Thanks Gary,

How did you route each input to each specific track on the timeline?

Right-click the track header and choose "Record Inputs". That should give you a list of options. Pick a different one for each track.

Edward/Gary,

I guess what fooled me was that I do not have a multi-track A/D convertor attached to the system at this time, and therefore every time I tried to map a track, I only got the Stereo, Left and Right options. The system needs to see the device before I have the option of routing my tracks. I understand now!

Thanks so much for your support!


Lance

Corrupted files???
 

I have had some problems with what I suppose are corrupted files. Occasionally I see a dead spot on an .avi clip in my timeline. It is all black or it is pixelated, multicolored and there is no picture, a third type would be similar, multicolored and the sound of rushing noise. I take that to mean the file has become corrupted somehow. A fix is to replace it from my backup, an external IOMEGA hard drive. This has always solved my problem of the unuseable file but I have not figured out just why the file would go bad.

Aside from that happening, I have twice lost all content from Drive E, a 160 GIG hard drive. The error says there is no directory to reformat etc. I have done that twice but have lost all data twice.

I note that those two drives, one 250 GIG and the 160 GIG are on a Promise controller card and that never occurred to me that there was a relationship so that card is suspect.

But here in the BIG problem. My project files are not working. I run a project file and I get an error that says "the file is an unsuported format".

A couple times I got past that initial error and into Vegas. I then was told that such and such a file had errors and would I like to replace the file. I can do that and restore all the files needed but after that installation when it all looks like it will work I get another error.

The one staring me in the face says,

"An error occurred while loading the project file Ceremony Synched with Master PIP track WORKVERSION 9.veg. The file is an unsupported format." then Vegas shuts down.

Obviously I have a PC problem but doesn't it seem unlikely that .veg files are now considered "unsupported format?". I am running backup .veg files from another drive. Vegas also is not installed on the drive with the project files or the .avi's.

Any ideas why Vegas is rejecting .veg files? I am looking at losing an awful lot of work if I can't get the .veg files working.

Thanks in advance.

Faulty CPU/RAM/power supply is one possible cause (but unlikely IMO). If you have bad hardware then you will see some of the following:

Blue screens of death (XP automatically reboots on these unless you tell it not to)

Your computer does not always boot up.

Weirdness and random instability.

A bad IDE controller could also be a cause, although I don't know what might be causing this. It could even be a bad hard drive, but I have never heard of a hard drive doing that. I think there are programs out there that test for data corruption.

2- You could try running chkdsk to check your drive for errors. run --? type in "chkdsk /f" if using winXP
You may need to have the test run on reboot.

Very very nice, well done. Just one short remark: I would avoid cutting on the beat for that makes the next cut predictabe, thus making the viewer aware of the editing.

Barend Jasper

Keep in mind that issues with AVI can also come from dropped
frames during capture and tape problems. Also at times I've
seen some weird pixels or other stuff in Vegas and when I closed
it and re-opened it was gone.

It does sound you have much more serious problem. It is NOT
healthy for drives to dissappear or loose all of their content.

Are you running a virus scanner? Is this machine connected to
the internet? If so are you running a firewall?

I would definitely check that Promise card out. It could be yours
is a faulty one. Heat can be a problem too, so if you can I would
check that as well. Besides that memory is quite a possible
candidate as well!

i live in the burg...i may be able to make it

DVDarch2 - blur or alias issue - mpeg2?
 

i had worked all day yesterday with a fellow student at school with idvd to create our dvd and the program jsut wasnt supportive enough...

i went home and redid it all in arch2 (first time using it) and rendered/burned as i finally caught a few hours of sleep

got up and grabbed the disc and headed back up to school... the dvd looks great BUT all the video seems to have a blur to it...anything with more than just slight motion has either a blur or alias issue (kinda the best way i can describe it)

quick pans look especially awful - almost like an interlacing issue but the sections are much larger than what ive seen before when ive dealt with interlace issues

the files were all .mov, (because we did them here at the school on mac) when i rendered out the files i set them as avi though (interestingly in XP i could rename the mov extension to avi and the video play just fine)

all the clips were shot on my GL1 or XL1s - it doesnt appear to be a cam issue...

it looks like more of a mpeg2 conversion issue...i didnt see this problem with the files when i was messing with extensions and opening in QT or WM9.

when i set it to optimize the DVD it was left at the default 8 Mbps that Arch2 uses (same as Arch1 i believe)

It shows on my set top dvd player /32 inch sony tv (interlaced)
and on compaq laptop (winXPpro) and now here on the G4 macs at the school.

