Total "time" for Region
 

If I have a Region on my timeline how do I find out exactly what the total "time" of that region is? Ive tried right clicking, menus... can't find anything that tells me the total time of the Region. Best scenerio would be if I right clicked the region and it said, "this region is 00:00:10:23 long" I need to know for scoring music...

disable video preview in the timeline
 

is there anyway to disable video preview in the timeline...not the video window. I 'm speaking of the trims in the timeline. I do believe if I could disable this, it wouldn't chuckle once in a while

UPDATE:
Fixed. Ctrl+Shift+W And it increased my preview performance

Double click above the timeline in the area between the region markers.
Look at the far right of the 3 timing windows (just above the preview window). It's called "selection length" and will tell you what you're looking for.

That feels about right. Hour long HD videos (Vegas 6) rendered to Real were taking about 18 hours on a SCSI P4 2.8 GHz (.wmv's went a little faster).

Switching to a dual-dual-Opteron (four 2.6 GHz cores) dropped the time (Vegas 7) to 100 minutes. I'd kind of given up on HDV until the new machine. The faster chips restored editing responsiveness as well (no debilitating lags). Some of the difference could have been Vegas 7 Vs. 6, but it was probably the chips.

Vegas may be limited to four cores (can't get the "render threads option" to go beyond 4 on 6 or 7).

You can also go to "View - Edit Details", select "Regions" as the item to show, and it will show all details for all regions.

Yes, View - Waveforms and frames will change this. However, it will ALSO turn off the wave form drawing in the audio which is not something most people want. But using the keyboard shortcut, you can quickly switch between the two.

You could post the VEG file and see if someone else can load it.

Your problem is that you're replacing a 2 second clip with a 4 second clip. However, the clip on the timeline is still 2 seconds. You need to get the timeline event length changed. The quickest way to do that would be via a script but you can manually do it as well.

I can open the veg file on my laptop, so it doesn't appear to be a problem with a corrupt veg file. But I tried reinstalling both Vegas and ConnectHD with no luck. It still errors out at 6% every time.

Can you try moving the clips to an unknown location, open the VEG file, and then start trying to reattach them one at a time?

Thank you
 

Gentlemen. Greatly appriciated. On another personal rant at/to myself... I think it's time for a "monitor" of sorts I think... everything colored in vegas looks different when rendered out and then once again on a TV... Hmmm... it's a pain "testing" 4 or 5 different "versions"...

dual monitor in Vegas - PAL in 60 Hz?
 

I have the ATI Radeon X1600XT card with VIVO and HDTV output (as the second display option to DVI-D). I've just bough the V1E which comes with the Vegas 7 NLE, which has the nice option to use the secondary monitor for preview. I don't have 2 physical monitors; instead I'm planning to use the two inputs of my 1920x1200 24" LCD. The PC input is of course the DVI, but I also have the HDTV output of the graphics card connected to the 1080i capable component input of the monitor, so when I need a preview full screen, I just press the input button on the monitor and voila - it works!

However, I've got a problem configuring the ATI Catalyst for component HDTV: it does recognize my LCD component input, but only in the 1080i/30 Hz mode, which is OK for NTSC, but not for PAL! I realize the monitor - being LCD - is not capable of 25 or 50 Hz refresh rate, so I'd probably need a multiscanning CRT monitor (or a CRT HDTV) to use the PAL mode...

Now, my question is this: what is the influence of displaying a PAL 1080i material with 30 rather than 25 (or 50) Hz refresh rate? I can see the output just all right - there's even not to much movement jerkiness. I'm just wondering whether previewing in 1080i/30Hz is representative to the true output quality of a PAL video - in terms of colors, resolution etc?

My personal recommendation for a decent monitor that (I think) won't break the bank is the JVC TMH-150CGU 15-Inch color production monitor. It has 750 lines of horizontal resolution, underscan switch, blue gun only switch, 16:9 and 4:3 aspect switch and is NTSC and PAL switchable. B&H has it for $500.
To set it up properly, follow the steps at http://videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm
I use several in student edit suites at the college I work for and have recommended this monitor numerous times to other Vegas users. Everyone who has bought one has been very happy with it.

all of a sudden I can't do titles in vegas 6
 

I was trying to add some titles to a little project. I don't know how i did it but when i hit the media generator tab and selected text and dragged it to the the timeline it seems i wasn't given the window to actually WRITE the titles--as if I accidentally disabled it somehow. This is in Vegas 6. How did I screw up this time?

