Hi all. Just dragged in from seven weeks of production in the woods late last night, and before I get down to it I need to know one very crucial Vegas thing.

When Vegas aborts capture owing to dropped frames (I've set my preferences to do that), is the footage that was captured prior to the abort ok? How much is recorded that is "bad"? Does it record a second or two, a frame or two, of "bad" footage before it aborts? Or does it abort at that very frame? I'm hoping there is a safe way of "knowing" so I can use the rest. Thing is, it was all shot 24p, and there is a possibility of a film transfer, so I need to be very sure I have clean footage to work with. If there is any question in the slightest that I have footage where I can't tell if a frame is missing or not, I'd rather play it safe and blow out what I've already brought in while I was having a dropped frame problem with my system (which still is an issue... have to track down what's causing it or do a clean hard drive re-install so I can get cranking). OTOH, with over 90 hours of video, I want to keep what has already been captured if at all possible. That's a lot of "real time" to crank through in the days ahead.

Thanks in advance,
Marcia

I believe it will be fine up to the point where it stopped. When set to stop on dropped frames, everything should be fine up to the point where it stopped - i.e. the dropped frame.

Thanks Edward. A genuine relief.

Marcia, are you going to capture the tapes in one long file or have
it split them up into individual scenes? I do the latter and in the
case of dropped frames always recapture from that particular
scene. Ofcourse this is near impossible to do if you want a video
file that is 1 hour long.

Hello,
Just for a test I have used keyframes to send a sound round my 5.1 speakers starting from left rear round the front to right rear using 5 keyframes. It almost works, but when the sound gets to about front right, it starts appearing again in the rear left speaker, where it started. I don't know where I'm going wrong. The surround panner animates where the sound is positioned perfectly, so I don't see how the sound can end in the rear left and right speakers, when it should just be right. Any ideas? I'm using Vegas 5.0 by the way.

Thanks
Stewart

Rob, to save time I was going to bring in entire tapes then subclip from there. Logging first, then capturing the clips, is certainly the best way to go (like I did in my old Avid days) and would allow for easier recapturing as you say, if something goes awry. But that basically doubles the required real time hours (viewing, then capturing), and I desperately need to get into editing asap. And with 90 hours, that's a lot of time needed already. Thing is, I have someone at a studio, waiting, wanting to show my rough cut around to a some power players (a dad with a son impacted with this disease who understandably would like to help me get this story out there). Am hoping to have it pounded together by mid October, set to a score, etc. for the onset of the festival season as well.

So in your opinion, what I have that's intact from before I got the dropped frame message and Vegas aborted should be fine as Edward says? When I was home for a couple days mid-production I'd brought in around 10 hours of footage to check some things, and was having a maddening time with dropped frames. Something going on with my system, obviously. Still unresolved, but will track down what's going on in the next few days (more interviews today and tomorrow). But what I'd done at that time when Vegas aborted a section was back it up to the last place the speaker had begun a new thought, and restarted the capture from that point on, rather than deleting the entire capture.

I just wanted to verifiy that I wasn't courting trouble to keep that footage.
Marcia

Capturing:
- capture the whole tape and let vegas decide on the scenes.

Editing
- I view the captured material in the trimmer and add markers
- at the same time I move the fragments I believe I'll need onto the timeline and put them next to each other without being too anal about precision in the cuts
- I add photos / titles in the same rough, unfinished manner to mark their places
- I view the resulting first very rough cut and start adjusting the cuts for rhytm, logic, aesthetics doing my best to finalize them, including the transitions (dissolves or whatever I'm using). At this stage I view each cut a few times and also fix the additional graphic elements - titles, images etc.
- at the time of the second view i also pay attention to the sound and may add markers in problematic areas.

- If I am happy with the cut I go on to fix the sound which may involve many things - from using volume envelopes
to opening it in audio software and applying compression, using one channel to create simulated stereo etc.)

