And More: How To Stop Ghosting or Blurring in Sony Vegas Video Rendering (Tutorial with Example Video and Screenshots)

 [Update 1: Added still frame examples of the difference, to help those who perhaps could not easily see the difference in the video or in their own renders, from the recorded video/output, found at **]
[Update 2 (2016-12): Updated some Screenshots and added additional example Screenshots of what the various Menus and Properties windows look like (to Vegas Movie Studio 13, the version I currently own at the time of this Update)]

As part of the 'And More' of this blog, I would like to present a Tip that will help everyone asking about and experiencing the 'blurry/ghost-y' effect that appears when rendering a video that they have created in the Sony Vegas line of products. An example of this blurring or ghosting is shown in this short video:

Recorded with:  Bandicam @ 1080p, Quality 70%  
Recorded Game: Left 4 Dead 2 @ 1080p, Dark Carnival Level
Recording Output: Rendered with Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum Edition, Sony AVC codec @ 1080p, 15Mbps data rate for smaller upload size


The first 10 seconds is the 'Smart Resample' setting that is on By Default in Sony's Vegas product line (Movie Studio, Movie Studio Platinum, Vegas Pro). The second portion is the same recording but with the 'Disable Resample' setting. Even with some quality loss from YouTube, the difference between the first "blurry" output that many have experienced - and the second crisper, clearer version without it can hopefully be seen... So then, how to fix it?


The simplest way is to right click on the video event (video clip) and open the Properties of the event/video. The pop-up menu that should show up when right-clicking on an event/video is seen here (shown from Vegas Movie Studio 13):

Then in the 'Properties' window, simply click on the radio button choice that indicates "Disable resample", as seen here (example Event Properties window shown from Vegas Movie Studio 13):

That's it!

Now, with any further work you do with the video, you won't have to worry about the 'ghosting' effect happening to you in the end render output. I suggest doing this at the beginning of your project and as you add new video clips, that way it is done for the entire clip, even if you split it up into parts.





**Below are two examples, one showing the "ghosting" or "blurring" effect in more detail (for those that could not quite tell the difference in the video example), shown as frames extracted from the video itself:

Example frame from video showing the "ghosty" or "blurry" effect that can occur with Resampling Enabled in the Sony Vegas Video Rendering Options (Smart Resample ENABLED).

Example frame from video showing the absence of the effect/problem that can occur with Resampling here being Disabled in the Sony Vegas Video Rendering Options (Smart Resample DISABLED).

Behind-The-Scenes: Additional Info About The Above Thingamajig And Related Doohickeys

While the above steps solve the problem, I would like to go into more detail as to why this is occurring. I see this question a lot in forums, particularly ones about gaming and video editing, and would like to clear up more of what is going on.

Many people blame Vegas and say that the resampling (which is essentially a re-structuring/blending device to correct for framerate, interlacing, etc.) is not working properly. Although Sony's method could use a little work, the program portion of it 'detecting' and 'kicking in' is actually working as intended...

One of the reasons why this ghosting or blurring occurs, is that the project framerate (what Vegas 'assumes' you are going to be rendering to) differs from the recorded source (that source being your gaming video, recorded with Fraps, Dxtory, Bandicam, etc - whatever you prefer to record with).

One way to check what the output goal that Vegas has set in mind is: open up the Project Properties by going to the Project pull-down menu and select Properties. That pull-down menu looks like this (shown in Vegas Movie Studio 13):

You can also open up the Project Properties by clicking on the button/icon that looks like 'a grey box with an arrow in it', found in the top toolbar and also is found just above the main video preview window area. The button to click on looks like this (shown in Vegas Movie Studio 13):

In the Pro versions of Vegas, the pull-down menu will not be called PROJECT, it will be called FILE (but it will still be the first menu in the Toolbar). The small button that can also be clicked on, will still be located in the same place, just above the Preview Window area, as shown above.

Here is an example of what the Project Properties window will look like (shown from Vegas Movie Studio 13):

The main thing to check in the Project Properties, is the Frame rate (shown pulled-down and highlighted in the screenshot above).

