Because you have unlimited tracks in Vegas you can sort audio that requires the same kind of treatment on separate tracks, and even channel some of those track to different buses. Then you can apply FXs on both track and bus level. Have a look at the audio signal flow diagram in the manual.

What you also can do is to set up the default track FX and/or create FX packages with typical presets that you normally will use, and then just select/deselect them as required.

In detail:
Drop Graphic Dynamics on an audio track. Select and tweak some different presets and save them. Rightclick the track header, click on Set default track porperties, and then OK. Next time you create an audio track it will have Graphic Dynamics selected and you can just pick the appropriate preset.
OR:
Set up a collection of audio FXs and tweak them for one typical use you may need (music, voiceover, etc). Save as FX package. Next time you can just selct th package and it will replace the FX already on your track and install itself, tweaks and all. Repeat for other typical uses.
Of course you can still fine-tune the tweaks after that, but you will have a relevant starting-point.

Thanks to all for the inputs. Vegas looks like it will be my choice. It has more tools than I will ever be able to use, but it's a little daunting coming from a Pinnacle Studio 8 background.

To slow down, freeze, or reverse, use a Velocity Envelope.

When capturing or printing to tape, it would probably be a good idea to shutdown the firewall and antivirus programs. For normal editing it probably won't matter (and *may* not matter on capturing or printing either - only tests will determine that).

Personally, my editing and internet computers are two separate machines. My editing computers never see the internet so they have no need for a firewall or antivirus program.

Check out EndItAll. This progam allows you to setup which processes should be shutdown or killed. I have it setup for editing, so when I start editing, I close/kill everything I won't need.

Mark,
Kudos, you did a smokin' job with what looks to be the same tools we all have. Once again great job. I would also like to get additional info on you PS training disks. Please email me off the boards with info:

me1313@mindspring.com

Thanks,
Wade

I will eventually be using Vegas 4.0 to edit 24p or 24pa footage and will need to output to dvd w/ 5.1 sound and include a commentary track. For that reason, I was leaning toward DVD Architect; however, it's my understanding that multiple audio tracks, for a director's commentary track, isn't possible in Architect. Ouch!
Now what authoring program should I purchase? Isn't there an available plug-in for Architect to enable a commentary track? I guess it's on to other 5.1, AC3 encoding software that has multiple languages capability.

Correct. DVDA does not currently offer multiple audio tracks. If the video is short enough - it could be included twice. Otherwise you'll have to look at another product that does offer this feature.

Hope I didn't stump EVERYONE. *yikes*

<<<To slow down, freeze, or reverse, use a Velocity Envelope.>>>

I know how to slow down and reverse but how do I do to freeze a videoclip with Velocity Envelope?

I want to freeze a videoclip and then have a text rolling there.

ZERO percent as the speed is Freeze Frame. Right-click the node, choose "Set to..." and type in 0.

Are you using best or preview mode and do you have other processor/memory intensive things running on your PC at that time?

No other processes- and yes I WAS running at best/full. However standard footage plays smooth when played at full size- why should this be any different. Besides I have a 3 ghz P4, and 1 gig of PC3200 XMS memory

hmm, not sure than what might be causing it. Let's see if anyone else comes up with an idea.

I tell you this tho, you can do some regedits and tweak Vegas to natively read .m2t files. This allows it to read them from the explorer and preview without opening them. I see where to allow it to render to m2t also. But I haven't been that bored or ballsey... yet.

It may be possible to transpose the codec's and file instructions from the Utility to Vegas, if I find out I'll post. Actually, It's so easy to change the registry to accept m2t files, I think vegas and Windows will handle them natively w/ a simple update-hopefully soon, so I don't have to go wrenching under the hood again.

Just wodneirng if ayone has this set up at all and hoping to hear their thoughts on it...

apparently its now compatible with vegas, but i havent seen any real work done with it..

anyone???

Turns out somethign went haywire with the maxtor hook up. I did system restore to restore prior to the maxtor install and it worked fine. Then reinstalled maxtore with no problems. Thanks everyone for the help!

A good free tool from Canopus, raptest :
http://www.canopus.com/US/products/free_utilities/pm_free_utilities.asp

It can be used to verify the read/write speed of your hard drive. Very easy to use (green, red, yellow ;)
A friend of mine had so many problems with a laptop, a firewire drive and his camcorder. It was a mix of : bios version, OS (2K vs XP), PCMCIA card model and firewire chipset.
The result was that the card is not fully compatible with his laptop. Using a cheaper one solved the problem (worked under 2k and XP as long as all patches are installed). Now he can capture and use the drive over firewire.

