Setting project properties

Allows you to select a preset template to automatically configure the controls in the dialog.

You may also manually change the settings and save them as a custom template for future use. To create a new template, enter a name in the text box and click the Save Template button . The new custom template name is added to the drop-down list.

To set your project properties to match the properties of an existing media file, click the Match Media Settings button and browse to the file you want to use.

Determines the frame size of your final movie when rendered. The maximum frame size for AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Windows Media, and still-image output is 2048x2048.

NOTE The maximumframe size is 4096x4096.

Determines field order of the frames when drawn on the screen. Consult your capture/video output card's documentation for the proper field order for your specific device.

• None (progressive scan): Select this option when viewing the video on a computer. This option ignores interlacing.

• Upper field first: Select this option (also called odd or field A) for video that will be viewed on a television.

• Lower field first: Select this option (also called even or field B) for DV output or if Upper field first produces jittery or shaky output.

Choose a setting from the drop-down list to change the pixel aspect ratio of your project. This setting will depend on your capture/video output card.

Computers display pixels as squares, or a ratio of 1.0. Televisions display pixels as rectangles (ratios other than 1.0).

Using the incorrect setting can result in distortion or stretching. Consult your capture/video output card's manual for the proper settings.

Selecting HDR10 or HLG in the drop-down menu will turn on all of the following settings:

1. Set Project Pixel format to "32-bit floating point (full range)" in Project Properties Dialog

2. Set appropriate View Transform ("Rec 2020 ST2084 1000 nits (ACES)" for HDR10 and "Rec 2020 HLG 1000 nits (ACES)" for HLG) in Project Properties Dialog

3. Enable "HDR Preview" in the Preferences | Preview Device dialog and the "HDR Preview" toolbar button above preview window, if suitable hardware is available. This applies to both windowed and full-screen preview

4. Set the HDR Compatible Output filter in the Render As... dialog. The presets will be filtered based on HDR mode.

5. Enable the Master Display Settings in Project Properties dialog.

6. Selecting Off will reset all of the settings to default project settings.

Choose a setting from the drop-down list to rotate your project's output. Use output rotation to edit projects for display in portrait (rather than landscape) or inverted orientation:

In this example, the video was shot with the camera tripod rotated 90 degrees. However, with the project output unrotated, the video is pillarboxed within the standard landscape frame.

After choosing 90 clockwise° from the Output rotation drop-down list, the Video Preview window is rotated, and the video fills the frame.

TIP If you want to rotate a media file's orientation, you can use the Rotation drop-down list on the Media Properties dialog.

For more information, see Creating rotated projects

Choose a setting from the drop-down list to change the frame rate of your project.

The television frame rate in the US, North and Central America, parts of South America, and Japan (NTSC) is 29.97 frames per second (fps). In many parts of the world, including Europe and much of Asia, the television standard is PAL at 25 fps. France, Russia, and most of Eastern Europe use SECAM, which is a variation on PAL and also uses 25 fps.

Choose a setting from the drop-down list to indicate whether you want to perform video processing (compositing, scaling, previewing, rendering, and most video plug-ins) using 8-bit or 32-bit, floating-point arithmetic.

• Legacy 8-bit (video levels): Performs video processing using 8-bit arithmetic and in the video (studio RGB, or 16-235) color space.

• 8-bit (full range): Performs video processing using 8-bit arithmetic and in the full range (0-255) color space. In this pixel format mode, standard video formats in limited range are converted into full range RGB space by reading color range information provided in the media files. If the media file's color range is limited or undefined, then it is automatically converted full range RGB. If the color range is full, no level conversion is performed when decoding into RGB color space. This is the default pixel format for new projects.

  For more information, see 8-bit Pixel Format in Projects.

• 32-bit floating point (video levels): Performs video processing using 32-bit arithmetic and in the video color space.

• 32-bit floating point (full range): Performs video processing using 32-bit arithmetic and in the full-range color space.

  The 32-bit floating point settings allow greater precision for processing video, but require significantly more processing power than working with 8-bit video.

When you choose 32-bit floating point (full range) from the Pixel format drop-down list, you can choose a compositing gamma value.

• 1.000 (Linear): The default setting when you choose 32-bit floating point (full range) from the Pixel format drop-down list.

• 2.222 (Video): Processing in 8-bit video is always performed using a setting of 2.222.

Choose ACES version and Color space. For more information, see S-Log and ACES workflow

Choose the reference view transform to use for the project. For more information, see Enabling color management in your VEGAS Pro project

Look modification transform (LMT) is helpful feature when working with 32 bit full range or in HDR project. LMT has two options:

None - This is default option.

Apply Blue Light Artifact Fix - Use this LMT for desaturating blue hues to reduce the artifact caused by bright blue colors (e.g. sirens, headlights, LED lighting, etc.) In 32 bit full range project or in HDR mode, you can choose "Apply Blue Light Artifact Fix", if the video preview shows any blue light artifact due to clipping caused by bright blue colors. In an 8 bit project or 32 bit Video level project or when view transform is off, LMT will be disabled.

Choose a setting from the drop-down list to set the quality of the rendered video.

Unless you have specific performance problems, choose Good. Choosing Best can dramatically increase rendering times.

Good uses bilinear scaling without integration, while Best uses bicubic scaling with integration. If you're using high-resolution stills (or video) that will be scaled down to the final output size, choosing Best can prevent artifacts.

TIP Some file formats allow you to associate a video rendering quality setting with a custom rendering template. Final rendering template settings override the Full-resolution rendering quality setting in the Project Properties dialog. For more information, see Custom rendering templates

Choose a setting from the drop-down list to choose the curve that is used to blur frames when you add a motion blur envelope to the video bus track. For more information, see Video bus track

Motion blurring creates the illusion of motion on individual frames (much like using a long exposure time) and can make computer-generated animation appear more smooth and natural.

