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Master Class: Viva Vegas Video

Nov 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Jeffrey P. Fisher

The creation of Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video 3.0 is a major leap forward for desktop media production. The program combines feature-rich, broadcast-quality nonlinear video editing with a complete, powerful multitrack audio engine. Combine an A/V-equipped PC with Vegas Video and a digital-video (DV) camcorder, and you can start offering audio-for-video post-production services.

This article will show you how to use Vegas Video for audio post-production (audio post for short), from getting the video into your computer and adding sounds to picture to manipulating and mixing those sounds to create an outstanding video soundtrack. (If you're new to audio post, have a look at the sidebar “Sound Meets Picture.”) And although I'll focus on Vegas Video and sound for picture, many of these tips and tricks also apply if you use the program for multitrack audio only.

FLYBY

Vegas Video 3.0 is an ideal environment within which to sweeten soundtracks for indie films, documentaries, music videos, commercial spots, and corporate productions destined for DVDs, CD-ROMs, Web sites, and broadcast. The program lets you record and edit narration, on-camera dialog, sound effects, and background sounds, and it even lets you compose and record original music. It offers an unlimited number of audio and video tracks (until your computer complains), and its nondestructive editing means your original files are never altered — Vegas stores all your edit data and applies it in real time.

You don't need any external hardware to keep your audio and video in sync. Instead, you import digital video and add audio to it. By showing you the video and audio together, Vegas makes editing and synchronizing sounds and music effortless. When you're done, you can export your finished work, complete with its new aural soundscape, to a variety of formats including DV, Real Media, MPEG-1 and -2, Windows Media, and QuickTime. Or, if you prefer, you can render just your audio files.

SETTING UP

Vegas is highly customizable. You can change the toolbar; resize, float, dock, and hide windows; and make the program mirror your working style. I usually undock the Video Preview window and let it float over the desktop, keeping the other functions in place (see Fig. 1).

To free up more space on your screen, you can press F11 to quickly hide the Window Docking area and Shift + F11 to hide the Track list. I prefer sliding the Track list to the left until only the Track FX, Mute, and Solo icons show. Forget what's on a track? Let your cursor hover over the Track number to display the hidden scribble strip.

If you have an OHCI-compliant IEEE 1394 (FireWire) card installed, you can send the video to an external monitor. I connect my 1394 card's output to my DV camcorder's digital-in port, then send the camera's analog output to a separate video monitor. You may experience some latency and stuttering, but it's better than squinting at the small Video Preview window in Vegas.

MOUSING AROUND

Vegas and a scroll-wheel-equipped mouse are a potent combination. By default, scrolling on the Timeline zooms in or out. Holding down the Shift button while scrolling duplicates the horizontal scrollbar functions; holding the Control button duplicates the vertical scrollbar. Scrolling while holding both Control and Shift moves the current position indicator around the Timeline. Allow the cursor to hover over the Scrub tool, and the mouse wheel controls the scrub speed either forward or in reverse.

You can also scrub directly on the Timeline by letting the cursor hover over the current position indicator, pressing Control, and dragging your mouse in either direction. If you want to scrub with key commands, pressing J scrubs in reverse, K pauses, and L scrubs forward. Holding K while pressing J or L gives you greater control over the scrub speed.

Right-clicking allows you to access several functions available in pop-up menus. Unfortunately, using your mouse to make precise adjustments to various Vegas parameters can seem cumbersome at first. An easy way to fine-tune a slider's value, however, is to click and hold both the left and right mouse buttons and drag the slider.

To reduce mousing and save time, it's a good idea to learn the keyboard shortcuts for common commands. For example, the Spacebar toggles start and stop, and Enter pauses. The tilde (~) key lets you quickly minimize all tracks. Page Up and Page Down move the cursor to the next grid line. Specify grid spacing using the Grid Spacing function listed in the Options menu. To jump to a particular position in your project, press Control + G and type in a value.