Vegas' resampling capability will kick-in even if the frame rate is off by a small amount, such as if you are using a recording that is 30 frames-per-second, but being edited with a Vegas project setting/output format that is 29.97 fps (which is most standard DVD/BluRay/Render Presets that Vegas may pre-load).

Whatever frame rate you are recording at (30fps, 60fps, etc.), double-check the Project settings to see if it is the same as your recording. If it isn't, Vegas will try to restructure the video and blend the differences, resulting in that 'blurry', 'ghosty' output that many are familiar with.

[To be fair, Vegas is attempting to help/compensate for the framerate differences of possible recording devices (cameras,etc), and in live-action[real-life] recordings, it does help in a way; but in videogame recordings that are already crisp and clear, this process is not needed and results in this ghosty/blurry 'problem' for gameplay recorders/editors]

There are actually three places in Sony Vegas that keep track of the frame rate:

1) In the Project Properties (eg. pulldown the PROJECT menu in the toolbar and choose PROPERTIES (FILE menu in Pro versions of Vegas))

2) Shown In Each Event/VideoClip (eg. Right-Click each of your clips on the Timeline and click PROPERTIES)

3) In The Render Options (eg. RenderAs and see it in the CUSTOMIZE TEMPLATE settings (CUSTOM button in Pro versions of Vegas))

If just Disabling Resampling [via the event on the timeline] is not working, try to see if all of these three locations match the framerate of your recorded video clips.



Alternatively, you could try to change only the framerate in the final Output Format rendering settings to match your source recording(s) framerate (location is shown highlighted below in an example Settings window from Vegas Movie Studio 13):

Looking at the Frame Rate (shown highlighted, near center of window) in a Template of High Quality Render Settings (shown from Vegas Movie Studio 13). Feel free to use these Settings in your Projects!

By doing this one adjustment at the very end of your editing process (just as you finish up and start the Render) - as long as you are sure that all of your source clips involved have the same framerate and you are going to do your final render out to that very same framerate - then you can try to change this one setting at the end and see if it works as well (you may still have go back and change all three locations if it does not).

Note that although the Setting for "Frame Rate" may only allow you to go up to "59.94fps" (even if you type it in); don't worry, that framerate is still seen by YouTube [if you are using YouTube to share your videos] as "60fps". I did a short Vegas render and Upload to YouTube to test it out [kept Private, done just for this test] and below is what it looks like at YouTube after Uploading:

As you can see, even though Vegas had "59.94 fps" in the Frame Rate box/area, it is a Standard Framerate and accepted as "1080p60HD" at YouTube.

Whichever way you go about it, hopefully checking these few things will help you create clearer, crisper game recording videos.

Have fun with it and See You In The Game!

GTAM Minute Tutorial - Editing Textures (Repairing A Deleted Branch In Leaves) with The GIMP

Playing around with editing textures for Minecraft (Tutorials on how to do that Coming Soon!) something happened that I think others would run into - it was a pretty minor/specific thing, but I'd like to share what I did and how I fixed it, just in case anyone ever runs into this little problem.

The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program, changed from General Image Manipulation Program) is a free editing application that is quite capable to stand up against most of the functions of Adobe's Photoshop and similar programs. Using it to edit the general Leaf texture portions of Minecraft's texture source, I accidentally selected and deleted a section of branch. Wanting to change the colour anyway, I replaced it but then thought that this might be something that could happen to other people, especially those new to graphic editing. I wanted to erase it again and record what I had done to repair the poor deleted branch and share it.

Perhaps for you it was deleted and then the file was saved, or perhaps you didn't notice it until a later step, where it was then inaccessible as a layer or similar problem. No matter what the situation, if anyone happens to run into this specific minor misfortune or even similar, it has spawned what will now become the first in a new series of videos I'd like to start, called Game Tips And More Minute Tutorials.

GTAM Minute Tutorials will be very short (60 seconds or less!) instructions showing how to do something very specific. I don't mean completing a quest or mission, I mean one thing, or at least a small number of steps, that complete one specific task. It may be editing or troubleshooting (the "And More" portion of this blog's namesake) or it may be how to jump high or shoot something in a specific game. Whatever it may be, in this time of short attention spans (who doesn't get crabby when the computer takes more than a second to do what you just told it?), all the tutorials/walkthroughs will be less than one minute. Really. Guaranteed! Not really.

