[Vegas] "glow" (from s_glow plugin) looks weird when rendered

[rocco123]

I use s_slow to create sort of energy balls with a nice blue glow, and the center is supposed to be white, but when I render it, it looks off. These are my settings:



32bit full range linear setting is the one that makes my source material looks best when rendered...

And now here is the glow issue with different settings. Snapshot means I used the "Save Snapshot to File..." icon which saves the frame and looks exactly as it does in Vegas, to compare it with the rendered frame.

32bit full range (linear)- snapshot (this is how it should look like when rendered)



32bit full range (linear) - render



32bit full range (video) - snapshot



32bit full range (video) - render



32bit (video levels) - snapshot



32bit (video levels) - render



8bit - snapshot



8bit - render



That's all. As you see, when rendered, the white center is lost and it looks like a washed out blue. Also 32bit full range linear has the glow exactly I would like before rendering, notice that the glow is bigger, and part of this glow is lost when rendered.


My source material details:

ID : 1
Format : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile : Simple@L1
Format settings, BVOP : No
Format settings, QPel : No
Format settings, GMC : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix : Default (H.263)
Codec ID : mp4v-20
Duration : 10 s 34 ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 8 737 kb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 30.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.140
Stream size : 10.5 MiB (100%)
Writing library : Lavc57.89.100

[poisondeathray]

It looks like it's not handling the 32bit linear => 8bit YUV (Rec709) transfer and conversion correctly

Did you try disabling GPU acceleration ? (not just in the export settings, also in the options)

What happens when you export an RGB format, like BMP (not take snapshot, I mean render as)

What is s_glow ? is it 3rd party borisfx/sapphire plugin or something else ?

[rocco123]

It looks like it's not handling the 32bit linear => 8bit YUV (Rec709) transfer and conversion correctly

Did you try disabling GPU acceleration ? (not just in the export settings, also in the options)

Yes, I disabled GPU accel in the export settings, and i just tested again by disabling it in options->preferences->video if that's what you meant, same thing happens, the ball is blue ish inside.

What happens when you export an RGB format, like BMP (not take snapshot, I mean render as)

I exported it, the ball looks white inside, but overall picture looks darker, like with a lot of contrast. Default color space option on render settings.

What is s_glow ? is it 3rd party borisfx/sapphire plugin or something else ?

Yes, the sapphire pack.

[poisondeathray]

I don't know.

I use vegas 13. I don't have that plugin pack for vegas (I have it for AE). But my experience is every version of vegas has had messed up linear workflow compared to other programs. It just doesn't do the linear transfer (to and from) conversions correctly, even from linear assets. Maybe it's fixed since Magix took over, I don' t know . It's one of vegas' weaknesses IMO, it's basically unusable for certain types of work that require linear compositing

You might be able to salvage it if it exports a 32bit linear format correctly, like EXR . Then use another program to do the linear conversion with sRGB gamma and back to YUV.

You can contact borisfx / sapphire for support, maybe they have a known workaround or fix

[rocco123]

I don't know.

I use vegas 13. I don't have that plugin pack for vegas (I have it for AE). But my experience is every version of vegas has had messed up linear workflow compared to other programs. It just doesn't do the linear transfer (to and from) conversions correctly, even from linear assets. Maybe it's fixed since Magix took over, I don' t know . It's one of vegas' weaknesses IMO, it's basically unusable for certain types of work that require linear compositing

You might be able to salvage it if it exports a 32bit linear format correctly, like EXR . Then use another program to do the linear conversion with sRGB gamma and back to YUV.

You can contact borisfx / sapphire for support, maybe they have a known workaround or fix

Indeed. Achieving image consistente in Vegas seems like an exercise on insanity. Im testing "glint disolve" instead of "glow" to try to achieve a similar effect, i'll see if I can get it exactly how I want to.