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Offtopicon 8/23/2016
Vegas Pro Website Conversion
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Videoon 8/23/2016
Grazie Gets his TAXI! 19336 Posts
And here you are in Berlin...!
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Videoon 8/17/2016
MP4 time code
All sorts of things could be happening. Maybe Vegas doesn't read timecode in MP4 containers, or maybe it just doesn't read it the way your camera wrote it. For example, it used to be that Vegas could read TC in DV25 files it had captured, but not in DV25 files that were captured via Premiere. I seem to remember reading here that you could actually just change an MP4 file extension to MOV and it would remain readable. It'd be a stroke of luck if rewrapping your mp4 files were that simple. Here's a FCPX developer page that has a bunch of related information on the topic: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/content/technotes/tn2174/_index.html <time passes> Well, it IS that simple in as much as Vegas will still read an MP4 file if you change the extension to .mov. But since my own mp4 files definitely do not have timecode in them I can't say more than that. Vegas may default to it's own decoder for AVC in quicktime wrappers. I'm certainly not seeing any differences in the way Vegas identifies the .mov version of my .mp4 file. Vegas says each of them is "Type: Sony AVC". In comparison, Vegas identifies a different (DVCProHD).mov file as "Type: QuickTime" and vegas sees the timecode in it. Rob
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Videoon 8/17/2016
MP4 time code
Vegas Pro 12, b563, but who's counting, right? http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/showmessage.asp?messageid=855642 The question here is whether an MP4 container can contain timecode that Vegas can read. The answer was a conditional "Yes, sometimes". So the course of action is to first confirm that the timecode is present in the media, and if it's there then confirm whether Vegas sees it. There's no switch I know of to make Vegas see or not see timecode. It either does or doesn't. <edit>There's also the question of *which* version and build of Vegas can read timecode in an MP4 container. The OP is using Vegas 12. </edit> If the timecode exists but Vegas can't see it then rewrapping it in a quicktime container might be a fallback proposal. Rob
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Videoon 8/16/2016
MP4 time code
VegasPro is not able to display .mov container timecode natively ... This is not actually true anymore. Sony added the feature about at the moment I stopped needing it. I've never seen timecode in an MP4 but rs170a says it can happen so I'll believe it. Rob
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Videoon 8/15/2016
Crossfading an edit where there's no time, tips?
Bury the cut under b-roll?
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Videoon 8/15/2016
How to best sharpen this image
Thanks Jerry, these are very nice and would be super useful to one man band photoshop users, or people who work collaboratively in the same shop. I like that they can work as a smart filter. As long as another editor also has the filters installed they can make adjustments to what you've done. Because I sometimes need to work with a freelancer or two, I tend to limit myself to whatever is stock in photoshop. It's about the most I can rely on as far as what the freelancer will have installed. Good recommendation! Rob
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Videoon 8/15/2016
timeline gets out of focus
Update. While I wasn't having any success clicking the preview window to switch focus, keying Ctrl+S has the side effect of moving focus to the timeline. And it never hurts to save your work. Rob
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Videoon 8/15/2016
Render File Size Question?
If you wanted to make a comparison to compressing a jpeg file, then think of bitrate is similar to the total file size. If you had a 1920x1080 image and a 1280x720 image and you specified that both will be 1MB in file size then you'd have to compress the larger file more than the smaller file. Bitrate is similar. You specify total bits per second. If the image frame is smaller then you don't have to compress it as much to meet your bitrate specification. But both files have the same bits/second so they're the same size in bits. Rob
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Videoon 8/15/2016
How to best sharpen this image
I just use High Pass as an example of sharpening and then using Masks and Blending options. It's not the only way to skin a cat, of course. A high pass copy layer used in an overlay blend mode sharpens edges. In fact, if you run the process and then do a difference comparison with a copy of the original layer, you'll see that it's not affecting your whites except at edges. And that's what sharpening does, increase edge contrast. I know you know this stuff but I'm also spelling this out for other readers. In any case, if you're curious about the method you could try it. It's a very manual way of doing sharpening, and it makes the process a little more visible. It also doesn't bake the effect into the original image, so it's nondestructive. It's easy enough to get similar control over a Smart Sharpen filter. If you use the filter as a smart filter applied to a smart object then it's nondestructive and you can play with it a lot more. If I were teaching, I'd start with the high pass method first because it also provides a good excuse to talk about masking and blend modes. Rob
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Videoon 8/15/2016
timeline gets out of focus
Yes, it's annoying. When saving a snapshot to file the snapshot is automatically added to the project media and then it gets the focus so you can rename it. Kind of silly since you just had a "Save Snapshot to file" dialog where you could have named it. The stumbling point here is that most of the keyboard shortcuts you press at this point get swallowed by the new media object trying to get you to rename it. As Donald says, Alt+0 refocuses Vegas to the timeline. That's fine if you're left handed since Alt+0 is a right handed key combo (or two handed if you're cursed with a tendency to always key Alt with your left and 0 with your right.) (I can't get Jerry's suggestion of clicking the preview to work). It's possible to remap the keyboard for this via Options/Customize Keyboard. The Global.View.FocusToTrackView command is mapped to Alt+0. You could change it to something else. I don't see a native way to map the preview window's snapshot button to a key command, but if you have a script that saves snapshots (like Vegasaur) then you can map a keyboard shortcut to *that*. Ideally, it'd be nice if there was an internal preference in Vegas to set the focus to the timeline after saving snapshots. Rob