CURRENT EVENTS

One of Vegas's greatest strengths is the ease with which it allows you to work with audio Events. Instead of having to edit and fine-tune your audio in a separate editor, you can massage audio tracks with speed and ease right inside Vegas. You can zero in on your audio and trim, cut, and rearrange it in numerous ways. For one project, I reduced a two-hour interview to one hour, making 172 separate edits all in Vegas — it took me less than four hours to do the job.

You can edit Events directly on the Timeline or use the Trimmer. Right-click on any Event and choose Open in Trimmer. There you can select portions of a file and drag them to any spot on the Timeline. The Trimmer has its own transport controls, zoom buttons, time-region selector, and ruler. There is also a hotlink button (or use Control + E) to open the selected Event in another sound editor, such as Sound Forge. To trim an Event, just drag its edges. Turn on Enable Snapping (this feature can apply to a variety of points including grid, marker, region, and Event edge) to quickly align Events, or turn off snapping for minute adjustments.

Much like its older sibling Acid, Vegas lets you easily slice and dice parts of your audio Events. You can position the cursor where you need to edit, press S to split the Event, and trim away the fat. You can also make a time selection, press S, and split both edges simultaneously. Either approach is useful for removing unwanted noises, deleting dialog breaks, and isolating the sounds you need.

Splitting long dialog or narration segments into short Events can give you greater control over a project's pacing. For example, amateurs tend to either leave too little or too much space between phrases. If everything is slammed together, you can slice the audio apart and move the sections around until it sounds right (music can fill in the gaps). For a slow section, use crossfades to tighten things up. Split the slow-paced Event into smaller segments and overlap and crossfade them slightly so they blend better. To change how sounds crossfade, right-click the overlapping area, choose Fade Type, and then select from the graphical list. Using only Vegas's Split and Crossfade tools (and no pitch or time shifting), I reduced a 19-second narration section to 12 seconds.

To time-stretch or pitch-shift Events, first right-click on the Event, choose Properties, and indicate whether to preserve the pitch and change the length (the default) or preserve the length and change the pitch when stretching. Then Control-drag either Event edge to the desired length.

When editing voice tracks, watch out for room tone — the general background “sound” of a recording. If you're combining separate Events, the sudden dropout and return of room tone can make even the most careful edit stand out. Vegas provides a few ways to deal with this pesky problem. Use a quick, smooth crossfade between edits to cover up the room tone stops and starts. Use the Track FX noise gate to eliminate room tone altogether during silent passages. If that doesn't work, find a piece of room tone from the existing recording, isolate it with splits, copy the room tone Event, and paste it on another track to mask the edits. Music and backgrounds can cover these edits, too.

INSIDE VIDEO

But how do you get to the point at which you can start editing the sound? Before you can begin working on the audio portion, you need your video in a format Vegas can read. Unless you are editing the video, you'll get a completed, or nearly completed, video from your client. The video may come in any of a variety of formats; CD, analog tape, and digital video are the most common. You want the edited video in the highest-quality format available, preferably DV. That way, you can import the video into Vegas, add your audio contribution, rerender the video with new audio, and then lay back the finished video to DV, CD, DVD, and other formats.

To capture video, connect your camcorder or other DV device to your computer's 1394 input and then launch Vegas. Choose the Capture Video item in the File menu to display the Video Capture dialog. If your device is connected correctly, you should be able to control it from this screen, using the transport controls to record the video as you require. The video's audio track will be captured at the same time. Capturing the original video and subsequently saving your final project using Sonic Foundry's DV codec results in the highest-quality video possible with no generation loss.

Always work at the highest resolution you can, paying careful attention to the video's frame size and rate. Work at high resolution (digital video's resolution is 29.97 frames per second, or fps) and then render the video at a lower resolution if needed for streaming formats such as Real Media. If you're unsure of a video's properties, start a new project and then use the Properties option in the File menu to access the Match Media setting (the file folder with an arrow above it). Now choose the video file provided to you (or that you captured), and Vegas will automatically match your project properties to that file. If you render your project to the same format, your final version should match the original's quality.

