Thanks Edward and Imran. It was well worth battling the automated parking device in downtown Orlando for the 30 minutes prior to my arrival. I do appreciate the help that many would require payment to provide.

Brad

Anyone take any photos?

Ah!
Thanks. Any suggestions for sites with free fonts to download?

I just bought Smartsound's Sonicfire 3 at NAB (it 's on a UPS truck somewhere right now...).

I looked closely at Acid, and decided to get a copy of 3.0. The learning curve looked much steeper, plus I never really solved the question of sorting out loops to find the ones I'd need to make any given soundtrack. But Acid looks like a deeper tool that would allow more creativity and control.

I'm planning on using Sonicfire to 'score' the memorial and possibly training/corporate videos coming up. It appears to be the quickest way to get a decent soundtrack created on a PC. Then, I can always tweak things in Vegas 5.0, or Acid 3.0, to make sure every soundtrack is unique.

It would be cool if Sony decided to create a competitor to FCP's Soundtrack that would fit with Vegas.

Scott

I mean if I save as to local shared address, and try access the file from a remote location, it doesn't work. So it just doe not support it I guess.

No, sorry, nobody had a camera...

It really happened, we swear!

Well, it's not all as easy as it seems. For "debugging", I run the program and, if it won't "compile", it will tell me the line it dies on. If it CAN, then it will attempt to run and either given me an error specifying a line of code or a general failure error with no error at which time you have to add some manual debugging code to find the exact error location.

Recently I've started using the SharpDevelop editor but Excalibur, Neon, and Tsunami were all written in Notepad.

If you have not done so, you need to check out the pages at:
http://www.ayizwe.net/VegasScripts/

Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to just sit down and make a list. However, I CAN remember if it's something I've read about several times.

Hi Guys!

After a mega load down session (over 16hrs for all the stuff!) i got it all happening without any dramas.

Harry: What transition shocks were you alluding too? I haven't had much time to do much, but it seems very much like 4.0 for me, although having said that I am not doing too much that involves using any of the heavy artillery in the program.

The celeron upgrade? yeah, just waiting for the price to fall a bit, then I'm there! :)

Seems odd you can't save the pan / crop settings. Hope they fix that soon.

Biggest buzz has been DVDA 2. Got it up and sussed very quickly. No frills but a great workflow.

Thanks for the replies!

Andy

If Best does that I suggest you stay at Good. The difference is
minimal between the two (according to people in the know). I
can't remember hearing about this problem before. It might be
a new bug you have discovered.

Are you running 5.0A? If not, upgrade to that version immediately
(download off the website). The A release contains many bug
fixes.

What is the framerate of the movie in the AVI since you IVTC'd
it? I assume it is 24 (or is it 23.976??) fps? What is the project
setting in Vegas? To what is the footage properties set when it
is in the timeline?

My feeling is that it is converting the footage somehow. That
should still not yield a black frame, but perhaps we can eliminate
it. Probably a bug that might need reporting to Sony.

Can you give us as much detail as possible about the file and
the project settings? (resolution, framerate, interlaced etc.)

Free fonts are hard to come by I think, Dylan. That's because
font libraries like to make money with the fonts they have and
sell. Personally I haven't looked at too much font libraries so I
can't really help you get underway in that depertment.

Ryan is correct: as long as it is a truetype font and you have it
installed it will be available to you. Keep in mind that a lot of
DTP packages (and some other text/graphics applications) can
install additional fonts you can/may use as well. So you might
already have some extra fonts on CD and not know about it.

No that doesn't work. I'll explain why.

Frameserving is used to transfer large amounts of data from one
application to another without actually writing a very large file
to disk. The way this works is that they construct a special file
(the frameserving file) which contains a reference to the application
instance that is serving the file.

The opening program loads the file and then contacts that instance
of the program for the requested data. If you open this file over
the network it tries to open this instance on the local computer
where it is NOT running. So it fails there.

I'm not sure whether this "standard" supports files over a network
or not.

What you might try to do is not write the file to your local disc.
So you turn the tables around. Let me explain.

You are now frameserving the file on computer A. You are also
writing the file frameserving.avi (for example) to this machine.

