To get the full 655x480 size, make sure you right-click the display window and choose "display at project size". Also, if you want the full 720x480 picture, instead of clicking on the "save" icon, click on the "copy to clipboard" icon. Then open your paint program, start a new picture, and paste it. Once in the paint program, you may want to run a de-interlace filter.

In Vegas 4, all of this got a lot easier, you just have to pick "Best - Full Size" in the peview quality window. There's also a script for Vegas 4 for saving snapshots.

"I was suprised to find the projects stored in C:\Program Files\Sonic Foundry\Vegas 3.0 and not just C/Vegas video"

It is standard windows practice to install programs in Program Files instead of the root directory.

As was said by Don, the file locations used by Vegas can be configured. I've started a new newsletter for Vegas which can be downloaded from www.jetdv.com/tts/TTS01-01.pdf. If you like it, you can subscribe to future issues at www.jetdv.com/tts. The first issue covers the Options - Preferences settings including changing file locations. The second issue (due to be released within the next 7 to 14 days) deals with the settings found in File - Properties. You may find this useful.

I'm currently running demo's of Premiere and Vegas and I'm heavily leaning towards Vegas. I was wondering if anyone has heard of a good book out there or what they did to learn Vegas. I know there's no substitute for hands on experience but just thought I'd ask. I like Adobe's "Classroom in a book" series as it includes a cd so that you can follow along in the book so something similar for Vegas would be nice.

Max

Which version are you learning, 3.0 or 4.0? You can go to the Sonic Foundry site and buy a workbook with a CD for learning 3.0. Douglas Spotted Eagle has just written a book for 4.0, which should be available as an e-book in the new few weeks.

In the mean time, you should visit the Vegas Video forum at the Sonic Foundry site.

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/default.asp

I've also started a newsletter at www.jetdv.com/tts that will be published roughly twice per month.

Thanks guys, I'll look into your suggestions!

Max

Vegas 4 really looks good from the specs and with DVD appears to be a killer NLE.

Well, Nathan, you'll find that those of us that use Vagas would agree with you 100%--it is a killer NLE. Finally, it has caught up to and surpassed every other NLE out there.

Having said that, let me also say I have not used all other NLE apps. But I have read too many posts by users of every other NLE app that have said that very thing. So I'm just repeating what've heard (read). ;o)

Definately a killer NLE--but DVD architect needs some work. However, its only version 1.0 and knowing the people over at Sonic Foundry they will fine tune it pretty soon.

I had Win 98 previously, and my video previews were fine in Vegas Video 3. I'm talking previews from the computer monitor, with no effects, plain old video.

I put in Win XP Pro recently, and now my previews are very stuttery. The playhead will run smoothly across the timeline for various lengths of time (sometimes five seconds, sometimes twenty minutes) and then stop, during which period I can't do anything with the playhead, and after about ten or fifteen seconds, it will become usable again. Sometimes it tells me it was "unable to mix audio, time out," or something like that. If anyone has suggestions, I'd like to hear them. I've been doing the videoguys.com tweaks for Win XP, though I haven't done the ones where you edit the registry yet. . .maybe that's the problem.

Also, is there a way to keep Vegas from showing the actual frames of video in the timeline on the video clips? If so, might this make a difference?

You might check how much memory you have. XP likes lots more memory than Win98 does. The other thing is to check whether your system is XP compliant (are you running Pro or Home); just because you can load it does not mean it will run properly.

You might want to do a search on XP or Vegas. There are a number of posts from individuals who also had problems with XP.

Also, post some information on your system. Its a little hard to offer suggestions without system details.

I just finished my first project on VV4. It is a great program and fun to use. Only one thing kept bugging me. When I would apply color correct or brightness/contrast to an event I assumed if I clicked on any point on an event in the timeline it would adjust the color for the whole event. That proved to be wrong. So I clicked on the beginning of the clip to adjust. The strange thing is it doesn't adjust the very begining of the event but quickly fades into the adjusted color. This wasn't a critical issue for this project since I used a lot of crossfades between the events, but could see how this would be too noticeable with a straight cut (without any transition). Is there an easier way of doing this. Most of the time when I have problems I find I'm just doing some simple step wrong.

