Vegas Pro 11: Why I Cuss So Much More

I'm writing this post to help inform others on what I've come across while editing with Sony Vegas Pro 11, which hasn't been a fun experience.
First, a little background. I started out with a new Dell XPS desktop. 3.4 i7 with 8 gb of  ram Amd 6750 video card.
I got Sony vegas 11 after trying out their studio 11 version. I knew I needed the added features of the pro verison and it wasn't much to upgrade to pro 11. When I first started to edit, I was shooting on Canon DSLR's and everything seemed ok. There were the occasional crashes and the auto save would not work but nothing too bad. Playback was smooth and rendering was very close to real time while grading within Vegas. It seemed like after every new update the problems got worse and worse. Crashes would happen more often and there would be a huge shift in color after rendering, mainly in skin tones. This forced me to start grading differently, by not going for how I would like to see the final image but just enough to get good skin tones. Earlier this year I got the GH2 and soon after I was using the high MBPS all I frame patches and Vegas 11 didn't like these one bit. On play back, it will skip up to 10 or more frames at a time. Far from what any editor wants when trying to piece together a edit. Rendering stayed pretty good with the high bit patches only adding a few minutes to the over all time to render.
Things only got worst from there. Vegas seemed to crash every couple of minutes. For some reason while rendering, it would only use the computer's processor instead of also using the graphics card's processor. Even my i7 had trouble with bigger files and if the render ever did complete, it would take up to 2 hours. Frustratingly,  it would crash with only a small percent left and an error screen will pop up saying unknown error has occurred.

At this point, I decided to start to upgrade the parts in my workstation to see if anything would help with better performance.
First, I got a new set of ram cards 16GB of 1600mhz ram, clocked the i7 at 3.8.
Then I did some some research on graphics cards. I knew I wanted to get a cuda based card since most softwares actually use these instead of open cards to speed up rendering and smooth playback. When looking at the different gtx series cards I found the gtx 570 and gtx 580 were very popular among editing workstations. The gtx 570 has 480 cudas cores and the 580 512 cores. Both the 570 and 580 need a larger power supply a minimum of 600 watts. But then, I found the newest gtx cards. The gtx 600 series. These cards use Nvidia kepler gpu architecture. "They have been designed all new for maximum performance and opitimal performance per watt. The smx streaming multiprocessor is twice as efficient as prior generation resulting in world class performace and the highest image quality."
After doing lots of research, I decided to go with a gtx 670 card after reading it outperforms both the gtx 570 and gtx 580 cards, and it does so using less power and runs quiet and cool. Base clock 1006 mhz, boost clock 1084mhz, memory clock 6208 mhz, 1344 cores and only needs a 500 watt power supply.
Reading a few forums, I found out people using Dell computers with sandybridge were having trouble getting the gtx 670 to recognize the drivers. Dell won't update the bios because they now have the xps 8500 using sandybridge. But Nvida found a walk around to updating the bios of the gtx 670s to boot the drives. So I ordered the gtx 670 from a online source and installed a 600 watt power supply.