It may be you docked the title dialog in one of the docking windows.
Click/select the small green box in the top right corner of your text event, and that should show you the titling dialog.
Or, make a selection in the blank area of an existing or new video track, right click inside the selection, and choose "Insert Text Media" from the sub dialog that opens. This should also show you the Text Editor/Text dialog, even if it's docked. Drag it out of the docking area, if this is the case.

Tried those things and it still won't give me the text editor box! I click the little green box and tried right clicking. It's strange though, it seems like the text editor is going to open, but it doesn't. hmmmm....

did you drag it off the screen somehow?
restart holding shift for defaults.
(will change all defaults)

If (I don't know your setup) but IF you are using 2 screens to edit on and you have the preview screen set to the windows display and have set it to show external monitor the text editor might be hidden behind the full preview screen. Like i said, I'm guessing because I don't know your setup.

Don

Capturing a tape - why does it break it down into 100 scenes?
 

I tried capturing a full DV tape tonight and it gave me about 100 different files. What is the way in preferences to make it one big file? Also, there are some dropped frames as well - how can I prevent this?

Thanks

Hey David good question, I would like to know the same thing. It would be better to have one big event in the time line and put a couple of fade in or out where I want.
Steve

in vidcap, options, preferences, capture, uncheck scene detection

also ensure that the HDD is not running as FAT32

as for dropouts, ensure that the HDD is defragmented, and that its not being accessed for anythign else..

what amazes me about vidcap is how weak it is.. when scenelyzer live can do as many streams as u throw it at, Vidcap struggles with one...

problem solved
 

So I decided to remove and reinstall vegas. before I uninstalled I decided to also dump an Angelina Jolie screen saver that had mysteriously attached itself after a visit to youtube. After dumping Angelina, for the heck of it I opened vegas and the titler worked!

The moral of the story? Who knows. Maybe Angelina is a Final Cut fangirl.

This is no joke.

not sure about this but i think if your hd is filling up it'll be inclined to drop frames. and do you have a hd dedicated to capture?

Thank you for your monitor recommendation
 

I will... seriously consider a professional monitor in the future but as it is my Indi is running over budget as it is... don't they always... Strange thing is the Vegas preview is a different color than the Windows Media Player render and My DVD software player. The Vegas preview is less saturated... is there a way to calibrate the little preview in the bottom right? The color from the DVD software player is closest to my TV so that is what I am basing my "coloring" on now. By the way... wouldn't just a cheap TV from the goodwill be a alternate "monitor" that would give me pretty close representation of what the real TV color is?

You will almost never be able to "calibrate" a CRT monitor to get true color or exposure of tape. If you can't do a monitor then at least preview off of a TV as you suggested. On many of even the less expensive small screen you can make some adjustments for color, tint, brightness,contrast etc so I would first put up a color bar frrom Vegas and even though you won't be able to get a TRUE setting you can at least make some adjustments so the colors are fairly close to real. Don't forget to also set a B&W bar set also.
Again, this will not replace a production monitor but it is worlds ahead of the computer monitor.

Don

And one thing that is painfully clear, the tv sets now-a-days have a variety of settings which can affect how something will look. So what might help is, on your final version, if you have something old something new in terms of a television.

Panasonic P2 files
 

Is there any other way besides RayLight to get P2 HD files in Vegas 7.0 Thanks

CineForm and Serious Magic both offer alternatives to Raylight. Serious Magic is now Adobe, but the website still reflects their conversion package.

no joke
 

I just bought an external HD for backup and one of my projects cannot be backed up to it because it has a single clip that is about 2.2GB. This drive is "Mac compatible" so it is FAT32. that measn the largest file is 2GB. So I'll have to either detelet the contents and reformat, or find a utility to transform the file system on the fly.

jason

FAT32 has a 4 Gig file size limit.

