How can I script the text event?

DarrenStarr wrote on 9/28/2007, 8:30 AM

I have developed a full suite of software designed for producing CableLabs compliant VOD transport streams from within Vegas with the click of a few buttons. It has subtitle support for PAC, RAC, 860, 870, 890, STL, USF, DVD Architect, DVD Studio Pro, Encore 2, and VOBSUB subtitle file formats directly within Vegas.

The current version of the software rebuilds the entire Vegas timeline within DirectShow Editing Services (yeh, ouch) to be able to provide preview of subtitles for alignment to the user.

I am currently hoping that I can obtain a new VPDK to develop a new plugin that will allow the user to preview the subtitles directly within the Vegas preview pane or via the External Preview Device. This will also let users add burned in subtitles from any of the mentioned formats or the other formats I intend to add shortly.

If I can't get a hold of the VPDK, my fallback is to either create a video track with images (which with 1500 images being typical actually crashes Vegas). Or to add subtitles via a text event object.

What I'd like to know is, is there any posibility that the Text event will ever be scriptable or if the new Protype Titler is scriptable?

Since the text events I'll be adding typically contain multiple font styles (italic/bold,underline,different sizes, etc...) I would love to be able to not only produce the text events, but also calculate metrics so that I may render align multiple text elements by overlapping multiple elements and get them in the correct locations.

Please tell me if there is some way to accomplish this? Otherwise, please let me know how I can send a sample to you so that you may analyze why Vegas is crashing from too many images events, the typical uncompressed image being approximately 10k in size. In memory, the bitmap buffer required, should not exceed 150megs.

Comments

jetdv wrote on 9/28/2007, 9:09 AM

What I'd like to know is, is there any posibility that the Text event will ever be scriptable or if the new Protype Titler is scriptable?

Neither is currently scriptable. Can't say about the future - I don't know.

You can try lowering the "Ram Preview" size to see if that helps with the crashing. Drop it to something small like 16Meg. You can even try as low as 0 if needed.

ForumAdmin wrote on 10/1/2007, 11:07 AM

We are aware of the desires for scriptable text. It is by far the most requested scripting feature/enhancement. Much like render template parameters, video generator and effect properties are a "black box" to Vegas and its scripting API.

I suspect your best approach is, as you've indicated, either a custom text generator plugin or still images that are managed by your script.

What image format were you using that caused Vegas to crash?

DarrenStarr wrote on 10/4/2007, 8:39 AM

1-bit,2-bit,4-bit,8-bit,256-bit,32-bit BMP playing with multiple different formats of RGB and ARGB.

palettized and not PNG files.

pretty much all of them. The amount of memory being consumed by the internal objects representing an media object apparently were killing the program. The machine I did most of the testing on generally only had 1.5 or 2 gigs of memory though.

I only rendered the bitmaps to exact size required, I did not just use a 720x576 bitmap since that's just wasteful.

DarrenStarr wrote on 10/4/2007, 8:45 AM

While we're at it, I might be spamming the wrong forums, but I'm trying to figure out the starting point for a new generator plugin. I have written both DMOs and full DirectShow transforms with great success, but I can't for the life of me get a stable compile environment running for DirectX media SDK plugins as required by the Vegas Video Plugin Development kit.

For the moment, I'd be happy enough just to have some type of plugin running, even if it lacks proper Vegas integration. Can you tell me what Vegas 8 is based on? Is it on DMO's (seems like a logical move) since I'm quite sure that with 128-bit FP support, DirectX media SDK doesn't seem like that right choice for coding these.

Please also try and have someone that knows the architecture to try and respond to my posts and support requests for a new plugin SDK or at least something that compiles to work from. For example, a simple ball filter would get me going.

ForumAdmin wrote on 10/5/2007, 7:31 AM

We'll have a look at the memory management issue with thousands of bmp images.

If you are having trouble with the video plug-in development kit, send e-mail to the address included with the kit. The video plug-in team should be able to help you resolve those problems.

ForumAdmin wrote on 10/5/2007, 12:12 PM

Can you provide more details about when and how Vegas crashes when you attempt to import many BMP images.

I have written a test script that creates and imports many full-frame sized 32bpp BMP images and have not been able to crash Vegas. I have tested up to 3000 images on a DV sized project. I also did 1500 images in a 1080i project.

I was able to run out of memory in the script by adding all the Bitmap objects it creates to an ArrayList so they could not be garbage collected but this only resulted in a script error and Vegas was able to recover without crashing.

Udi wrote on 12/23/2007, 11:16 PM

I am trying to send the PIDK team anmail - got error "server has rejected address" - the address I have is
md-videopidk@sonypictures.com

Anyone got some answer from them about a new or upgraded PIDK?

Udi

SonyDennis wrote on 1/3/2008, 3:01 PM

Use sonycreativesoftware.com instead. There is an updated VPIDK that works with Visual Studio 2005. That is the only change.
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