I'm gonna be a bit harsh here, sorry <g> There is a sticky thread
on top of this forum called:

Quick reference: Vegas shortcuts and mouse gestures 1.0b

It links to a PDF that contains all these nice little keyboard
shortcuts and other much used tricks in Vegas to complement
the manual (in which you could also have found the split option).

Please take the time to view and read the PDF in the link above!

Thanks.

This has to be one of the most asked questions from people coming from Premiere. Fortunately, in Vegas you don't need a "tool" that you have to select to simply split clips into multiple pieces. As Rob said, there's LOTS of keypresses that can help speed your workflow.

ok ,great thanks!!! =).

thx for the links.

16:9 and Vegas
 

Hi. I just discovered my rinky-dink Canon ZR20 has a squished 16:9 widescreen function. I'm using Vegas 5, and I had some quick questions that I'm trying to figure out.

1) The widescreen format looks fine in Vegas. The source media file is NTSC Widescreen. The veg project file is NTSC Widescreen. However, when I render to NTSC DV Widescreen format, the resulting file still appears squished in Quicktime or Windows Media player. Is this normal? I'm assuming that it is -- and that it will only look "correct" on a proper monitor/TV or if I render to a widescreen DVD.

2) Since I primarily make avi's, wmv's, and mov files, I'd like the widescreen look without the black bars. Is there anyway I can do this -- getting rid of the bars -- in Vegas? When I just try to crop the footage or when I try to change the actual render video size, I either get black bars or more squish. It seems rather bone-headed of me not to figure it out, but I can't quite figure this out.

Thanks.

Thanks Edward. I've got the newsletter and have looked at that Faq.

I was hoping to get an indepth book or something on Vegas scripting with tutorials.

Thanks anyway
Aaron

DVDA and DVD Burner Compatability
 

Greetings,

I am looking to purchase a new external DVD burner very soon, however I would like to hear from some of you as to what you use successfully with DVDA 1.0 and 2.0. I have a leaning to the Sony DRX-530UL or the DRX-700UL. The 700UL has the advantage of being able to burn daul layer, but does not record to DVD-R where the DRX-530UL will. The other unit that is interesting is the BenQ DW822A. I also understand that DVDA 1 and 2 does not support dual layer burning. Will DVDA still recognize and control a dual layer burner?

What format of DVD (DVD+r/-r) have you found seems to be most compatable with consumer level DVD players? I am in the midst of producing an hour long documentary which I need to distribute soon, and will need to find the most logical solution to distribution on DVD.

Thanks in advance for your help!

1) yes that is normal. Those formats do not take a different pixel aspect ratio into consideration.

2) this is definitely possible, so something must be going wrong.

I think something like this should work:

- start a 4:3 project
- import the 16:9 footage (you should see it with black bars)
- now crop 60 pixels from the top and bottom
- change the project settings to a resolution of 720x360
- export to a resolution of 654x360 at 1.0 pixel aspect ratio

How does that look? Could you otherwise put up a 1 second
of DV on a webserver somewhere so we can try ourselves?

I don't have any NTSC footage since I'm in PAL land. Nor do I
have any 16:9 footage myself.

I've debated writing one but that crazy little thing called TIME keeps getting in the way. It may be time to start again, though.

I think one is definately needed as there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of stuff out there.

Right now I'm stuck with scripting something to make a copy of an event in one track into another track. Looks like I have to actually duplicate all the properties and build it by hand. Must be an easier way.

Aaron

XP themes and Vegas
 

Hi,

I know I'm going to get shot down for even suggesting the use of such things but here goes anyway...

First of all, has anyone used WindowsBlinds with Vegas 5? For some reason the scroll bars on the timeline on mine just go completely black no matter what settings I have. Secondly, is there a performance hit with WindowsBlinds? I heard that in actual fact it uses less resources than the default XP interface. Is this true?

Has anyone here used ObjectDock with Vegas too? I did have it set up without the XP taskbar but found it had a problem when minimising and enlarging the Vegas window. However now I have it set to the top of the screen with autohide on and the normal windows task bar at the bottom of the screen and it seems fine. Thing is, has anyone here noticed any huge performance hit when using Vegas with this software?