If the video provided to you already has sound, consider isolating the existing soundtrack elements on separate tracks. When you open a captured video in Vegas, its audio track appears as one long file below the video portion. Right-click on the audio-track icon and choose Duplicate Track; that places a copy of the audio track directly under the original captured audio. Mute the original track, Split the duplicate audio Event, separate it into component chunks (dialog, narration, and so forth), and move each component to a separate track. If necessary, apply quick fade-ins and -outs and use EQ on the separate Events to help disguise your edits.

To make sure that Events you've moved are in sync, you could look at the waveform display while comparing the copy to the muted original. Another way to check would be to unmute the original audio track and play it along with the copy. If your sync is off, you'll hear slapback doubling on the copied track. If you're right on, the dialog should sound twice as loud (3 dB louder). Don't forget to either mute or delete the original audio track when you've finished your work.

INSIDE AUDIO

Referring to your notes, begin gathering the audio material you need by recording, finding, and creating new sounds.

Dialog

If your video has on-camera sync dialog, you may need to fix or even replace the production audio with a new recording. This is called Automatic Dialog Replacement (ADR), or looping in the trade. The term looping came from the process of rerecording dialog by splicing a tape loop of the original, playing it back for the talent, and recording while they repeated their lines.

Vegas can easily loop dialog and record new takes. First, get the talent into your studio and use the same mic and preamp that were used in the field, if possible. If identical equipment isn't obtainable, choose similar equipment and experiment with mic positioning, EQ, and reverb to match the new recordings to the field tracks.

Then, in Vegas, find the dialog you need to replace on the Timeline (see Fig. 2), choosing short segments of not more than a sentence or two to work with. Split the Event just before and just after the offending segment. Insert a new audio track below the bad track and solo the two tracks. Next, turn on Loop Playback, wrap a time region around the Event to be fixed, put the new track into record ready, and start recording. The talent will hear the old dialog and can then talk along with it until they get it right — Vegas will record take after take in the new track. To switch between takes, you can select the Event and press T, or you can right-click on the take for other options. Make sure that you check the dialog sync before the talent leaves. Play the project at 29.97 fps on a larger monitor, focus on the lips, and listen critically.

It may help if the talent can see themselves as they replace their on-camera dialog, so you should pipe the video to them through an external monitor if possible. It's also useful to insert a countdown tone to help them know when to start speaking. To do that, create another track and place three beeps on it spaced a half-second apart. Line up the new track with the existing audio so that the dialog to be replaced starts where the fourth beep would sound. Make sure the countdown tones are within the loop region. The talent will hear the beep rhythm and know when to start talking. Delete the tones after the recording session ends.

To punch in or out on an Event, select it, wrap a time selection around the punch area, and give yourself some preroll and postroll to make doing the punch easier. If you need to replace only a portion of the Event, split it to isolate the punch area. Enable Loop Playback mode to record multiple takes. Arm the track and start recording. Vegas will loop the time selection but record only into the Event you selected.

Narration

You have several options when it comes to narration. One is to record the narration in advance and supply it to your client to use when cutting the video. Another possibility is that your client will use narration obtained from another facility or directly from voice-over talent. In that case, the video provided to you will have this narration in place, and you can add further audio sweetening (such as effects, music, and mixing). You might also need to replace the narration or record an entirely new one in sync with the video.

Ideally, you can follow the techniques of the ADR method and have your voice-over talent record his or her contribution, piece by piece, to fit a finished video. Unfortunately, you might have to record or use an existing “wild” (unsynced) narration track and make it fit with the video. If so, splitting and arranging smaller chunks, crossfading, and time-stretching will come in handy.

Sound effects

Sound effects fall into three main categories: hard effects, which are synced to some onscreen action (a door closing, for example); soft effects, which are not synced to any action but reinforce a scene's reality (such as a bird call during an outdoor scene); and ambient effects, which provide a general, overall soundscape (for example, traffic sounds in a city segment).