After installing the new card, I got everything put in place and I was ready to get started with my amazing fast graphics card. I turned on the computer and after a few seconds, the screen remained black and no boot up. I unplugged everything and opened back up the computer case to make sure the card was sitting in the slot right and I didn't miss any connections. I tried booting it up again and still got just a black screen.
I contacted Evga to see what could be going on with the card. I explained what was happening and mentioned I had a Dell running a Sandy Bridge board. Evga explained it could be a bad card or maybe I didn't have the latest drivers installed. They set a pre labeled mailing slip within a few minutes.I sent it off for a replacement card with the newest drivers and bios software.
The replacement card came pretty quick and once I installed it, the computer booted up just fine. I started on a edit I had been working on. I checked Vegas if it recognized the Gtx 670 and at least it showed it did. I went to the start of the edit and pressed play. I wanted to see how big of an improvement the new card had on playback. Unfortunately, playback was worst then ever - skipping up to 20 frames at a time and sound would cut in and out. This wasn't good. I needed to send off a rough cut to get approve before I started to grade and this was definitely holding up my progress. I checked all the settings and looked at the properties again to see if Vegas recognized the card and, again it said it did.
I double checked all the settings since Vegas will sometimes change the render settings from the project settings. Everything seemed good, so I selected the render to only use the card and a few seconds in, Vegas crashed. I restarted the program and tried again and the same unknown error message came up. I changed the setting to use the processor and card and still got the unknown error. So the last option was to use the processor only. The timeline was around 10 minutes with added sound effects and it took 45 minutes to render. The longest render vs actual timeline I've ever dealt with.
When I got the go ahead to start grading the edit from my client. I use Magic Bullet Looks 2, which is a great grading tool, but is also giving me problems now. When going into Looks 2 it gives a washed out image, different from what is being showed in Vegas. Grading takes longer then it should. I have to keep going back and forth between Looks and Vegas to see what is actually being done to the image.
After working on the grade I needed a mov file to send off for scoring. I selected the highest setting for both video and sound for the mov file. Once again, I was forced to use the processor only to render. After watching the render time go up and up Vegas crashed. I got fed up and installed the Amd card and tried the render again. Still forced to use just the processor. The render started and once again the time kept going up and after 2 hours, the render was finally finished. Heavy grading with Looks adds a little time to the overall render, but I've never seen it add more than just a few minutes. Before Vegas updated, I could edit and grade a short in a few hours. But this ten minute short I easily have over 20 hours because of all of the crashing and render problems.
I started to search the web and found that no software supports the newer Gtx cards except Cs6 but not officially through Adobe, but using a walk around and adding the card to the list of supported cards for Cs6.
I contacted Sony asking if there will be any updates to add support for the Gtx 670 card. Got an reply back saying to try the newest update but they saw nothing in the notes saying that it would support the newer cards and if the update didn't work it was just the card I was using that was the problem. Tried the lastest update soon after reading the email. Same thing constant crashing, playback skips and can not finish a render with the card installed.
So basically I now have one of the highest benchmarking cards out but one of the worst for editing since its not supported by the software I'm using. Vegas 12 just came out and Sony offers a 30 day trial. I'm going to be trying it out to see if the Gtx 670 is supported. With all the problems I've had with Vegas 11 even if 12 does support the card, not sure if the 140 dollars would be worth it to upgrade. Vegas 11 has been out over a year and it's still so buggy with all the crashing, poor playback and forced to use only the computer's processor. It's hard to say how a new version could be any better if 11 has had numerous updates and still so bad. I will write a new post telling my findings with the trial offer of 12 and if it does indeed support the newer Gtx cards.
If it doesn't I will have to spend more to get Cs6 just to run the card. But hopefully it will make editing smoother, faster and keep me from cussing so much. Haha!

Neumann films teaser toolbag and horror music album

I first heard of Neumann Films on Twitter. In July Luke Neumann had daily freebies, tracks you could download for free. One for everyday in July that he had composed, and 18 tracks for a web series The Dark Knight he'd also composed. All you had to do was give credit to Luke, give the title of the song and you can use all of the daily freebies royalty free in your work. Since I shoot and edit, the thing I was really missing in my workflow was a good variety of music. All the daily freebies are really good with a little bit of every type of music to set the right mood.
I really liked  all the freebies Luke offered so I decided to get the Teaser toolbag and Horror music collection. I have to say the 50 bucks spent is worth every penny. Both albums have tons of tracks and I can easily see using everything in both albums.

The Teaser Toolbag is a library of sounds, elements, percussion beats and songs with over 3.2 gb of content. Everything is broken down into 3 different folders and categorized by beats per minute ranging from 80bpm all the way upto 140 bpm. You can mix and match each file for upto 2000+ unique song compostions.

The first folder In The Teaser Toolbag has 7 sets of intros all the same content but at different beats per minute. At 80bpm there are 14 different intros all ranging just below one minute. Then 90bpm thru 140bpm range from 10 to all 14 of the same tracks at 80bpm.
Also in the first folder there are 3 cymbal rises, 13 different hits, 9 orchestral sound designs, 30 different sound designs and 11 full songs ranging in emotions they set. Most of the full songs have a nice upbeat tempo to them for action, a few a little slower for dramatic scenes. The two songs that really stuck out were Edge of reason and Space Debris both of these songs gave me a sense of helplessness and sadness. I could see using these for a scene for something  life changing in a big way.


Teaser Toolbag 2 is all orchestra tracks ranging from 80bpm to 140bpm. At 80bpm you get 29 different tracks, then upto 110bpm the same 29 tracks and from there you get 28 for 110bpm, 25 for 120bpm, 21 for 130bpm and 20 for 140bpm.