Thanks

Could it be you had keyframing enabled?

Check to see that the "sync cursor" button beneath the keyframing timeline (inside the FX window) isn't selected...

Dan, your best bet for getting answers to your Vegas questions is to go to Sonic Foundry's Vegas forum: http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/default.asp. Scroll down and select "Vegas--Video Topics". You won't be sorry!

Billy Boy over at the Sonic Foundry Forum has a great tutorial on color correcting.

I'd suggest looking into your DMA settings for hard drive access, if this is coming from an IDE drive. Right click "My Computer" and pick "manage" to get to the device manager, and check the properties on your IDE controllers. You should have Ultra DMA enabled.

Depending on your chipset, you likely need updated drivers. For Intel chipsets, visit http://support.intel.com and get the latest chipset driver package (it's generic and covers all chipsets in the last few years). For Via, find the latest 4-in-one.

Drivers for what exactly? I've updated my video card, (though not the sound card--the website said not to because of problems people had had with their drivers). I have an AMD processor, not an Intel. DMA is enabled.


System Details:

AMD 1600 XP processor (approx. 1 gigahertz)
1024 MB of RAM
NVIDIA Diamond Viper 770D Video Card
Aureal Vortex 8830 Sound Card
WIN XP PRO

Sorry don't know the speed of the C drive--it's whatever came with this computer and I have no idea how to look it up

Media drive for video is a LaCIE 80GB Firewire Drive, 7200 RPM

Anything I left out? Can't think of anything else that would be pertinent.

Here is the key: "unable to mix audio, time out,"

By this, I assume the video is on a firewire drive and NOT an internal drive. Some have claimed that rebuilding the peak files will help solve this problem (F5). Others have mentioned uping the audio buffer from .35 to .40.

If all of these fail, try copying the data to an internal drive and seeing if the problem still exists. If the problem goes away on the internal drive, it is a Windows problem in communicating with the firewire device which may require any or all of the following to fix:

1) A different firewire enclusure (don't know what brand you have)
2) A different firewire card (also don't know the brand)
3) Changing the hard drive to a USB enclosure.

It sounds like you are NOT setting the FIRST keyframe to the correction values. You can make sure you get the FIRST keyframe by clicking on the box that looks like a diamond with a left arrow in it and a vertical line to the left of it. Clicking on that will guarantee you are on the first keyframe. Also, if the box with the little lock is clicked, turn it OFF. Then you can click anywhere on the clip and the keyframe timeline will not follow causing you to create additional keyframes.

A good idea. Thanks.

I seem to remember problems even without audio, i.e. if I removed the audio from the timeline. I'll try it again though.

If your cam and the drive are on the same firewire card that could be a problem. The rest of the data looks good.

BTW, in Win2K and XP the drive's DMA by default is enabled.

Uh. . .cam and the drive on same card? If the camera's not even hooked up to the to my computer, does that matter? This isn't a problem I get with external monitor previews, I'm talking when it's the preview window in the timeline.

Well, whoever suggested rebuilding the peaks: brilliant! I don't know why, but it's been running smoothly since I did that. And I just received Vegas 4 today.

Thanks all for the feedback. I figured out my problem is when I apply a video effect I am not getting the keyframe timline beneath the effect window, so it must be keyframing from the main timeline, but I don't have any of those little keyframe diamonds. I do get the keyframe timeline with the track motion application however. I can't seem to figure out how to make it appear with video effects. Any ideas? I will check out the Sonic Foundry Forum as well. Thanks again.

any time you add a FX the 1st key frame is there in the FX time line ( bottom of FX window ) ... do a right click on the key frame ( square on it's edge) and choose HOLD if you want the color/brightness to hold your settings till the next key frame .. if you want it to change slowly to the next key frame then choose linear etc ...

to make key frame easier, below the FX time line click on the "lock" icon ( sync cursers) ..now where ever you put the curser in Vegas TL it will also be at the exact same place in the FX time line ... any changes you make to the FX will add a key frame at that TC ( you can slide the key frames- right click & drag ) ...

again on the key frames you can choose HOLD , linear ,fast slow, smooth ... i think it is defaulted to linear

Actually, it's very easy. Make the pop-up configuration screen BIGGER. It sounds like you need to enlarge it in order to see the keyframe lines. Just get on the top or bottom of the box and, when the arrow turns into the up/down arrow, click and resize it larger.