• Gaussian: Gives more weight to the central frame in the blur and less weight to the outer frames. A bell-shaped curve is used between the central and outer frames. Gaussian blur is the best choice in most situations where blurring is required.

• Pyramid: Gives more weight to the central frame in the blur and the least weight to the outer frames. A linear slope is used between the central and outer frames.

• Box: Uses an equal weighting for all frames, essentially averaging the frames in the blur.

The Gaussian (asymmetric), Pyramid (asymmetric), and Box (asymmetric) settings use only the left half of each curve, from the central frame back. Asymmetric settings create a hard leading edge with a trailing blur behind the moving object.

Choose a setting from this drop-down list to determine the method used to render effects and deinterlace the two fields that make up a frame.

• None: Performs no deinterlacing.

• Blend fields: Uses contents from both fields and works well for high-detail, low-motion video.

• Interpolate: Uses a single field at a time and works well for high-motion, low-detail video.

• Smart adaptive (GPU only): An advanced deinterlacing method that you can use when upscaling video for 4K/Ultra HD output.

  This setting is for use with interlaced clips up to 2048x1080. For more information, see Upscaling video for 4K/Ultra HD

TIP No deinterlacing occurs in the Draft and Preview video preview modes. The Good and Best modes apply the selected deinterlacing method.

Choose a setting from the drop-down list to determine how video frames will be resampled when the frame rate of a media file is lower than the project’s frame rate. This can occur either when the event has a velocity envelope or when the frame rate of the original media is different than the Frame rate setting on the Video tab of the Project Properties dialog.

With resampling, the intervening frames are interpolated from the source frames, much like a crossfade effect between the original frames. This may solve some interlacing problems and other jittery output problems.

You have three options to set the default resampling option as a project property:

TIP You can override the project Resample mode setting for each event using the event switches. For more information, see Applying switches to events

Select this checkbox if you want VEGAS Pro to scale images or adjust interlacing to allow media files to work better with your project.

This setting will correct for the following types of inconsistencies:

• DV media will be cropped for 320x240 Internet renders to prevent letterboxing.

• DV widescreen media will be cropped in HD projects.

• HD media will be cropped in DV widescreen projects.

• 486-line media will be cropped in 480-line projects.

• 480-line media will be padded in 486-line projects.

When the checkbox is cleared, source media files are processed with their native settings.

Prerendered video files are saved to this folder so that you don't need to rerender the project every time you view it. For more information, see Selectively prerender video

If you want to change the location of the folder, click the Browse button and choose a location. Ideally, this location should be on a different hard drive than the one where your operating system is installed.

IMPORTANT Prerendered files can consume significant drive space. Select a folder on an a/v-capable drive with ample free space: DV requires approximately 228 MB per minute.

Choose Stereo from the drop-down list to create a two-channel stereo project.

Choose 5.1 Surround if you want to perform advanced 5.1-channel mixing. For more information, see 5.1 surround projects

Enter the number of stereo busses for the project. For more information, see Adding audio busses

Choose a sample rate from the drop-down list or enter a value in the edit box.

Select a setting from the drop-down list to specify the number of bits used to store each sample. Higher values will increase the quality of playback and any recordings that you make.

Choose a setting from the drop-down list to determine the accuracy with which audio files will be resampled to match your project settings.

The Resample and stretch quality setting also determines the quality of processing when time-stretching audio events. For more information, see Editing event properties

Select this checkbox if you want to apply a low-pass filter to each track in a 5.1 surround project that is assigned to the LFE channel. For more information, see 5.1 surround panning and mixing

Applying a low-pass filter approximates the bass-management system in a 5.1 decoder and ensures that you're sending only low-frequency audio to the LFE channel.

IMPORTANT Before rendering your surround project, check your surround authoring application's documentation to determine its required audio format. Some encoders require a specific cutoff frequency and rolloff, and your encoder may require that no filter be applied before encoding.

Choose a frequency from the drop-down list or type a frequency in the box to set the frequency above which audio will be ignored by the LFE channel.

Choose a setting from the drop-down list to determine the sharpness of filter's rolloff curve. Best produces the sharpest curve.

When you record audio tracks, your recorded files are saved in a single folder.

If you want to change the location of the folder, click the Browse button and choose a location. Ideally, this location should be on a different hard drive than the one where your operating system is installed.

TIP If you have not specified a location, you will be prompted for the location where you want to save your recorded audio when you click the Arm for Record button in the track header:

Choose a setting from the drop-down list to choose how you want the Time Ruler to be displayed. You can change the format at any time after project creation.

For more information about each time format, see Time ruler

Enter the desired starting time for the project.

For example, the ruler can be offset to start at 1 hour for timecode synchronization purposes.

Enter your project tempo in Beats Per Minute.

This tempo is used to determine the scale of the ruler (if you choose Measures & Beats from the Ruler time format drop-down list) and to specify the tempo used by the metronome.

Select the Import at project tempo checkbox on the Audio tab of the Preferences dialog if you want ACID loops to be stretched to match the project tempo when you add them to the timeline or preview from the Explorer window. Clear the Import at project tempo checkbox if you want to ignore tempo information.

Specify the number of beats in each measure.

This tempo is used to determine the scale of the ruler (if you choose Measures & Beats from the Ruler time format drop-down list) and to specify the tempo used by the metronome.

Universal Product Codes (UPC) or Media Catalog Numbers (MCN) can be written to a CD as a means of identification. However, not all CD-R drives support this feature. Check your CD-R drive documentation to determine if your drive will write these codes.

Enter the code in this box, and the codes will be written to the CD along with the rest of the project.

Universal product codes are administered by GS1 US: http://www.gs1us.org/.