- Create DVD using DVD Architect

- If it's an important project I show it to people (wife, friends, neighbor - whoever I can bribe with beer and crackers) and ask them what they thing (and also watch them while they are watching - when are they bored and when are they interested?).

- Maybe make adjustments and create a final dvd.

- It's a wrap.

A few notes:
- When editing I sometimes don't use the trimmer but put the whole file on the timeline, watch it, and slice (S) around the parts I want to remove.
- When working with footage from 2 cameras, I sync the tracks (using a noticeable sound event), put them above each other and use the Exclamation mark button to turn the bottom on and off and see which view I want. Then move the footage I want to a third timeline.

What I would like to hear from others:
- approach to editing footage from multiple cameras.
- approach to editing music video type stuff - (many cuts, sync to beat)

Regards,
-- Andre

Capturing:
- capture the whole tape and let vegas decide on the scenes.

I capture "segments" of tapes but do so via Batch Capture. I do NOT let vegas break on scenes, I do so later.


Editing
- I view the captured material in the trimmer and add markers
- at the same time I move the fragments I believe I'll need onto the timeline and put them next to each other without being too anal about precision in the cuts

I place the segments directly on the timeline skipping the trimmer. Depending on the project, I then use Tsunami to extract the good segments.


- When working with footage from 2 cameras, I sync the tracks (using a noticeable sound event), put them above each other and use the Exclamation mark button to turn the bottom on and off and see which view I want. Then move the footage I want to a third timeline.

I usually create a PIP view so I can see all of the cameras at once. I then simply place markers where I want to switch cameras named to indicate the proper camera. Excalibur makes this process a breeze. After all markers are in place, Excalibur creates the "third timeline" or Master Track for me.


What I would like to hear from others:
- approach to editing footage from multiple cameras.

Click on the link below my name, go to the Newsletters, and read Vol #1, Issue #9 for 4 different methods of Multi-Cam editing including Excalibur.


- approach to editing music video type stuff - (many cuts, sync to beat)

1) Capture- allowing vegas to break the sceens up (ie sceen detection enabled)

I used to capture entire tapes, or large sections at a time w/o sceen detection but I found it makes fragmentation even worse as it's hard to place a huge file on a populated hardrive without fragmenting it. Besides I figure if I need the whole tape on the timeline I hold down shift to select all the clips from a particular tape then drag them to the timeline in one fell swoop.

2) Weed out the clips I'm using.

Usually I'll create an empty track above my footage and shuttle through my footage using the new drag the cursor ability in Vegas 5. When I see a clip or segment I'm going to use I usually extract it by making a selection and hitting S.......or simply by finding the start and end and hitting S at each point. After the clip is split I'll move it to the track above which is usually muted so it won't interfere with the viewing of the raw footage.

3) Go back with all the little slivers and segments and condense them so they are butt up against each other only leaving small gaps between shots from different sceens. It's at this step I'll actually start to pull the clips and assemble them over a bed of music....that is if the type of video your doing needs to be timed and edited to music.

4) Render.

I'll render whole sections at a time. For example while doing a wedding video I'll render the ceremony as one long AVI clip. Once I have all the clips...(bridal prep, ceremony, recessional, various reception segments, and highlight vignette) I'll assemble all the DV AVIs on a separate timeline add my markers for chapter points then encode an MPG2 using the DVDA template making sure I keep save chapter markers in media checked. That way all my chapterpoints are already made BEFORE I go into DVDA.

What I would like to hear from others:
- approach to editing footage from multiple cameras.
- approach to editing music video type stuff - (many cuts, sync to beat)

Regards,
-- Andre


Editing to Music: A lifesaver for this style of editing is to listen to the music peice your using several times. Get the feel of it's range and beat. Then go back while listening and keep your finger on the "M" key. Tap the M key to the beat, and or transitions in the song. Areas where you feel would be condusive to cuts and dissolves. I sometimes even close my eyes not to be distracted by the screen and just listen. Once your done you might have some minor tweaking to make sure your markers are cleanly on beats. I use this as my foundation for laying down clips.