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Videoon 8/14/2016
How to best sharpen this image
There are a couple of ways to put your finger on the scale. Regardless of your sharpening method, you can use a mask to only mask in sharpening where you want it. So, for example, I'll sometimes do a kind of old school sharpening where I -- copy the image to a new layer (ctrl+J) -- Run Filter / Other / High Pass (around 1.4 radius) -- Set layer's blend mode to overlay -- Apply a black mask to the High Pass layer (Alt+mask button at bottom of layers panel) -- Use paintbrush tool to paint white in the mask where you want sharpening to occur. -- Change the opacity of your brush, or change the opacity of the entire High Pass layer if you want to tone down the effect. You could also do this by turning your picture layer into a smart object (a symbol) and then applying any sharpening filter you want. Then you can paint a mask on your smart filters layer to limit the sharpening to the places you want. The advantage here is that the smart filter is adjustable later on. Another way to affect things is to take a sharpening layer like my high pass layer, right click it, and adjust it's blending options. This would allow you to adjust it so that it doesn't affect your shadow areas at all. You could also do this using the Smart Object approach by placing the filtered smart layer over an unsullied copy of the smart layer, then adjusting blend options. They're just symbols so you don't double your file size. The only other thing here is that I'd do spotting before doing sharpening. You don't want to sharpen the dust spots. For those dark dust specs you could use a healing brush or a clone stamp, either one set to Lighten mode. Setting it to lighten makes the brush only paint over things that are darker than the brush's source. Also, both of these brushes can be aligned with other source elements so you can do touchups over seams fairly easily. Do all your touchups on a separate layer and then you can erase them if they didn't work. Rob
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Videoon 8/8/2016
Apple ProRes 422 4k not open
This might be opening a can of other worms, but if the OP bought V13 through the current offer: http://www.magix.com/us/specials/vegas/exclusive-welcome-offer/ then they'll be able to get a free upgrade to V14. V14 has some form of native ProRes support, although it's not stated that 4444 4k is supported. So, no guarantees, but they should've taken that offer if possible. The best idea would be to try to contact sales support and ask them if this will be supported. Don't ask tech support, ask sales. I don't think tech support is staffed. Rob
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Videoon 7/27/2016
Opening Project Takes Hours
Bins are what is expected in most professional environments, so if you have more than one editor and they have varied backgrounds you might want to organize things in a way everyone would expect. In addition, you can have one clips occur in many bins. It's an organizational tool but not a storage tool. If you're working in a place that has strict storage policies then bins give you some freedom from that. Also, if you regularly work with stock or library footage that is used in multiple projects (magazine shows, for example) then it may not be possible for everyone to move the media to the folder they want. Rob
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Videoon 7/26/2016
Opening Project Takes Hours
Perhaps each media bin triggers a re-scan of all the media bins (for thumbnails, codec support etc.). That would explain the approximate doubling of time for each extra bin. That would fit in nicely with what I was seeing with Smart Bins in VP11. They would get unmanageable at around 20 bins where plain bins were still usable. Smart bins will rerun a search whenever the bin is touched. Many years ago I had a similar experience with Dreamweaver and its site caching. I think it was attempting to run two simultaneous scans in an attempt to build a cache of a site. They never caught it because on smaller sites the effect was negligible, but there was a tipping point in the number of file objects where the scan would start to take forever. This sort of thing can happen when you've got multiple developers or a feature has been developed in bits and pieces over time. Rob
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Videoon 7/25/2016
Opening Project Takes Hours
Nick, this is something I recounted a while back. I was seeing projects bog down at around 20 bins in VP11. Maybe this coincided with the introduction of some new bin features like smart bins. I didn't actually time it since it was just pretty obvious there was a problem. http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/showmessage.asp?forumid=4&messageid=816340 Rob
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Videoon 7/12/2016
WOT: Apple Support Rant
Not all chargers ARE what they seem at first. One requirement their tech support should have is that you use the charger they provided with the product, or a replacement Apple charger for that product. I assume though that the problem occurs with the stock charger. I think the best course is to get one's hooks into a specific tech agent, which often happens through an escalation. Individuals are usually more responsive than faceless organizations. Rob
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Videoon 7/11/2016
WOT: Apple Support Rant
Take it to an Apple store. If that's not possible then get a person on the phone and ask to escalate it. Tech support hates escalations. If THAT isn't possible then make a video illustrating the problem and place it on youtube so you can show it to them. Before you show it to them, invite all your friends to look and comment so that it is looking very public. Direct them to the comments as if they were helpful ideas.
