I have heard that VV 3.0 does not support Canon 4 track audio: is that true?

Nathan Gifford

G'Day from WA

Yes this is true, from my understanding.

cheers

greenday

I just bought a Canon XL1s and do have Vegas Video 3.0. I am just learning about this stuff, but I was hoping that this setup I could get the four tracks of audio. This is too bad.

Ron

Nathan did you figure out anything about Veg video 3.0?
i too have been using all 4 channels of audio and just discovered that i will have to dump via s-video and rca cables due to the fact that firewire to vegas is not picking up my 3-4 channels.

does anyonw know of software that is supporting all four chaales of audio via firewire?


amon


thornburgav@hotmail.com

I have read that Vegas Video 3.0 is not supporting XL1 4channel audio. What programs are supporting 4 channel firewire dumps and use's real quad surround sound proccessing?

Also i to am looking for a good totaly wireless microphone system
with Lavalier and handheld microphone. any suggestions? include all specs...thx

Has anyone tried using the supplied cannon mic with extention cables (1/8 stereo and the power) as a boom mic?

Suggestions on hooking up a me66 sennheiser for boom mic.



thanks for the help. . .

DVi rox

There is another solution if you don't mind purchasing a very inexpensive capture program. Scenalyzer now has the ability to capture either stereo 1 or stereo 2 from a minidv tape. The cost for this program is only $33.00. The updated version that has this capability is not yet a direct link on their site but they will send you a link to the beta version that includes this ability.

www.scenalyzer.com

If you simply want a cheap capture program that will capture all 4 tracks, try www.scenalyzer.com. You will need to request the link that points to the beta version that now includes this ability.

Most capturing programs allow this ability including: Cinestream, Premiere, and FCP. So, you can easily find a program which can capture the additional audio tracks.

For our wireless system, we use an Azden UDR400 system. It has worked great for our purposes. (Yes, it does record onto Stereo 2)

The Dazzle/FAST 'DV.now AV' and 'DV.now' products will capture all 4 audio tracks and to boot they store them as four speparate WAV files. The cards come with a full version of Premiere 6.0 and soem other software.

Many programs are capable of capturing all 4 tracks including:

Cinestream/EditDV
Premiere
FCP

As mentioned in my previous post, the CHEAPEST add-on you could get that will import all 4 tracks is Scenanlyzer. The demo version can be downloaded and tested from:

http://www.scenalyzer.com/sclive20011115.zip

Personally, the options I use most are Cinestream and Scenalyzer.

I thought I saw a Vegas Video 3 post elsewhere on this site. . .so here's mine. I recently edited something on Vegas Video 3, and during playback the last time I opened the program, it was all stuttery and nasty. . .kinda like streaming video with a 56k connection (which I also have), you get me?

The time before that, playback was fine. Capture looked nasty though. Granted, I am working off a 13 gig hard drive, the computer's original HD, and I have 384 mb of RAM. . .which I'm planning to change. However, I still have about 3.5 gigs of drive space left, and it's never been stuttery before, even at the highest quality preview level. Any ideas?

not sure this is your problem, but, all hard drives lose speed on read and write operations as they fill up. If you're drive is full, it's working at a lower speed than when it's empty. If your drive is an older model (ie slower than the new drives) it is marginal for video capture/playback. As a result, you could be dropping frames. Are you?

Well, there's a readout somewhere when you capture that tells you how many frames are dropped while capturing. It says no dropped frames. But yes, it is an older model (1999). I'm going to get a 80 gig firewire drive. They have mac-configured ones for &200 or so, and I've been told they can be reformatted to work on the PC. Is this s good way to go?

Dropping frames is a problem reported only during capture. If playback is too slow, you'll get a lot of stuttering, but, no diagnostic message. There are a number of freeware drive speed testers available. Assuming you're using a DV codec, the drive speed has to be better than 4 Mb/sec minimum. Most older drives average about 12 Mb/sec with an occasional dropout to less than 3 Mb/sec.....not good.

A firewire IDE drive will work pretty good...at least as good as a drive mounted on the internal IDE bus. My Western Dig wd1000BB runs at 24 Mb/sec minimum. For best video performance, be sure to get a 7200 RPM ATA/100 drive.

sometimes when i edit VV i get the studder ...BUT when i look around i find that i accidently turned something ON that then makes VV have to render that FX which my processor can't do in real time... my most common accident is the luminance level slider it has to be 100% if lower heavy processing ...
another is sometimes i'll try a pan/crop or track motion then forget to unplug them .... if you added any FX to the video track it will put a load on the processor ...

VV runs very good on 384ram -IMO not the problem

i suggest you open a NEW window of vegas ..drop the avi clip on the timeline .. now play it ... if it plays back with no studder then somewhere in your other edit you have turned on a FX of some type... ??

also turn OFF any software running in background.. IE virus software, screen saver , easy cd ,

you don't say what CPU you are running ?? if under 933 .. when you capture do not use the computer - do not move the mouse , do not open a excel/word doc, capture using smart capture ( when you capture you will NOT see the image) view image on camera or tv , defrag your drive ... 3.5 gig of free HD space is very small ,

if running win2K have disk management look at HD - it will tell you how many pieces your clip is broken ... i'm running 80 gigs sometimes i'll have 15gigs free then when i capture a 3 gig clip it is broken up into 200 pieces ........

