Vegas with Pan/Crop in a DV project

[DigiDis]

OK, I downloaded the Vegas 7 demo and am playing with it. What I would like to do is capture the HD footage and load it into a Pal DV widescreen project at its full size. Then I would like to use the Pan/Crop tool to move the footage around and zoom in. But is seems that the footage comes in already scaled down to fit in the regular DV format. So, I guess I can scale up but I would rather start with the footage at its original size. Anyway to do this inside of a normal DV timeline? Anyone have any workflow suggestions for this approach?

Thanks in advance!

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

There is a Vegas Movie Studio Standard and Platinum editions and Vegas+DVD versions, and the first two are already outdated, as the current version is v8. If you downloaded Movie Studio Standard, it does not support HDV. You must download the trial of Movie Studio Platinum 8 to get full HDV support. If you meant "just" Vegas as the name of the application ("Vegas+DVD") then that's indeed v7. Please note that you don't need the pro Vegas version to do 24p, the Platinum edition will do most of what a normal user would need except exporting to 1920x1080 (it goes only up to 1440x1080-anamorphic).

Anyways, back on topic, Vegas defaults to the DV resolution. To get it to do HDV, you must modify its project settings and tell it that it's 1080i. Then, it will use the full resolution of your video without problems.

[DigiDis]

I am using the trial of Vegas 7 Pro. I already have Premiere Pro 2 and it seems to do what I want except that it is sluggish with HDV with my system (Athlon 3500+, 1Gb Ram). If I import HDV into a DV timelime in Premiere I have to scale it down to 54% to see the full frame. If I import HDV into a Vegas DV timeline it is already scaled down from the beginning. I already am starting to like Vegas over Premiere, it handles HDV more gracefully on my system, and the Pan/crop tool is way too cool...

What I want to do is have my final export be for the web or DVD using a DV timeline. Then with the Pan/Crop tool I can have the "window" of my final output size and place the HDV over it and pan, crop and scale down using that "window" as my guide.

Another way of describing what I want to do is this: Since my video input is far greater than my output I could do the Ken Burns effect with video instead of photos. In effect, the greater input resolution offers a 2-3X zoom opportunity in post. I just want to be sure that my final output retains as much quality as possible.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

Yeah, you should be able to do that with Vegas. Although, Vegas also truly requires 2 GB of RAM for HDV. No matter if you are using a DV timeline or not, the file loaded is an HDV file, so you really need the extra RAM. I had to upgrade to 3 GB when I got to Vegas.

[DigiDis]

OK, I played around a bit more with the Pan/Crop tool. Essentially the tool shows the video at its true resolution (1440X1080) and is "fixed" for the tool to resize over it. It seems that if I maintain the aspect ratio and never go below my final output resolution it does what I need.

What I wanted to do was exactly the opposite of that. I wanted to have my final output window size fixed and then scale and pan the video over it. Not a problem.

[mik]

Yeah, you should be able to do that with Vegas. Although, Vegas also truly requires 2 GB of RAM for HDV. No matter if you are using a DV timeline or not, the file loaded is an HDV file, so you really need the extra RAM. I had to upgrade to 3 GB when I got to Vegas.

very not true. vegas doesn't require much ram. 1gb will do hdv just fine.

second if anyone opens the help file will see that the pan/crop has options. many actually and you can do anything you like.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

>1gb will do hdv just fine.

NO, it will NOT. 1 GB is not enough for HDV and I stake my left eye on it. When I FIRST bought Vegas, I actually DID have 1 GB of RAM. And guess what. After about 2 minutes with the app and more than 2 scenes in the timeline, I was already at 1.2 GB of RAM! Added a few more scenes for a video that was not even longer than 3 minutes and RAM was at 1.5 GB. So, no, 1 GB is just not enough, and if you say that, you probably have never used it with 1 GB and you just assume it would be enough just because the "minimum requirements" say so.

>second if anyone opens the help file will see that the pan/crop has options

Why? Did anyone said otherwise?

[DigiDis]

OK, I checked out the help and didn't learn anything more than I already figured out. I think I am good to go from this point.

FWIW, I am having a new computer built with the E6600 and 2Gb of ram. I wanted more ram but my IT guy told me going to 3 or 4 gigs in WinXP Pro sometimes results in more troubles than benefits so I left it alone. I'm not a video pro so having a screaming fast system isn't crucial, but a stable system is.

Thanks for the help.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

I have 3 GBs now with no problems. There are stability problems ONLY if you tweak XP to let applications to use more than 2 GBs. You see, XP is a 32bit OS, and so applications can only use 2 GBs of RAM. Any extra RAM you have will only be used by the kernel. And that's a good compromise to leave you a full 2 GBs for your apps. Problems ONLY start if you tweak in the control panel a setting to let apps to use more than 2 GBs. Then, all hell breaks loose, especially with drivers. But as long as you leave the default, you are good.

[Dodgy Nick]

I actually DID have 1 GB of RAM.

I was already at 1.2 GB of RAM! Added a few more scenes for a video that was not even longer than 3 minutes and RAM was at 1.5 GB.

Eugenia, when you had 1GB of RAM, how could you get to 1.2/1.5GB of RAM? Or are you talking about virtual swap files or something? For the record, I have 2GB of RAM and it works just fine for me.

[Eugenia Loli-Queru]

Of course and I am talking about swap. Otherwise, the OS would crash. :)

Swap makes everything extremely slow, several seconds to even register a click as hard drives are much slower than RAM chips.

When I upgraded to 2 and then 3 GBs, everything is just fine. But I would not suggest, not even to an enemy, to use *any* NLE with 1 GB of RAM when using HDV. For plain DV, you are "ok", at 1 GB of RAM, but not HDV.

[mik]

please no need to poke eyes :)

if it works ok is all fine.
check the dynamic ram preview setting, you can hugely affect performance with it.