surround sound/workflow situation

J

joshtownsend

Well-known member
I should have posted here a couple of days ago. You guys are so helpful and knowledgable around here.

OK, I'm editing on the newest version of sony vegas and using DVD architect to finalize to DVD my movie. I shot in 24padvanced with a DVX and I'm making 24p dvd's that look great.

Problem is, I edited each scene/location in a seperate timeline because it made more sense to that. Each scene has about 15 tracks in it and it seemed way simpler. Total there are twelve scenes. I've been putting it together with debugmode frameserver. This saves me having to render one more time. I just go through frame server and put the final cut together then render to mgeg. Minimal generation loss, right?

THEN CAME SURROUND SOUND. I went and panned surround sound for each scene then I realized that vegas wont register my rendered ac3 file in the timeline where I put all the scens together.

I have so many tracks it would take weeks to copy and paste them into one big timeline. Plus you can't copy whole tracks in Vegas so I lose the weeks I spend fixing audio levels. Is there anything I can do to preserve my surround sound?

Like I said everyscene is on a seperate track. If I could stack scenes one after another on the DVD architect program it would work but that's something else I can't do.

Thanks,

Josh Townsend
Empty Bottle, Loaded Gun Productions
 
Re: surround sound/workflow situation

How do you have your tracks arranged? Seems to me a copy/paste wouldn't be THAT onerous if you have your audio on the bottom tracks and your video on the top tracks, and not mixed in between. You can still do that by moving the tracks. Then, just copy everything into a new project which has as many video tracks as the scene with the most video tracks and as many audio tracks as the scene with the most audio tracks. Copy and past the video and sound separately, and you shoule be OK. Just use markers to get the alignment correct at paste.

As for the surround panning keyframes, you're probably out of luck there, unless one of the audio geniuses who pop in now and then has different ideas.

A weakness of Vegas is that it doesn't have nested timelines, and we're all hoping Vegas 6 incorporates them. However, the way the track system and surround sound work, I hope they'd find a way to make it seamless. It probably will be a challenge.

I'm assuming, though, that this is a continuous narrative, and you can't practically use a DVD-A workaround like putting them into DVD-A separately and defining end actions so that, say, scene 1 goes into scene 2 when it's done playing?
 
Re: surround sound/workflow situation

Huh? Are you saying that you created the parts on a different computer?
Once you are registered, it works for any instance of Vegas you have open.

Gary
 
Re: surround sound/workflow situation

David - Thanks David. Cool it seems like you understand what I'm saying. THe problem with copy/pasting to a new timeline is that I'll lose all my volume keyframes. I spent weeks adjusting the volume to get good consistant dialog levels. If I could copy and paste the keyframes for the volume on each track then I'd be straight. I don't think it's possible.

About the DVD option. Are you saying I could render each scene's audio(AC3) and video(mpeg2) seperately then put them back to back as seperate movies on the DVD? On playback, would they continously as a whole movie? Is that right?

Gary - no, I created the each on a different timeline. I used this :http://www.debugmode.com/
 
Re: surround sound/workflow situation

Well, you can define an end action at the end of the clip and have the DVD go to the next clip automatically -- like a series of deleted scenes might be on a commercial DVD you watch. There would be a pause between the scenes, though. If that's acceptable to you, it might be your best bet. But if you need smooth flow between the scenes, it probably wouldn't work so well.
 
Re: surround sound/workflow situation

Dammit!!!. Thanks for saving me more render time. This is a movie-movie so pauses wouldn't be cool at all. :P
 
Re: surround sound/workflow situation

I'm going to download Adobe Encore and see if I can put the tracks back to back on it. If not, I'm just going to have live without surround sound.

Sucks because Vegas was working great for everything. The only other ***** I have is the non realtime preview which got old after about a month of editing.

Anybody else have any idea's how to keep my surround sound without having redo all my audio keyframes?
 
Re: surround sound/workflow situation

I don't think it can be done, the way the track keyframes work.

But try this -- you have the option of grouping your keyframes with your events, so that if you move them on the track, the keyframes go with them. Enable that (don't have it in front of me; I believe it's a button on the toolbar, though) and do some test copying. See if the keyframes go.

For the future, don't edit the sound keyframes separately. Yes, it's often very helpful to edit individual scenes in separate projects, but don't worry about the sound when you're doing that. When you have all the video done, get it into a single timeline. THEN do the sound. The final soundtrack should generally be the last thing you do in the project, anyway.
 
Re: surround sound/workflow situation

Thanks dave,

I'll try the grouping thing. Musta missed it. The only luck I'm maybe having is with mpeg2vcr. It lets you link .ac3 files. I just gotta make sure everything is still synched when it gets put together.

Seems silly that Vegas (and all the other NLE's) can render a .ac3 file, but can't import the file.

Oh yeah, I learned my lesson about editing scenes in diff timelimes. It wasn't an issue at all till tried to do 5.1

Thanks for the help Dave I'll let you know how it goes.
 
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