So I'm not supposed to leave any FX in my piece when I watch it? I thought that was the whole point of Vegas Video. . .real time previews without the card.

I recently upgraded my computer's processor to a 1.6 gig Athlon, so it should be fine. I do have a pretty slow HD, though. . .I don't know its speed.

I'm also still running win 98. . .does it make a big difference. I don't know much about this stuff. Should I get win XP? I know 2000 and ME are supposed to be ass.

I was planning to buy an 80 gig firewire drive, and transfer the actual program files from Vegas Video, as well as the media from my project to it. Will this cause playback to be smooth? Do I need to have Vegas Video on the same drive as the media for it to run smoothly, or does it matter?

with all the NLE's I'm aware of, it's always recommended to have your video capture/playback drive different from the drive that the OS and application are on. This also applies to all the scratch files the app uses. Firewire drives work fine, unless you're trying to network over the firewire bus...not enough bandwidth, despite what they claim.

Ok . . .media on one drive, VV on another, that the idea? Cool. Someone above told me that 384 MB RAM was plenty for VV and I didn't need any more,but on the box for the program, it says it uses DYNAMIC RAM previewing, which leads me to believe the more RAM you have, the smoother playback will be.

Is there a way to letterbox (make the video look 16:9) in Vegas Video 3? I've played with the crop tools and searched the help files, with no luck. Am I retarded or is it just not possible with this program?

I printed something to tape from the timeline with Vegas Video 3 last night, and the audio came through pretty badly. The video looked fine, just like I had it on the timeline, but the audio was very stuttery, usually cutting out when the video dissolved. Any idea why?

Could it be brand of tape I printed to (Panasonic LinearPlus minidv)? Maybe the fact that my hard drive is about 99 percent full?

Here is two ways depending on whether you want the entire clip to remain or chop off the top and bottom.


Click on the Event FX button for the clip. Add a "deform" effect. Change the Amount to -1, change the left squeeze to about -.35 and the right squeeze to about -.35. Adjust these numbers till you get the appropriate size. This will give the full frame squeezed down to size.

To simply make the top an bottom disappear under a black border, click on the Event Pan/Crop button for the clip and move the top and bottom edges in the appropriate distance. You may have to turn off the keep aspect ratio so you can move the edges individually.

You sure about that second method? Maybe I was cropping it wrong. I couldn't do anything but move the picture up and down. Am I grabbning the wrong handle or something?

Yes, I am sure about #2. I tested it once again and it works fine. Make sure the lock aspect ratio is turned off. I had size about center turned on. I grabbed the top middle handle and pulled it down. That also raised the bottom edge (to maintain center). This created a black border across the top and bottom.

The mask mentioned is just a picture that is superimposed over the video. I don't know which method would render faster.

You're right, good sir. You have to override the maintain aspect ratio option by holding "Ctrl" as you drag. Thanks for the tip. The manual to the software is next to useless.

Okay, this may be a bit lengthy. I shot a wedding recently, my first and probably only one, using an XL1s, and a Sennheiser ME66 for audio. I was able to pick up the music, though it was mostly over modulated. I edited a little package together in Vegas Video 3 using the audio from the wedding. It's fine pretty much all the way through, except at the end. At this point, the music has a lot of "gaps" in it---dead spots on the timeline where there's no information. I don't know if this is a capture problem or if it's messed up on the tape as well (my tape is screwed up, a whole other story, but I can't get back to that point on the tape to check the audio). At any rate, I cut and pasted audio to fill in the gaps, and it sounded a little better. When I exported to tape, however, the gaps were there, but longer. This happened when I printed to tape previously, when I had done no alterations to the sound. I have no idea why my changes didn't come out on the tape, when everything else I altered did. Any ideas?

1) try again to play back the TAPE in the XL to see if the audio gaps are on the tape..

2) if tape had gaps .. then in the VV time line just render out the AUDIO of the section that you repaired .. after you have rendered out the audio place the new audio clip on a 2nd audio track right below the repaired section ( zoom into time line so you can sync up the audio waves visually ) just slide the new audio right/left to sync it ... then either delete the old audio section (audio 1)or use the volume rubberband to turn the audio OFF during that section..

now render out the whole clip or use the PRINT from timeline

Can you do a flop in Vegas Video 3?

What is a flop?

***********DITTO***********

Oh sorry. I thought that was the film term for when you reverse the, uh, direction or orientation of the video. For instance, let's say you shot a close up of someone, and on the original footage, they're facing left, but you need them facing right. That's a flop.

ahhh...

use the "event pan/crop" tool and drag one of the handles across the center and all the way to the opposite side. This will reverse the image either left/right or up/down depending on which handle you grab.

hope this helps

Ahh. . .thank you sir. I bow to you.