Sources for sound effects include online and CD-based sound-effects libraries, your own creations, and the original video production audio (see the sidebar “Sound Effects Sources” for additional candidates). Many professionals use library sound effects as starting points, although the sounds may require editing to get them just right. When you can't find the right sounds, you must create them yourself. Roam the world with a portable recorder to capture audio. Bring sound-producing material into your project studio and record there or create new sounds from scratch using your sound gear (synths and samplers) or through Foley. (Foley is the process of recording sounds in the studio to match onscreen action. Sound effects suitable for Foley include footsteps, clothes rustling, and other actions that are easy to mimic. A Foley session is similar to ADR: the Foley artist watches the video and re-creates the sounds using various props, and the results are recorded.)

Another source for sounds, particularly backgrounds, is from the raw production audio that is captured during videotaping. If possible, go back to the field video to lift sounds. Capture the footage, open it in Vegas, delete the video portion, and save only the audio as a WAV file. When choosing a general background sound, be aware that when lowered in the mix, it just may sound like low-end rumble or white noise. To overcome that problem, feature distinct sound effects along with a general ambient background. Also, use EQ or other effects to make background sounds more prominent.

On a project that I recently completed, I was able to combine the original background noise with a distinct sound effect to achieve excellent results. The production audio contained a needed sound — a bar-code-scanner beep. Unfortunately, the factory noise where it was recorded interfered. I recorded a new beep (my microwave!) and synced it with the original. Using Vegas's Scrub tool, I rocked back and forth until I found the original beep on the factory track. Next, I inserted a new audio track for my clean beep Event. I repeated that procedure with several other sounds. The outcome: a low-level general factory background with up-front hard effects to match the video action.

When looping backgrounds, the loop point might sound obvious. To keep it from standing out, split the Event before the loop point and trim it slightly. Trim the next iteration slightly and then overlap the Events. Experiment with the fade type to help make the loop point less noticeable. A similar technique can work with music loops. Overlap two Events a beat before the loop point and experiment with fade types. To find the beats easily, play the music and press the M key in time with the music, placing markers on the beats. The waveform itself can supply a visual cue, too.

Once you have suitable sounds, place them on your hard drive and audition them in Vegas Explorer. Try rough syncing them with the video to hear how they work in context. You may discover that you need to find other sounds. If you're lucky, you'll have everything you need, and you'll be able to start putting the sound effects in place.

Music

There are two kinds of music to use on a video: source and underscore. Source music comes from action onscreen, such as a band or radio playing. Underscore music provides the general mood for the video. Underscore can be dramatic, evocative of a historical period or exotic setting, or just a neutral background filler. Music can also eliminate the need for ambient backgrounds.

You can buy library or production music just as you would sound effects. Such a purchase will be classified as either needle-drop or buyout. With needle-drop, you pay a fee every time you use a cut from the library. A buyout lets you pay one fee and then use the music whenever you want. You can add original music to the video, too. Either record your music separately and drop the completed piece into the video, or compose and record your musical parts directly within Vegas while watching the video.

If you want to use another application for music composition, Vegas includes the Sonic Foundry Virtual MIDI Router (VMR) so you can either control Vegas from another MIDI application or let Vegas control it. In Vegas, select Preferences in the Options menu and navigate to the Sync tab. Under Generate MIDI Timecode, select the Sonic Foundry MIDI router and choose the correct frame rate for your project. Save the settings, return to the Options menu, select Timecode, and then use the Generate MIDI Timecode command there to send Timecode to the other program.

To control Acid, for example, select Preferences in the Options menu and then click on the Sync tab. Under Trigger from MIDI Timecode, select the Sonic Foundry MIDI router and choose the frame rate that matches your Vegas project. Next, select Trigger from MIDI Timecode under Timecode in the Options menu. Press Play in Vegas, and the programs will run in sync. You can then create your music using Acid, render the final WAV file, and add it to your Vegas project. You could also edit your narration, effects, Foley, ADR, and other elements in Vegas, then render the project as an AVI file and import it into Acid to score the music.

