Tim,
I have a Revere P-90 under my bench somewhere. I tried it as my first machine for transferring regular 8 mm before I bought one of Moviestuff's CineMate units.

From your post, I'm assuming that you can observe the change in speed of the projector as the speed dial is turned.

There are three (or more) possible problems.

It may be that the projector cannot reach 20 fps and needs oiling. (I found that 15fps almost always gave the impression that the projection was too slow. The old cameras were spring wound, and frame rate was sort of an average. )

The instruction book does say that 16 fps is the normal speed, but it does not say what the range is. I can tell you that mine would reach 20fps, based on the dissappearance of flicker.

It is also possible that your film is "dragging" in the projector. Film dries out and must be cleaned and lubricated to protect it from scratching. Unlubricated film can also cause projector belts to slip, preventing the 20 fps from being reached

Another possibility is that your camcorder is not being locked to 1/60 sec shutter speed. If it jumps to higher speeds you can get some very strange effects. 1/60 seems ideal, 1/30 and 1/15 will work but with increasing softness of image. If you are using the original 500Watt+ bulb, your camcorder may be going to a higher shutter speed. Try a neutral density filter, or project to a photo gray paper instead of white to try to knock down the brightness.

While probably not the culprit, turn off any image stabilization on your camcorder.

Interesting... The last segment HAS been moving for me without the need for an ending marker. But I'm glad you found a solution that worked.

If you ever have a segment that does not move, it CAN be done manually. Simply pick the desired clip, manually move it to the Master track, remove the Pan/Crop settings, and then remove the Border effect.

Can't read the file from the CD fast enough to prevent the stutters. Your hard drive is faster allowing it to play correctly.

One thing I notice in my files is a short interlace artifact between cuts.

The footage is progressive (DVX100) but when one scene cuts to another, there appears a split second bleeding interlace effect.

Has anyone else noticed this?

It pops up only in the rendered footage.

Brian

Ralph,

Thanks for the info. Tried everything but the lube part. What kind of oil should I use to lube the projector? Also what is used to clean /lube the film? I think I'm getting somewhere with this and this may solve my ills. Thanks.

Tim

For the projector, a light oil such as "3 in 1" brand or sewing machine oil will do fine. Do it sparingly, a few drops at a time.

I also see that there is an adjustment available to allow the rheostat knob to be positioned for slower speeds. It's on P11 of my booklet. It's possible someone has done this adjustment and that it's now preventing you from achieving the highest speeds.

For film cleaning and lubrication, see the supplies at urbanskifilms.com Probably whatever lubricant is available in the smallest size would be your best bet. Some people use Lemon Pledge, but I've never tried that (and never will).

A set of film winders helps, but if you are not doing a lot of film, it's a sizeable investment. You can probably rig something to get you through cleaning a few reels.

Ultimate S presets vs Magic Bullet
 

How similar are the Magic Bullet presets to the Ultimate S film looks? If they were specifically design to mimic each and every effect (not that you could openly admit to that) I might seriously be interested. I've been considering picking up MB editors for V5 and Ulitmate S might be a cost-effective alternative...not to mention giving Spot more of my patronage. TIA

Vegas Leaks
 

I have been using Vegas intermittently for a few months. Every time I use it, I have to reboot my computer after closing Vegas, or everything runs at about 20% of normal speed until I reboot. This is indicative of old-time "memory leaks" or unreturned resources upon program closing. Damn sloppy programming for 2004.

Do other people experience this, or there something wrong with my Vegas installation?

I have NOT experienced this. After you close Vegas, is there a "Wowexec" listed in the Task Manager? If yes, what happens if you kill that process? While in the Task Manager, what does it indicate is taking CPU time?

No wowexec listed. Also no processes running that are obviously taking CPU cycles. I do have FIVE svchost.exe processes sitting there (zero CPU), and that seems odd. But it may be related to something else, so I will watch it now before and after Vegas.

