hmmm
What chipset are you using? Via? Which 1394 capture interface?

for example, I have a mobo with a via kt266a southbridge and an Audigy MP3 with built in firewire. During capture, it appears to lose clips, but they are there during playback.

You could have PCI bus issues is what I'm getting at. Or not.

thanks bill.

<<< If you are going to transfer to a high end suite to finish, then the Xpress files transfer straight to a symphony or composer. >>>

the way i understood it, working with dv has the advantages of dv in and dv out. no recompression. i imagine i'll want to at a point get a dvd burner and burn my final projects to dvd. if these are my intentions, what advantages does transfererring to a high end suite give me.

if none, at what point will i need to do on-line editing on a symphony or composer? only when cutting film?

thanks... as you see, i'm still learning these things.

Adi,

Like I said, you probably don't need to transfer. Using Avid to off-line a down convert from film or High Def, or Beta for example, then transfer to a high end suite to finish your project. Or when cutting and conforming a negative of course. EDL's are really crucial.

I see there is another thread where someone is having problems with Vegas crashing on capture... so like I said, conficts and ironing them out are part of the PC world.

You might want to look into purchasing a turn-key system, if you are not comfortable tweaking a computer to it's best advantages. I bought my turnkey from DVLine. Got a great deal. They also sell Vegas turnkey systems, ready to go. They back it up with LIFETIME free tech support, and have always cheerfully handled my questions or problems.

Bill

ok. thanks for the help bill. i might just give dvline a call.

I think one of the BEST new features is the scripting language. I have been able to create three scripts that will greatly simplify a weekly edit by automating some tasks. Read the list from the other link. I, personally, feel it is well worth the update.

I would also recommend updating to Vegas + DVD. The difference is $150 which is LESS than the cost of the AC3 addon. So, you are basically purchasing AC3 and getting a DVD authoring program thrown in for free. I'm switching to DVD Architect for most of my DVD authoring.

It really seems to have so many great features. Any of you folks been happy Premiere users that switched to VV and never went back? Just asking since I'm a Premiere user and wondering what the experience is for a similar individual who made the switch.

I've read about a few who have switched on other forums--Creative Cow and Sonic Foundry--and refuse to go back.

The biggest challenge for other NLE users is to unlearn (forget) what they know about their old systems. Vegas is that much simpler to use.

You need to at least refer to the manual. It doesn't come through osmosis. ;o)

Please post the following information:

- What CPU/chipset
- Memory
- What firewire/audio card
- Which Operating System
- If Win2k/XP, are you using NTFS or FAT

This will help narrow down the possible problems. Did you truy
Sonic Foundry's forums to see if anyone else has this problem?

I downloaded some drivers for my system and my new motherboard. Well, okay, a friend who knows what the hell he's doing downloaded them. He also did some tweaking with the system so the parts would talk to each other better. Since then, I've had no crashes and no dropped frames.

Ahhhh... life is good.

Thanks, all.

While using Vegas 3 I used a velocity envelope to increase the speed of a clip. On preview it looked fine but when rendered to MPEG-2 the edges of people were somewhat irregular, jagged like. I read about using fast motion in Premier and how you must deinterlace the clip to remove the jagged edges. Does anyone know if this is possible in Vegas 3 or 4?

Of note, while playing around I noticed that this effect was not nearly as bad in slow motion.

Right-click the event on which you applied the velocity envelope and choose properties. On the page that pops up, make sure you turn on Resample (Vegas 3 only because Vegas 4 does so automatically with the "smart resample") and turn on "Reduce Interlace Flicker".

These two settings alone should greatly enhance your output.

Thanks a lot. That did it! It looks great now.

Does anyone think a 3rd party manual for Vegas 4 will become available? I'd like to purchase an downloadable upgrade for Vegas, but I think printing the manual would certainly kill my printer :)

I ask because if I order from the states, I have to wait a couple of weeks, and deal with UPS brokerage B.S. I might as well buy a book and save some cash in the long run.

Douglas Spotted Eagle---one of the most knowledgable guys on VEGAS out there has just completed his book and submitted it to the publisher----CMP---It should be a virtual Bible of all things Vegas so I would wait for that to come out---I believe it will be avalible sometime in the Spring.

It doesn't matter if you order the download version or the boxed version - you STILL have to print the manual because it is NOT included in the box. It WILL be available as a separate order from eNovels. Printed double-sided, it's only about 150 pages.

DSE's book should be great. I'm looking forward to it being released in the next couple of months.

<<<-- Originally posted by Edward Troxel : It doesn't matter if you order the download version or the boxed version - you STILL have to print the manual because it is NOT included in the box. It WILL be available as a separate order from eNovels. Printed double-sided, it's only about 150 pages.

DSE's book should be great. I'm looking forward to it being released in the next couple of months. -->>>

Yeesh, that is sad. You'd think spending hundreds of dollars, they'd print a manual for you! I'd prefer the DSE anyways, I'm sure it touches on technique and functionality much better than the eNovels print.

It's unbeleivable to me that someone would complain about not getting a written manual with the software when V4 is parctically given away for free. When was the last time you looked at the price of an NLE that competes with V4...like FCP?