Im guessing it is something that happened in the conversion by dvdArch2...possibly because the files were .mov (outputted on g4s at school from FCP) maybe?

it's driving me absolutely nuts (not to mention I quit smoking this past week so im completely irritated with everyone and everything)

hopefully it wont be a real issue for the average user viewing it but to me its so blatantly obvious that something doesnt look right.

i live an hour away from school, so heading back and reencoding is kinda not the cards for me...i have the dvdARch and source files on ipod, but no vegas/Arch here at school...i guess it will have to suffice but i really must get to the bottom of this...i wouldnt think i would have had to deinterlace or anything since this is meant for set top dvd/standard tv.

any value-added comments anyone can help me with here?

Impressive work!

its coz u havent set the last keyframe within the scene..
the panner is still moving..
u need to set 2 of them.. on for the final stop within the pan, and one to keep it ther..

thanks Peter, maybe that is what I did wrong! I'll check it at home!

Vegas5 - scrub
 

the scrub doesn't seem to work like in Vegas4. In Vegas4, draging the scrub while in "pause", whould play the video with variable speed/in selected direction. In Vegas 5 it just alter the play speed while in "play" mode. If I'm in "stop" or "pause", dragin the scrub does nothing!
Is there something to set so this would work?

Vegas5 - DataCode...
 

I can see in MediaPool the DataCode (if that's its name - date/time of shooting) for captured (from DV) clips. But when rendering a project, the date/time is replaced with a new one (generated at the date/time of rendering).
Is there a way to kip the original date/time?

I want to use some apps to generate subtitle from the date/time info of the generated avi to use when compiling a DVD. (this is posible with the original captured avi)

I see the following things that could be wrong:

1) the quicktime format was not in DV but some other compression format like mpeg2/4/sorenson

2) the footage was progressive and you forget to let DVDA/Vegas know and it thinks it is lower field first / interlaced (default)

3) the footage was interlaced but the field order went wrong somewhere

4) the playback DVD player does some artificial electronic enhancing (some players have this, most can have it switched of that do)

I have a virus program with updated virus definitions. It runs when I am not rendering. I have only the firewall that comes with my router. I do not feel I have a virus.

Power supply? Hmmmm. I have replaced the power supplys on the last 4 machines I purchased but only after they gave me obvious symptoms like shutting down when hot. This PC has 4 Hard Drives and a DVD drive. That is a lot of power. I believe I have a 400 power supply. I would not know how to test to see if its a power supply problem.

I run Norton Utilities religiously and never really get disk or cluster errors.

I have since taken a few .veg files from a safe drive. They start to load and when they go to load a corrupted .avi file Vegas asks me to replace it. I then replace it with a good .avi from the external IOMEGA and it plays. So my problem is not that Vegas doesn't recognize its own file format, it is just what Vegas reports when it has a problem with a file being used in Vegas, such as a corrupted .avi.

Bottom line, I feel, is that this is NOT a Vegas problem now but one of having both corrupted .veg files and .avi files. I need a safe drive to run them from until I figure this out. This discussion belongs on some other board at this point.

But one question for anyone who might know...

I am runnnig a fairly new motherboad but it doesnt recognize the 250 gig drive as such. It would see it as 137 GIG without the controller. If I purchased a 250 GIG external firewire drive, would that be seen as 250 or would it also be seen as 137? An external 250 GIG drive would temporarily rescue me.

An external 250GB drive should be seen as 250GB by Windows
since it will control it directly instead of through the bios who
doesn't understand such things through USB/firewire.

Seems to be working for me. While stopped, drug the scrubber icon both directions and the timeline cursor moved just fine.

This has been debated several times. When you render a crossfade, what time code do you use? Since it is NEW video, it would be NOW. Then you end up with date codes bouncing all over the place. If you do a full render, the entire file is new which should also be set to NOW??? Maybe you could provide some suggestions to Sony on possible ways it could operate - maybe even options so that it could behave like now, or behave in this manner, or behave in that manner...

