Vegas Pro 11 still changing aspect ratio

Vegas Filmmaker wrote on 11/7/2011, 10:20 PM
What the hell is this? I'm getting so fed up with these problems. Vegas 8-10 haven't done this.

I have thousands of clips of footage from my three Canon Vixia HF S21s. They're in 1440x1080 resolution and an aspect ratio of 1.33. I use Cineform Neoscene to convert them from AVCHD to AVI.

When I drop any footage into the project media in Vegas 11, the aspect ratio for every clip is changed from 1.33 to 1. Vegas does what someone trying to sabotage my project is doing, and I've been civil about this in sending questions about it to technical support, but I'm getting so fed up since this is my livelihood, and I can't deliver projects to clients because of other bugs that Vegas 10 and 11 have.

Vegas 11 changes every clip-clips that are on my hard drive and in projects that I'm editing on 10, which are in the correct aspect ratio-and changes them. That's quite the business strategy. So if I am to use Vegas 11, I have to go through thousands of clips I shot and change the aspect ratio to 1.33.

To be clear, this is not a problem in the properties of the project. I can change the aspect ratio in the project to anything, and it doesn't fix it. I have the aspect ratio set to 1.33 in the project properties. It's the clips themselves that I have to right click on once they're in Vegas 11 and change one by one.

I got a response from Sony saying that the problem is fixed with the new upgrade that came out, apparently on Nov. 1st. I uninstalled Vegas 9, 10, and 11, installed 11, downloaded the upgrade, and I still have the same problem.

And by the way, I uninstalled Vegas because Vegas 10 and 11 are giving me avi.dll errors as soon as I open projects, meaning I can do no work.

I know, Sony quality is notoriously bad, which is why I won't buy their DVD players. The promise of Sony is that you need to be a computer programmer and keep your editing computer internet free to run it properly, and even then there's too high a chance that, with a clean install of your operating system, you'll have errors, as I've seen people report. I'M GOING TO SPEND ALL NIGHT trouble shooting this mess so that I can try and edit two shoots before I'm off to another one tomorrow.

I know, Sony. Windows is a complicated beast. There's all too many configurations and resource conflicts that are just unforeseen. Many people use Vegas without problems, so it's obviously me.

And I spent $120 on a GeForce GTS 450 to take advantage of GPU acceleration, because the Radeon 6870 that I had wasn't recognized by Vegas, even though it's listed on their GPU acceleration page with exact specs as to how much faster rendering time is.

I know, Sony. Nothing can be done. It's impossible. You did everything you could. This has never happened before. I've got to be my own advocate, spend dozens of hours (done!) and hundreds of dollars, and learn the intricacies of computer hardware and software so that I can debug Sony Vegas. After all, that's what every startup software companies aspires to be-a huge waste of time and money for their adopters.

I really liked telling people how easy Vegas was to use and would recommend it to anyone. But I know, I've got to go fix the problem. Sony's hard at work every day. I've got a completely inaccessible piece of software that I use to make a living because of an avi.dll error. I should sell my three Canon Vixias for cameras that have a file format that works better with Vegas. I should get a codec pack to fix it. I should convert everything to wmv to edit.

If it's not clear, I want to emphasize how baffling it is that Vegas Pro 11, advertised as an upgrade, CHANGES THE ASPECT RATIO OF ALL MY FOOTAGE AND MAKES ME GO THROUGH EACH INDIVIDUAL CLIP AND CHANGE THEM BACK TO THEIR CORRECT ASPECT RATIO.

Why stop there, Sony? Why not go for broke, and replace all the audio from my clips with the sound of a toilet flushing? You only did half the job-really, a quarter, or even a fifth-when Vegas 11 changed the aspect ratio of all my clips. Sabotaging my work is a full time job, and there are plenty of people I can pay to do a better job of it than you. You could just put pop up ads in Vegas, install spyware, change the frame rate of all my footage, remove volume envelopes-I could go on, but you get the idea. There are literally thousands of things you could do to screw up my work, and there are far too many facets of Vegas that seem very simple to not screw up that need unfixing.

Screw you.

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 11/7/2011, 11:25 PM
This is not now, nor has there ever been any way to embed the aspect ratio information in the header of an AVI file. There is also no provision in the header of an AVI file to store field order information either. (The one exception is widescreen DV files, but the PAR information is contained in the data stream, not the header.) Strictly speaking, it is not a Vegas problem.

There is potentially a simple solution to your problem, in Vegas go into the properties of one of your 1440x1080 AVI files and under the "Media" tab set the PAR to 1.3333 under "Stream Properties" and you might also want to check that the field order is set to "Upper Field First" assuming that your files were originally interlaced HDV files, THEN click on the little disc icon to the right of "Stream: Video 1" which will save the new PAR (along with the other stream properties) as the default for all files with those image dimensions and frame rate. Thereafter, when you load a 1440x1080 Cineform AVI, it will have the correct PAR. This information has always been available to you in the Vegas User Manual under "Setting Custom Stream Properties." Although I have not tested it, it is likely that Vegas will use this new information when you load your old projects.

