Video Editing Tools

This is probably more for my own use than anyone else’s, but I thought I would share a little bit of information on my editing platform and the necessary tweaks and fixes needed to make things little easier and better.

Anyway, on to the tweaks and fixes!:

Fix #1: Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 Memory Usage Tweak:

To make Sony Vegas Pro work with Windows more effectively, more control over memory space needs to be given to Vegas. This help me solve some rendering issues with Panasonic HMC-150 AVCHD files.

8.0c AVCHD Render Crashing Tip
I have used various versions of Vegas Pro for many years and never had any serious issues, nor any crashes. But, along comes big AVCHD (mts) files from an HMC-150, and WHAM! System crashes randomly, and cannot get past 11% render without crashing. Sometimes Vegas would just crash and disappear without even leaving a smoke trail! Yeah, I tried the 9 demo and didn’t find anything I needed with it at the time (did not try AVCHD problem).

Of course you read all the forums and everyone has their own theories about how to fix it or make it a little better (clean installs, blah, blah…). I spent several days researching the problem above and found at least 20 different things to try out. Only in several of these things did anyone post positive and conclusive results (ie. no crashing, faster performance, etc.).

Disclaimer: This worked for me and many others, but like all advice, your mileage may vary. This involves minor modifications to executable files, and you should make backups of originals in a safe place.

Utilizing AVCHD (M2T & MTS files) seems to cause some memory usage issues in Vegas. Many 32 bit EXE and DLL files (including Vegas 8.0c) have a 2GB maximum memory cap. Using CFF EXPLORER you can easily open the EXE or DLL files and click the 2GB memory switch that allows the programs to use more than 2GB.

The following files should have this switch set to allow more than 2GB memory usage (provided that you are running a multi-core system with 6GB or more memory).

vegas80.exe
m2tsplug.dll (file i/o)
mcstdh264dec.dll (file i/o)
sonymvd2pro_xp.dll

Procedure:
1. Make backup copies of each of the files (okay to make a new backup folder within the program directories), and replace the extensions with .bak.
2. Download CFF EXPLORER (NTCore’s Homepage) and install and run.
3. From the menu, select File/Open.
4. Select file to be modified from above list in the explorer window and open.
5. In the left window of CFF EXPLORER you should see “NT HEADER”…”DOS HEADER”… etc
6. Highlight “File Header” under “NT HEADER”
7. In the right window of CFF EXPLORER you’ll see a chart of various parameters. On the bottom right corner of this chart you will see “CLICK HERE”. Click on that and a check box system menu will open for that file.
8. On the menu list you will see a check box for “app can handle > 2gig address space”. Check that box.
9. Please note that you are modifying contents of executable files here (so make sure you have made backups!). Save and close the file, and repeat for remaining files above.

My system: Core i7 920, mild o’clk to 2.9 on MSI mboard, 6GB RAM, MSI nVidia 9800GT, Vista64.

I am happy to report that after making these modifications, I have not had another render crash with AVCHD (mts) in my timeline. I just rendered 75 minute 2 camera project, 1920 x 1080 down to mpg2 for DVD widescreen. Had color correction and a few jpgs scattered about. Before the mods, I could not render more than 3% of this project at a time without Vegas totally crashing. This also rendered in about 75 minutes! (single pass, VBR, best quality).

Fix #2: Editing HD footage shot with Canon DSLR (5D, 7D, t2i, t3i, 60d, etc.)

Editing footage shot from a Canon DSLR poses a number of technical difficulties:

• First of all, the footage directly from the camera is composed of a compressed AVCHD format which is either not natively handled by most video editing software platforms, or it gives them fits!  Generally, footage must go through an intermediate CODEC to convert the video format to one handled more easily by the video editing software.  There are quite a few resources these days that provide this intermediate step.  The more popular ones at the moment seem to be using Cineform’s Neoscene ($129),  NewBlueFX’s AVCHD Upshift ($80),  or Squared 5′s MPEG Streamclip (free).  To use MPEG Streamclip, you will need a Quicktime H.264 codec (information available on Squared 5 website).  Once the footage is transcoded using one of these methods, then Sony Vegas Pro 8 will edit the footage quite easily and with high playback frame rates in the editor.
• Another technical difficulty not entirely limited to the use of DSLRs, but due to the very nature of DSLR cameras of exaggerating both the camera movement itself and CMOS sensor rolling shutter effects, is camera stabilization.  What can be done to clean up shaky footage and reduce the rolling shutter effects?   Again, there are a few solutions for this.  One is to upgrade to Sony Vegas Pro 10, which I understand has some built-in functionality to deal with shakiness and rolling shutter.  Other solutions include: BorisFX ($299), or BorisFX Continuum ($595), proDAD’s Mercalli V2 ($149), or DeShaker for Vegas Pro 7, 8, and 9 (free).  DeShaker provides a script that can be run within Vegas by selecting the clips you want modified directly from the timeline and then running the script.  The clip in the timeline is replaced by the modified clip, so this needs to be done before applying any effects, panning, or cropping.  DeShaker uses VirtualDub to perform the transcoding and modification.