An example of a clip that required lots of timing:
http://home.comcast.net/~g.elliott3/HSA_HIGHLIGHT_VIGNETTE1.wmv



Multi-Cam Editing: One word- EXCALIBUR
I'm spoiled- I can't imagine going back after doing multi-cam editing with Excalibur. It's arguably the most usefull script in that plug-in...I love it!

Thank you Edward, Andre and Glen. I'm sorry for the lack of contact, but during the last few days I went down on a fast-track at work, could barely speak.

Will use your 'inputs' as a general guideline for me. I'm kinda lost, if you know what I mean.

Kindest Regards,
Gustavo

From the current wedding project I'm neck deep in....

http://home.comcast.net/~g.elliott3/Bridal_Prep_Intro.mpg

Hello Glen,

Great work!

I really love the end scene with the bell and the overcast sky ( did you film like 2 minutes and then sped it up ? )

The in-zoomed-eye to white flash -> forrest is also very nice!

One thing that I noticed:

First scene when you super impose the brick wall on the church - I think it is a bit "quick" I'd like the bricks to come in a bit smoother.

Best regards,

Lars Siden

I honoustly don't know if the very last piece of the captured file
will contain the drops or not. I just don't know since I've always
deleted the complete file and started over again. Ofcourse the
earlier parts of the file MUST be okay, so having an overlap
sounds wise to me to make sure all is well.

If capturing is such a precious thing timewise perhaps it would
be good to look at direct to disk options? Anyway, good luck
hunting your problem!

Good morning:

Now that WinXP Service Pack2 is available but I'm still not confident enough to install it. I'm afraid that it will screw up my Vegas 5 or something else. Has any try it yet?


Thanks
AP

Well basically it is not out yet. It has only been released to beta
testers and partners of Microsoft. So testing hasn't really begun
for the consumers yet. You've survived this long on SP1 so I would
not upgrade to SP2 for a couple of weeks at least.

A lot has changed in the service pack. I so no reason for Vegas
not to work, but I would not advice against testing if you do not
have a very good knowledge of Windows and problem solving.

SP2 is a bit overhyped and I'm pretty sure a lot will still work.
The major thing for consumers is that the Firewall is now enabled
on all connections per default. This can cause some problems if
you already are running a third party firewall or don't have one.

The other biggest change has to do with network security but
a single user system will not see anything of this. This network
security will only hit you when you are doing DCOM which a lot
of people ARE NOT doing anyway.

Why am I then saying you should wait? Because you can never
be sure. Microsoft can't test everything in the world and errors
or problems can always crop up. Again, you have survived this
long on SP1 so just wait a bit longer.

I'm gonna do some tests myself this week and I might test Vegas
as well, although I'm not to keen on installing it on my main
machine just yet. I need the ability to do some work!

According to Sony, they have been testing it for quite a while and have not discovered any problems. If you DO install it and discover a problem, they want to know about it immediately.

most of SP2 goodies are downlaodbal from windows updates anyway :)
theres nothing too significant out there that isnt prolly already installed on ur machine..

if its not 100% to the front, u WILL get bleeding in the rears..
(no heameroids jokes please..lol)

<<<-- Originally posted by Lars Siden : Hello Glen,

Great work!

I really love the end scene with the bell and the overcast sky ( did you film like 2 minutes and then sped it up ? )
Exactly- then I applied a small zoom using pan crop.

The in-zoomed-eye to white flash -> forrest is also very nice!
Thank you- yeah I love that "flash" transition.

One thing that I noticed:

First scene when you super impose the brick wall on the church - I think it is a bit "quick" I'd like the bricks to come in a bit smoother.
Thanks for the input- I'll take a look at the timing of that transition again. Sometimes you get too close to these projects and miss things.

