Sony Vegas

NTSC to PAL DVD Conversion

Overview: Customer has a NTSC DVD that they want converted to PAL.

When recreating the DVD the menu cannot be transferred over (without a huge amount of work).  So, we recreate the menu and scene selection by creating markers for each clip and placing these for menu markers.

Steps:

  1. Using Sony Vegas import the media from the DVD.
  2. Place media on the Vegas timeline
  3. Go to UltimateS' marker tab and create "Marks" for each event.
    1. Use "Chapter" or "Scene" plus sequence numbers to create the names.
  4. Create a Region for the whole DVD...all clips.
  5. Render out the regions using UltimateS batch render and select the correct PAL DVD preset (full or widescreen).
  6. Open DVD Arch; choose "Menu Based".
  7. Set to PAL and the correct aspect, 4:3 or 16:9; be aware of the finer details ie., MPEG-2 720x576-50i, 4:3 (PAL).
  8. Create "PLAY ALL" button by right-clicking on the home page and inserting large media file (that incidentally has markers from vegas denoting all the scenes).
  9. Change the 'video' name to "PLAY ALL".
  10. Delete the old PLAY ALL button as you don't need that one.
  11. Right-click on the new PLAY ALL button and click on "Insert Scene Selection Menu..."
  12. You will be asked how many scenes per page; choose 6 or 8 as per the number of scenes (to cut down on the number of pages choose 8). Scenes will be based on the markers within the large media file.
  13. Align items on the first Scene Selection page accordingly; then select all except the page re-direction arrows and then "Copy". You can then select all these same items on the remaining pages and Paste Attributes - All, to copy the formatting on this and other pages using this method.
  14. All the scene selection and menu page links should already be situated at the bottom of the respective page lists so that they will be highlighted last.
  15. prep and burn DVD.

16:9 HD Video Output As 4:3 HD or SD

Overview A film transfer customer wanted their output in two formats:

1)            16:9 HD on a Blu-ray and 16:9 SD on DVD

2)            4:3 HD on a Blu-ray and 4:3 SD on DVD

The footage is and has been editied in the highest resolution and we did not want to loose quality by zooming in or such.  What I wanted was to crop the sides of the 16:9 image to a 4:3 image without loosing any of the top and bottom.

The original image is 1920 x 1080 (16:9) and needs to go to 1440 x 1080 (4:3).

Steps:

  1. Create a copy of the original 16:9 vegas project and name the new one 4-3 or something like that.
  2. Here’s the typical HD properties window(.....missing pic):
  3. Change the new 4:3 project properties to:
    1. Leave the “Template” as is.
    2. Change the “Width” field to 960 and the “Height” to 720 and other properties fields will automatically adjust....such as the “Template” and “Pixel aspect ratio” fields.
    3. Click the “Apply” button.
  4. Select the “Event Pan/Crop” tool to adjust the image to a 4:3 image.  This must be done for every event in the project (Ultimate S matches aspect to the project aspect however it zooms in to do it and we want to crop the sides so that we do NOT loose quality).
    1. Change the “Width” field under the “Position” group from 1920 to 1440.  This will cause the left and right sides of the frame to move in and the top and bottom to remain fixed.
  5. Render the footage using the follow “render as” settings.  This will render the footage out as 4:3 and will fill the frame...no black bars.
    1. “Template” set as “Blu-ray 1440x1080-24p, 25 Mbps video stream”
    1. “Render loop region only” checked.
    2. “Save project markers in media file” checked.
    3. NOTE: Blu-ray does not support 29fps and therefore DVDA will recompress the entire video.  24fps (23.976) is supported.

NOTE: For 4:3 HD rendering out for a DVD

  • Make sure to not to select the "stretch video to fill output frame size (do not letterbox)"
  • Also, if the project is using tracks for bars in the output (which an HD project must have for HD 16:9), then the bars MUST be turned off if rendering as 4:3 for DVD.

PowerPoint Into Sony Vegas

How to convert a PowerPoint or Keynote file to images PNG is the recommended export format for generating high-quality slide images for your presentation video. However, Presto can work with a wide range of image formats, including:

  • Windows bitmap - BMP, DIB
  • JPEG - JPEG, JPG, JPE
  • Portable Network Graphics - PNG
  • Portable image format - PBM, PGM, PPM
  • Sun rasters - SR, RAS
  • TIFF files - TIFF, TIF

Microsoft Office PowerPoint®

To convert PowerPoint slides to images:

  1. Open the presentation in PowerPoint.
  2. Choose Save As...
  3. From the file type drop-down menu, select PNG Portable Network Graphics Format.
  4. Type a filename, choose a location for the files, then click Save.
  5. After you click OK, PowerPoint will present the following dialog:

Select Every Slide, and PowerPoint will create a folder with the name you specified. Your PNG slide images are in this folder.

Apple iWork Keynote

To convert Keynote slides to images:

  1. Open the presentation in Keynote.
  2. Choose Share > Export, then click Images.
  3. Specify whether to create a file for every slide or for a range of slides.
  4. To create a separate image for each build stage, select Create an image for each stage of builds.
  5. Choose a format option from the format pop-up menu (preferably PNG, as noted above). If you choose JPEG format, use the Quality controls to specify a high-quality output.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Type a filename, choose a location for the files, then click Export.

How to quickly rename slide files using Windows Explorer

If a single presentation video is based on multiple presentations (i.e., you have several PowerPoint or Keynote presentation files to work with), you may need to rename the slide image files that you export from PowerPoint or Keynote, because Presto requires that each slide image has a unique filename.

In Windows Explorer it's easy to rename a group of slide image files. When you select multiple files in a folder, Windows automatically adds a number in parenthesis after each filename. The following steps explain how to use this multiple file renaming feature:

  1. First, make sure all the slide files are sorted by name, then select them all, as ilustrated below.
  2. RIght-click on the first item and choose Rename from the drop-down menu.
  3. The text of the first item will now be selected, as illustrated below. Type a name for this presentation that is unique and will ensure that the multiple presentations sort in the correct order (e.g. Presentation 1, Presentation 2, and so on).
  4. Now when you press Enter, Windows will rename all the files, adding a number in parenthesis to make each filename unique, as illustrated below.

PAL DVD to NTSC DVD

Purpose Need to convert a PAL DVD to NTSC DVD.

Steps:

  1. Check the PAL DVD on a Win7 computer and play the DVD in Win-Media Player to find out:
    1. If the DVD is 4:3 or 16:9
    2. How many chapters
    3. And check how each chapter starts so that you can id the chapters later
    4. Open Sony Vegas Pro
    5. Set the project properties to either PAL widescreen or PAL 4:3, whichever applies.
    6. Under File, go to Import and select import from DVD
    7. Copy the DVD VOB’s into the RAW/third party/DVD/etc
    8. Place the VOB’s onto the timeline.
    9. Use Regions to Chapter the VOB’s based on findings in 1c.
    10. Use Ultimate S to render the regions.
      1. Render using NTSC widescreen or standard screen as applicable
      2. Use DVD Architect to author and burn the NTSC DVD’s

Covers:

Scan the covers and print them out on photo paper.  The cover size is typically 273 mm X 183 mm.  I found that ACDSee's print allows you to select the top, bottom, and both side margins and whether the image is in the top left, center, etc.  knowing at 8.5X11 paper is 279X217mm one can do the math and adjust the margins accordingly (i.e. 6mm and 34mm for the margins)