The SECOND time (and thereafter), choose "Make DVD" and then just choose the "BURN" option. Point it to the right folder and you're done.

Thanks Douglas - I've emailed you at the email displayed by this site? Correct?

Grazie

Cameron: do you want to burn more copies of your movie or do
you want to have one half on one disc and the second half on
another disc?

The former was answered by Edward. In the case of the latter
I would just splice the movie in Vegas and export the two
sections to two different files and do two projects in DVDA.

I just upgraded to v 5.0 and noticed a significant drop in performance of the out-of-the-box install as compared to my version 4.0 installation.

Below are the things I changed in the v.5 installation to improve performance. Please add your tips below.

1. Moved the default Prerendered files and Audio files folders to a separate large, empty drive partition (File>Properties dialog).

2. Moved the temp files folder to the same dedicated partition (Options>Preferences:General)

3. By default I use an external drive for capturing and editing. When rendering, I render to another physical drive (so read and write happen on separate devices)

The performance however is still not on par with my v.4 installation.

Please add your tips -- let's collectively squeze the best possible performance from the new toy!

Overall it does feel a bit more sluggish than Vegas 4 but don't have any hard facts to prove so. Simple loading times from windows is a bit slower but not by much. Apparently people have seen performance improvements in MPG rendering but I cannot test it myself as V4 is off my system now.

One of the things I notice being pretty substancially slower is grabbing a bunch of clips from the explorer and dragging them to the timeline as a group. There is a latency now...at first nothing happened and I thought I hadn't quite grabbed them correctly with the mouse only to see them pop up about 4 seconds later. Vegas 4 it was instantaneous.

All in all I don't think it's that much "slower" than Vegas 4 but there are a few things that feel a tad "sluggish" but not by a margin enough for me to cause concern. Regardless it's a bit dissapointing to Upgrade and get something that isn't quite as fast in some aspect...then again Vegas 4 is a tough act to follow! I'm hoping in subsequent patches the engineers can clean up the code on some areas a bit.

Not to be a downer but, to be honest, I'm not really impressed with Vegas 5. I still love it- it's Vegas...but the additions they added (while some are nice) aren't earth shattering. The largest improvement, the addition of 3D compositing...isn't something I'd want to do detailed work in Vegas on in the first place...especially with a copy of After Effects 6 by my side. My opinion is that they should have patched up the weak-points from Vegas 4 before piling on new features such as 3d compositing and bezier masking. Better media management, ability to prerender a clip and actually MOVE it without losing the render, nested timelines, and better titling ability should have been tackled first. Regardless I still prefer it to PPro anyday of the week- plus what about DVDA 2...man what an improvement!...but that's another story all together. I'm not sour grapes about my purchase of the upgrades soley due to the inclusion of DVDA 2...it was definitly worth the price of admission alone. *sorry for the rant*

Anyway...Andre...back on topic. I'd try moving the prerender and temp folders to a separate physcial drive. Other performance tweaks are 1.Make sure your media drive is separate from your program drive...and keep it defragged 2.Close down any anti-virus programs while editing. 3. Might be a bit larger scope but- buy the fastest Cpu and Ram you can afford, SATA drives are a plus too. As far as in-program tweaks there aren't many other than the ones you mentioned regarding placement of temp/prerender folders and media.

There are many tweaks you can do although only a few tweaks do anything significant.

1- Ensure your drives are in DMA mode. Go into control panel --> system --> device manager --> properties and make sure your drive is using DMA.

2- overclocking (kind of counts). I'm not sure if this is worth your time since you need to stress test your system. It's best to plan for this before you build your system. Using thermal compount instead of the thermal pad is the #1 thing you should do. Everything else (premium heat sink, overclocking RAM, water cooling, etc.) is questionable and not so clear cut.

3- Clear out any running programs and processes you don't need. Fire up run-->msconfig to do this. You probably don't need ANY of the programs that start up.

?- Set Vegas priority to real-time. This makes like a 1-2% difference. Probably not worth it.

4- Disable unnecessary services:
Indexing service
Messenger Service (doesn't affect performance really but isn't useful and lets people spam you if you aren't firewalled)

Rendering to a different physical drive doesn't really help unless your render is mostly a file copy. On long renders you will see virtually no difference. On network renders your drive configuration may make a very significant difference (based on other people's testing).

5- Enable hyperthreading. This makes a few percent difference on real world renders (it *really* depends on your render though).

Other ways to improve performance (that may or may not count):
1- Get a faster processor. Within the same processor family, clock speed has a nearly linear relationship to rendering speed.

2- A faster front side bus speed helps. This is related to your processor and motherboard. This makes a few percent difference, which ain't much.

3- Dual processors. This doesn't help too much with Vegas although it helps with DVD encoding a lot.
Exception: You might get more performance by network rendering to your own computer.

4- Go do something else.

5- Render with one instance of Vegas and open up another copy to continue editing.

6- Avoid the median filter.

7- Make sure all your clips are at 100% opacity. The Sundance site has some useful scripts for this I believe.

Doesn't help at all:
1- lower memory timings. They make no measureable difference in my tests. Avoid the expensive low latency RAM.

2- loads of RAM. I doubt anything past 512MB will improve rendering speeds. However, more RAM will give you longer video previews.

Spot,

I registered for the Sony Media Showcase on Wednesday night, the 19th, (unfortunately, can't afford the dollars and time away from my day job for the training sessions).

Will Sundancemediagroup be sending out an email listing the time and place for the Chicago media showcase?

