Again, good advice. Thank you.

I'll be forwarding these suggestions to the client.

Interestingly, the client has another company in its group that specialises in ISO9000 management software called Achiever Plus. Just wondered if you ever came across it?

Ian . . .

When you're going for ISO certification it's important that there be only 1 "official" document. the easiest way is to keep it securely on a server somewhere and allow access to it. In my company the documentation control person generated an internal web page referencing locations on the server. THat way, everything is located in 1 place. A lot easier to manage when there's only 1 version of something. Being on a corporate intranet, you won't have the bandwidth issues as you would have hosting on the internet.

I would render to WMV (or whatever format they desired), put it on the web somewhere, and just e-mail them the link. That way, even if you have a 10 to 20 meg file, the e-mail will still be very small. If they want, they could just right-click and download the file directly to their computer OR just play it from the net.

One thing a script COULD do, go through the media pool and delete the files for any items that are not being used. There IS a use count on the media pool items so it could limit itself to only the files that have a use-count of zero.

However, you may then get into the problem of a sub-clip not being used but the base file IS being used. So, it would need to be carefully coded.

I believe there are some sessions there, but I'm not certain. I was originally slated to go, but am unable to break away from the VASST tour as originally planned. I think Tim Duncan will be there showing Vegas at the FCP event.
There's a lot more info on the site I linked to.

>How would Vegas or a script know WHICH footage belongs TO
the project but is NOT used. Basically it can't.<

The Find Unused Wizard in Neon does exactly that.

Gary

there are file storage websites out there and for a nominal fee allow gigs of storage to be xfered.

I have numerous corporate clients, with offices in NY and London and being here in Oz allows me to work on the Australian element of the presentation, then uplaod and they can do as they wish after that ;)

;)

on larger text u can get away with lower bitates..., u can maybe even run a second track with a softness filter on it.. this may smooth out the lines as well..

glad it worked for u mate :)

Ian, I work for a company that has provided the technology for many many video in email campaigns. It is streaming video so is light on the bandwidth and does not require emailing a huge attachment. Please take a look at our demos here:

http://www.clipstream.com/

From one of our partners (http://stream.azionare.de/videomail/oresund/)

Our own email demo (http://www.videoclipstream.com/akamai/d/destiny/emailable.html)

Feel free to contact me by email if you have any questions.

I'm looking for suggestions. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm running Vegas 5 and want to use an external video monitor as well as have analog capture and output. What video cards would work best.

I'm currently using a NVIDIA Ge-Force FX 5200.

Thanks

well, i have no idea what a script is or how to make one. so i'll stick with rob's advice of just going over the media files manually, one by one, and delete the ones not on my timeline.
thanks.

You're missing out on one of the greatest features in Vegas, then. You really need to take a look at scripting. You don't have to write them as there are already many out there available (some free, some for a small cost). They really are a timesaver.

video card doesn't make any difference. All that you mentioned should be done via a firewire card. External preview goes out firewire, to a camera/convertor/deck, to the monitor.

For analog capture, I do the same thing: Analog source to camera/convertor/deck to the computer via firewire. This will give you your best results.

True to that Edward. For the Lady X episode I handled I wrote
a small script that would open the leader, then present me with
a dialog to open the movie someone sent in and then it would
present me with loading the credit roll movie and it would load
the music underneath that itself. It all crossfaded this and the
only thing I needed to do was make sure the crossfades where
good etc. It also added cropping to get it to widescreen size.

Then all I had to do was hit export and load my quicktime preset
I had made and I was done. Pretty neat.

Edward: do you know if we can group events through scripting
in version 5 now? That was the only thing I could not do and had
to do manually when moving the credit roll around.

i'm still learning. eventually, i imagine i will get around to working with scripts. thanks

Thanks Edward,

do you mean just run it through my XM2 and use this as a convertor? Will this degrade the camera in any way?

Rich

Hello everyone,

Everytime I try to add my Lacie 250 GB ext. hard drive to the disk management file under capture I get this message from windows "Windows-Delayed Write failed"

I currently have the camcorder and the ext. hd connected to my laptop via 2 port firewire card. I tried the same set-up on my desktop an got the same message. I am using the XP OS.

Isn't it possible to capture footage to an ext. hd ? I thought it was but I am having doubts. Please help.

Al

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : Edward: do you know if we can group events through scripting
in version 5 now? That was the only thing I could not do and had
to do manually when moving the credit roll around. -->>>


Grouping events is still not available.

Assuming the XM2 allows passthrough (my XL1 and GL2 do) then, yes, you can just use your camera. As for the camera, it won't be damaged except for the fact that it must be powered on and some people claim the heat from being on can reduce the life of the camera. I have no proof of that but also have no proof to the opposite. Many people use a convertor such as the Canopus ADVC 100.

Yes it is possible to capture to an external hard drive. Your symptoms sound more related to OS/hardware issues to me. Can you do anything at all with the external drive? How are you connecting it? (firewire or usb?)