I know people will chastise me for installing what might seem at first to be eye candy on an editing system. But to me Object Dock seems like an essential piece of software and stops me having ugly icons all over the desktop. I also believe that a nice looking interface can influence the mood of the person using it somewhat.

Yes, there's an easier way. Send me an e-mail with what you're trying to do. But the answer is to use the COPY command to make a copy of the event - even to the new track.

Assuming "MyEvent" is the event you want copied, Mtrack is the TARGET track, and MyTC is the beginning timecode for the clip, you can create a new event "mynewEvent" like this:


mynewEvent = MyEvent.Copy(Mtrack, MyTC);

I doubt this will work for you. These are addons and hacks that
usually have problems with such applications.

I have turned off ALL XP theming since I don't like it and, yes, it uses more resources. So these WindowsBlinds use more resources than no theming at all. Whether it will use less than the default I do not know.

I can understand why you would like to do such things. But if it
gives you so much trouble I would just not use it for my editing
work!

Thanks Edward. I must have missed that in the docs somewhere - then again it is 2:40 am here at the moment.

Cheers
Aaron

DVD Arch. DVD erosion problem
 

I was using the first version of DVD architect, and all of my DVDs from that era have eroded and become useless. My associates tell me there is an option in most DVD burning programs to add an end cap of some sort. Does DVD Architect 2 have this feature? If you know anything about what I’m talking about, please comment.

Michael J. Estepp

What exactly do you mean by "eroded?" What are the symptoms? If the DVD's played initially and now they won't, that sounds like a media problem. What brand of media have you been using?

John

DVDA (both 1 and 2) automatically close the DVD. That is not your problem. I agree that it sounds like a problem with the DVD media itself. I've seen this when using some cheap media - plays initially but slowly gets to the point where it can no longer be read.

Michael,

Have you tried playing these corrupt DVDs on different players? How are the DVDs being stored? And as John asked, what kind of media was used? Did they use different brands of media? Was the media -R, +R, -RW, or +RW? What kind of DVD burner are you using?

Lance,

I've used a Pioneer A05 with complete success for burning -R and -RW DVDs. I haven't tried it with +R or +RW. The A05 is about 6 months old so it's only a single layer burner.

I believe -R continues to be the predominant DVD. I've checked multiple brand DVD players and most always support -R, but I don't think Phillips did.

Check out http://www.videohelp.com/ for DVD players and the formats supported.

I was using Maxell DVD-R , and now I have Legacy DVD-R. My burner is a pioneer DVD-RW DVR-105

generated media and time code
 

I've noticed that with my current settings, when I create and try to edit an effect with generated media (let's say, for instance I want to change the color of some text over time), the time code in the generated media's dialogue box is ITS OWN, as opposed to the timecode of the project/timeline. What I mean is, let's say my project is 5 minutes long, and I want this text to appear at the two and a half minute mark. I would expect that when I right-click on the event with the generated media, and select "edit generated media", and then properties, that the time code I would see in the little dialogue box, when I add or alter key frames, would begin at 00:02:30:00, right? No. Instead, I get the event's own time code. So let's say it's a ten second long event, no matter where it is in the timeline of the project, the timecode for that event will be 00:00:00:00 through 00:00:10:00.

Is there a way to change this? It's not like this with pre-existing events, like captured video files. . .those will conform to the project's time code. Just not the generated media, for some reason. It makes it easy for me to create and alter the keyframes if I know where in the project, timecodewise, they do their business.

Does this make any sense? I looked through all the preferences, and couldn't find anything that seemed to change the settings.

What you are seeing is normal. The timeline will show you the length of the media. If it is 5 seconds, that timeline will be five seconds long beginning at 0. Take a video clip, split it in a couple of sections, and open Pan/Crop on one of those sections. You'll see the exact same thing.

Hmm. Perhaps you only get the timeline's timecode when you apply FX to the event, then? I'll have to experiment.

Nope, that ain't right either.

Well, I just don't get it. I know in the past it's worked the way I previously described, and in addition, I could get the little cursor on the keyframe timeline to move when I played the video in the project timeline, so that'd they move in sync. I am quite perplexed. Is there a setting I can adjust? Newer version of Vegas 4?

I've got it working now. Nice and smooth with Windows Blinds. Haven't noticed a performance drop and I'm only running on a 1.33ghz Athlon!