Dany

Thanks for the heads up on the app Dany. It showed me my SATA drive on my onboard Promise controller is working fine. READ: 54mb/s WRITE: 60mb/s Although when I capture to it I drop frames like crazy.
It enabled me to narrow down the solution. I found out capturing using my Audigy's IEEE works without a hitch. There must be something not jiving between my onboard IEEE and Promise controller.

Oddly enough I got the same read/write performance out of my OS drive but half as slow writes to my secondary hard-drive on my other intel SATA connection. Odd. I couldn't seem to get OVER 28mb/s READ performance. All the drives are the same (Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 120gig SATAs), and the two additional drives (ones without the os) are completly empty.

Can you offer some hints on the reg edits to get it to include the m2t files in Vegas?
Thanks
-Les

Is there any hint of when DVD Architect 1.x or 2.0 might be available?

It's pretty clear this market is heating up fast. Ulead's DVD Workshop 2 is a huge advance over the first version and seems to beat Adobe Encore in the feature department. Pinnacle Impression Pro is lagging badly and needs an update.

I'm going to have to buy one of these products sooner or later. I'd just as soon stick with the Vegas family and a well-integrated solution, but right now DVDA doesn't quite fill the bill. I'd much rather see DVDA 2.0 than Vegas 4.1 or even Vegas 5.0.

Will

P.S. Major features required are DVD-9 and multiple audio tracks (for commentary).

Sonic Foundry had some excellent computer-based tutorials for Vegas 2.0. They are very professionally done -- carefully scripted, crisp and to the point. First class work.

It turns out that a lot of the Vegas 2.0 material is still valid for Vegas 4.0, a testament to the strength of the user interface design, so it's too bad the older tutorials are no longer available. (I wish Sony would just throw them into the Vegas 4.0 box with appropriate caveats.)

I've been encouraging Sony to upgrade and enhance these tutorials for Vegas 4.0. There seems to be some interest, but nothing definite.

Will

I have a better idea...how about the two of you come on over to the states.. New Mexico to be specific, there are several of us here.
Your pal,
Randy (I ain't afraid of no Vikings) Brown

Better yet, east coast, AND it's closer. If it's anywhere between NY and Delaware I'm in.

How about Hawaii! The weather will certainly be warmer...aloha hoy!
Randy

I'll tell you where to look around...

hkey local machine>software>sonic foundry>vegas

you need to add the m2t extension to the mpeg definitions.

If your familiar w/ regedit thats enough to do it. If your still lost leave it alone.

Thanks, got that working.
-Les


<<<-- Originally posted by Stephen L. Minor : I'll tell you where to look around...

hkey local machine>software>sonic foundry>vegas

you need to add the m2t extension to the mpeg definitions.

If your familiar w/ regedit thats enough to do it. If your still lost leave it alone. -->>>

I've been using Vegas for about 9 months now -- love it. Two of my best investments have been Gary Kleiner's quick start to Vegas DVDs (www.vegastrainingandtools.com), and Vegas 4 Editing Workshop by Douglas Spotted Eagle (available on Amazon). Both are excellent resources to understand the basics and the subtle nuances of a world-class NLE.

James

If I had a still of a red rose, and it were the only red in the picture,
how could I change the red to white? A while back I removed all but one color using masking, copied events, parent/child, black and white. Don't remember the exact details. Any help with changing one color to another would be appreciated.

Use the secondary color corrector. Use the mask and select a
piece of the red color. You can then use the upper part of the
dialog to shift the color to another color. You might need to work
on the mask to get it smooth.

Thanks Rob, that did the trick. I actually needed white so I didn't even use the color wheel. I just put saturation to minimum and gain to max to get white.

Well I am one of the closest, but I gotta decorate my house,
sorry. Now if you could come to Amsterdam...

Hi all. I'm trying to darken down a face in Vegas but I want to keep the rest of the area light. I've tried playing with the composition stuff but I don't think I understand it properly cause I couldn't get it to work. I would have thought I could make a small circle, either on a separate image or using the mask generator and made that do some sort of "Darken" composition mode and voila. I'm not expecting perfect, and the face isn's a close up at all, it's almost a full shot but I can't get anything happening at all.


Anyone done this before and can tell me what I need to do?

Cheers
Aaron

Although I don't use Vegas, this could help you out. I use Premiere.

Some time ago I had a situation where a still scene had a bright corner. What I did was export the frame in question and imported it into photoshop. I then created a new layer on top of the captured image and applied a gradient over the corner, it was from black to transparent with the opacity of the layer tweaked so it was perfect.

