Regions in Project Media

[Ryan McCarvill]

Hey Guys,

I am preparing to embark in a 48 hour short film competition and trying to get all the ducks in a row, this will be my first serious go at using Vegas Pro 9 (didn't have access to FCP anymore and Vegas seemed the best value).

We are shooting on a DSLR (GH1) and recording sound separately, so from research I figure the best thing to do is to create one project per scene and put all of the video from that scene into the project creating regions for each clip with the appropriate description.

I can then create a new project (one per scene) and import the regions as footage, using region view. I will then create a new project per scene and nest then in one overall short film project, having three layers of nesting:
The first layer is a container for footage organised by regions,
The second is each scene with the regions edited onto a timeline,
The third is the overall project with scenes in order, score, credits, bars and tone, etc.

While I am editing the sound people will have their own version of the initial projects (which are simply every video clip split into regions) and will be syncing sound (using pluraleyes) and adjusting levels, etc. Then we can replace the container project that I am working on with a project with adjusted sound, etc and have the changes propagate through the other projects.

The problem that I am having is that once a region is placed into the timeline the project that it belongs to is placed into the Project Media bin, there doesn't seem to be a way to select regions from anything other than the explorer tab, ideally I would like thumbnails within the Media Tab but realise that this is unlikely. Is there a better way to organise this? Perhaps I can get Vegas to automatically output the Regions to separate .mts files which will hopefully be a lossless process?

 

[David Jimerson]

You can do a batch render and choose regions as what you render. That's under Tools>Scripting.

 

[Ryan McCarvill]

You can do a batch render and choose regions as what you render. That's under Tools>Scripting.

Yep I've seen that, unfortunately it doesn't seem to keep the region labels as the file name. I will test it to make sure that its reliable each time as we will be doing this at least twice.

If I am using AVCHD footage and render as Sony AVC Default template will it simply pass through my footage or will it add a generation? If I am doing this should I render as uncompressed video instead?

 

[David Jimerson]

It may not recompress if the render settings exactly match the AVCHD (and you've done nothing to the footage), but there are numerous flavors of AVCHD, so I can't say for sure.

 

[Ryan McCarvill]

It may not recompress if the render settings exactly match the AVCHD (and you've done nothing to the footage), but there are numerous flavors of AVCHD, so I can't say for sure.

Well considering it's for a 48 hour competition that is delivered in SD I won't worry too much about it. I have read that it tends to simply pass through AVCHD, I guess I will experiment.

The default settings for the script outputs to filepath/filenam_render template[region number].extension

I have modified it so that it outputs to filepath/filename_region label.extension to me this seems better as long as the labels are simple (runs a a function to clean up the extension).

 

[PDR]

Well considering it's for a 48 hour competition that is delivered in SD I won't worry too much about it. I have read that it tends to simply pass through AVCHD, I guess I will experiment.

If its being delivered in SD, that implies a resize if you shot in HD on your GH1, so pass through (aka smart render) won't work

 

[Ryan McCarvill]

Ok looks like I have to re-render it / compress it therefore loosing a generation, that being the case, what is the best format to render to (of the free ones that come with Vegas Pro 9), hard drive space not being an issue the only limiting factor is that the computer is a dual core 2.2ghz and therefore speed to decompress on the fly within the NLE is a factor.

The video is PAL 720p and 50fps.

Thanks

- Ryan

 

[PDR]

Ok looks like I have to re-render it / compress it therefore loosing a generation, that being the case, what is the best format to render to (of the free ones that come with Vegas Pro 9), hard drive space not being an issue the only limiting factor is that the computer is a dual core 2.2ghz and therefore speed to decompress on the fly within the NLE is a factor.

The video is PAL 720p and 50fps.

Define "best"? Best quality? Best render time? Best compatibility? ?

Doesn't the competition have submission guidelines? If you give them something they can't watch or too big for them to handle for example, I doubt the judges would be very happy...

You mentioned "SD" , but that can encompass many things... need more details

 

[Ryan McCarvill]

Sorry PDR,

Posted my previous comment before seeing yours

What I want to do is pass through at first so that I have 720p footage which is trimmed (ie without clapper, setup time, etc) but with the different audio attached, I want the sound guys to keep tweaking the audio and outputting it and have an easy way to replace the tracks within Vegas (by replacing the source files). We will eventually convert to SD for the comp, but will try and keep it at original quality until the very end of the project. That way I can upload a 720p version to Vimeo, etc.

Seems like my best bet is to use the XDCAM 720p preset, its higher quality than the AVCHD of the GH1.

The final deliverable will be Pal Widescreen SD on either DVD or MiniDV tape, that is an easy template to choose from the Render settings.

 

[PDR]

ok sorry I misunderstood what you were trying to do with the "SD" curveball

Just to clarify, the "rough edit" (the one trimmed without clapper etc...) is so everyone is on the same page at first before dividing up the project to for the others?

If you were able to get smart render working (as mentioned earlier, the settings have to be identical) , that would be the best; it's less lossy than exporting XDCAM (but re-encoding the entire thing to 18Mbps AVC would be worse than XDCAM IMO). The next best in terms of quality would be uncompressed AVI, then some form of lossless compression (e.g. huffyuv, lagarith).

Another thing to consider is editing speed; if you're doing this on a laptop, uncompressed AVI or lagarith might not be the best edit (high data rates, and slow laptop HDD = sluggish timeline) ; XDCAM will edit very smoothly even on older systems.

Something like cineform would be perfect - visually lossless, snappy editing (low latency decoding), 4:2:2 color sampling, 10-bit depth, but it's not free and you would need a license for each computer

I would seriously go through your proposed workflow a few times to work out the kinks; I haven't the best success with nested projects and have had the occasional crash (I would save frequently). There seems to be many parts where errors might occur or problems to arise

 

[Ryan McCarvill]

Yeah, so the idea is that we put the footage into the project, trim the files with regions and output it straight away. I can then start the main edit while the audio guys are syncing audio, adding folly to the takes which we are keeping, etc. They can then re-export and replace the source files which will update my project.

The problem with Cineform is as you point out we will need a few licenses so I will stay away from that.

Anyway thanks for the help.