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Offtopicon 7/1/2016
Photoshop competitor is coming to Windows!
It's a public beta and I didn't notice any sort of nondisclosure agreement. Chat away. One thing to point out, though, is that Magix also has a Designer and a Photo product so they might also like your attention, especially while you're posting on their forum. Anyway, the notice was for Affinity Designer, which is a more vector-centric application. I tried it out briefly yesterday and there are some things I like and others I'm skeptical of. I'm hoping to make some time over the long 4th o' July weekend to play a little more and send them some feedback. One thing I noticed with the canned shapes like arrows is that there's no obvious way to make it remember how you want to draw the arrows (like, only draw an arrowhead at *one* end of the shape rather than both, etc.) The other thing is that they use a custom file format so I need to figure out what format I can export in that will then import nicely into other software (like Flash in my case, but obviously Vegas would be the target app as far as this forum is concerned). So, currently it's just a Beta of Affinity Designer. The bitmap editor hasn't dropped yet and that's the one that might be a Photoshop competitor. Rob
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Videoon 6/30/2016
Vagas Pro 13 + 14 Free ($200) Email Offer
Another way to look at it is that you're buying an upgrade to 14 before the release and getting a free copy of 13 in the interim. This is $50.00 less than the list price of a Vegas upgrade. Whether a better upgrade deal might come in September is anyone's guess.
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Videoon 6/30/2016
Print timeline for client editing
how does the client assess a clip if he doesn't SEE the whole take We may never know if Adam never comes back. However, I guess this sort of printed page could be useful as a worksheet to mark up while watching the window dub.
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Videoon 6/29/2016
Print timeline for client editing
There are lots of free utilities that will create a PDF through your Pint dialog. You open the html page and then print it as a PDF. Rosebud's script very nearly does what the OP was asking for, except that it doesn't show durations. Rob
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Videoon 6/29/2016
Print timeline for client editing
Yep. A window burn was the obvious answer. I was assuming the OP knew they didn't want one. Rob
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Videoon 6/28/2016
Print timeline for client editing
I don't know of an automated way to do it but I think it could be done somewhat manually, especially with a script tool like Vegasaur (not free). For starters, you can easily copy a list of your timeline events from the edit details window. To simplify things, set it to "Show: Events", Rename the view to some custom name and then save it, then drag away the column headers you don't want to use. I'd keep the Timecode Start column in addition to Length and Active Take Name. Now click the top left cell to select the whole table and key Ctrl+C to copy it. You can then paste it into Word or Excel Notepad or whatever. Next you want to get first frame images of all the events. It looks like Vegasaur will do that in two processes from Vegasaur's Timeline Menu. The first process would be to use the Marker tool to set a marker at the head of each event. You get a choice of what to use for a label. Play with that, I'm not sure what's best but for the next step I think you could leave things blank. The next step is to use Vegasaur's Snapshot tool to grab snapshots at every marker that you previously placed with the Marker tool. The snapshot tool will grab shots and show them in it's window, you then need to select them all and save them. What you end up with is a folder full of images that should include in their names the label option from the marker tool plus the timecode. So now you should have a text list of events and a bunch of stills with names that could match the text in the list. Once you've done it a few times then it shouldn't take more than 10 or 15 minutes to get this far. Your next step is to combine all this in a table or HTML page. That'll be tedious. There are probably some other ways to skin this cat but this is the method that comes to mind. Probably what you really want is a single button to push that does it all. Maybe that exists. Everything I described except for the final assembly is scriptable, and in fact the final assembly might be scriptable as well. Rob
rmack350
Offline, Last login 7/16/2022, Member since 8/23/2016