Teaser Toolbag 3 is all percussion tracks. You get 9 different tracks at the 80bpm and ranging from 8 down to 5 the faster the tempo.



The Horror music folder is broken down into 6 different folders. The first folder is bonus tracks full songs ranging from a minute upto 2 and a half minutes. And you get 5 in total.

The second folder is digital atmosphere and there are a total of 17 errie tracks all a minute and a half.

3rd folder is the Hits folder and there are 13 different "hits" The best way to describe the hits are the loud  noise right before something is about to happen.

4th folder is orchestral atmosphere and you get 2 in total.

5th folder is orchestral rises and there is 5 in total.

The last folder is sound design, the best way I can describe it is tracks I would use to add to the other sound effects in the album to create the overall audio for a scene. There are 51 different sound design tracks.
The Horror music collection is great overall, you get alot of really creepy and scary sounds to score a film with. I really like the full songs.
 Listening to the songs on the horror album I got a nice Halloween vibe right off the bat. Hearing them I could easily see were they could be used when scoring. Geniside is one I really dug. It gave me the Halloween movie series right away, when Micheal is stalking his victim. And Horrorcast I could see the bad guy chasing someone thru the woods.

Right now if you buy the Teaser Toolbag you will get free updates to the album. Which will include new percussion, drum hits, sound design elements, intros, orchestral tracks and even full songs. The Teaser toolbag is 39.99 but will go up to 45.99 when the next updates are released. Your email will be added to a list and every time an update is added you'll get a free zip file containing the new music. Also right now Neumann films has the composers toolbag which has 25% savings and it includes the The Trailer toolbag, The Horror movie music  and Teaser toolbag for 74.99

Luke also offers photography and video presets on his site.

I'm very pleased with both Teaser toolbag and Horror music album, both have a ton of really awesome tracks, beats, and full songs. If you need some good music for your edits give Neumann films a look, you won't be sorry.

http://www.neumannfilms.net/

my photography

Here's some of my favorite pictures I've taken over the past few years not from film sets. Most were shot using a Zeiss 50mm,  a few with 17-50mm 2.8 and the last pic was taken with a 8mm fisheye lens.

T

cpm follow focus review

The first thing I noticed when I got the CPM follow focus is its size. Its a big follow focus and is kinda heavy which I really like. It feels solid and is well built using black anodized aluminum and blue anodized aluminum for the rail support.

The knob is oversized compared to other follow focuses and makes it really nice when shooting with a shoulder mount rig. When you reach for the follow focus to pull focus, the knob is very easy to find and adjust. If using a tripod the oversized knob can be marked with a dry erase marker for your focus points. Both the knob and gear turn smoothly. This follow focus has just a little backlash which is nice for a follow focus in this price range. It performs nicely in this catagory.

It comes with one supplied lens gear which is one of the nicest and easiest ones to put on and take off. The lens gear uses a zip tie method but it can be switch from lens to lens, unlike other zip tie lens gear that are permanent once applied. 

One thing worth mentioning about the CPM follow focus is that the gear isn't reversible. So when you are using smaller prime lenses, if you rack focus with your left hand, the gear is too far forward on the rails to reach the lens. The whole unit has to be switch over to the right side of the rails to reach smaller lenses, which isn't a big deal if you're used to using either hand to pull focus. 


Overall, I'm very pleased with the CPM follow focus. Build quality is what you would except for CPM which is very good, and you'll get great customer support from their team. The CPM follow focus feels and works like a much more expensive unit. If you're in the market for a follow focus I would recommend this one.

http://www.cpmcamerarigs.com/Carbon_Rod_Kit_s/3.htm

If using a shorter prime on the left the gear is too far forward

color space adobe and srgb

I visit numerous sites and blogs to learn about gear and settings on DSLR's and one thing I've never seen or noticed until recently is what color space to set your Canon DSLR to. I've always used the set color space on my cameras SRGB. Shane Hurlbut on his site http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/ talks step by step on how to set up your Canon DSLR and color spaces. I found it interesting that he mentioned that he uses the Adobe RGB color space. So I decided to test both color spaces to see what I could come up with.