In prior versions of Vegas, it could make relatively safe assumptions about PAR and field order of AVI files but now that there are new formats, some of the old defaults might not be correct, hence the little button which saves video profiles for future auto-detection. By the way, AVCHD and MPEG2 files do have provisions in their headers to contain PAR and field order.
bigrock wrote on 11/8/2011, 1:21 AM
Wow good answer.
Vegas Filmmaker wrote on 11/8/2011, 8:17 AM
Thanks for your answer, but my footage is progressive scan. I know I can change the aspect ratio to 1.33 by right clicking on media, and when I tried to save it, I get an error message that says, "An unknown error occurred while trying to create your video profile."
Former user wrote on 11/8/2011, 8:19 AM
Vegas isn't changing any of the clips on your harddrive. It is just not showing the correct aspect ratio within Vegas. And has John wrote, there is an easy fix for that.

Dave T2
MRe wrote on 11/8/2011, 8:58 AM
Thanks John. This solved the problem with Cineform, at least for me.

See the other thread:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=786173
Chienworks wrote on 11/8/2011, 9:44 AM
Vegas 11 handles AVCHD pretty nicely right on the timeline. Try dragging some of the camera clips into your project. You might not need to do the conversion.
Vegas Filmmaker wrote on 11/8/2011, 10:09 AM
Dave, that solution doesn't work. I can't save the settings to clips. I get an error message.

I'll try editing the AVCHD clips. I haven't been doing that because with any effects or transitions, the preview would stutter.
Laurence wrote on 11/8/2011, 10:37 AM
>If it's not clear, I want to emphasize how baffling it is that Vegas Pro 11, advertised as an upgrade, CHANGES THE ASPECT RATIO OF ALL MY FOOTAGE AND MAKES ME GO THROUGH EACH INDIVIDUAL CLIP AND CHANGE THEM BACK TO THEIR CORRECT ASPECT RATIO.

Just fix one clip, then copy the clip attributes, then select all the clips you want to change, then paste the clip attributes. It's pretty quick when you do it that way.

I'm pretty sure you could also just run the aspect ratio script that JR has on his site as well to fix this:

http://www.johnrofrano.com/vegasscripts.htm
Vegas Filmmaker wrote on 11/8/2011, 10:43 AM
Sony should just play nice and not change the aspect ratio of my clips.

I don't have time now, but later I'll try Vegas 11 again and will use the AVCHD files straight from the camera. Already on 10 it's working without bugs, so the aspect ratio issue is what I'm concerned about next.
JJKizak wrote on 11/8/2011, 12:32 PM
If you do what John Cline says with the properties/setparto 1.33 and save it will change back all of your clips at the same time forever more.
JJK
johnmeyer wrote on 11/8/2011, 12:39 PM
This is not now, nor has there ever been any way to embed the aspect ratio information in the header of an AVI file. There is also no provision in the header of an AVI file to store field order information either.The second statement is true. The first statement is false: the aspect ratio IS stored in the AVI file header.

You can verify this (as I just did) by rendering some generated media using the DV AVI codec in Vegas. Render using the "NTSC DV" template, and then render a second time to a different file, this time using the "NTSC DV Widescreen" template. Open both files in MediaInfo. You will find that it correctly reports the aspect ratio of each file.

Field order is not stored, and must be determined by separating the fields and looking at the resulting motion. The field order is then quite obvious.
Geoff_Wood wrote on 11/8/2011, 2:48 PM
Maybe the root problem is this avi.dll problem that has affected your other versions. Other people haven't had this problem, which narrows it down to some aspect of your system.

Does this do this on one or multiple computers ?

Is there some other software (in common if on multiple PCs) installed that may have upset things by maybe installing an alternate version of avi.dll ?

geoff

John_Cline wrote on 11/8/2011, 4:58 PM
"Sony should just play nice and not change the aspect ratio of my clips."

Vegas is NOT changing the aspect ratio, it just doesn't KNOW and has no way to KNOW what the aspect ratio of an AVI clip happens to be and you must tell it. However, once you have told it, you can save that information so the next time it encounters a clip with those dimensions and frame rate, it will apply the defaults you have defined. It is NOT a Vegas problem, but it is a problem and Vegas gives you a tool to deal with it.

"The first statement is false: the aspect ratio IS stored in the AVI file header."

I said that the exception was DV format AVI files where the aspect ratio is contained in a flag in the video stream itself, not the AVI header. When the AVI container format was defined by Microsoft some 20+ years ago, there was no provision made in the header for storing aspect ratio information. At the time, all computer video had a PAR of 1.0, when DV was introduced, which had both .9091 and 1.2121 (or 1.0926 and 1.4568 in PAL), they devised a way to store PAR using the DVC codec itself and not the container. They didn't have to store field order since all DV video is lower field first. There is a provision in the DV-AVI header to specify whether the video is interleaved, but NOT a provision what the field order happens to be.

