I've asked this before, but haven't got a usable answer, so I'll ask again!

What are the advantages of preparing with DVDA but burning with Nero?

Assuming DVDA will burn, why would I choose Nero?

Andy

AND HDVSplit is free. Personally, I like to do something else during capture, like eat and see my family. ;)

I always 'burn' an ISO image on my hard drive with DVDA, then I simulate a DVD drive with deamon tools so that I check all the menus' and chapters' functionnality. This gives me the bonus of being able to cut copys whenever I want in half the time. As for actual burning I just prefer Nero because it works flawlessly with my recorder, with adjustable buffer, auto detecting media speeds so why bother. I'm so used to Nero, I haven't even given DVDA's burning a try... YMMV

Thanks guys. If it isn't folder placement I've got to figure out why a couple of the plug-ins aren't showing up in Vegas.

Does your new PC use the nVidia nForce 3 chipset? If so, there is a known problem with all Sony Media Software applications not recognizing the CD/DVD drives from these motherboards (DVD Architect, ACID, Sound Forge, & CD Architect). As you saw Vegas 6.0d has the fix. Contact Sony Tech Support and they will email you DLL’s to patch your other software.

~jr

Which ones are giving you problems?

Mike

Mike,
I'll check when I get home to my editing compter (on the road with the work laptop now).

I think there is a possibility that some of the .dll files I think are not loading might have loaded with an Effect or Transition name other than the name on the .dll.

I just wish that there was a dang folder labeled "Effects .dlls" and such to make it clear. I guess I can't complain about free effects, transitions and presets not showing up like I think they should.

Vegas Users Event At NAB
 

Registration for the Vegas Users Group event at NAB is open/live now. This event is sponsored by a number of folks like Pixelan, ProDad, Nero, Sony, VASST, Artbeats, and our own DVInfo.net.
http://www.vasst.com/registration/re...Vegas&state=NV

be sure to register in advance so the catering will be sure to have food and drink for ya!

HBO Carnivale Intro technique?
 

I happen to be learning Vegas right now, so I'm posting this here, but I'm sure this is not specific to any particular piece of software:

I was wondering if anyone has some ideas on how to mimic the type of still-picture, massive depth-of-focus effects like the ones done for the title intro in HBO's now-defunct Carnivale series.

I've also seen it done recently in a History channel documentary where they give a 3-d or stereoscopic look to old drawings and such.

Thanks for any pointers...

Problem with Film Effects - Motionless
 

I'm trying to apply Film Effects to an event. So I clicked the Event FX button and added 'Film Effects' (set the preset pulldown menu to Very Old Film).

The problem:

When I previewed this event the Film Effects was NOT dynamic. It stayed motionless. From previous experience using this effect, I remember flickering, dust and scratches appearing randomly at different places. But now nothing happens. There's only a Film Effects tint and some particles which stay put and don't move throught the whole playing of the event.

I tried rendering the event to see if this problem is only with the preview. But the rendered .avi acted exactly as the preview.

Does anyone know what the problem could be?

Thank you

Greetings Marc,

Have you checked out HBO's website? It goes into detail about the process and the meaning behind the intro. Enlightening indeed.

As far as the technique used to achieve the effects, I'm almost certain (99.975%) that After Effects was used to create the animations and transitions between live action and the animatics. I'm not sure if something similar can be done in Vegas, but in AFX it's just a matter of applying blur. Easy pie, but it ain't free.

What version of Vegas are you using? Early versions of Vegas 6 had this problem. Update to 6.0d and all should be fine.