Hi there

I am having trouble capturing to a RAID 0 array on my new Abit AT7 motherboard. It drops frames left, right and centre when capturing to the RAID (which is two Maxtor 60GB Viper 7200rpm ATA133 drives), but captures perfectly when capturing on the system drive (one Maxtor 40GB Viper 7200rpm ATA133). The operating system is WinXP and have the RAID setup as hardware array (Highpoint). I am capturing from my Canon XM1 (PAL version of GL1).

Has anyone had this problem before, or might know what is going wrong???? One of the reasons for getting this board was for fast, reliable capture using the ATA133 RAID on this board :(

Thanks in advance

Tim
Australia

Many times, for a RAID array to work effectively, it has to be properly configured. One of the options that needs to be optimized is the block size defined when the array is formatted. Also, RAID arrays are not immune to other programs or hardware hogging bandwidth on the PCI bus. I suggest you get a disk speed testing program, like HDTACH, and run a test comparing your disk I/O thruput against the HD that's working correctly. More than likely, you'll find the RAID array's not up to reqmts for some reason.

How do I slow a clip down/slow motion in Vegas Video 3?

position the cursor over the right edge of the clip and the cursor icon changes. CTRL/Rt Click/and drag to change the speed.

Or....

Right-click the event, choose "Insert/Remove Velocity Envelope". This will add a blue line with a square on the left side. Right-click the square, choose "Set To..." and you can manually set any speed you desire from -100% (reverse) to 300% (3 times speed). Enter 50 for half speed. Afterwards, adjust the clip to the length you desire.

The advantage of this method is that you can have multiple blue squares in the clip so you can actually change the speed of the clip as the clip progresses (i.e. you could gradually go from full speed (100%) to freeze frame (0%).

Thank you guys!

Okay, all. Follow me here. I have Vegas Video 3, and I'm embarking on the frustrating journey that is claymation. I'll be using my XL1s in interval recording mode to capture a half second for each separate image. I'm going with 15 images per second (2 frames long each).

I figure, using this method, I can capture two frames from every image, or capture the tape and edit each image down to two frames after breaking it up into clips. Either way will take forever. I was thinking of just capturing the tape, breaking the scenes up, and then speeding up the footage until it's at the speed it would be at if I'd only shot 2 frames for each image. I can't see why this wouldn't work. If I speed it up by 7.5x (750%?) This should work, going from 15 frames per image to 2. Is this right?

Be sure to select "RESAMPLE" before you render.

I did a test shoot using the above described method, and found that in Vegas Video, you can only speed up the video (using the event envelope) to 300%. I'm going to need more than twice that, and even more if I can't figure out how to get the damn interval record mode to work. Is there another way to speed the video up more?

The only thing I can think of is to speed it up to 300%, output to minidv, reimport it speed it up again, etc. until the desired speed is reached. Should only have to do this once, though, right? (300% X 2.3333333333333333333 = 750 percent (7.5x). Still, a lot of trouble. Any other way?

You actually have multiple methods of speed-up. The BASE speedup can be up to 12X. Here's how:

1) CTRL-drag the end of the clip to change its speed.

(or right-click it, choose properties, and modify the playback rate)

Using this method, you can speed up the clip up to 4X

2) Use the velocity envelope to speed the clip up to 3X.

By combining the two, you can get up to 12X. To get 7.5X, just set the properties playback rate to 3X and and the velocity envelope to 2.5X. That should give you the results you need.

Much appreciated sir. The manual's useless in that regard. . .I remember reading that "one of the methods used to change the velocity of a clip is the velocity envelope" and it never mentioned what the others were!

"The [Vegas Video] manual's useless in that regard. . .I remember reading that "one of the methods used to change the velocity of a clip is the velocity envelope" and it never mentioned what the others were!"

You're right, Josh. As much as I like VV 3.0, the manual is just about useless. Why is it so cotton-pickin' hard for software manufacturers (and some equipment makers) to write comprehensive manuals???

While I agree the manual could be improved, these methods ARE mentioned in the manual. Yes, they could be better organized but they ARE there. The pages listed below are the PDF page numbers.

The velocity envelope is discussed in full beginning on page 159.

The "Time Stretching" (as it is called in the manual) - i.e. the CTRL-drag - is given an overview on pages 138 & 139.

The "Playback Rate" in the Properties dialog is discussed on page 155.

Perhaps there are some people unaware that there is a seperate manual available from SoFo that is pretty inclusive. The manual that comes with the software is pretty worthless except to get you started. The HELP function provided with VV3 is, also, very useful.

Where is this other manual available?

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/products/NewShowProduct.asp?PID=686

i would think that a "macro" could be written that once you had the clips in VV time line it would pull 2 frames out of each 2 second clips. or pull 2 frames and delete the next 58.

you might post your question over on the VV board. there is a person over there that does come up with "marco" answers for these kind of things ( delete every other frame .. then double each remaining frame )