Not sure what you mean by a menu-based CD but:

You can make a music compliation DVD with DVDA

You can make an audio CD with Vegas.

Gary

There are two official formats basically:

1) DVD with menu's

2) VCD (2.0?) with menu's

Most DVD authoring packages do not support making VCD's
with a menu, but some do. A VCD is a movie encoded with
MPEG1 at lower resolution than DVD and put onto a CD. DVD
uses MPEG2 at full resolution.

Now there is also something we call "miniDVD" where a full
DVD structure is put on a CD. You can't put much footage on
such a disc and it won't play on most players.

I would stick with either DVD or VCD 2.0 (you need a VCD menu
creator or something like that).

Problems with a reframing job ...
 

Hey all. Well I had applied a "widescreen" mask to a 4:3 project I had completed and had some problems. I have some cuts from MS to LS etc. and sometimes when I do this, a single frame will have the original positioning if I hadn't moved the frame inside the widescreen mask at all and then the next frame is where I moved the 4:3 picture in order to reframe items. When I go frame by frame there seems to be no problem but when I render out, it has a few jerks. They are almost unnoticeable but I can tell and it bothers the hell out of me. Thanks guys!

Why not just apply a mask on the top track? That way it would EVERYTHING beneath it.

Or for simplicity, render everything out and then apply the mask?

Recommended system requirements
 

I am considering buying Vegas 4, which would be my first major NLE software purchase. I know the minimum requirements as listed on the Vegas site, buy I was wondering what current users would consider the recommended requirements as far as processor speed, RAM, HDD, etc.

Any reasonable speed PIV will work well. Get as fast as you can afford. I would recommend a 512 Meg or 1 Gig of RAM. Get as much hard drive space (separate from the system drive) that you can afford. Otherwise, Vegas will pretty well work on any PC.

Because, certain shots were a framed with the subject a little higher in the frame, if I simply apply the mask to the entire project, then I chop heads. If I apply it to seperate parts, I can reframe my subjects and have perfect framing.

You could still apply the mask to the entire project but use Pan/Crop on the individual trouble areas to adjust the position as needed.

Vegas will run fine even on really wimpy computers.

Rendering speed is about proportional to CPU clock speed (among the same processor family, so don't compare Pentiums to Celerons or AMDs). Hyperthreading and 800FSB vs 533FSB (front side bus speed in mhz) add a few % each, but not much to worry about. For MPEG2 encoding hyperthreading should give about a 15% speed boost. A faster computer would be nice since you have to wait less for rendering, but Vegas has real-time previews so you should be able to get decent quality previews of your video.

RAM... Vegas doesn't need much.

I wouldn't obsess too much on performance. Like Edward said, "Vegas will pretty well work on any PC." An exception to that is your monitor resolution. 800X600 just won't really work that well. Try the demo.

I'm upping my RAM from 256 RAM to 512 MB not because of Vegas per se but because I have so many plug-in programs for it that I think it can only benefit performance.

Thanks for the advice. I just downloaded the demo and I'm pretty sure I'll be making my purchase within a few weeks.

Gold Coast Queensland
 

Hi Guys.

Just hanging about, waiting for the postman to tell me My Vegas 4 + DVD has arrived.........


In the meantime, are there any Vegas users on the Gold Coast, that might be interested in drinking a few beers at my expense in return for giving me a quick tour of the program?

I'll even get the wife to cook dinner!

Waiting, waiting....

Cheers,

Andy

LOL

I wish I could be there. Check out Klieners 2 DVD Vegas tutorial. It helped me tremendously. (I was new to NLE). I have a solid grasp now because of these!

I'll drink a beer anyway and think of the Gold Coast!

Power Point mpegs?
 

Hello all,
I'm trying to embed an mpeg2 (default setting), into a Power Point slideshow and it seems to work OK on my PC but when I try to play said file on my client's PC it will not play. Same OS, same version of Power Point.
Should I render as an mpeg1?

Thanks in advance.

Shane

David Hague is a very knowledgable Aussie user although I am not sure exactly where he lives in Australia---He actually was the technical editor for DSE's book. You can find him over at http://www.digitalvideoediting.com---in the Vegas forum section---