Excessive heat can also make external hard drives do weird things. I haven't seen the kind of problems like you've seen but it's a good idea to make sure your drives are running cool.

Good luck.

Dennis Vogel

1. the QT format was in DV. my classmates had previously rendered HUGE uncompressed movs using 4:2:2 colorspace - I then rerendered to QT and selected DV/DVPRO AVI 29.97fps best quality. from FCP / apple support this seems to be on par with what i render from Veg5

2 the footage was all shot on my GL1/XL1s cameras in normal mode. I leave Vegas at a default of lower mode...all clips were originally imported with Veg5cap and then distributed among us all. Unless FCP render did something weird.

3. possible - but i think maybe it was during mpeg encoding

4. it performs this way on mutliple set top, multiple pc/macs so i believe it to be in the mpeg2 encoding...

Multiple Me's in the video?
 

i have been in photography for a log time now. and have some experimental photo's of me like 5 times, 10 times, and i am working on one now where i am in it over hundreds times...


but i am starting to get into video and would like to transfer my style into this. is cromakeying the best solution? some green screening? because i am looking into making videos where i interact with myself. anyone have any tutorials or software i should look into.

I have Vegas 5.0, and after effects 5.5, can this be done with just tons of masking? i have NO idea where to begin with this...


one example might be in the newest austin powers movie where austin goes and visits dr eveil, he interacts with himself. or dare i even say a really good example is the matrix...

Vegas is good for standardish and advanced 2d chromakeying composites, but for really advanced stuff, with moving 3d layers, id suggest Combustion. Its VERY advanced, and not that easy to get into.. works totally different to Vegas... but its a lil more powerful... Vegas comes close.. but ther are some things like lighting, which it still cant match

for stuff like Matrix and austin powers, ur lookin at a Silicon Graphics workstations running advanced renderfarms...

u can try to emulate this, but i wouldnt try doing shadows, and actual interaction (ie, like in teh movie Secret Window when johnny depp grabs hinself)...

its al in the editing... if u can overlay your audio with a different pitch ot tone for each of ur personas, with some clever cuts and angles, as well as sporadic "dual" shots, u should be able to pull of the ilusion if 2 yous..

It really depends on how sophisticated you want to get. If you never cross paths, just split screen. For example, if you sit on each end of a couch, you can easily separate the left and right halfs using a locked down camera shot and a split screen. If you're going to be walking in front of yourself, things get more difficult. You may also want to experiment with using a green screen.

Cosmin,

Go to Options, Preferences, and check the General tab of options. There are a couple of scrubbing options near the bottom of the list.

Randall

One thing (and I could be wrong on this): if I remember correctly
interlaced DVD is actually upper field first instead of lower. I
haven't really looked that much at DVD Architect yet so I don't
know if that is a setting you can alter in the project properties
or whether it saw the DV file correctly (lower first).

You can always try changing the field order of the imported file
(if changing the project doesn't help) and see what that does.
It might be that it just went screwy somewhere along the line.
That will be hard to tell.

CD/DVD Printer
 

I just came across this new product for printing on CDs & DVDs. It's from Primera and it costs about $140. I don't have any experience with it but I thought you may find it of interest.

http://www.primera.com/signaturez1.html

I saw that too. My first thoughts was "it's a little expensive for what it does". It appears to be a single color thermal printer. I recall seeing the same thing from other companies for under $100.

Lance, be sure you've got a converter device that obliges ASIO drivers. you can run into significant issues. While Gary is apparently having good luck with the MOTU, that is more rare than common. Echo and M-Audio, Frontier, Aardvark are more performance oriented. 24 channels of input are quite possible and capable if your system can sustain. Firewire won't sustain this many inputs simultaneously either, unless you've got lots of RAM.
Sorry for the delayed response, I've been overseas for Vegas training.

ok ...

i took all the .mov files today and brought them into Veg5 and outputted with the mpeg2 option and made sure the field order was set for lower field...

things look great now!!!