He's not talking about "bleeds".

I get that, too, Stewart...
The sound gets from left, to right, and then to the lfet again, even though you panned it to the right. I have no idee why this happends :(

Hi, Northern VA here, Alexandria to be axact. I'm a Vegas user 4+5 mainly for wedding.

Welcome.
Our kickoff meeting is scheduled Sunday, 4 PM, Aug 22 at the Food Court at Union Station, because it's accessable for just about everyone by Metro and/or car. I believe the Red Line gets you there if you prefer not to drive.
Email me and I'll pass your name on to Mickey. We want a relaxed atmosphere so everyone can discuss what sort of group we want to be. Everyone can get something to eat and contribute their ideas. We will also be open to suggestions as to where to meet on a regular basis. Something accessable, cheap or free and has good electrical hookups.

Hi,

I'm running Vegas v5.0b and Win XP Pro Eng SP2 - works perfectly! ( Installed the final SP2 3 days ago, have been running the betas and RC:s earlier ).

Best regards,

Lars Siden

The groups isn't just for those who live close to DC, but for those that work in and around DC. All are invited. We will have members that live in Fredericksburg and Chantilly.

In general, unless you really need a feature or fix in new software, don't upgrade. Everyone assumes software development will produce improvements. Just about the
only thing you can count on is an increase in the size
of the software. New software is a combination of
previous bugs and features and new bugs and features.

(Personal rant)
A prime example is Pinnacle Studio9. It has the same
critical bugs of Studio8 (Audio/Video out of sync, lack
of project time estimation, rerenders existing MPEG2
files, butt-slow editing performance with
more than 15 chapters, etc.), but comes in a shiny new
box, with new graphics and "bonus" content, and
lots of little things to click on that ask you for your
credit card.

I like the camera movement on the close-up of the flowers while leaving the statue and background stationary. Must have taken some time to perfect.

Nice audio, where is it from, and is it royalty free, or dare I ask? I am interested in licensing some decent tracks, but can't seem to find anything worth while at any reasonable price.

Just well done, I really enjoyed it.

Dan check out my post here:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30423

I have the Gary Kleiner DVDA2 Training Discs (2 discs)....I'll be putting them for sale as soon as I'm done watching them. If your interested in them as well check back in a few weeks. If you need them ASAP- I'd suggest ordering them from www.VegasTrainingandTools.com

I have used Vegas for mulitple multitrack audio projects, however the source files were always recorded on a pro audio multitrack recorder and converted to .wav files before being brought into Vegas. What I am looking into is whether Vegas will allow you to map dedicated audio inputs to specific audio tracks on the timeline for recording real-time from an audio interface such as the Edirol FA-101 8-track firewire interface (http://www.edirol.com/products/info/fa101.html). basically, I want to record 8 discreet audio tracks from external audio sources at the same time. Will Vegas do this with the appropriate interface hardware?

Your input is appreciated!

I am not DSE, but can tell you that I have recently done excalty what you are describing: 8 tracks live to the timeline...for three hours.

No problem. I used a MOTU 896HD.

Gary

Thanks Gary,

How did you route each input to each specific track on the timeline?

Right-click the track header and choose "Record Inputs". That should give you a list of options. Pick a different one for each track.

Edward/Gary,

I guess what fooled me was that I do not have a multi-track A/D convertor attached to the system at this time, and therefore every time I tried to map a track, I only got the Stereo, Left and Right options. The system needs to see the device before I have the option of routing my tracks. I understand now!

Thanks so much for your support!


Lance

I have had some problems with what I suppose are corrupted files. Occasionally I see a dead spot on an .avi clip in my timeline. It is all black or it is pixelated, multicolored and there is no picture, a third type would be similar, multicolored and the sound of rushing noise. I take that to mean the file has become corrupted somehow. A fix is to replace it from my backup, an external IOMEGA hard drive. This has always solved my problem of the unuseable file but I have not figured out just why the file would go bad.