Thanks,
Dan

Thanks Rob. I am trying to split a large project that will not fit on a single DVD. I'll use your suggestion.
Cameron

See... just proves I shouldn't try answering questions at midnight! :-)

It's listed on the site currently. I believe it's the Westin, but I'm not certain. That's managed by someone else.
www.vasst.com/training_tours.htm

I know what you mean Edward..thanks anyway....:)

Thanks, Spot. The locations weren't listed last time I checked the VASST site. I should have checked once more before posting here!

Dan

I am setting up a TV and DVD in my office for demos to play on.

Is there a software(DVD Arch.) or hardware(player) solution that is easy to implement?

Thanks,

Mark

p.s. DVD Arch. has a 1 gig limit on Background video.

I use DVD Lab to author looping DVDs. It has end actions. I use DVDA version 1 for most projects, but it does not have this capability. I'm not sure if DVDA version 2 has end actions or not.

Also, some DVD players have an A-B repeat function, but it can be troublesome to get setup in the beginning.

2- loads of RAM. I doubt anything past 512MB will improve rendering speeds. However, more RAM will give you longer video previews.

Loads of RAM will allow you to run multiple Vegas's more smoothly, as well. With a dual CPU machine, you can even set the specific instances to specific CPU's by using the affinity settings in the processes tab of the Task Manager.

- jim

I've had good results with "Tune Up utilities"
Finds a lot of strange things in registry and
other places and does not kill XP or apps when cleaning.
Also has system optimizer

http://www.tune-up.com/

/magnus

DVDA2 will handle that with ease. End Actions ARE included in DVDA2.

I'm new to Vegas and developing a training video that will incorporate both moving and still diagrams.

I know Vegas 5 can now import flash. What other options do I have for moving diagrams?

I have a project I'm working on...for one reason or another some of my clips went offline- maybe I moved them or deleted them..I'm not sure which. Anyway I chose to "ignore all offline content..>" went on about my business and did some editing. When I was finished for the night I saved the all the changes I had mad during this editing session and closed Vegas. I open it up again, later, and it....again....asks me to locate offline media?! So I go through the same routine- clicking "ignore offline content..." etc.

Why does it prompt me to find this offline content every time I load the VEG? When I save the veg after I choose to ignor offline content shouldn't it no longer ask me for it when I load it?

If it's still missing, it will continue to ask for it. Make it not "missing" and it will no longer ask.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Or use another computer for email.

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

Thanks again Edward.

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

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

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).

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?

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.

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

Add a velocity envelope, and a node at the point you want the freeze to happen.

Add another node (point) to the right and move it directly undeneath the other one. Right click on the bottom node and Set To.. 0%.

Now you can dag out the event however long you want it ,and it will stay on that frame.

Gary

While Vegas can now import Acid loops and their metadata.

Vegas is nowhere near what Acid does, and visa versa. Two very different programs.

Gary

Man, I should have tried that! Thanks Gary, that worked like a charm.

in which ways is ACID more comprehensive than what Vegas offers, in terms of loop-based compositions?

pitch, time, midi set, tempo/beat matching etc.. are all superior in acid

why would they jeopardise a market by offering it all in teh one package?

This way they get more moola

It might also just be unused media. There is an "Remove all
unused media from project" button in the media pool for this.

I had that too last year and was puzzled by it until I figured out
it was a test clip I did some things with and put up on the
timeline to see if it fitted in with the rest. It didn't so I deleted
the clip from the timeline and from my harddisk.

Next time Vegas asked me for the missing piece. It was still in
my media pool and the cleanup function got rid it of it (could also
have doen it manually ofcourse).

I usually try several different takes of scenes (which are different
AVI files in my setup) and also do a clean media pool every once
in a while to get rid of those references I did not end up using.

Yeah, that's exactly what I did to fix it. Ugh...media pool- who actually uses that sloppy thing. lol

Coming from Photoshop, I like working with adjustment layers. They allow me to modify the image without irrevocably altering the image. I was thinking.... couldn't I use opacity envelopes to cut between scenes? Say I have a main video track, and a supplementary video track. I add an opacity envelope to the latter, and use it to cut between the two tracks. The problem is that opacity envelopes are not conducive to cutting; all changes are smooth. I do not want dissolves; just cuts. Is this possible, and if so, do you think it is a good idea?

Vegas is non-destructive in nature so you don't have to do that.

If you split a clip with "s" and delete one portion, just expand the remaining portion and you'll get your clip back.

That is true.

Meanwhile I solved the problem: Mute Envelopes are exactly what I wanted. What a great program eh?

Hi folks;
Anybody get anywhere with the rebate Sony was offering for folks who bought Vegas 4 during the month of April?

I saw it listed on another forum that there is a $50 rebate but when I tried to register I got an error screen.

When I called Sony they said they were aware of not being able to register for the rebate on line and that I would get a phone call saying when they had fixed the problem.

Of course, no phone call as of yet.

Anybody had any luck getting further along in the rebate process?

Hi all,


Ok so i got two kinds of footage for a video i am editing.

One shot in 16:9

One shot in 4:3


When i rendered it i specifically chose to put it in 4:3 but the end result is that all the shots in 16:9 are widescreened and the 4:3 are full screen.

Is there any way to harmonize the two so they either both go wide or full screen.


Thx a bunch

Phil

One method would be to use the pan/crop tool on the 16:9 footage. Zoom-in/pan/scan so it fills the screen.

Or you could letterbox the 4:3 video using either the Pan/Crop tool or by using a mask.

I recommend you call support again - especially if it still doesn't work today. Have you tried it again?

Though you can cut between scenes by using opacity envelopes, you should be aware that render times may increase dramatically by using this approach as Vegas will be forced to render every frame.