Plus, it didn't take THAT long to print it. And you'll probably use the help file more than the manual anyway. Plus it is always available as a PDF if you need to quickly read any sections. I have no problem with the manual not being included (just like the manual you NEED is not included in ANY software you buy today - what came with your Operating System???)

I've heard the eNovels manual is all black and white. If that's the case, you are better off printing it anyway.

Sometimes when I try to render to an mpg1 file the process will stop and I'll get a window that says: An error ocurred while creating the media file ----.mpg. The reason for the file error could not be determined."

Of course, it only happens about 3/4 of the way through after I've already waited half an hour on a 15-minute project.

The last time it happened I went to the frame where it happened and took out that event. Then it rendered okay. I guess it must have been a bugged capture, or something. But it happened again on a different project tonight, and I'd rather not have to take that event out.

Nothing's running in the background. I have the preview turned off.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

While capturing from my camera recently, I experienced dropped audio only, meaning the video accompanying that audio was fine. This was not on the tape, and when I tried to capture the same clip again, I could never get the whole clip to have perfect audio--there would always be dropouts somewhere. The drops are very quick; you can hardly tell they're there, but they definitely are. On the waveform, the line is completely flat in those areas. I tried spooling the tape (fast forwarding all the way, then rewinding all the way) and then capturing it again with the same results. It was a Panasonic Linear Plus tape. I've only been putting Panasonics in my cam since last October. I haven't had this happen for a long long time. Any ideas?

Diskspace. How much freespace do you have? Enough on your
OS and temp drive, what about the drive you are outputting to?

What version of Vegas are you using?

Do you have DMA enabled on your harddisks? (Are you really sure?)

Other than that it does not make a lot of sense. VV3 correctly
set up and so forth?

Plenty of space. I've actually rendered larger files w/o trouble.


V V 4

What kind of camera, what kind of 1394 card?
I have had mostly issues exporting back to tape with Veags and foudn the issues is generally related to any footage I captured in Pinnacle software, somhow Vegas drops the audio intermittently, but your problme is the reverse.

It probably is just a plain old bug then. Have you tried looking
around the VV forums over at http://www.sonicfoundry.com/?

Perhaps you should mail there tech-support?

Are you capturing from the same camera that recorded the video? If not, try that first. It sounds like what I got when one of my cameras was going out of alignment. The tapes from that camera would drop audio when played on my deck.

DMA was apparently not enabled. I clicked the check mark (this is win 98) and it says it may have undesirable effects on my hardware if I enable it. Sure this is a good idea? Does this even matter on my C drive, or only on the drive where the media is stored?

My card was a $75 Pyro 1394 card--been using it for like a year and only had this happen with one other tape (coincidentally, a Panasonic linear plus)

XL1s camera.

This should work as a work-around for you. First, render the project to an AVI file. Now, start a new project and import that AVI and render it to MPG. This method should work.

Not captured from the same cam that recorded the video. That came was rented from our local Public Access station, and unavailable at the time. I don't really have the means to get to it for capture, as they need a quick turnaround on these edits.

First, DMA really needs to be turned on.

Second, do you hear the dropouts when playing the tape to a TV? (i.e. connect the deck/camera outputs to a TV and watch the tape - are there dropouts then?). If there are dropouts on the TV too, then it is NOT the computer - it's the tape.

Third, do you have another camera/deck (or know of someone who has one you could test with) you could try playing the tape in? If yes, does it exhibit the same symptoms?

Josh,

DMA is very important. Just ignore the warning. I have never ever
had a problem with turning this on (althought in theory it could
lead to problems). If your devices do not support it they will disable
it automatically. So you can go back in your device manager after
the reboot and see which devices kept the DMA flag and which
didn't. By the way, this is not only for harddisk but also for CD
players, DVD players & burners!!

You will notice a whole new different world when you turn on
DMA. It is crucial for audio/video work! I'm pretty sure it will
eliminate your audio dropouts.

HTH!

Posted by: SonicPJM
Date: 2/27/2003 11:24:53 AM

I've been working on a script that exports CMX 3600 EDLs... there are some limitations but I've had decent success bringing the results into AVID. Of course, once the sequence is in AVID, my success with editing tasks has not been as good ;-).

Get it here: http://www.ayizwe.net/VegasScripts/ExportEDL.js.txt

Feedback is welcome.... Enjoy!

Well, hell, I'll try it! I think it was the tape though, in all fairness. I captured another tape last night, and that one had no drops.

Also, on my media drive (a Lacie firewire drive, 80gb) there is an option to check the "int 13 unit" (there is no DMA enable option). Anyone know what this means?

Int 13 is the BIOs way of accessing a drive. My guess is that is for backward compatability with olde old software, I would NOT turn it on unless you are having a problem with something accessing the drive, in 13 is literally accessing the drive via BIOs (very slooowwww) calls, it is the simplest, yet slowest way of working with a drive. Essentially int13 is what DOS used in the begining to access a drive. IDE still uses int13, but just long enough to initialize the drive from the system to boot form it, then the various IDE controller drivers take over and access the drive via the variosu Ultra-DMA methods.