Thanks Ed. I tried your suggestion to no avail. I tried reinstalling Vegas and Cineform to no avail. I tried reinstalling XP to no avail. I'm at a loss. I think that I have the same problem as Will Scanlon, in that I have over 60 minutes of footage and can't load it at all. And I get no error message.

The only thing I can think of is if upgrading from Cineform 3.0??? to 3.3 screwed it up. I sent a tech support email to Cineform to try and get a link to download the old version of ConnectHD.

Other than that, I'd have to start over, which I'm hesitant to do, because it is a 90 minute project and I don't want to start over and have the same thing happen. Ahhhhhhhhh!

No my hard drive is pretty big, so I don't think that is the problem... I am going to try my SATA drive too and see what happens.

Analogue - digital pass - Vegas stops after 8 seconds?
 

I am running an older high 8 camera through my digital camera into Vegas capture. It sees it and it captures ok, but stops each time after only about 8 seconds of video - how come? Capturing is fine any other time ,but this is strange - always 8 seconds and the video from the high 8 does not stop and it one continuous scene so I am not sure what is happening. Any ideas?

hard to tell, but do you have vegas set to stop capturing on dropped frames? It's in the cap. prefs..try unchecking that and see if frames are dropping..if so, is it something with your PC or the drive you are using?

Do you have scene detection off and any other prefs unchecked for camera control, since you are basically using firewire to send a dv signal, but don't want vegas to control the tape transport.

Sounds like trial and error will be needed to narrow down the problem. When you capture dv tape from that same digital camcorder, does it work ok? how about a different hi8 tape using your setup (do you have one)?

You may not want to fool w/ other software, but scenalyzer live is also decent for catpure... http://www.scenalyzer.com/

hope this helps a little .. maybe nothing you didn't think of ...

Thanks for the advice. I actually managed to capture using WinXp movie maker - don't ask me why it works.
I have scene detection and stop on dropped frame already off. Back in the VV4 days, I managed to do this using digital-analog pass, but with VV6 and XP, it doesn't like it and hence the 'stop after 8 seconds'. It is like clockwork - no matter where on the tape (and I have used two different high 8 units as well). I guess I will have to go with Moviemaker for capturing, although I would prefer Vegas because the file size seems to be smaller, or maybe it is just me...

You didn't mention Device Control. As Dave said, that needs to be turned off as well.

Using Vegas . . . on at SKYPEcast NOW!
 

I just started a "Using SONY Vegas for Editing" SKYPE cast .. . if you wish to talk about anything "Vegas": Bezier, Titling, Workflow etc. I've got a SKYPEcast up and running.

Do a search on Skype for my handle: BIGGRAZIE or SONY or VEGAS

https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/home

Grazie

I haven't really used movie maker, so can't say. file size should not vary based on the capture program. One difference could be type I vs. type II avi (and even then, I am not sure of whether there would be a file size difference based on whether the audio and video are interleaved in the file..maybe only a very small difference for overhead, if any, but I do not know for sure).

Other thing causing file size difference would be the codec. I have found gspot to be a very handy and really great tool for looking at codecs used, bit rates of a file, etc. (free). Highly recommended if you don't have it:

http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

install the tool, then in the file name box, click the little box with the '...' in it and it will pull up a 'file/open' dialogue box where you can find your avi file. it will then give you the file info. click 'render' at the bottom for more info.

Might be worth while using gspot to look at the version vegas is creating (do you get an integral file?) and the windows movie maker version and see if there are any codec differences (check the bitrates too although they should be the same).

This may sound silly........
 

......Considering I have been using vegas for almost three years now, but here goes. To make titles, video, etc fade in, I have generated an alpha channel and crossfaded the media in or out from that. Is there an easier way to make a clip, title, audio (right now for audio I use the volume env.), etc just fade in?

Seeing the fade offset on some lower thirds in Ultimate S led me to believe there is a way. I was unsuccessful in digging through the manual or searching the help.

Try the Opacity envelope.