Aside from that happening, I have twice lost all content from Drive E, a 160 GIG hard drive. The error says there is no directory to reformat etc. I have done that twice but have lost all data twice.

I note that those two drives, one 250 GIG and the 160 GIG are on a Promise controller card and that never occurred to me that there was a relationship so that card is suspect.

But here in the BIG problem. My project files are not working. I run a project file and I get an error that says "the file is an unsuported format".

A couple times I got past that initial error and into Vegas. I then was told that such and such a file had errors and would I like to replace the file. I can do that and restore all the files needed but after that installation when it all looks like it will work I get another error.

The one staring me in the face says,

"An error occurred while loading the project file Ceremony Synched with Master PIP track WORKVERSION 9.veg. The file is an unsupported format." then Vegas shuts down.

Obviously I have a PC problem but doesn't it seem unlikely that .veg files are now considered "unsupported format?". I am running backup .veg files from another drive. Vegas also is not installed on the drive with the project files or the .avi's.

Any ideas why Vegas is rejecting .veg files? I am looking at losing an awful lot of work if I can't get the .veg files working.

Thanks in advance.

Faulty CPU/RAM/power supply is one possible cause (but unlikely IMO). If you have bad hardware then you will see some of the following:

Blue screens of death (XP automatically reboots on these unless you tell it not to)

Your computer does not always boot up.

Weirdness and random instability.

A bad IDE controller could also be a cause, although I don't know what might be causing this. It could even be a bad hard drive, but I have never heard of a hard drive doing that. I think there are programs out there that test for data corruption.

2- You could try running chkdsk to check your drive for errors. run --? type in "chkdsk /f" if using winXP
You may need to have the test run on reboot.

Very very nice, well done. Just one short remark: I would avoid cutting on the beat for that makes the next cut predictabe, thus making the viewer aware of the editing.

Barend Jasper

Keep in mind that issues with AVI can also come from dropped
frames during capture and tape problems. Also at times I've
seen some weird pixels or other stuff in Vegas and when I closed
it and re-opened it was gone.

It does sound you have much more serious problem. It is NOT
healthy for drives to dissappear or loose all of their content.

Are you running a virus scanner? Is this machine connected to
the internet? If so are you running a firewall?

I would definitely check that Promise card out. It could be yours
is a faulty one. Heat can be a problem too, so if you can I would
check that as well. Besides that memory is quite a possible
candidate as well!

i live in the burg...i may be able to make it

i had worked all day yesterday with a fellow student at school with idvd to create our dvd and the program jsut wasnt supportive enough...

i went home and redid it all in arch2 (first time using it) and rendered/burned as i finally caught a few hours of sleep

got up and grabbed the disc and headed back up to school... the dvd looks great BUT all the video seems to have a blur to it...anything with more than just slight motion has either a blur or alias issue (kinda the best way i can describe it)

quick pans look especially awful - almost like an interlacing issue but the sections are much larger than what ive seen before when ive dealt with interlace issues

the files were all .mov, (because we did them here at the school on mac) when i rendered out the files i set them as avi though (interestingly in XP i could rename the mov extension to avi and the video play just fine)

all the clips were shot on my GL1 or XL1s - it doesnt appear to be a cam issue...

it looks like more of a mpeg2 conversion issue...i didnt see this problem with the files when i was messing with extensions and opening in QT or WM9.

when i set it to optimize the DVD it was left at the default 8 Mbps that Arch2 uses (same as Arch1 i believe)

It shows on my set top dvd player /32 inch sony tv (interlaced)
and on compaq laptop (winXPpro) and now here on the G4 macs at the school.