In this tutorial, I show how to easily replace a deleted branch in a photo of leaves. That is something pretty specific; but the concepts presented, such as shading, blending and some general GIMP usage can be applied to many other situations and projects as well:

It is played back at 4x speed and states the steps being taken and basic concepts behind them. Being very specific in nature, not a lot of extra information is given, but this video is targeted towards people already editing [Minecraft textures for instance] and familiar with programs and games such as GIMP and Minecraft.
(I would like to do a full tutorial on how to extract, edit, import and save your own textures for use in Minecraft in the future)

Recorded with: Bandicam
- 'Rectangle On A Screen', 'For Edit Premiere/Sony Vegas' Preset
- 1280x720 (720p HD), 60fps, no Audio
- compressed to 720p, 30fps, 10Mbps, h.264/AVC for smaller upload size


Check back for more Game Tips And More Minute Tutorials in the future and See you in the games!

Plants vs Zombies - How To Get Unlimited Sun (Or Any Amount You Want) with Cheat Engine - Tutorial (Video Removed, Steps Below)

Note: While the utility used herein and the steps below are still valid, for some reason, YouTube has decided to remove the video tutorial (2015-10), despite there still being similar videos still on YouTube.  

This is currently under investigation.

Who doesn't love Plants vs Zombies? The simple and easy to learn gameplay, the catchy full-of-character music, the simple yet pleasing graphics. With fun levels and achievements and mini-games to boot, it was destined to be a classic.

Screenshot of the game, showing the variety of units and usage of the Unlimited Sun cheat, described herein.
Click to see Full Size

This past Christmas, Santa saw fit to put PvZ in my stocking and after completing the adventure levels and mini-games I wanted more. I wanted the feeling of wind rushing through my hair and hot sand under my feet while I sipped a drink out of a coconut. That's what you get when you use Cheat Engine: 'Anything You Want' (in a game)...

The Cheat Engine (by Dark Byte and many other contributors) and similar utilities have been around for a while and if you play games and program you probably tried one in the past. The basic way a utility like this works is:

• Tell the program to look for a value in the game, let's say 25 Gold as an example.
• Buy something and now let's say you have 23 Gold. 
• Tell the program to now look for all those 25's that have turned to 23 and it will find one or more "23"s.
• Tell the program to change that 'new' 23 to 2500. 
• In the game, you now have 2500 Gold. 
• Sip coconut drink.

Programs like this are great because it's not limited to just 'gold'. It can work for almost any value in a game, such as ammunition for your gun, health, minerals, food, anything. It works on most games, even ones that don't have built-in cheats or have limitations like achievement-disabling (such as Starcraft2). It will work on these games and allow you to pretend to be an "Elite Haxor", Kobayashi Maru-ing your way through games [yes I use that as a verb] and getting achievements in games that wouldn't normally allow them after using cheat codes (such as Starcraft2 and others).

There are really only two things that would get in your way once you know how to do it. One is, some games have not just one 'spot' that has an amount you want to change, like Gold in our example, they will have multiple 'spots' that will hold the value you want to change. Usually you can just change all 6 or however many come up, but sometimes a game developer is 'tricky' and will use an algorithm instead - some formula that the game goes through to calculate how much you 'have' of something. When this happens, you will not find any results when looking for, in our example, "25" Gold. The other thing that can happen is that the values are not 'kept' on your system, but are only on the server that you are playing on ("Server Side"). This happens with most Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs). In this case, you may not be able to 'inject' the value that you want for something (like Gold).

Note: In most Online games, especially MMOs where you play with/against other people, I do not suggest utilizing the "cheat utility" described in this article, as may present an unfair situation to others. I do not condone nor support "cheating" when the game is not a Single Player game (where it is done 'just for fun' and not affecting anyone else).