It can be done in Vegas. Look at Edward's "Kid Stays in the Picture" tutorial in his newsletters, or look on the VASST site for similar. It's done with Bezier masks, blur, and 3D track motion with parented tracks.

save w/o render
 

Since Vegas support says my edl functions will not work with my HD on line editor, I am having to get my on line editor to do a manual digitizing of my project. Basically, I shot a 3 camera shoot of a music performance. The performance breaks down into 13 songs about 3 minutes each. Since I can't figure out how to color correct, I was going to get my on line editor to take my sd down convert (HDCam captured through a J-H3 deck via firewire) and do the color correction so he can give it back to me to put to dvd. I used Ultimate S to do my camera cuts. It created a new master track with the cut segments on the timeline. How can I send each of those cuts with say an extra couple of seconds on the handles to later install disolves without having to render the entire track to avi? We are going to trade back and forth with an external drive. Also, how can I learn to actually do the color correct myself. All of the Vegas stuff I see is very general. Is there a step by step to tell me EXACtLY what to do?

Jeff

You also have to open the Film Effect dialog box and the use the pull-down menu to select Hair, Dust, Scratch, etc. And the use the slider bar to introduce more (or less) of each effect. I went overboard once and it looked like I edited the film in a barber college.

Thanks Ed. You were right on the money. Downloaded the update and now everything is fine.

Vegas to Final Cut work flow?
 

The editor who is working on my project works in FCP (yeah, I know) and I only have Vegas and am pretty comfortable working in it.

He's sending me clips from the assembly cut to reveiw. And it's not a problem to drop them in to the vegas time and look at/work on etc.

Is there a way that I can create the equivilant of an edl so that I can make changes to the clips and he can update his version in FCP without having to do a lot of re-editing?

Barring that, is there a way to embed instructions in the clip or somehow make my notes evident to him in his FCP?

I came across a thread on the Sony forum at http://tinyurl.com/phe4c dealing with this exact issue.

Does your Mac editor have a product called Automatic Duck?
If so, export AAF from FCP, open AAF in Vegas.
FCP AAF does requires the plug-in from http://automaticduck.com/

I have no idea which version of the product to get as I'm just passing along info. Also, I'm not a Mac user.

laptop, horse power
 

editing with Vegas 4 or 5 on a Dell 600M Celeron M at 1.4Ghz, (400Mhz bus). Intel model 360. 1.0 GB of DDR SDRAM , Windows XP Home SP2 and burn DVDs with DVDA2

think this will work as an editor and burn OK?


Thanks
Vince

Vegas is the King when it comes to audio, as well as many other things

Vince

Absolutely. That is faster than the machine I usually use, although it's an M proc. Just today, I was forced to use my laptop to author a project I wasn't expecting to do. We only have a couple machines with dual layer burners in them, and my laptop was the only one free. So, I authored a project previously edited but not rendered, on a firewire drive on a desktop. Finished editing, rendering, and authoring, burned to DL disc on my 16 month old laptop which is slower than yours. If you have a network and travel much, XP Home is a PITA, but outside of that...you're good to go. Vegas doesn't notice differences between XP Pro and Home.

Vegas, 5.1 Surround, and DirectSound
 

I have just encountered a problem with Vegas, DirectX (DirectSound), and 5.1 Surround Projects.

I have an Alesis Multimix Firewire 16 that is ASIO compliant and works perfectly for recording multiple audio tracks in Vegas.

After recording 6 mono tracks I now want to use these tracks to create a 5.1 Surround DVD (for example). No problem so far.

Last night I noticed that the only way that I have (full) access to my 5.1 Surround monitors is to select the 'Direct Sound Surround Mapper' as my 'Audio device type' in Vegas. If I select 'Microsoft Sound Mapper' or 'Windows Classic Wave Driver' the monitoring of the surround panning does not work properly i.e. is not routed to the correct monitors. Still no problem yet.

The problem is that when using the 'Direct Sound Surround Mapper' the video and audio go out of synch with each other when previewing on an external firewire monitor.

After much fiddling around I discovered that the only way to get things 'back to normal' as it were was to lower the 'Audio playback Hardware acceleration' in DXDiag to 'Basic acceleration'.

This ALMOST works properly except for the fact that every time you open a new media file in Vegas you have to start or initiate playback of the file once or twice and let it run for a couple of seconds and only after doing this (once or twice) does the audio and video stay in synch and you can then start editing.

