John,
Ultimate S does work differently than Excalibur. That may or may not be the difference you're looking for. Updating is a one-button operation if you're not happy with edits. And your original tracks are never touched, so if you want to just get back to your pre-edit state, just delete the master track and you're finished. Multi-Cam is just one of over 200 features. There is a free 14 day demo on the website.

Thanks both of you - sounds like it may be time to add another tool to the toolbox...

Tweaking with the Virtual Memory?
 

In optimizing my XP Pro PC for digital video editing w/ Vegas and the other Sony software, I came across this suggestion: Fixed Swap File (Virtual memory): changing the virtual memory. It states "that for custom size, set it to 1.5 to 2 times the amount of your total RAM for both initial and maximum size."

Has anyone else done this? If so, what settings would you suggest for my machine (2.00 GB RAM)? I don't want to mess up the settings unless it's warranted and beneficial.

Fx1 to 24pSD - What am I doing wrong?
 

Something has gone terribly wrong. I am simply trying to use video shot with FX1 in HD mode for a SD 24p widescreen DVD. However, my final SD looks horrible (relatively) much worse than my VX2000. I know I have to have made a critical error somewhere, can someone please help?

I shot video with FX1 in HD.
I set Vegas Properties to NTSC Widescreen 24p.
Captured HD to hard drive with Vegas 6 as mt2 files.
Used Gear Shift to convert those files to widescreen 24p SD proxies.
Edited the proxies.
Rendered to mpg2 using the NTSC Widescreen 24p template.

The video looks bad. Blocky around the edges of things (sorry don't know correct terminology) and maybe a little blurred. Just to make sure, I looked at the native mt2 files and they look great. I then compared the video to some shot on my vx2000 and it was significantly worse than the SD camera. What have I done wrong?

And then to add insult to injury I was going to use Gear Shift to replace the proxies with the original mt2's and it just put a bunch of solid red files in place of the video. Something I'll need to fix since I'd like to preserve the ability to do a HD render in the future.

Anyway, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

it doesn't make much change really but you cant also call it messing up. Windows normally changes the size of the virtual memory according to its needs and this change in the size causes some slowing down. by setting up limits to 1.5 and 2 times of physical memory you simply define an optimum size so that it is supposed to increase performance.

i always use virtual memory with these settings.

for you comp the min size is 3 gb and the max is 4 gb.

Can you post some stills?

FWIW, GearShift can't create red frames. This would indicate a problem with your system. Red frames mean corrupted frames. Since GearShift uses the Vegas rendering engine, this would suggest computer problems of some sort, ie; fragged drives, corrupt sectors.

Thanks; I'm assuming the four digit number that's listed on my current default setup is in MB, so just so I have my math correct:

One gigabyte equals 1,000MB (to be specific, I've discovered it's 1,024 megabytes). Would that mean 3GB equals 3072MB? Here all this time I thought a gig was 1000.

Yes, 3Gig = 3072Meg. Here's why 1024 instead of 1000:

2 * 2 = 4
4 * 2 = 8
8 * 2 = 16
16 * 2 = 32
32 * 2 = 64
64 * 2 = 128
128 * 2 = 256
256 * 2 = 512
512 * 2 = 1024

Computers work with binary numbers. 2^10 = 1024

Thanks for the reply.

Unfortunately it seems I do not have priviledges to post attachements. I'll look into changing that.

I was hoping the red frames were just because I had moved the original mt2's from my hard drive to an external drive and Gear Shift couldn't find them (never was prompted to redirect to a new location like Vegas does). But I guess I need to do some trouble shooting.

i believe V6 creates the red frames when it sees errors/corrupted data ..

maybe they were corrupted when you moved them to external hard drive ?
i've had that happen more then a few times over a bad 1394 cable/connection

I've never had corrupted files before. Is there a way to fix them or am I stuck recapturing and then re-editing?

Deinterlace option
 

Dan,

Thanks for the comments. Sorry about not stating the capture format. I am using the Z1, it captures interlaced (1080-60i 1440x1080).

Regarding the deinterlace option of the encoding: as I stated in my post, I do in fact select the de-interlace option from encoder options, so it does perform the deinterlace (if you download and install the codec from the first post, you will see the options available, also the documentation describes how the deinterlace works).

My basic question was, does anyone have any experience with the workflow and have they encountered any problems? So far my tests appear to be very successful. But, I am wondering if I am overlooking anything.

HDV to Web
 

I have been using WMV 720-30p to web. Any suggestions on how to make the file size smaller would be great.

Jon

Text is "lossy" on still frames and solid colors
 

Text against still frames or solid colors has the JPEG "lossy" or "blocky" look after rendering. Is is possible to correct this?

A couple of things to look at;
First---where are you developing the text? In other words are you using Vegas Media to generate the text or another program

Second---what font are you using? (some lend themselves better than others to this problem)

Thirdly---when are you seeing this? In other words, when you render to AVI,MPEG (1 or 2) or on preview?

Fourth---If on preview how is your preview set? (draft,good,best)

Let us know and we'll try to help you out.

Don