Vegas Video discussions from 2004 (Q1Q2)

[Glen Elliott]

How do I do that if the file it's looking for no longer exists?

[Mike Moncrief]

Hello,
You can use Pan and Scan, where you could take a large diagram and pan the camera across it, zoom in on it etc... Kind of like the moves you see in a Ken Burns Documentary

Mike

[Jim Lafferty]

Also, I never get tired of offering this advice: defrag often.

Get O&O Defrag and set your machine up to defrag once a month at least.

Having a virus scanner can't hurt either -- there's plenty of things that a virus can do to screw with Vegas's workflow/feel.

Incidentally, in the short time I had the Vegas 5 demo working, it felt "snappier" to me. Hmmm.

[Edward Troxel]

Either make it exist again or replace it with something else. Basically, it's warning you - every time you open the file - that if you print it to tape, something is NOT going to work correctly. You can ignore it for now but you DO need to do something about before any rendering.

[Glenn Chan]

Some virus scanners like Norton seem to slow your computer down considerably. It's worse than a virus IMO ;)

I don't use any virus scanning myself though. Here's what I'd do though:
Get a hardware router for its built-in firewall. That would have protected you quite well from worms and hacker attempts as long as you aren't running MS's web server software. Or use free software like Zone Alarm or XP's built-in firewire.

As far as email attachments go, know how to spot them (actually had 1 accident, which I fixed very quickly) or scan attachments (update definitions *before* you scan). Don't let your antivirus software do anything else (slows down computer).

Or use another computer for email.

It also helps to keep your mailbox spam-free. Some viruses mine the victim's computer for email addresses, so if you email was in some posting to a newsgroup of whatever then you'll get a nice email sent your way.

[Glen Elliott]

Can this be fixed by simply purging my media pool? Especially beings the file(s) aren't missing on my timeline?...

[Edward Troxel]

Yes. Delete them from the Media Pool and all will be fine.

[Edward Troxel]

Or use another computer for email.

I use this option. My editing machines NEVER see internet access.

[Glen Elliott]

Thanks again Edward.

[Jim Lafferty]

True, it costs about as little as $500 for an email only machine, but some of us don't have even that luxury given other financial needs. I, for one, am moving shortly, so every penny counts.

For those on a single machine -- for networking and for editing -- I'd recommend Tiny Personal Firewall and F-Secure's Antivirus 2004.

They're $50 and $30, respectively (I think -- haven't purchased F-Secure yet -- just running the free trial demo...), and combined make for a comprehensive defence against virii and hackers.

Tiny doesn't slow my machine down at all -- save for the initial steps of registering apps with it -- and F-Secure has adjustable "awareness" settings, so I only use it to scan incoming emails and run a full scan once weekly (while I'm away from the machine sleeping.)

Once caveate with Tiny is that its dev team isn't too involved with the community of users and rarely looks in on the forums. I recently had an issue with Tiny and it took quite a bit of work on my end to do their trouble-shooting for them :/ However, as software firewalls go, none are as secure as Tiny -- that is worth the price of troubleshooting IMO.

- jim

[Jim Lafferty]

Also...as a general response to the topic, I can't say enough: make sure your machine is well powered (a good Antec power supply and a UPS), well cooled, and sealed tightly/has filters to remain dust free.

These solutions alone cure more problems than just about anything else around.

- jim

[Justin Ross]

Hi this is my first post here after lurking a long time.

Once you've decided on your basic hardware, think about how to set stuff up.

Here's my approach:

2.8 p4 on a decent mobo (your choice). 1gb ram. A decent seperate sound and video cards. lots of storage.

I have two hard drives with 280GB of storage.

On drive 1, using the XP installers setup options, 4 partitions.

1) XP Install 1 - This is my general use system. I run a firewall and antivirus because it's where I do most of my active networking. 10GB parittion.

2) XP Install 2 - This is a system that I treat with more respect. I only install necessary system patching. I boot into this for real work.

3) XP1's installing partition: A 45GB partition to hold all the programs and junk I want to play with: games, new programs, stuff I download off the internet, beta stuff. Also a copy of the video and music apps I use most. This system has firewalls and antivirus. *this system is simply for basic office work, light media usage, enough to do initial messing around*

4) this partition is only for apps I want to do real work with: cubase, Vegas etc etc.

partitions 3 & 4 are more mental partitions for my own sake.

This lets me have two choices at boot. media and normal use.

I tune the media system to my likings. Turn off everything I can think of and disable networking (it eats cycles like you wouldnt believe). I do have networking available to me on this system, but by default I keep it disabled. I am also limit my websurfing and downloading when using this partition (to avoid spyware, trojans and other questionable things that can download and mess up stuff).

The second 160GB disk is my scratch disk and is defragged whenever I remember to do it (about once every two weeks.)

I've found this lets me have a very stable system to work in for long periods of time without worrying about general clutter that you accumulate on any system over a long period of time.

If partitioning your drives scares you you can always disable your networking during periods you're working and reactivate it later (just right-click on the network connecting thingy and choose 'disable').

I have found that disabling networking itself allows me a lot more overhead when working with multi-track audio (I can add another 4 or 5 tracks without a quality hit).

To conclude, you dont need a second computer to have multiple systems, just an idea of how to do partitioning and editing the NT bootloader (use google for this info).

[Allen Nash]

Since Vegas 5.0 incorporates ACID-style loops and editing, is there still a point to using ACID? Or can everything now be done efficiently from Vegas?

[Tim Le]

Hi,

I have a question about pausing the last frame of a clip and then applying a crossfade to black over it. My problem is I have a clip that starts with a pan and then stops with a lock off on another subject. I want this lock off to fade to black, but the lock off isn't long enough for the pacing that I want. So I want to extend the last frame a few seconds longer and I know of one way to do that and that is to take a snapshot of the last frame from the preview window then paste it to the timeline. But the snapshot is considered a separate clip from the other clip and I can't get the crossfade to black to apply gradually over the first and second clip.

Does anyone know how to get the crossfade to do that? Or is there some other way of pausing the last frame of the original clip over a period of time?

Thank you in advance.

[Derek Hoffnung]

Two things:

1. I want VASST to come closer to where I live so I can attend. If we get enough users interested, maybe DSE will add our area to his schedule.

2. Would you be interested in starting a Users Group.

Email me at: drhoffnung@cox.net

Thanks,
Derek