i couldnt figure out HOW to set this up directly in DVDarch... it give me options for bitrate, apsect ratio, resolution, frame rate, and a few others, but nothing about field order in DVD arch...so it seems like i may be better off in the future to simply output directly from Veg5 mpeg2 as it has more options...does that seem right? maybe im missing something here...i would assume that DVDarch would have the same mpeg2 options as Veg5

i guess ive never run into this issue before because ive always used Vegas4/5 and always had it setup for lower field interlace in proj and render settings.

this was posted quite a while ago...BUT since i learned a little about macs & idvd this past week....and maybe possibly you found a different workaround...or maybe it will help someone else...


macs are a little different than our pc...for example...i found that FCP AVI renders werent designating field order (lower) for our clips at our school lab which gave me a lot of headaches over the past couple of days...

you could render to AVI and let him convert the file however he sees best fit for his setup

or

if he has (or maybe had at this point) just that reel in mind...make the DVD and then goto (on MAC) applications/utilities/disk utility and there click the DVD drive after its inserted and create an image of the DVD

then it would create a image file (ending with dmg i believe) and he could jsut go back to DiskUtil when he needed and click the image and click burn (and it will ask for a blank dvd)


probably not of any help to you now....but perhaps someone...somewhere...will have a similar issue and it will help them....maybe.

I had a discussion with the guy who runs all Mac labs in our school about this type of device this weekend...as those sticky labels kinda stink...

i found this http://www.cdrom2go.com/equipment/inkjet-thermal.htm which offers a little more info on thermal vs inkjet...

what i dont understand is why thermal would be listed as NOT having the capabilities to do nice graphics/pics....

i got a super duper (and somewhat pricey) thermal 8.5x11 printer a year or so ago and it makes awesome pics from my canon 10d still (which is about the only thing ive tried on there)

maybe its just thermal for cd/dvd

It is fine to use Vegas and the MPEG2 encoder the way you've
done! No problem at all. Since I haven't used DVDA much I can't
really comment on the MPEG2 settings etc. But, I'm glad you've
resolved your problems and it was something "as simple" (heh)
as a wrong field order!

Acid Pro Problem!
 

I've posted this in the Sony vegas forum, but it is a Sony Acid query.

I have recently added Sony Acid Pro 4 to my system, and during the installation, I am prompted to install DirectX 8.0 Runtime in order for the installation of Acid to continue.

I tried installing the supplied DirectX 8.0 and kept getting an error message telling me that this installation was only achievable under Windows 98/ME/2000 (I'm running XP), so I downloaded and installed DirectX 9.0c.

Yet when I go to install Sony Acid (4f) I still get the message prompting me to install at least DirectX 8.0!

I have successfully installed DirectX on my system, so why is it still not allowing me to progress??!!

Is there anyone out there that can help? There usually is ;-)

Thank You!

Sunny

DVDA2 Dual Monitor Preview
 

Soon I'll be receiving a Matrox Dual Head G550 card and 2-Samsung 173P LCD monitors. I'm playing around with DVDA to see what I'll be able to do with 2 LCD monitors.

Is there a way to preview in DVDA2 to a second monitor? I know DVDA2 is supposed to preview to a fireware connected monitor, but I didn't see any mention of a dual monitor config.

It appears most of the windows in DVDA2 will tear off so I assume I can move them to the external monitor, just like in Vegas.

I don't know of a way to put the preview screen on the second monitor. at http://www.vasst.com/training/DVDAscreen.htm I've put up a screenshot of my DVDA layout. The workspace window is the only one that can't be moved about the dual screen. You *Could* open DVDA on the second monitor, then put your additional/other windows on the first monitor, that would put the preview screen on the right, with tools to the left if that's your preferred workflow.

Themes from the VASST tour
 

Several have asked about various Themes used on the VASST tours to give Vegas unique looks. I've uploaded a few of them, more to come as I re-tweak the cursors and a few other settings.
http://www.vasst.com/training/Themes/themes.htm
Enjoy.

thanks, i did a little big of experimenting, i was really looking for interaction with myself...not really like beating myself up...but definitly like walk passed eachother and the like...i will try and find more info on it, already did a little big of googling

Waldorf here. This would be great.

-Jonathan

very very nice ..I need to work more with Vegas ...hard to get the time

Vince

thanks for the post