In Plants vs. Zombies however, it works great, and after 'finishing' the game, I used it to give myself the freedom of Unlimited Sun and a bunch of Money, so that I could buy more plants and grow The Tree Of Wisdom and finish up some Achievements I had missed as well. The Unlimited Sun was a lot of fun, cleaning up harder levels and it allowed me to try new setups and tactics.

And so, [although it would have probably been more helpful a few years ago lol] here is our Tutorial video on How To Get Unlimited Sun (Or Any Amount You Want) with Cheat Engine:

*** VIDEO REMOVED BY YOUTUBE FOR UNKNOWN REASONS OCT.2015

CURRENTLY UNDER INVESTIGATION

(Update just below)

*** VIDEO REMOVED BY YOUTUBE FOR UNKNOWN REASONS OCT.2015
CURRENTLY UNDER INVESTIGATION

(Update 2015-12:  It appears that YouTube is taking movements towards "possibly deceptive" or "harmful"-type Videos and Information. It was suggested that the use of Tags such as 'Hack' or even 'Cheat' and similar terms, was the trigger for this removal. 
I will follow this up further and see if this is fully the case. I do not want to post something that YouTube finds Questionable, but I also wish to help gamers enjoy 'Cheats' or other additions to games, to their fullest extent ('doing whatever you want' in a video entertainment vein). Once I find a compromise between these two goals, I may update this video above. Until then, please use the Steps below to carry out this 'Cheat', if you desire.)

Here's a breakdown of the steps shown in the video:

• Start a level in the game
• Start Cheat Engine
• After the level begins, pause the game and open the PlantsVsZombies process (.exe) in Cheat Engine by clicking the first button and choosing "popcapgame1.exe" and click Open
• Enter the amount of Sun to look for (present value, 50)
• (Optional, may need to be different for different games - set the Scan Type for "Exact Value" and set the Value Type for "4 Bytes")
• Hit the First Scan button to begin scanning the game in memory for the value (50), multiple results are shown
• Go back to the game and change the amount of sun (shown in the video as clicking on a dropping sun for +25 additional sun, making the sun amount now 75)
• Pause the game and go back to Cheat Engine and change the Value from 50 (what it was) to 75 (what it is now) and hit the Next Scan button
• One value results, which was the only thing to change from the old value (50) to the new value (75)
• Click on the one result (75) anywhere on the line of the result and click the Red Arrow button to move it to the bottom area where we can work with it
• Right-click the Value (75) and in the submenu select "Change Record" and click "Value"
• Enter a new value (750 in the video)
• (Optional, put a checkmark in the "Frozen" box, if you want the value to be 'locked' and never change (if possible))
• Go back to the game and plant and use sun, it should stay 'locked' at 750 (if using the amount shown in the video)
  

If it isn't working for you, let us know and we'll help you out!

Note that in the video, we showed how to do everything side-by-side (so you could see what was happening and how to do it easily). It does not have to be set up in this way in order to use Cheat Engine, you can ALT+TAB out of a game and still do this with some value you want to set/lock in a game running in the background.

Have fun and see you in there!


[Personal Story: I remember playing a game quite a number of years ago that had the same concept as PvsZ. You were to 'defend a gate' by placing little turrets that shot dots at invading triangles and squares and depending on the placement of the turrets you chose (some shot missiles that did area-of-effect damage, etc) if too many invaders got by, you lost. I'm not saying that PvsZ ripped that game off (there were a lot of that type of game and since then) who knows, maybe the developers are the same ones that made that game that I enjoyed so many years ago...] 

Plants vs Zombies game material is Copyright PopCap Games, All Rights Reserved. 

This "How To" video is for educational purposes only and is covered by Fair Use. No infringement on the Plants vs Zombies Trademark is implied or intended and cannot be inferred.
The author of this article and this blog and any affiliates, throughout all chains of degrees, do not condone nor endorse "cheating" in any games that are not Single Player games. "'Cheating' should only be done in Single Player games, where it cannot possibly present an unfair situation or negatively affect others in any way" - that is the Official View of this blog, in perpetuity.
The video above and the steps described herein are not to be taken as a substitute for medical attention.