I could never use it with theming turned off. Far too plain and makes me feel like I'm using something from the 1980's :-) With 1gb of memory and todays processor speeds I really don't believe turning off the theming would make any real world difference.

The timeline works the way you describe when adjusting Track Motion or track level effects.

Just because the timeline doesn't match doesn't mean you can't use the Sync Cursor option. However, Sync Cursor DOES NOT WORK with generated media (never has).

So what did you change to get it working the way you wanted????

well, i suppose if you enjoy having your desktop look like something from fisher price.....

After all the messing around I found I had Vegas 5 in the 'by application' section. Deleetd hat and it worked fine.

As for the Fisher Price thing, I am running a theme that looks very business like actually :-) I hate those themes that look like something from a sci fi film etc. The one I am using is very usable and looks LESS Fisher Price than the default XP look, so there :-)

dont get me wrong, im not trying to insult you or any other person that uses the default or any other theme.

even running at 2800+ and 1G DDR i still prefer all the visual themes/shadows/fade menus etc etc turned off.

the default XP theme does bring fisher price to my mind every time i see it though....

no offense taken. Everyone has their own personal preferences.


I have noticed that the interface is much more responsive with Windows Blinds than it is with the XP theme. This is probably because Windows Blinds skins the Windows Classic look rather than the XP one.

But further to all of this, I have always used Dr Salmans Power Tools as it produces a very significant response increase to the Windows interface, particularly where the Start Menu is concerned.

dunno bout that stuph too much....

used to use the old windows power tools back in the 95/98 days..

then 2k came along and rocked hard. didnt do much except add in msconfig from the winME version

now i just use services.msc to config everything in background
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm
(this is in another post recently as well)

im happy with classic (on rainy day scheme)

Vegas composition question...
 

I have some footage that has a couple of one frame dropouts that I'd like to remove. They sit above nonmoving areas. I was thinking that I'd be able to make a couple of little bezier masks over the footage where the dropouts are, place a frame of the background with no dropouts underneath (on top?) and composite through so that the dropouts disappear on that frame.

I've always been confused with Vegas' compositing and now I'm in Vegas 5 it seems worse. I just don't understand it well at all.

Is there a way to do what I'm after?

Cheers
Aaron

Doesn't sound overly difficult. Take a look at vol 1 #12 of my newsletters to see a similar effect using the cookie cutter.

Need help: capture/audio questions
 

Hi all. Am home for a brief couple days, then am back out in the field for the second half of my shoot. Thing is, while trying to capture one of my tapes in Vegas 5, I about had a heart attack as it was out of sync in the preview window of the advance capture tab while I was logging, but after I batch captured it, and played it in Vegas, it played fine. What gives? Don't rem. seeing that in V 4, but I've been so focused on pre-prod and production for so long now, maybe I'm mis-remembering. Should I be concerned? Could I have some setting wrong? It's all shot on my DVX (24pA), and I'm bringing it in w/ 48k audio and 23.976 (IVTC film). Why would the preview window while logging be so off?

Marcia

Okay... here's what I've gotten so far...

http://externalis.com/yurple/Effect.wmv

You can see what I'm trying to do. I've changed where I fade into and out of this effected clip. While it's decent, what I'm looking for is a way to kind of ease into the effect. I'm thinking that I might need to make several copies of the region that I originally cut and apply the same effects at varying levels and then crossfade between them.

Is there a simpler way to "ease" into an effect that I have set?

Also, anyone want to be brutally honest about my use of the effects?

Thanks,
Kevin

The effect looks "eased in" just fine (preety cool BTW).
The easiest way to do what I think you are asking is to simply have one event without the effect and one with, and dissolve between them.

Gary

<<<-- Originally posted by Gary Kleiner : The effect looks "eased in" just fine (preety cool BTW).
The easiest way to do what I think you are asking is to simply have one event without the effect and one with, and dissolve between them.-->>>


Okay... well that is what I did here. I guess tweaking the effect is all that's left for now.

Thanks!

Were you previewing on an external monitor (or the camera's screen) and listening to the computer? The computer is delayed to an external monitor on capture. That could account for the difference.

MPEG-4 and Vegas
 

I want to make some low-res MP4 clips of some videos so I can play them on my cell phone. Can Vegas do this?