It seems almost as if some sort of 'clock' or 'buffer' gets initially 'calibrated' or 'set' when you start the initial playback as described above - almost as if by starting playback a couple of times some or the other synch is being done between the audio hardware, Vegas, and/or the IEEE1394a controller.

Anyone else ever had this problem.

I have tried everything I know including playing around with the playback buffer sizes and even tried to adjust the 'Synch offset' for my 'Preview Device'. No fix.

This only happens when previewing to an external monitor i.e. when only using the Vegas preview window there is not problem evident.

Are there any registry settings or the like that can be changed to eliminate this sort of 'initial synch' problem. Any other adjustments?

By the way my sound card is NOT ASIO compliant but WDM.

Regards,

Dale.

Hi,

I registered for the fun! An email confirmation came telling me that payment information was listed at the bottom of the page. I didn't see anything, and my question to the contact person failed to go through.

Is there a charge for the event?

No, there is no charge. If there were, you would have input a C/C number. But for a one-time yearly event we're organizing for NAB, it's not worth it to change around our entire cart system. Which is why it should show a zero cost on the emailed confirmation.

Just so you know, it doesn't show anything like what you described; hence the confusion. But, thanks.

I guess you're right, I must not know what's at the bottom of the confirmation mail. Until this post, of the roughly 100 people registered thus far, no one has asked the question, so I haven't dug into the answer. I was under the impression it uses our same mail template for all registrations for all events.
Either way, to clarify again....there is no cost.
http://www.vasst.com/nabparty.htm

Ha ha! For every hundred people there can be a dullard, is that what you're saying? Thanks for putting me in my place.

Thanks,

I'll check it out...

Thank you sir.. I was not quite sure about the Celeron..

Thanks

Vince

Under Preferences>Preview Device, you can set the Sync Offset for the sound. You should be able to match them up.

It won't effect the sync in your Vegas preview window.

Hello, and thanks for the reply.

I already tried that - did not work.

The problem was that the sound would start in sync and gradually start going out unless you lowered your hardware acceleration level and even then you would have to start your playback once or twice before the preview stayed in sync.

Solution:

I tried a few (other) WDM sound cards - same issue.

I then went out and bought an ASIO compliant sound card - problem solved!

The difference (for those that may be interested) is that ASIO allows your software (Vegas) to talk directly to the sound hardware and is not dependant on DirectX or DirectSound for mapping your tracks to the correct audio channels.

This was the only solution that would allow for the preview of a 5.1 Surround Project with 6 mono tracks and preview to external monitor without glitches and audio and video in sync.

Regards,

Dale.

Just some information that nearly made me fall of my chair last night.

I had noticed that somewhere along the line (sometime in the past) my external monitor preview (via FireWire) had become somewhat 'sluggish' and 'choppy' but I just put it down to the fact that my workstation was becoming overloaded with drivers and things and could not cope (and I also never had this issue when running Windows 2000 but had to change to XP because of Cineform HD).

While investigating my sound card issues I came across the following link:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=885222

Basically if you do not apply this patch and make the relevant changes to your registry after applying Windows XP SP2 the maximum speed at which your FireWire peripherals operate at is limited.

I installed the patch and presto - my external preview is smooth as smooth can be!!!

If you have a problem installing the patch (as I did) then do a Google search for a file called 'RegClean1394' and run this prior to installing the Microsoft patch (it just clears all of your current IEEE1394 settings and allows the patch to install). If you can't find the file email me and I will send it to you.

Email: dpaterso@fleetfocus.net

Regards,

Dale.

Extraordinary
 

Did notice that the preview was getting choppy from time to time, but never had a thought that this could be XP/SP2/FireWire related - defragging disks, cleaning drivers, disabling all kinds of useless services in XP, and then.... SP2 sets the port to S100 speed, instead of S400/S800. Morons.

Thank you very much for this post.

We use the USB Terratec Phase 26 USB card for 5.1 surround mixing, 6 analog out, two in, stereo Optical/SPDIF in/out.
Works like a dream with vegas - and easily switchable between ASIO and 'standard' for other apps.