Thats the weird thing. My key frame window never comes up. Even with the video effects window as big as my monitor screen it is not there. Just a blank space below. Strangely, however, it is there if I want to apply track motion. It's got to be a simple mouse click that I've somehow bypassed to get it to come up.

Thanks for all the great feedback. I was able to discover the answer at the sonic foundry forum. Somehow I had inadvertently minimized the keyframe window seperately which made it invisible (which is a new feature on VV4 apparently).

I have read a lot about VV3 in the forum, and have decided to give it a try.
Its pretty good.

The only problem is, when I start rendering the final output of the video.

The quality of the avi, or mpeg2 files produced seems pretty bad.
I have set the rendering to the 'best' and have altered a number of parameters as well, but the video still seems pretty bad compared to the previous program i used which is ulead.

Does anyone know what has gone wrong?
Thanks.

VV3 should be head and heels over Ulead. I have used both extensively. Could use some more information, size of files, settings, system setup etc. . . I always get better results with Vegas. Are you simply viewing the mpeg files, or are you burning them?

I guess I'll post more info.
Firstly, I click File, and render as.

Then, I save the video as AVI files.
I then click 'Custom' to change some settings.

I put 1) Video rendering quality to 'Best'
2) Motion Blur type - None
3) Resample the frame rate of all video (I've tried both click and unclick it but the video is still blocky)


Under the video option
1) Frame size - Pal DV standard
2) Frame rate - 25 (PAL)
3) Field order- Lower field first
4) Pixel Aspect Ratio - 1.093
5) Video format - PAL DV ( I suspect this is the one giving me problem as there are different compressors, but i've tried a few and the result is still the same )

6) Interleave every secs - 0.25
7) Create an OpenDML (AVI ver 2.0) Compatible file (Clicked)


I am not burning the files, just viewing the completed files. I am not too sure bout the system setup, but I have set it to all the best settings too under the project properties.

What should i check/do? thanks for ur help.

Check your project settings to make sure they are concurent with your render output settings. If its trying to do conversions and so on, you make get drops in output quality.


Zac

My project settings is as follows.

1) Template - PAL DV (720x576, 25.000 fps)
2) Width - 720
3) Height - 576
4) Field order - Lower field first
5) Pixel aspect ratio - 1.0926 (Pal DV)
6) Frame rate : 25.000 (PAL)
7) Full resolution rendering quality : Best

As I see it, it looks the same as the output. Hmm this is weird.
Anything else I should check?

Can you play the file back on another computer to see if it's a playback problem you're having? I had some problems that looked a bit like yours, and they went away when I defragged and did some tweaking of the memory handling etc. Turned out the renders were good, but the system couldn't handle the through-put in real time.
Tor

I dun think that its the system fault because I could still output better quality files from ulead n read them, which means my system should be able to read good avi files.

I thought something was wrong with the setting in VV3.
Does that mean all my settings is correct?
What could be the problem?

If you are viewing the video on the computer, you could be seeing interlacing issues. TV video is interlaced, computer video is NOT. How does it look when sent to a TV? If it looks normal on a TV then everything is fine. If you are really wanting to use it on a computer, then deinterlace it.

Vegas Video 4.0 with Noise Reduction Plugin.

I footage I shot for a wedding and I discovered that I have echos and wind noise that drowned out the main audio. Can I fix this with NR and Vegas or should I look at Premiere 6.5 or maybe something else? If I can use NR...how? thanks.

