Has the driver been installed for HDV? XP SP2 supposedly does it automatically. Previous versions require you to manually do it. Here's the basic procedure:

Go to Control Panel>System>Hardware>AVC Subunit with no driver Right click to Update Driver Tell Windows you'll locate driver yourself.

Browse to the Sound, Video, Game Controllers.

In there, you'll find two Sony driver options, choose the top one.
In there, you'll find two Sony driver options. Choose the upper one.

What version of DVDA are you using? Also, what FORMAT are the DVDs? (PAL or NTSC). First recommendation is updating to the newest version of DVDA2.

Got it works now!!! Thanks

Thanks for the reply Ed.
DVDA2; version 2.0 (build 94)

It figures that 2.0b is 30 MB.
Is there a list somewhere that lists all the fixes?

I found the list & here is my fix;

"A bug has been fixed that could prevent text-only buttons from being displayed on a burned DVD when a video was used as the menu background."

Thanks again Ed!

Shane

external previewing
 

I know how important it is to preview your hd work on a real hd big monitor of course. Just wanna see what you guys are using for your external monitor to preview your work in hd. Right now am just using the FX1..all that matters to me at this point is making sure the images are crop right and that my scrips don't fall off the page if you know what i mean.

thanks

Another approach: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=70

This way doesn't work in post, though. :)

Well, I haven't looked at vo. 3 #3 yet, but was wondering
if Bezier generally works like some of those photoshop-type
programs insofar as it will automatically find outlines of
objects in the image?

Yep. It was a known problem. Just had to verify you were on the version that had the problem. Get the update and all should be fine.

No. It won't automatically find the edge. You have to painstakingly add the points in the proper places.

Yes, that did it.
Thanks Ed, saved my bacon once again!

Shane Schmidt
VSF Productions

Render a quicktime file with an alpha channel
 

Hello,

I've rendered a few animations using premiere and the "animation" codec for quicktime to get the transparency to carry over into our pinacle thunder, but i prefer vegas. I just made an animation in vegas and i cant seem to render it in a way that the alpha channel holds. any ideas? It seems the "render alpha channel" setting is only available for uncompressed avi, and when i try that the thunder doesnt see it.


the option for the:
Quicktime Animation Codec in Millions of Colors+
doesnt seem to be there like it is in premiere

try rendering as uncompressed QT and slide the quality slider to 100% ( default is 50%)

some friends took a NTSC DVD (-R) to London i made and they said it played on about 50% of DVD players and of course and 100% of computers ...

i have a $200 sony DVD player and it will NOT play PAL .. i have a $39 cyberHome DVD player and it plays PAL/SECAM/NTSC DVD's to NTSC Tv's = converts them to NTSC real time = they look good to me ...

can computer 1 using NRS assigns a rendering job to itself ( computer 1) ..

can computer 2 assign itself a NRS rendering job

can computer 1 assign a solo ( non distribute) job to computer 2 ..

remember all folders that contain any media , the folder where you are storing the rendering job , temp folder , must be SHARED on the network..

if the rendering job stops - see what is being wrtten in the LOG ...

make sure both computers have the same DNS suffix ... my computer-properties-network ID - properties-more - look at DNS suffix name

Pick AVI as the file type and UNCOMPRESSED as the preset. Now click on "Custom" and make sure the include alpha channel box is checked. Then you should be good to go.

Don, that 50% is awfully low.. were they techy friends or just normal people? The NTSC playback on PAL hardware is often as much to do with the setup and cabling of the gear.. if you've got the dvd player setup wrong and you're using yicky composite cabling, then it'll appear in black and white.. so many people think "oh, nevermind" without realising all you need is a fully wired SCART connector, and you'll get perfect playback.

Its been a long, long time since i've seen a setup at anybodies house that isn't capable of playing an NTSC disc, and not very many that won't do it "as is" (ie i've not had to do anything to get it working properly.)

help with zoom in
 

Thanks in advance....
My situation is the photographer on a wedding shoot I did was standing in front of my stationary cam. I need to zoom in on the video clip to get her out of the frame.
I did a zoom but preview shows lose of detail. Is this regular or once I render it would be ok.

What would you do in this case?

Thanks again!!!

If you zoom in on video and output to the original size (i.e. zoom in on a DV frame and then output DV), you WILL get a loss of resolution. You can zoom in a little without it being over noticable (say maybe around 10%).

thanks Edward..

How do i take a screenshot?
 

Hi all... this must be such a simple question that no one asks it... i can't find an answer ANYWHERE on google, and just TRY searching for "screenshot" here!!

I'm wondering how i take a nice res screenshot using Vegas 4? I have a frame from DV video that i really want to use as the menu to a DVD i'm creating, but i can't get just that frame. I've tried everything that someone who doesn't know what they are doing would try. I've tried rendering repeats of just that frame as different kinds of mpeg2 video and it still looks like 2 oscilating frames on the TV. How do i get just 1 frame? (and also, would i have to get 2 frames and deinterlace them together??)
Thanks so much,
matt

Ok, figured it out.
For anyone as dumb as me, there was just a "save screenshot" icon in the preview screen area. Saved it, opened it in Photoshop 7 and used filter>video>deinterlace to clean it up. Applied it as the menu, and everything works great now.
Sorry for the dumb question.
matt

I can't remember if the preview quality effects the quality of the screen grab but it might be something worth checking just in case. I think I remember getting a better picture when it was set to best.