Then you go over to computer B, browse to computer A and open
the file, right?

Do it the other way around. So when you are starting the frame-
server in Vegas browse to computer B and write the file there.

Then go over to computer B and open the LOCAL file that you've
just remotely written to that machine and see if that works.

If that doesn't it might just simpy not support it or you may need
to do some manual stuff. How large is the AVI file that is written
to disc (the frameserving file)?

Font libraries are incredibly expensive- have you ever priced any of the adobe offerings?....Highway robbery. Thus I get lots of my fonts from those little font discs you can find in your bargain bin at a software store. Usually pay a few dollars a disc.

The source huff file is 720x360, 23.976p. The Vegas project is 720x480, 23.976p, 4x3 A.R. The footage settings in the timeline are not otherwise changed except to indicate the 4x3 A.R.

The vegas project settings don't seem to matter though. The frame drops are somewhat random as far as I can tell, although they do show up on the time line (it's not just at the final render). The reason I know it's vegas is that they don't show up in Media Player or other NLEs. I also thought maybe it was my hard drive, but it also doesn't matter what drive I'm on.

It could be a bug with huff, I suppose, that causes Vegas to reject certain frames.

This also happened to me recently !!!!!

I'm glad to hear someone else having the problem. I was suspicious of another software program (Ultra from Serious Magic) but I only saw the occasional single black frames in Vegas. I was using clips from Ultra that were rendered with the Huffy codec.

I had to chop the single frames out to get my final render to work without that ugly black frame. I found about 6 of them on a very large project recently.

I believe it happened when I was running Vegas 4 and don't think it's happened since I installed 5.0. Sorry I don't have more details because I'm not sure which project it happened in (I had about 40 small ones I was working on last month) .

Unfortunately I can confirm it happens in Vegas 5 as well. :(

The solution, for me at least, was to use uncompressed AVI from VirtualDub, instead of HuffYUV. The file size is thus doubled but at least I can rest easy. The other saving grace is that huffyuv output from vegas appears to have no problem.

Damn -- I've been using HuffYUV and VDub with Vegas 4 and haven't noticed this problem yet -- now you've got me worried :/

- jim

The part about it that sucks the most is having to blink with alternating eyes because I don't want to miss a dropped frame! :)

Try this site for free fonts.

http://dafont.com/en/

Very welcome, Nick. Hope to see you in one of the VASST cities down the road. We're now in San Francisco. Hope to meet a bunch of you at the Sony Showcase or at the VASST training event!

That would be hard to find out whether this problem is related to
the codec or Vegas. Perhaps its due to both. Perhaps you can
shoot the Sony guys an e-mail or something so they can start
testing this themselves?

Yes Rob . . I agree .. too important for it not to go "upstairs"!

Grazie

Wow- thanks a million Bob...great site!

Hi Edward,

Many thanks for your reply! The link you provided was very good!

I've created a very :-) complex script now:

var MediaEnum = new Enumerator(Vegas.Project.MediaPool);

while ( ! MediaEnum.atEnd() )
{
var media = MediaEnum.item();
MessageBox.Show( media.FilePath );
MediaEnum.moveNext();
}

I'm getting the hang of the Vegas objectmodel now - one thing though: How do you design your dialogs? Do you use some visual tool like Visual Studio or similar and writes down the Position X and Y values? I'm so spoiled using .Net - you know, building an UI takes 5 minutes :-) with point & click!

// Lazze

ps. Out of curiosity: Have you written the Script-obfuscator yourself or is it an open product? ds.

Bob!
Thanks, thats great!

I built the screens the "hard way". I wrote the code to add a control and then manually positioned it in the right place. And, yes, it took quite a bit of trial and error to get things positioned correctly.

The obfuscating software is a third party program. If you'd like to test a piece of code, I can do that for you. If you want full details about it, you can click on the JS-Obfus link at http://www.jetdv.com/tts

Lars,

I use SharpDevelop (http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/) and write my scripts in C#.

I have been able to launch the CLR debugger by inserting the following code:

using System.Diagnostics;

Debugger.Launch() ;

You need to compile with the debug option, but this allows you to do pretty much full interactive debug of your code. Basically, you run your script in Vegas and when the Launch method is reached, the CLR debugger starts and asks if you want to debug.

