / sharpened footage
I'd have to see a clip to offer informed advice. However, most sharpening works by putting a thin halo around sharp light/dark transitions. Over in the doom9.org AVISynth forum, quite a few people have developed "dehalo" scripts that attempt to eliminate these halos. They do work, but only to a modest degree.
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Videoon 5/9/2015
Removing or minimzing background voices
I can't say for sure without listening to a sample. You should certainly try iZotope RX and Spectral Layers. However, my instinct says that Kelly (Chienworks) is right on the money: cut out the sections with the voices, and then mix sound from adjacent sections of the clip to file the gaps. If the airplane noise is fairly constant, you'll be done right away. If the noise is from airplanes at a show, and they are moving across the field of view, creating a change in both volume and pitch (Doppler effect), then it will be trickier.
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Videoon 5/9/2015
New Version: Neat Video v4.0
I prefer to use no more than 15-20%, when necessary for noise reduction, to avoid a plastic look. Sometimes it's possible to preserve tons of detail but the overall image still looks plastic. Yech. That is precisely my gripe: plastic. For a spatial denoiser, Neat is one of the best, but the temporal portion has never seemed to me to be even close to what I can get with other tools. Every Neat-treated video (as opposed to still shots) I've ever looked at seems to suffer from this same artifact. But, the noise sure is gone.
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Videoon 5/7/2015
Search by Name of Active Take Information
Did you click on that little "button" in the upper left corner of the Edit Details dialog, like I described in my last post? If you don't do that first, then Ctrl-C won't do anything. I would be very surprised if you can't copy/paste from that dialog, if you do what I describe because, as big as your project is, I've actually worked on projects that are much larger, including one that had 14,000 events. That was a long time ago, and it actually did almost bring Vegas to its knees, and I eventually had to simplify the project to get my work done.
johnmeyer
Offline, Last login 7/27/2022, Member since 8/24/2016