The thing about Vegas is that is so intuitive. Very small learning curve. Awesome software, I have not been able to find anything that Vegas was unable to produce for me. It is feature laden, stable and if you buy it via the upgrade or academic pricing, inexpensive for what you get. The DVD authoring program they offer has Dolby 5.1 AC3 encoder included.

I would also add that the performance of Vegas when you scroll and preview clips is superior to Adobe Premiere.

I work off both of them. I tend to 'quick edit' on VV and then dump it into Premiere for fine tuning.

Having worked on both Premiere and Vegas, I would definitely have this to say.

Vegas is a much faster layout and more intuitive interface and editing is quicker and easier to get you moving along. Not to mention real time previews of your transitions and corrections and effects. Premiere is a render happy tool. Yes the current version has real time but depending on the horsepower of your PC this may mean 8 fps. Chromakeying and other effects are much easier on Vegas. Remember Premiere was designed around the Mac as the ideal platform. Controls and stuff, much like Photoshop is designed around what a Mac User is used to. Whereas Vegas is a PC product that is PC friendly, the right click does what you intend it to do unlike Premiere. But I do complement Premiere on its titler program that is more robust and more professional than Vegas'. Premiere is also easier to work with when you cross other programs like After Effects and Photoshop. With all that said, Vegas is cheaper, easier and faster. Buy Vegas, because Sonic Foundry is in dire straights in the financial side and if we want to continue having great products designed for PC users then we should give them some cheddar.

Keith:

What's the nature of the "fine tuning" that you do in Premiere? Are these things that Vegas cannot do?

Will

To all:

For those using Vegas+DVD, could you describe the capabilities and limitations of DVD Architect? I've read the Web site and brochures, but I'm finding it difficult to put the product into context.

Also, how well integrated is DVD authoring with the NLE? The docs talk about placing chapter marks on the timeline that are exported to DVD architect. I'm not sure what that means or how well it works.

Thanks.
Will

Will, I've not had the occasion to use the DVD application in Vegas + DVD yet. I'd suggest you go to:

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/default.asp and scroll down to Vegas Video Topics. Post your question there and you'll have more answers than you know what to do with.

Jay:

Thanks for the lead. I also found:

www.dmnforums.com
www.sundancemediagroup.com/help/kb/kb_tutorials.asp

I'm still interested in any experiences from DViers.

Will

Here's an interesting one.
I'm having problems capturing video using Vegas 3 on my WinXP system. The camera is connected properly, and I can print video to tape with it perfectly. However, when I go to the Capture Video ..
First, I get a message window that says:
"The Device "No Capture Device" could not be opened.
Please Make sure that it is turned on and is not being used byu another application or user."
I click OK, then I get another message window saying:
"The device "Microsoft DV camera and VCR" Could not be opened.
Please makse sure it is turned on..."blah blah..
I click OK, and then I have the Video Capture screen, which shows no camera connected. I hit Reconnect and the same thing happens again.
Now, when I turn the power to the camera off, I get the same messages again.

It worked fine about 3 days ago, which was the last time I captured video.
THe video camera is a Canon ZR40 and I can capture video fine using Microsoft Movie Maker.


HEEEEEELP!

THanks

EDIT: Note, this is also the same result as what happens when you start the Video Capture when the camera is not turned on. But it is, and the DVIN on the camera is solid, not blinking.

Integration, well they are two separate programs, unless I'm usign them incorrectly, usually I would finish editing and then I encode using procoder and then use DVD Architech to make menus and the DVD.

In addition:
I've also tried starting the computer with the camera on, and various other methods of power on/off while opening the software.

At least this time I know it's a software problem, as the computer detects the video camera when I plug it in.

What driver is the firewire card using? If it is using a Texas Instruments driver, delete the card, reboot, let it auto-detect the card and use the Microsoft driver.

This so far works just like a dream I cant think of any way this could work better. Im just wondering if anyone has fooled around with this option and if so would they mind posting their results. I would enjoy hearing it.

Rob:D

I have Vegas 4 also, I'm trying to figure out how to talk my wife into a surround sound system, so I can try it out.

hmmm. . . a wise man once told me "It's easier to get forgiven, than ask permission".