I create my forms in SharpDevelop using their GUI editor, but you should be able to do it all in Visual Studio as well. Bascially create a project that will create a .Net dll library. Then establish a reference to the Vegas .Net dll library (for Vegas 5 this is Sony.Vegas.dll and for Vegas 4 it is SonicFoundry.ScriptHost.dll).
You can then create Window Forms using the GUI tools, etc.

Randall

Hi Randall & Edward,

Thanks for all input and help!

I now have a working setup. Basically you need:

1. A DLL written in some .NET language
2. That DLL references Sony.Vegas
3. A Script that instantiates(new) your DLL passing the Vegas application pointer in the constructor
4. A XML file with the same name as the script. This XML file points out where the external DLL is located - else vegas can't find it.

Beats me why vegas fails to find the DLL when its registered in the GAC - guess that some mysteries must remain :-) I read something on MSDN about the need to create a manifest(the xml file ) enabling scripts to see external resources....so I guess that it is so by the words of Bill :-)

If someone by any chance should be intersted in example code - I could post it on one of my sites.

Best regards,

Lazze Z

ps. Right now the only kill-joy is that VEGAS is locking my dll after first use, so I have to exit Vegas in order to re-compile...ds.

Glad that you are up and running. I agree with the locking the dll problem, it is a real pain, but I have not found a solution to that.

You might want to check out the Sony Vegas Scripting Forum if you haven't seen it. Some of the Sony folks participate in that.

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.co...asp?ForumID=21

Randall

Scrolling Text (Text Roll)
 

Hi Guys!

I might be just over looking this however:

Is it possible to have a text roll or scrolling text with a transparent back ground?

I'm in Vegas 5, and although I could do it in Boris Graffiti LTD, I don't have time to go through the learning curve right now.

Thanks in Advance.

Andy

In Generated Media Tab goto Credit Roll, you'll find Scroll and Backwards Scroll already there. For certain effects such as a crawling text you can use track motion and chroma key.

Hope that helps,
Don

Oh it's easy. Create the text roll in Photoshop witha black background. Make it 640 pixels wide (or 873 if you're 16x9) and however tall you need to fit the entire contents in one image.

Then use the pan/crop tool and keyframes to control the motion. The only variable is going to be "Y Offset." Finally, set the track to "Screen" compositing mode.

Question RE Vegas 5 upgrade path.
 

Hi guys. I can only see on the Sony site, upgrades from Vegas 4.0 to 5.0 by either

1) Buying Vegas 5 +DVDA 2
2) Buying Vegas

I was looking for, in vain, to find a way to just upgrade DVDA from 1 to 2. I will upgrade vegas first but don't need DVDA 2 just yet. That may change in a few months so would like to hold the purchase off until then. Does anyone know if this is possible.

Cheers
Aaron

BTW: I have emailed Sony - no reply yet.

Any of the presets with the checkerboard background are transparent. You can also change the background (and it's transparency) on the Properties tab.

In order to get DVDA2, you must also get Vegas 5. However, you DON'T have to install it. (However, I would because it does add a lot of great new features)

Thanks guys!

Workarounds I guess, what I was actually after was getting the preset to be transparent, which I can't do and though I was missing something.

I'll give each of the suggestions a go and see which is best.

Don: I can't make the preset transparent. That's why I thought I was missing something.

Thanks

Andy

Thanks Edward. Bummer about that. If I got it I would definately install it, but I don't really need it just yet with what I do. Will have to take the gamble and hope I can use it's features in the future.

Cheers
Aaron

One of the reasons I think doing it with Photoshop is best is because you have 100% control over the look and layout of your roll and can apply any photoshop effect you want. As long as the background is black, just screen composite and you don't even have to worry about chroma or checkerboards or anything like that. I find Vegas' preset effects to be a little to "canned" for my taste, but anyway do what works best for you.

I don't know if i can believe it or not but the $199 upgrade price is set to increase to $250 on the 4 June.

I ordered my upgrade in the late afternoon of the 26th, UPS was beating at my door at 11am this morning(27th). Now that's fast. (I live in Canada as well).