/magnus

Go heroglyph
 

Hi, been using heroglyph for two years now - the interface and approach is extremely non-standard, but it does render fantastic graphics. Especially the matrix-functions are extremely useful for making effects which look very good, and take no time at all - and then apply any number of effects to the whole matrix.

The font handling i think is a problem with Heroglyph, not all fonts installed on system are available in Heroglyph, and I cant figure out why.. and not being able to get the video from Vegas that I am compositing on/around is frustrating - apparently there is no way for a plugin to get the video signal from vegas..

It's great to be able to "fill" fonts with video from any number of clips.

/magnus

I'm in for this! From what I've heard about past events, this is one big BLASST for Vegas folks. Thanks to VASST and the other sponsors for putting it together. Hope to meet others on this forum there.
Randy

It is only a pleasure.

Please let me know if it helps.

"Performance of 1394 devices may decrease after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2"

It is the word 'may' that makes me smile so I would like to know if it did make a difference to your preview speed.

It certainly has improved things here.

Well, put it this way, the external preview certainly seems smoother and if there is a glitch now and then it certainly seems to recover a lot faster!

Regards,

Dale.

I would save the project under a new name and delete all the tracks from that saved project except the master video track and any audio tracks you want to keep. Then do a Save As... into a new folder and check the option [X] Copy and trim media with project. Vegas will not render, it will just copy out the sections that use used with a little extra on each end (you get to set this amount when you save) Than all you do is give your friend these AVI files to color correct.

~jr

The VASST site has some free tutorials on color correction:
http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/ar...s_part_one.htm
That still just covers the basics.

If you're doing a DVD, then you can throw on the broadcast colors filter with the lenient settings (w 7.5IRE setup if you are targeting non-Japan NTSC markets). Over-the-air broadcast will actually be more limiting than DVD, so the 120 IRE is a little too conservative for DVD. It shouldn't be a big deal since your colors likely won't get that high (unless you are shooting something that's really bright+saturated). If you feel that the broadcast colors filter is limiting the colors too much, then raise composite max to "130".

Anything more really depends what you want to do. Color correction generally covers:
A- Fixing problems.
B- Making sure the video levels are legal.
C- Making the footage look good/better. The DVD I have coming out goes into detail on this.
At a basic level, having the video levels hit proper black and white level will make footage look better. See the tutorial link above.
With video-originated footage, you can also add a bit of film-like contrast with Color Curves. See the last event in the following .veg:
http://www.glennchan.info/Proofs/dvi...lor-curves.veg


I hope that helps.

Hello - check this out!

It seems that I was a bit too hasty in my assumption that I had solved my external monitor preview issue by replacing my sound card with an ASIO compliant sound card!!!

Everything seemed fine yesterday although admittedly I did not test with large files.

Today - the problem started again - the video and audio started losing sync with each other AGAIN!!!

Eventually I was able to simulate the problem every time.

After a reboot of the workstation - as long as Vegas was the first application that you opened - the video and audio would be in sync when previewing on the external monitor but the moment that you exited Vegas and then opened Vegas again, or if you edited the clip on the timeline, the video and audio would go out of synch and stay that way until a reboot. The same problem was replicated on another of my workstations.

Note that this problem was only apparent when working with 5.1 Surround Projects.

After wasting the whole day today trying to solve this I eventually found the fix:

Checking (or enabling) all of the available devices under 'Options' and then 'MIDI' and then selecting the devices on the 'Sync' tab seems to have solved the problem!

Don't ask me why or what the MIDI settings have to do with external monitor preview via FireWire! I don't know! But (for now) it seems to have solved the problem!

Comments appreciated!

Regards,

Dale.

Really customizing the toolbar
 

How can I go about adding a Preview on External Monitor button on the toolbar? My first idea was to create a script that would invoke that Preview command but I could not find a way to do so in the API. Did I miss it, or is there another way? Is it possible to invoke a keyboard command in a script?