I shot with my t3i, Zeiss 50mm set at 1.4. On one card I shot on Adobe color space and the other card on SRGB color space. Picture profiles used were neutral 0,-4,-2,0, Flaat 10n 0,-4,-2,0, flaat 10p 0,-4,-2,0, portrait 0,-4,-2,0 and on a few I set everything to 0 except adjust skin tone one click to red.

When editing,  I start out in Vegas Pro11 and grade in Magicbullet Looks2 and noticed either something wasn't working in either both or one of the softwares. In Looks 2 my normal grading, which is adjusting the curves, adding contrast and the 3 wheel corrector, none of the adjustments were doing what they usually do. All the adjustments were just washing out the image, also the scopes and waveforms weren't working  so I had nothing to go by to tell what was actually being done to the footage. When I clicked back in Vegas the image was totally different from what Looks was showing and far from ideal. Usually the adjustments made in Looks2 carry over into Vegas smoothly and accurately. So I had to make small adjustments in Looks and see what was being done in Vegas, this took a while to grade the footage. I got the footage close to where it needed to be as far as finding true skintones but it would of went a lot faster with the aids of the scopes and waveform.

Even though the grading was done by eye and clicking back and forth to each program I will have to say the Adobe colorspace on all the picture profiles look nicer both in skintones and overall color. I will now be using the Adobe color space for all my shoots. As far as picture profiles I'm stuck between neutral and the Flaat 10p profiles, they both produce really natural and pleasing skintones and colors.

Once I figure out what's going on with the editing software I will reshoot the footage and grade properly to get a better examples of each. 

Here's an example of what was going on in looks2 and Vegas two same grade but two different images

after graded in looks 2 image is washed out

going from looks2 into vegas pro 11 

footage adobe colorspace
http://youtu.be/pv4APivbWlU 

Srgb colorspace 
http://youtu.be/zAdsAZEcMW4 

Bargain condition lenses "Olympus"

I just got a Kowa 16h anamorphic lens and I wanted to see how wide I could go on the taking lens. I needed lenses with a small front filter thread to fit onto the anamorphic clamp. Zeiss contax mount lenses would of been my first choice but since they are around $300 dollars for one and only being a f2.8 lens, I decided to look for some cheaper alternatives. 

I looked at a few different brands I already owned and most of the 28mm and 35mm were out of stock or they only had one or the other. So I looked at Olympus lenses, and found they had both the 28mm and 35mm in stock but they were what Keh calls "bargain condition". Bargain means 70-79% of original condition. They may show more than average wear for the age of the item, or may have dents, dings and/or brassing and finish loss. The glass may have marks, anomalies and/or blemishes that should not affect picture quality. So you basically get an ugly lens that performs.
At first I was hesitant to order a lens in this condition but for the savings I got 4 Olympus lenses for just over a hundred dollars, 28mm f2.8,35mm 2.8, 50mm 1.8 and a 70-200mm 3.8.

I received the lenses quickly and looked them over and to my surprise they pretty much looked like a lens they would offer in better condition. All the lenses had finish wear. None of the lenses had cleaning marks or dust. Only the 28mm had a small little ding near the front filter thread. Not bad for the money I spent. Also the 28 and 35mm were very small in size which makes them easy on packing and makes for a more stealth look if shooting in crowds.

I decided to do a quick test to see how the color and bokeh looked compared to a few of my other lenses. Zeiss 50mm 1.4, Pentax super takumar 50mm 1.4, Canon 50mm 1.8, Samyang 35mm 1.4 and to cover all three a 17-50mm 2.8 zoom. 
All shots were set to standard profile with everything set to 0. No grading was done so as not to effect the final image. Iso for all f8 shots were at 160 and iso for all shots 2.8 and faster set at 100, with these I used a lightcraft nd fader. 
At first look it seems all the lenses colors are pretty close, except the Pentax 50mm has the yellowish tint due to its coating which fits what I was shooting giving it a nice vintage look. 
Overall, I'm pleased with the Olympus lenses. They are small, have a decent f stop, bokeh looks pleasant and the 28mm and 35mm focus down to well under a foot for close up type macro shots.  If you're looking to get a lens to fill a certain focal range, or start a set of the same brand, don't hesitant to look at the bargain condition labeled lenses.
 


footage from the test 
http://youtu.be/F-MP3PnBB_k 

Flaat picture profiles reviewed

Ever since I started shooting 2 years ago with my first Canon DSLR, I've always used neutral 0,-4,-2,0. Unless I wasn't going to grade the footage I would use the standard profile. Shooting neutral set at 0,-4,-2,0 has always made for a nice flat image that gives plenty of room in post to grade and get a nice looking final image.