Quick question here.
I saved a 3 minute video in a new folder, using "copy and trim media" with a 2 second heat/tail on each clip.

Instead of cutting everything into little clips like normal, Vegas saved one 3.7 GB file for the video (should only be 600ish MB), and all the assd small audio files.

Can anyone tell me why it's doing this? I test saved another short video and it worked normaly with it.
Thanks

What format was the video file?

If it wasn't DV-AVI, it copies the whole thing instead of the smaller piece.

All my video clip that I capture from tape become ATI files.

Normaly, when I save a project with Copy & Trim Media, it saves 3 files per clip; an ATI file for video, a Sonic Foundry Wave64 for audio, and an SFK file. So if there is 30 clips in the project, there will be 30 of each file type. Plus the VEG project file.
What happened this time, is that everything was saved normaly, except that instead of 30 small files totaling 700mb, I got the one original 3GB file that the all the files originated from when I imported the video from my camera.

Do my files only save as ATI files because of my ATI Radeon video card software?

I've never heard of an "ATI" file. It seems to work fine with "AVI" files captured via firewire with the Vegas capture program. Sounds like a file format problem.

I'm guessing ATI is a perversion of some other file, thanks to my stupid Radeon software.
There's lots of other people out there using ATI video cards... Does anyone else have this situation?

The ATI media software has taken over for windows media player as the default for these files. Right click on your "ati" file, and select "open with" and click "choose program". Make sure the "alway open this ........" box is checked. Double click on windows media player. The next time you explore files, windows will show the correct file format info......

Dylan,
On my 8500 DV I never use the firewire port on the "dongle" to capture footage from tape for this exact reason.

I use a seperate firewire card, and you won't have the "ATI" issue.

I've also found it easier to use the "split" in VV instead of using the trimmerfor editing.

Hope that helps or sheds some light on your issue.

Ati has its own proprietary compression codecs that it uses with the TV instant playback/capture features. You should be able to overide these by selecting "NTSC DV" format in both the "file properties" page and the "render to" option menu.

Hope this helps someone. In an attempt to regain some of the 10 gigs of space I used off my 19 gig HD, I saved several projects to tape that I had finished and tried to delete them from VV3. I am sure there is an easier method than I use but I have not searched much for it. I went to "C/ Vegas Video" and deleted the files there. Not much cleaning done and hard drive still 1/2 used, After a few days I looked further and cleaned out "My Documents" with very limited success. I finally found an area where even the music from my very first project was still stored. After deleting the unwanted files from "C:\Program Files\Sonic Foundry\Vegas 3.0" I gained back 6+ Gigs. I havn't found (or looked very hard) a way to delete files when you are in VV3. Maybe if someone knows an easier way to delete vegas projects from within VV3 they will reply.
Thanks
Donny

I just delete them off my HD like you, but perhaps I have a better system of saving my files in different directories for different projects. So if I want one project and everything associated with it gone, I just delete that directory. I don't put anything video related in My Documents, or under Vegas Video.

And Don.... Go buy a second HD... Get a 60GB for less than $100. You will be happy, and not have a space problem for at least... a week. ;)

What's the best way to grab good clean stills from video in Vegas Video 3?
Footage was shot with an XL1 in regular mode, not Frame mode.

in Vegas you can change where it default stores temp, pre-render files, audio files & with Veg files you decide ... also when you install V it will have a C/program files/sonic foundry set up folder that you can delete after install ....

if V crashes then it may not delete the current temp video & audio

take control and you decide where to put these folders

in Vegas OPTIONS/PREFERENCE/GENERAL you decide where TEMP should be

under FILE/NEW now check the box that says "start all new projects with these settings " under Video you can change the pre render folder .... under Audio the audio folder ...
when you go to save a VEG you decide where to save project VEGS files ... also when you render out a new clip again you decide where to put it ..

i put all the Vegas folders next to each other ..IE: V temp, V pre render, V capture , V audio, V veg files, V render. i put these folders on all 3 HDrives ... so when i delete a project the folders are easy to find ...

Just above the Video Preview window there is a disk icon for saving a snaptop of the window in jpg or png format. Save png for a lossless copy. Apply any effects you want, set the frame, and snap. For extra deinterlacing, open the clip properties and check the "deinterlace" option.

Thanks Dylan, I use my documents to save still pictures to when I scan them, It's easy to burn them to a CD once I have cleaned them up and don't want to loose them. It is also easy to move them in and out of paint, which is an easy way for me to clean up photos with dirt and scratches. I just thought VV3 may have some delete command that I didn't know about. I was suprised to find the projects stored in C:\Program Files\Sonic Foundry\Vegas 3.0 and not just C/Vegas video?.

Thanks Don, I saw your post after I posted this originally

adding to brians post

make sure you have the preview quality set to BEST when you capture the still ..

the size of the still will be whatever you currently have the preview window set to ...

<<<-- Originally posted by Don Donatello :
the size of the still will be whatever you currently have the preview window set to ... -->>>

I wished this wasn't true, and I hoped they would give us the option to size the photo in the next revision of VV. I was hoping for it in 4.0, but I'm still on 3.0c so I don't know if it changed.