The preview quality affects both quality and size. I always change to Best (Full) before taking a snapshot (actually, I just use a script for taking the snapshots which will set all settings for max quality and then reset them back to the original settings when done). I talk a lot about snapshots in Vol 1 #5 of my newsletters.

DVDA and volumes
 

I found the thread that says DVDA does not allow you to adjust audio volumes. But that was version 2. I still have not installed version 3, but could do so if this would solve my problem.

I have a bunch of different videos and some music I am compling into a demo DVD. Most of my projects all have equal audio levels, but the DVDA menu background music is always much louder. Is there any way to balance all of these, short of exporting the music tracks into SF or Vegas and rerendering at a lower volume level? That's pretty ugly IMHO.

Did version 3 address this? Any other ideas or tricks?

VEGAS 6.0b installation Hassles
 

hi everyone, newbie here.

yesterday i finally installed my vegas 6 but during the installation it wanted me to install the .NET Framework 1.1 service pack 1 (i have .NET Framework 1.1 already installed) so the installation cancelled, and the web browser took me to the microsoft page to install the sp1.
i did that and started the installation again, let it run, i opened vegas 6 onto my desktop and everything seemed ok with vegas, but when i attempted to play my games on my pc, not one would play, error after error all relating to my graphics (need to enable 3D effects, your card is unable to run this game etc etc) so i went to my omega graphics control panel and everything was gone, only had 4 tabs left from the 12 i normally have with the omega drivers (run a saphire 9500 pro card)
i reinstalled the omega drivers, still no good so i uninstalled vegas 6 and did a system restore back to the previous day and all was good, back to normal.
i then reinstalled vegas, it asked me to install the framework 1.1 sp1 again, i did it again and bang, no games again, so uninstalled, redid my omega drivers and system restore and now ok again, so unless i can resolve this mess, ill stick with power director 4 for now.
why does it want the .NET Framework 1.1 sp1 installed for this software, i never needed it before. im not sure if it is that sp1 causing the problem, but appears it must be, or maybe its just the program itself, i dont know but i won reinstall that sp1 again if its not required.
my system is win xp pro +sp2

has anyone got any idea why this is happening, any help will be appreciated.

cheers......GLEN

Toolbar troubles
 

Pretty n00b question I guess, but I mucked up how everything is set up, is there a way to reset everything to default?

For example, instead of the mixer and preview window being side by side, only one is visible with the other only being brought up when I click the tab at the bottom, how do I reverse what I just did?

Architect Help
 

Forgive me if I posted this in the wrong area. This is my first post on this forum. I have and have been using using Sony vegas 5 and DVD architect 2. I only know how to use Vegas on a moderate level and love it. I learn something every day. Ok now that my videos have progressed from the web I need to put them on DVD. Well what a task. I am trying to create menus in DVD architect and here is my question.

When I create them every thing has like this brown mask on it. EX: If I have an image on top of a standard background when you preview it there is a brown mask or something covering it. Now when you click on it, it goes away and then the video plays. I am sure this is a simple fix but this is my first time using Architect.

Thanks, Jason

That is teh highlight so that you can see what option would be selected with a click of teh remote. You can change those colors in properties.

You simply undock the mixer and then redock it into the proper location.

If you simply want to "Reset" Vegas, hold down CTRL-SHIFT and then START Vegas. Now ALL settings will be reverted back to factory defaults (including the ones you possibly DID want changed)

The .NET Framework is used by Vegas. Vegas 4 required version 1.0. Vegas 5 used 1.1. And now Vegas 6 requires 1.1 SP 1. The question becomes, why does the Microsoft Update mess with your video card?

Are there new drivers available for your video card that are compatible with .NET 1.1 SP1? And do you have DirectX 9.0c also installed?

You can also get very fancy with the "selected item" effect. For example, look at Vol 2 #6 of my newsletter where I describe used Masked Menus for your DVDs.

Well that sure makes sense. Never even thought of it. Ok next question. How do you create chapters?

Thanks, Jason

Where is this news letter

Jason

hi edward.

thanks for your reply, yes i have directx 9.0c and latest omega drivers that worked ok prior to installing the .NET Framework 1.1 sp1 so i guess ill now have to find out if my drivers actually are compatible with sp1 b4 i attempt to install them again.

thanks again.....GLEN

The link is below my name. The newsletter archives can be found at www.jetdv.com

no scene detection
 

Vegas 6 does not have scene detection when capturing HD. Thats horrible. Any advise in making Vegas more editor friendly?? Beside going back to DV editing.

Are you talking HDV or DV? It does for DV.

Beautiful,

Thanks Edward

How do I create a looped DVD and other questions
 

I have to create 1,000 dvd's and they need to be in a continious loop. So when it gets to the end it starts all over again. I assume this is possible but not sure how to do it.

Also is there a good cheap company that can create one thousand or so disk. I am sure that I could do them on my burner all day long or go to my church and use the 10 burner one but I am thinking that might not be the same results.

Sorry for all the questions but last what dvd media seems to be most compatible with players. I am mostly talking about brand. Maybe it is different and depends on the burner. I have been using Maxell and sony dvd-r and they work fine on players. But dvd-r fujitisu or whatever it is doesn't work at all.

Thanks, Jason