AVI Main Header Information

AVI Stream Headers

DV Data in the AVI format Specification v1.01 (Microsoft)
johnmeyer wrote on 11/8/2011, 7:58 PM
John,

Good information. I just tested every AVI codec I have installed on this computer and indeed most of them do NOT store the PAR information, just as you say.

I did, however, find that my version of DivX does include the PAR information which both GSpot and MediaInfo read correctly, so I assume other applications can read it as well. Thus, DV is not quite the only format that includes PAR in the file.

HuffYUV, Cineform, Cinepak, MainConcept MJPEG, and SonyYUV did not store the PAR information.
Rainer wrote on 11/9/2011, 12:22 AM
Since HFS21s mostly are used to shoot 1920X1080 1:1 I'm just covering the possibility that just maybe you did shoot 1:1?
Grazie wrote on 11/9/2011, 12:47 AM
John Cline: .... it just doesn't KNOW and has no way to KNOW what the aspect ratio of an AVI clip happens to be and you must tell it.

Is this true for MXF files too? Yes, I realise that's only a wrapper, but if this holds true for MXF files too, then how am I getting Circles as Ovals in Cookie Cutter? Meaning that this Bug kinda indicates that Vegas DOES know PAR, at least with the stuff in MXF wrappers. This indicates to me that Vegas has to be "aware", if only, with respect to this Bug, it gets it wrong! To get it wrong it would HAVE to know when it's correct and have an internal system to do so. And for that to happen Vegas would have to be PAR-aware.

Or have I misunderstood all of this?

- g

farss wrote on 11/9/2011, 12:57 AM
"Or have I misunderstood all of this?"

Kind of. Vegas understanding / reading the PAR of media is a different issue to the Cookie Cutter problem.
Vegas can and does read the PAR of some types of media and yes, it gets it right for MXF which can be either 1:1 or 1.333:1.
In the case of the Cookie Cutter Vegas is reading the PAR of the media correctly.
The FX somehow doesn't see that, it is probably creating a circle which gets stretched into an oval when it should be creating an oval which gets stretched into a circle.

Bob.

Grazie wrote on 11/9/2011, 1:31 AM
So I'm correct in assuming that Vegas flags MXF PARs, it does this is evidenced by the BUG I'm getting, proves it does.

Yes, Bob, I realise the Circle thing will be sorted out as an FX thing, my only point I was making is that, and you've confirmed it, is that for MXF Vegas is PAR-aware.

- g
farss wrote on 11/9/2011, 1:48 AM
"So I'm correct in assuming that Vegas flags MXF PARs, it does this is evidenced by the BUG I'm getting, proves it does."

Easiest way to confirm it's doing the right thing with MXF is to use MXF from an EX camera which can record PAR = 1:1 or PAR =1.333:1. It gets it right both times other wise you'd get tall skinny people or short fat ones depending on which way around it got it wrong.

What seems to determine the problem with the Cookie Cutter is the Project PAR, not the media PAR.

Bob.
Grazie wrote on 11/9/2011, 2:16 AM
What seems to determine the problem with the Cookie Cutter is the Project PAR, not the media PAR.

How or why do you draw that conclusion?

- g
farss wrote on 11/9/2011, 4:22 AM
[I]"How or why do you draw that conclusion?"[/I]

Because in Vegas there are two things at work.
1) The properties of the source media.
2) The properties of the project which determines how Vegas's pipeline processes the media.

Vegas takes whatever it believes is the source PAR and SAR, conforms it to the project PAR and SAR and processes it as such. If you render out then again it is conformed to the render settings PAR nad SAR.

A simple real world example:

I take some FullHD (1920x1080) 1:1 PAR footage into a matching Vegas project, Cookie Cutter works as it should.

I change the project properties to HDV (1440x1080) 1.333:1 PAR and the Cookie Cutter gives me an oval. Same media, no change to media properties.

It works the other way around as well, if the source is 1440x1080 1.333:1 PAR the only time the Cookie Cutter gives the wrong result is if the project PAR is 1.333:1.


This is why at first I couldn't repo your problem at first, I generally run all my HD projects with a PAR of 1:1, regardless of what the source footage is.


Bob.

.
Grazie wrote on 11/9/2011, 4:46 AM
And there you have it!!

- g

Vegas Filmmaker wrote on 11/10/2011, 11:04 PM
Turns out Cineform avi, or at least the combination of it and Sony Vegas, is the problem. As soon as I switched to editing my video in AVCHD as it comes out of my camera, I haven't had a single crash, and Vegas 11 can now edit smoothly in multicam and I can drag dozens or hundreds of clips into my project media bin without it crashing.

I contacted Cineform and they said that no one else has reported this problem, but I uninstalled Vegas and reinstalled it several times, cleaned up a bunch of stuff on my computer, and switching to AVCHD fixed it.
John_Cline wrote on 11/10/2011, 11:13 PM
"Turns out Cineform avi, or at least the combination of it and Sony Vegas, is the problem."

Apparently you didn't pay attention to a word I said...