Replacing material while keeping old cuts and effects

[gaggia]

I went through the entire process of capturing, editing, and authoring video with VideoStudio Pro X2 only to realize that the first half of my hour-long project was captured with the wrong aspect ratio. The aspect ratio of the footage is 16:9, whereas the capture settings were set for 4:3. The discrepancy causes flickering and other unwanted effects to the video, but I'm not compelled to redo the entire business with all the cuts and effects that I so carefully worked on. Is there a way to recapture the footage off the DV tape, this time with the correct aspect ratio, and to import it to the project so that it would replace the respective, pre-existing while keeping all the editing decisions of the old footage intact?

Thanks a million for any help!

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

If you have Mini DV tape then you should capture via Firewire to the DV format.
This transfers the footage to the pc as DV-Avi. There are no capture properties to set except DV Type 1.
There is no re-coding what you have is what you get. The aspect ratio would have been correct.

How did you capture the video?
Can you provide the video files properties?

It is possible to re-link one video file to another and keep the same editings, but its not easy.
You have to
1 / Capture
2 / Recode the new video to match the old.
3 / Re-link to the original project.


If you were to capture the footage again, you would have to ensure that the first frame is the same as the original. This is best done after capture.

Capture your video using firewire to DV format.
It may be best to capture the video a little longer than the original, a few seconds will do.

Start a new project, add the original video to the overlay track, add the new video to the top track. Re-position the top video to bring into line, cutting only the new video, keep the original intact. Getting them in Sync’ is probably the hard part.
When both videos are in line in sync’, remove the old video.
Render the project to ‘same as first video’
The new video file should have the first frame as the original.

Using Windows Explorer, re-name the original video file.
Opening your project will generate a Re-Link request. (because you renamed the file and VS cannot find it)
Re-link to the new video file.

Don’t know if I have explained that correctly, so if you understand your doing well.

[gaggia]

Thanks for your reply, Trevor. The original footage was indeed captured via firewire, but instead of the DV format I used MPEG-2 with the PAL DVD formatting.
The file attributes indicate the first half of the project with the wrong aspect ratio to have resolution 352x288 at 25 fps, and the second half with the correct
aspect ratio as 720x576 at 25 fps. This being the case, should I capture the to-be-replaced first half of the project directly as MPEG-2 with the 16:9 PAL DVD profile?

Thank you!

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

Your best option is to capture to DV as this transfers / copies the data to the pc with no re-coding. (its 13Gb per hour)
You can use the DVD option but X2 does not give us much choice, just a list of templates.
Any manual settings being replaced with templates.

The Mpeg option does have an Advanced button allowing us to manually set the properties.

I’ve just viewed my capture options and X2 appears to be acting up, it now reverts to NTSC when I’m defiantly Pal. Very strange...it worked yesterday………

[gaggia]

If I re-capture the first half of my project as dv and follow your instructions, can I keep the second half of the project (which, I stress, is perfectly fine in terms of aspect ratio) intact? In other words, will the program allow me to have video material of two encoding types (dv of new first half and mpeg of old second half) in the same project?

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

Yes, you can mix Dv-Avi and Mpeg in the same project.

But if you wish to stay with the DVD-Mpeg capture option then do so.

I would advise you to make a copy of the project .VSP before you start. At least you can always go back to the beginning.

When you have completed the editing you should create a new video file using Share Create Video File.
Use the properties of the mpeg file as your render properties.
You may be best to use the Make Movie manager to create a template of the Mpeg properties.

[gaggia]

I got a chance to work on the video a bit, and here's where I've come to:
I placed the original video on the overlay track and the newly captured video on the top track. Then, I edited the new video
on the top track to start at the exact same point as the original video starts from, i.e. they have the same first frames now.

What's my next step? The new video is obviously much longer than the original because it lacks all the edits. Should I now go
ahead and delete the first part of the original video with the wrong aspect ratio and leave the ok part on the overlay track?

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

The original video is placed in the overlay track at the beginning (important-at the beginning)
By original video I mean the original captured video prior to editing.

The new captured video is placed in the top track.
Edit the top track adding or removing frames from its start to synchronise the two videos.
Remove the video from the overlay track.
Share Create Video file—Same as First Video will create a new video file.

Using Windows Explorer re-name the original captured video file. Add a suffix to the name.
Opening your project should generate a Re-Link option.
Re-Link to the new rendered video file.

Your project should now be using the new video with all the editings that you have applied.

[gaggia]

Hello Trevor,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I had troubles synchronizing the new video because the camera would skip the first
seconds in the recorded file, so I captured it as DV-AVI on a friend's computer with Premiere.

I've now got the videos synchronized in a new project so I deleted the old video from the overlay track and I'm about to do the
rendering. I'm a bit confused what options I should choose -- hopefully you can clear this up for me. The original video was of
mpg format at 352x288, 4:3, at 25fps and 3000 kbs VBR. Should I re-encode the DV-AVI to those parameters, except for the
resolution and aspect ratio, or can I choose a higher bitrate too? I hope you'll still be able to help me on this! Thanks in advance!

[gaggia]

Here's a quick update:

I went ahead and rendered it with the pal dvd presets. Upon the relinking process, however,
I'm getting an error specifying that the relinked video should be longer than 01:02:46:14.
When I check the properties of the video I'm trying to get it to relink to, I see that the new
video is indeed 01:02:46 long -- there must be a discrepancy of some milliseconds because of
the way the tape was captured. Can I get around this problem?

[Black Lab]

Just answer "no" when it asks to relink, then put your new clip in place of the old.

[gaggia]

How do I move in the new video while preserving the cuts and edits of the old, unlinked one?

[Black Lab]

Re-reading the entire thread I see that you want to replace a clip with the newly captured one (in the correct aspect ratio) while keeping the edits you have already done to the original clip. I don't know if that is possible.

What you might want to try is trimming the new clip so it is exactly the same length as the original. You would also have to rename the new clip the same as the original, because VS is looking for a clip of a certain name and certain length when it relinks.

[gaggia]

Yep, you got it, that's what I'm trying to do here. Changing the name to mach the original didn't stop that error message
from coming up. I double-checked the lengths of the original and the new footage: the original is exactly 1 millisecond
longer.

So here's what I did: I loaded the new footage onto an empty timeline in a new project, separated a small bit of the footage
at the end that I knew wasn't in use in the original project anyway, right-clicked that clip and selected playback speed,
and set the length of the clip to be 1 millisecond longer. This way I didn't have to alter the speed of the whole business and
potentially compromise render quality. I then rendered the entire timeline with the pal mpg 16:9 template, which produced
a video file one millisecond longer than what I had before. Then, I relinked the files and -- voilà, it worked. So far, it seems
like the video was replaced exactly in the original project. I'll keep you updated if there are some unforeseen problems. Thanks
a lot for both of your help, I owe you a lot!

[Ken Berry]

Just be aware that talking in terms of milliseconds is really meaningless. That measurement of duration you gave have four sets of digits. The first three are, yes, hours, minutes and seconds. But the final one is not milliseconds but frames. So in effect it was 14 frames, and that is a bit over half a second if you are using PAL (25 frames per second) or a bit under half a second if you are using NTSC (29.97 frames per second).

That probably doesn't affect the way you have done things, but I just wanted to explain to avoid any confusion...