Im guessing it is something that happened in the conversion by dvdArch2...possibly because the files were .mov (outputted on g4s at school from FCP) maybe?

it's driving me absolutely nuts (not to mention I quit smoking this past week so im completely irritated with everyone and everything)

hopefully it wont be a real issue for the average user viewing it but to me its so blatantly obvious that something doesnt look right.

i live an hour away from school, so heading back and reencoding is kinda not the cards for me...i have the dvdARch and source files on ipod, but no vegas/Arch here at school...i guess it will have to suffice but i really must get to the bottom of this...i wouldnt think i would have had to deinterlace or anything since this is meant for set top dvd/standard tv.

any value-added comments anyone can help me with here?

Impressive work!

its coz u havent set the last keyframe within the scene..
the panner is still moving..
u need to set 2 of them.. on for the final stop within the pan, and one to keep it ther..

thanks Peter, maybe that is what I did wrong! I'll check it at home!

the scrub doesn't seem to work like in Vegas4. In Vegas4, draging the scrub while in "pause", whould play the video with variable speed/in selected direction. In Vegas 5 it just alter the play speed while in "play" mode. If I'm in "stop" or "pause", dragin the scrub does nothing!
Is there something to set so this would work?

I can see in MediaPool the DataCode (if that's its name - date/time of shooting) for captured (from DV) clips. But when rendering a project, the date/time is replaced with a new one (generated at the date/time of rendering).
Is there a way to kip the original date/time?

I want to use some apps to generate subtitle from the date/time info of the generated avi to use when compiling a DVD. (this is posible with the original captured avi)

I see the following things that could be wrong:

1) the quicktime format was not in DV but some other compression format like mpeg2/4/sorenson

2) the footage was progressive and you forget to let DVDA/Vegas know and it thinks it is lower field first / interlaced (default)

3) the footage was interlaced but the field order went wrong somewhere

4) the playback DVD player does some artificial electronic enhancing (some players have this, most can have it switched of that do)

I have a virus program with updated virus definitions. It runs when I am not rendering. I have only the firewall that comes with my router. I do not feel I have a virus.

Power supply? Hmmmm. I have replaced the power supplys on the last 4 machines I purchased but only after they gave me obvious symptoms like shutting down when hot. This PC has 4 Hard Drives and a DVD drive. That is a lot of power. I believe I have a 400 power supply. I would not know how to test to see if its a power supply problem.

I run Norton Utilities religiously and never really get disk or cluster errors.

I have since taken a few .veg files from a safe drive. They start to load and when they go to load a corrupted .avi file Vegas asks me to replace it. I then replace it with a good .avi from the external IOMEGA and it plays. So my problem is not that Vegas doesn't recognize its own file format, it is just what Vegas reports when it has a problem with a file being used in Vegas, such as a corrupted .avi.

Bottom line, I feel, is that this is NOT a Vegas problem now but one of having both corrupted .veg files and .avi files. I need a safe drive to run them from until I figure this out. This discussion belongs on some other board at this point.

But one question for anyone who might know...

I am runnnig a fairly new motherboad but it doesnt recognize the 250 gig drive as such. It would see it as 137 GIG without the controller. If I purchased a 250 GIG external firewire drive, would that be seen as 250 or would it also be seen as 137? An external 250 GIG drive would temporarily rescue me.

An external 250GB drive should be seen as 250GB by Windows
since it will control it directly instead of through the bios who
doesn't understand such things through USB/firewire.

Seems to be working for me. While stopped, drug the scrubber icon both directions and the timeline cursor moved just fine.

This has been debated several times. When you render a crossfade, what time code do you use? Since it is NEW video, it would be NOW. Then you end up with date codes bouncing all over the place. If you do a full render, the entire file is new which should also be set to NOW??? Maybe you could provide some suggestions to Sony on possible ways it could operate - maybe even options so that it could behave like now, or behave in this manner, or behave in that manner...

Excessive heat can also make external hard drives do weird things. I haven't seen the kind of problems like you've seen but it's a good idea to make sure your drives are running cool.

Good luck.

Dennis Vogel