Has anyone else found Vegas to be buggy? It crashes very frequently, totally at random. Occasionally there's an exception message but not usually - usually it just closes. I'm pressing the save button every 30 seconds out of paranoia. And this is after I downloaded the 5.0a update. Any ideas?

I use my V5a for my business. It wont crash - User error stuff and hwere I've tried to introduce some 3rd party plugin that I've not set up well .. . but nope .. crashes are nornally down t me . .Can you give us an idea of what you are doing when this happens ... or better still do you get an ERROR report? I've sent these off to Sony Support for them to "decipher2 . . .I aint no programmer!

Grazie

I assume you are talking about Vegas 5. I have not noticed it to be overly buggy. I have managed to crash it a time or two but, overall, it has operated very well for me.

Often I get no error report - it just shuts down.

I just realized that the problem may have started when I switched to the Creative ASIO drivers so I can mix in 5.1. I'm going to try updating them and see if that solves it.

The most common problem with applications and crashes in
Windows self is drivers. That is the number 1 problem. The
second problem is usually some component that has failed
(cooling fans or cracks [unvisible] in the mainboard that expand
when they heat up etc.).

I've had 1 crash under Vegas 4 and zero under 5 thusfar. What
you can easily do is switch to a non ASIO driver in Vegas to test
it (if you don't need to do 5.1 mixing).

Right, like I said it may have started when I switched to ASIO. I hadn't been using ASIO until recently when I started some 5.1 mixing. Prior to that I don't recall any crashes. I'm hoping that's it. ;)

I remember 4.0d used to crash a few times but I determined that was because of my firewire hard drive and the 1394 interface. So it may very well be a driver problem, yet again. *sigh*. Can I get no good stable sound card drivers?

Delayed file write errors can be quite ciritical depending on what
the file is. You get this error when Windows has cached some
writes and cannot commit them to disk. It can't connect to the
disk for some reason. This can happen due to faulty cables,
bad drives or conflicts.

What camera are you capturing from? If it is a Canon the camera
is probably hogging the bus. I could not capture to my firewire
drive when my XL1S was connected and I just read someone
else has similar problems with his XM2.

I personally solved this by connecting my external drive through
USB2, but I'm not sure the Lacie has such a connector.

It might be solved if you can get a second firewire card in there
and connect the drive to another card than the drive.

Gang, I've uploaded our Beta Testing file for Vegas 5 up to the Sundance site. We used this throughout the various builds of V5 in Beta. It should open fine in your build 134.
http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/help/kb
It's a 5.1 file, using many of the new features found in Vegas 5. You don't NEED 5.1 to test it, but it surely is handy. I also would like to get your feedback on making it a new render test base, because 3D really chokes down the render times. So does motion blur, and this project has all of that and more. Check out the pitched Windows audio in the timeline.
You can also check out the dual monitor setup that I often use for video editing. I'm sure your colors will be different, due to the various themes I use, but you'll get the idea.

I am trying to capture to the external HD via firewire. This Lacie HD just allows you to connect via firewire. I used a Canon GL2 and will be trying a Sony PD 170. I have no troulbe accessing file from the ext. hd until I prepare to use the drive during capture. I am using two separate firewire ports for the cam and the hd. Can some one please help?

Thanks.

Al

<<<-- Originally posted by Peter Moore : So it may very well be a driver problem, yet again. *sigh*. Can I get no good stable sound card drivers? -->>>

We use gear from Korean St-audio (now ESI / Ego Systems )
with rock solid ASIO performance - have a look at the "DSP24 MEDIA 7.1" at http://www.staudio.com

/magnus

knock on wood, ive never had a crash, unless ive used the shuttle slider (playback speed duration slider) all teh way and its locked onto my new mouse, then it flies around and crashes, but i know it to be a mouse issue.. not a vegas issue..

apart from that, its rock solid, which is more i can say for any other Video Editing app out there.

All the footage that we are shooting is in 16:9 (stretched on a GL2) and is automatically imported into the media pool of V5 as widescreen footage. We want to edit it as stretched 4:3 DV so that it plays smooth throughout editing and so that it looks better on our 16:9 NTSC monitor (which can internally convert the footage to widescreen).

V4 did not automatically detect 16:9 footage, and we did not convert it to widescreen until rendering. I would like to know if this is a setting in V5 which can be turned off. The manual is unclear if this is possible.

Brad

Well, knock on wood as well, since I updated to the new SB ASIO drivers haven't had a single crash. Thanks for the tips guys. I should not be so quick to blame the software. :)

Albert,

This sounds exactly like the trouble I've had when using an external hard drive and a GL2 with the same FireWire card. In my case, the drive is a FireWire Direct 200 GB FireWire 800 drive and the card is a FireWire Direct FireWire 800 card with a legacy FireWire 400 6 pin port on it. The solution for me was to add another generic (TI chipset! - stay away from VIA or anything else) FireWire card in the computer. I've had no problems with this setup. The only problem I've had since going to this setup is that a coworker inadvertantly plugged the GL2 into the combo card and I saw the exact same error message you're seeing. Switching the camera to the other card solved the problem.