BUILDING YOUR MIX

With all your sounds collected or recorded, begin editing. Dropping Events into your project in Vegas and moving them around in sync with the picture is straightforward, because what you see and hear is what you get. When syncing music and hard effects, play the video and use the M key to insert markers at hit points. Scrub to find more precise placement. Hold down the Alt key and use the left and right arrow keys to move frame by frame. F8 toggles snapping on and off. Vegas even remembers your five most recent time selections; use the Backspace key to cycle through them.

Work on vocal material first, followed by hard effects, soft effects, general backgrounds, and finally music. Go back and edit until everything starts working together. Sweeten the tracks with effects and use the Vegas Level and Pan features to carefully balance and automate your final mix. Stay under digital 0 dB, compress the mix slightly, and check for mono compatibility. I mix using computer speakers, Event 20/20s, and the lousy single speaker in my 13-inch TV monitor.

While each track's volume fader controls the overall track volume, every Event also has its own Attack, Sustain, and Release (ASR) envelope. Place the cursor near the top left or right Event edge and click-and-drag inward to create an Event fade-in or fade-out. Place the cursor above the top of an Event (the cursor will change to the pointing-hand envelope cursor) and click-and-drag down to reduce an Event's level. Vegas provides a visual representation of Event waveform-amplitude changes when you use this tool. Reserve volume envelopes for other level automation and use the ASR to tame quick peaks. In one project I worked on, a dialog track contained one word that stood out like a sore thumb. Though I could have used a compressor or a volume envelope to even out the track, it was faster to split the offending section from the surrounding audio and lower its sustain level to tame the peak.

If you don't want to crossfade Events on the same track, position two tracks one below the other and use the ASR envelope to fade out the top track's Event and fade in the second track's Event. Choose appropriate fade types for the Events; that way you can use separate EQ or other effects and still get the benefits of crossfading sounds.

Because any Vegas track can hold multiple Events even if they have different formats, bit rates, or sample rates, I prefer keeping similar sounds together on a couple of tracks: hard sound effects on a track or two, narration on one, music on another. Using fewer tracks with more Events in them can sometimes work better than multiple tracks comprising a single Event each. If you prefer to use multiple tracks, bus them to a single fader at the mixer and adjust their overall volume and Bus FX there. Route on-camera voice to Bus A, narration to Bus B, hard effects to Bus C, and so on. That approach gives you control of the levels of individual Events (ASR), level and pan automation through envelopes, Track level and FX, and the buses, as well as another hit of overall level and effects. Nice!

Voice is often the most important mix element, so keep music and sound effects from overwhelming your key narration and dialog segments. Use the Track FX EQ, select Band, and set the frequency to 3,500, gain between 2 and 4 dB, and bandwidth to 2 on the voice tracks. Use the same frequency and bandwidth settings on the music track, and make the gain setting 2 to 4 dB lower. That can help make the dialog more intelligible.

Another trick is to reduce the level, or duck, sounds out of the way when voice is dominant. Position the music track directly below the voice track and add a volume envelope to it. Add points that fade the music down quickly under the voice, stay low, and then fade up slowly as the voice part ends (see Fig. 3).

FINAL RENDERING

If you wish to keep your project file and media together, create a project folder and use the Save As option in the File menu. Check the box next to Copy and Trim Media with Project to copy all the files to the same location as the project file. You get the option of copying the source files in their entirety or just copying the trimmed (edited) versions. In either case, make sure you clean the Media pool or you'll copy unneeded media during this procedure. Back up this project folder regularly and especially when your work is done.

To render the final file to combine the original video with your new soundtrack, choose Render As in the File menu. Rendering doesn't affect the project file, so you can rerender or render to multiple formats, making any changes as needed. Depending on your computer's power and the video's length, it may take a long time to render certain file formats. (Creating DVD-compatible MPEG-2 files is especially time-consuming.)

To save your project back to digital video, connect your DV camcorder, launch Vegas, use Capture Video in the File menu, select the Print to Tape tab, and lay your finished version back to tape. Because DV files are large and don't always fit on a standard data CD, laying back finished projects to DV tape is one way to back up your work and deliver it to the client. If you want to print to tape directly from the timeline (instead of from a video that has already been rendered), create a Time selection, choose Print Video to DV Tape in the Tools menu, and then follow the onscreen instructions. Vegas will render the portion you selected and copy it to the DV device you have hooked up.