After that I deleted the layer that had the captured image from the file and only saved the gradient. I then imported the still gradient image and applied it to one of the top video track with a certain transfer mode (I cannot remember which one it was) and stretched the image over the whole scene and bingo it worked like a charm.

Now if your face in question is moving around the frame, you might have to do each frame separately :(

That's the best way without using After Effects, I'm sure they have a better and more effective way of doing because it is using key frames for this type of compositions.

Regards,
Jack

Oh by the way, in your situation you wouldn't use a gradient like I did, you would have to create a darkish circle with a blur applied to it so that the rest of the image would not be affected.

Jack

To get plastered in Amsterdam - now that's a thought.
Anyway - GB: 3 more days.

Yo Torsie! - Email me and we can swap mobile numbers - At least I can give you mine - yeah? Don't wanna miss youat the NFT - HAHA!

Grazie

any superfast way to do it??

okies, heres what im envisioning,

harcore techno, big v8s, thrashing it out smoking up the street....

1 measure break in the music (4 beats) within these beats, i want the video to flick throu a zillion images.
now i can do tihs by changing the default still playback time to 1 second (i cant work out how to get it to 1 FRAME) then import some stills, but im loathe to manually do this, as were looking about 75 images (minimum) which need to be captured, then reimported.

anyone know of a simpler way?

If you want them to actually blast through at 1 frame per still image, just number the images sequentially and open as a still image sequence. Although 75 images really isn't much in this setup, unless you are looking through them, as they would be used up in under 3 seconds.

Okay, I've done it before, more than once, but I cannot seem to get it to work as of late. What am I talking about? Reversing the footage, making it go "backwards" instead of forwards, in time, that is.

Can someone give me the step by step instructions? I thought I knew how to do it, but apparently I don't.

I have seen the comparison between Vegas and Screenblast on the Sony site (http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/Products/showproduct.asp?PID=856&FeatureID=7369&FeatureTL=7231).

My question is simple, though. What does Vegas have that Screenblast doesn't? From looking at the chart, Vegas allows for more video tracks and there are several features that Vegas has that Screenblast doesn't. However, I don't know exactly what those features are (such as video envelopes, video track motion control, and audio/video scrub).

I currently use Pinnacle Studio, but it has never worked properly. I'll be building a new computer soon and I want to know if Screenblast is "good enough" or if I should go with Vegas.

I am not a professional videographer and don't have any current desire to become a professional. For now, I want to create DVDs of my home movies, but may want them to become more sophisticated as I gain more experience.

Any help would be appreciated.

Insert a velocity envelope on the clip, and pull it down into the negative numbers. :)

Hope this helps!

I know that part, the part I have trouble with is getting the right piece of footage to be reversed when it's all said and done. . .the beginning and end of the reversed clip are never where they're supposed to be.

Hi Josh,

I have done this recently, and encountered a similar problem.. If you trim a piece of video in the trimming window, and then place it on the timeline, apply your reverse velocity envelope it will not display just the trimmed video in reverse... The way I got around it, was clear the timeline, load the piece of video, trim it up, then render out that piece of video that you wiah to reverse as a new clip.. then go back to your project, load in the newly rendered clip that is exactly the right lenght, and apply your revers velocity envelope..

Mike m.

That makes sense. . .

The easiest way to do this is to figure out where you want the reversed clip to start. (The end of the clip before you reverse it.) Now split the event there. Now set the velocity envelope to a negative number. This will start at your split point and go backwards. Then split the event (or drag the right edge) until you get to the out point you want.

You have to split it? It's not the same as just trimming it down?

I never use the trimmer. I haven't found something I can't do quicker by just zooming in quick with the wheel mouse. Any way you do it (splitting, dragging and edge, trimmer), you need an event that starts right at the end of what you want to reverse.

You can definitely start out with Screenblast. You might want to check what the upgrade price is to Vegas and see what the extra cost will be to start low and upgrade later. A friend of mine received a competing product discount of $100 when upgrading to Vegas from Premiere. This was just before the software changed to Sony ownership, so I don't know the staus of this. I alos don't know if your software will qualify for that.

Screenblast will do all that many people need. I can't speak as a entry level video editor, but every time I'm in Vegas, I do use at least one of the features that are only available in Vegas.

Yes, as Joe says, you have to "think backwards"

- here's another method - first find the point where you want to FINISH, place a temporary marker there, then go ahead to where you want the reverse to START and place another marker.

Split or drag ends to make your event fit between the markers and apply the minus velocity envelope.

Screenblast is the "little brother" to Vegas. Consider it a "Vegas lite".

Vegas is much more powerful than Screenblast although Screenblast DOES have a couple of features NOT in Vegas (such as swf output)