Good Luck

I'm guessing you mean "squeezed" on the GL2 vs. stretched (DV Widescreen is anamorphic on the GL2 and other cams with this feature). Once you bring the video onto the Vegas timeline, you can go to File/Properties and set the aspect ratio to DV Widescreen (1.2121). That will make the video in Vegas look like it will look when displayed properly on a widescreen display. As you noted, when rendering out your edited version, you need to select the DV Widescreen template.

Thanks Everyone.

I took all the advice given and found a solution. Since there appear to be a problem with one of the virtual drives (I partition the Lace 250 GB Ext. HD) I reformatted that one. There wasn't anything very important on that drive anyway. After I re-formatted this drive, I tried to capture footage. This time I had the Lacie Ext. HD connected directly to the the built-in firewire port on my laptop. Then I connected my GL2 to a Firewire Card. I went to Vegas changed the disk management location to the Ext. HD and VIOLA I was able to capture live footage to my Ext. HD. I checked both partitioned drives on the Ext. HD and they both captured. Yes!! Don't you love success stories?

Thanks again.

Al

PS Now I have to test my PD 170. I'm sure I shouldn't have any problems!??!

I'm looking for some suggestions for the best way to handle editing video (chopping it up like is typical) that has several, in my case, at least 6 synchronous audio tracks associated with it.

I've tried grouping but I find grouping to be fairly clunky and limiting. Often you want to use parts of a previous audio track with a different clip, particularly with rear or far shots.

I was looking for a way to just cut using the video takes and only one audio track, the dialogue track, and somehow have the software keep track of the other audio tracks temporally associated with that main audio track without me having to worry about it constantly. What I would really like to be able to do is treat all six audio tracks as one but, again, grouping doesn't seem to be the best way to do this.

So what would you guys suggest? Any help would be most appreciated.

Scott & Edward:

Thanks to you both. The fix to my above problem was clear once explained differently. I'll check out the Sony forum and have bookmarked Edwards.

:D

Why not do your splits with ripple on, and if you need to use portions of audio that get split out, disable ripple and drag those sections out as needed, inserting Xfades? I use grouping for most tasks...but it's not for everyone

Was glad to help too. I know Edward has been around for awhile and has some excellent tutorials. There's no doubt about it he has some great info over there. I think Spot has a film look tutoiral online and Billyboy does too. His web is wide open west or something to that effect. Do a google you'll find it.

Guy,

Thanks for the response. I fully admit this to be a request for greater convenience. Changing the properties of the footage once and a while is no issue; I just get a little tired of doing it in multiple projects with the regular addition of supplemental clips to the media pool. Despite my resistance to over automation, I really like Vegas 5.

Brad

hi. i'm looking for a way to control the opacity of a video event throughout the shot.
i found how to control the opacity of a whole track, but i don't want to affect the track in it's entirety. i also found how to fade in and out an event by "pulling on the corners", but this only allows me to fade in, or fade out, but not freely control the opacity throughout the whole shot.

FOR EXAMPLE: i want to start a video event at 50% opacity, then make the opacity climb at a moderate pact to 100%, then go back down at once to 20%, then immediately back to 100%, and then finally decrease the opacity gradually down to 0%.

how do i do that?

Very easy.....right click on the video track and select "insert/remove envelope" and then select "composite level". Just add points to coicide the amount of opacity you want and your done....

got it. thanks for the quick reply!! that's as close as you can get to online support!

Great info - thanks Edward.

The MPEG2 result will not be lossless, am I right? I'm a newbie to HD, and was just expected to be able to render out to an HD 720p avi file.

...I need to go to college for this sort of thing?!

Thanks Douglas but that's not exactly what I mean.

Let me rephrase the problem. Let's say I have a video track (with multiple takes, etc.) and each one has 6 audio tracks associated with it from room mics. Let's also say I want to edit the video randomly just like I would a movie and all I want to worry about is dialogue for now.

Once the video and dialogue tracks are all arranged nicely, I'd like there to be a way to just throw in all the other associated audio tracks and auto-magically have them line up with the dialogue audio.

So is there any way to do this or am I just dreaming? Particularly, I am wondering, how would it be done if I Were editing video with Vegas and then mixing the 5.1 soundtrack in a different program all together?

Someone told me it could be done with SMTPE timecoding, but as best I can tell Vegas supports no such feature.

So any other ideas, Douglas or anyone else? Thanks a ton.

You can pretty much bank on Edward knowing the answer right off the bat and without guessing and conversation.

i need to copy and paste events from one vegas project to another. i tried, but it didn't work. any ideas why?
thanks.

Open Vegas, Open one of the projects. Open Vegas again, Open the other project. Select the items to be copied and press CTRL-C. Go to the other instance of Vegas, position the cursor correctly, and press CTRL-V.

i see. i tried to do it on the same application of vegas and not two seperate ones. i guess that is what i did wrong.

thank you.