Another cool feature of Vegas is its ability to burn CDs directly (see Fig. 4). The Burn CD option under Tools lets you make Track-at-Once or Disc-at-Once audio CDs, Video CDs (VCD), and Multimedia (data) CDs. VCDs use the MPEG-1 codec and will play in most DVD players, though they lack menu options and are of lower quality than DVDs.

If you are excited about using Vegas Video for audio/video post-production and are interested in exploring the possibilities, you can get more information from the Vegas Video forum on Sonic Foundry's Web site (www.sonicfoundry.com/forums). You should also look into the Vegas Video forum on Creative Cow (www.creativecow.net); it tends to be more video-centric, but you can occasionally pick up some valuable audio tips. Once you get your feet wet using Vegas, you'll emerge with stunning video soundtracks for yourself and your clients.

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Jeffrey P. Fisher wrote Profiting from Your Music and Sound Project Studio (Allworthy Press, 2001) and other books to help musicians make more money. Visit www.jeffreypfisher.com for more information.

BURNING TIMECODE INTO YOUR VIDEO

One video filter that's useful for audio post is Vegas's Timecode filter. From the Video FX tab, scroll down to find the Timecode filter. Then choose a preset from the available list (for example, SMPTE Drop 29.97 fps) and drag-and-drop it onto your video track in the Track List. This “burns in” a timecode window (see Fig. A). Reference the timecode numbers when spotting sounds, and then refer to your notes when editing your audio. To remove the filter, select the Track FX button on the video track and remove the plug-in.

SOUND MEETS PICTURE

Never added sound to a video before? Take these preliminary steps before you begin working your audio magic.

Meet with the director and producer to discuss their particular audio needs. On-camera dialog and even narration may already be in place, and only sound effects and music might be needed. Go through the video with your client and take notes about the soundtrack. Listen carefully to the existing soundtrack (if there is one). Ask these questions: What's missing? What's needed? Burn a timecode window and watch the video on a larger monitor, then discuss it together. Use the timecode numbers to note where certain sounds should go (see the sidebar “Burning Timecode into Your Video”).

Typically, you'll need to be concerned with one or more of the following elements:

Dialog, including replacing existing onscreen voices.

Narration, including replacing existing narration, recording new narration in sync with the picture, syncing existing narration to the picture, or providing narration up front (which the client uses to edit the video).

Sound effects, including hard effects matched specifically to screen action.

Soft effects not synced to action and general ambient sounds to complement the video.

Music, including choosing preexisting library music, editing music produced by another composer, and composing and recording your own original score.

After your initial spotting session and before you begin working, always make sure that you and your client are on the same page. Agree on all the specific sound elements for the soundtrack, including placement, feel, quality, style, instrumentation, musical genre, mix levels, and so forth. They may say “throw in some music here” — you don't want to pick rock and find out later that they meant light jazz. When a client is undecided or seems apathetic, take the initiative. Put together test sequences and get the client to sign off on them. You'll save yourself some frustration and lost time by clearing everything first.

A good video soundtrack captures viewers' attention and directs them to what's important. Soundtracks work when they present an authentic, realistic environment that supports the visual material. Establish a sense of sonic harmony by limiting yourself to a specific sound palette. Always include background ambient sounds and hard effects that synchronize with onscreen action. If essential sounds are missing, the production will seem unreal to viewers. Finally, like all audio work, your soundtrack must be balanced, clear, and distinct, with good separation among all the individual elements.

SOUND EFFECTS SOURCES

Vegas includes a CD with 1,001 sound effects and assorted music beds that you can use in your productions. Sonic Foundry also sells dozens of loops for Acid, some of which contain a variety of individual effects. Here is a list of some other useful resources for adding sounds or library music to your projects.

Firstcom Music
www.firstcom.com

The Hollywood Edge
www.hollywoodedge.com

Killer Tracks