Last year a few different picture profiles came out that could be downloaded on to your Canon DSLR. The one everybody talked about was Cinestyle. Cinestyle is supposed to give the flattest starting image out of all the profiles. I held off to see how others reviewed Cinestyle. Most liked it but said that it was an over all noisy image after grading. I have never used it because my editing software didn't have the needed lut curves to recover the information from Cinestyle profile. 

I recently heard of another profile called Flaat made by Samuel Hurtado known by @Simillaar on Twitter. He made his profiles off of Canon's preset with his own added touches and best of all they can be graded without the lut curves, so any editing software will work with Flaat profiles.
Flaat profiles are set to give less noise in the final image over other profiles, and ease of grading for skintones. There are 2 sets of picture styles one based off the portrait profile, and the other neutral. Both sets have their pros and cons. The portrait set has color shift issues. Blue tones tend to go a little heavy on the  cyan side, but overall has better skintones. The neutral set was made to avoid this color shift but the skintones don't turn out as nice.
There are four sets of each.
Flaat 09 gives 9 stops of dr
Flaat 10 gives 10 stops of dr much like Cinestyle
Flaat 11 gives 11 stops of dr
Flaat 12 gives 12 stops of dr but can be noisy
I choose Flaat 10n and Flaat 10p
 You can find the Flaat profiles here
http://www.similaar.com/foto/flaat-picture-styles/download.html

I had just gotten a Kowa Bell & Howell 16h anamorphic and I wanted to try it out and decided to give the Flaat profiles a go against what I've been using neutral 0,-4,-2,0.  I set both Flaat 10n and Flaat 10p at 0,-4,-2,0 also.
I shot using all three profiles on a Canon t3i with a Jupiter 9 85mm taking lens and the Kowa anamorphic lens. I used lightcraft nd fader when I stepped down to f2 and my Smallhd dp4 for framing the shots. The last three images I removed the fader nd and shot at f8. All three profiles start off with a flat image looking close to each other.
After all the footage was shot I began to edit in Sony Vegas pro 11 to get a timeline and graded in Magic Bullet Looks 2. I used a basic curve,contrast and 3 wheel color correction for all the clips. The curve adjustment for all were the same and I added the same amount of contrast to the clips. All the clips grading wise were very simialr in how I had to apply  the color correction to each to get the vectroscope get to the upper third of the wheel  known has the skintone line. Also with looks 2 there's a skin overlay which shows little dots over the person. The more dots the more the colors are corrected for skin color.

Neutral is easy to grade to get to the skin tone line in the vectroscope. And the image looked close to my subjects skin tone which is fair. The bokeh seemed to stay alittle flat but i wasnt graded for an overall image just the skin tones.
Flaat profiles are just has easy to grade. I applied close to the same correction to get the vectroscope where it needed to be.
Flaat 10n once graded for the skintone line ended up with more of a yellowish tint on the skin. But seemed to have more overall color in the image compared to neutral.
Next was Flaat 10p once graded for skintones gave a nice overall image. The skin color looked very good and the over all image looked nice and more colorful. 

Here are the frame grabs of each. I noticed once rendered there was a color shift in the images making them more contrasty and yellowish.

Video of the skin tone test 
http://youtu.be/0HAYzA7K3MY

I decided to shoot around the back yard to see how each would grade and to see if there was a shift in color once rendered.
I shot 2 different images both 3 times with each of the profiles. Neutral, Flaat 10p, and Flaat 10p.
All clips were graded the same, I applied the same curve adjustments,contrast and color correction. The color for all 3 look very close. The only difference is the flaat profiles have a brighter overall image.
There seemed to be no color shift after rendering these clips.
 Video of grading test 
http://youtu.be/kzA_3oiXjEA

After shooting with the flaat profiles I really like the image that flaat 10p provides. It gives a nice image in regards to skin tones and a brighter overall image with nice colors in the highlights and shadows. If your looking to try a profiles that doesn't require a lut curve or one that doesn't add extra noise give the flaat profiles a try.

t3i kowa 16h Smallhd dp4, Jag35 rails, Sachlter Ace tripod