As I said, it acts like a memory or resource leak. Imagine how slow your computer would run if suddenly you only had 128M instead of 512M or ram. BUt this kind of thing does not show up easily, since memory is still there, just flagged as "in use" or some other such id. I have not done extensive research, since I don't know what the knowledge would do for me. I have never seen a software company admit to having a memory issue like this or even be willing to discuss it. I just reboot after using Vegas and before going back to regular tasks. But it is becoming more of a PITA to do this..

I know they would be interested if you can narrow down the problem. I know this is NOT a common problem as I have not seen it on multiple systems and I have not heard of this problem before.

Vegas does access a lot of things - video, sound, scanners, firewire devices, etc... Are all of those drivers up to date?

It took me forever to get a DVD combo that would work. As part of that process I updated EVERYTHING I could find (as of October). It would shock me if a device driver could cause this problem, but maybe. I do know all firewire drivers are up to date.

Since it is not a common problem, I will try to figure out what it is about my configuration that is causing it. I have lots going on in my computer, although I typically shut off everything visible to edit or render or capture. I do leave Norton system protection running, along with wireless network and similar. Thanks for replies. If I learn anything more concrete, I will report in. :)

John, task manager will allow you to see how much resources each 'process' is taking up. This may be useful to check if there's a single process taking up a lot of CPU or RAM/memory. You can also see how much RAM is available- anything lower than 40MB may be bad.

2- It might also be that Norton is slowing things down. On older computers Norton Antivirus' real-time scanning can slow things down to a crawl. You could try temporarily disabling it. If that does work, look into alternatives (i.e. beef up security and disable Norton's scanning, or use NOD32 [fastest AV, but commercial] or AVG Antivirus FREE or Avast, also free).

Those are my guesses.

I'm pretty certain that the problem is not in Vegas (assuming you
are running the latest version of this). Yes a driver or video/audio
codec would have no problems at all to cause these kind of things
if they where badly programmed (and believe me, A LOT of drivers
are, especially the ones for older hardware!!!).

The problem which such leaks or other issues in drivers and/or
codecs is that they are nearly impossible to find. Especially since
such blocks of code are loaded INTO the calling process (in this
case Vegas). So the taskmanager is of no use at all to see which
process is using the most resources (which should be Vegas in
this instance anyway).

The only thing you can do is the following. Go into task manager
and into the performance tab and write down things like:

- PF Usage
- Handles
- Threads
- Processes
- Physical memory: available
- System cache
- Commit charge: total + peak
- Kernel memory: total + paged + nonpaged

Then start Vegas, do some silly work, exit the program, wait for
30 seconds or so and compare the numbers. You should have
some small differences, but if you have some big ones then you
should have a problem somewhere.

Which (exact) version of Windows would you be running?

You say you took a long while to get something running, that is
a pretty good indication that something is wrong on your system
or you are trying to work with some old hardware.

Which DVD combo would that be?

How are you on anti-virus software and things like spyware?

Help struggling NOOB
 

Help me...I just installed and began using vegas 5 and I can't figure out for the life of me how to apply a video effect to one clip (event) and not have it affect my next event or events. Example...If I want an event with a sepia filter/plugin on it to dissolve to a regular event with no effects, how do I do this? Every time I apply an effect to an event it gives everything in that track the same effect. Do I need to have the event with effects on a different track and if so how do I dissolve the two events??? I've looked in the manuals and I have ordered one of Spot's books, but I need help now to get me going with this. Thanks in advance...

Brian

The answer to your question may lie in how you have the keyframes set up. If you right click on the last keyframe(the little diamond in the effect timeline window) in your transition, you should see whether the ramp between keyframes is set to HOLD, LINEAR, or whatever. Make sure you have the right ramp selected.

>Every time I apply an effect to an event it gives everything in that track the same effect.<

This shouldn't be happening. I suspect you are not applying the FX the way you mean to. Sounds like you are applying at the track level.

Excaltly how/where are you applying the FX?

Gary

I've tried applying effect to the event on the timeline as well as to the video in the preview window.

Applying an effect to the timeline (not on an event) will apply that effect to everything on the entire TRACK

Applying an effect to the preview window will apply that effect to the entire PROJECT

Instead, you want to apply the effect ONLY to that one event on the timeline.

Vol 1, #12 of my newsletter talks about the scope of effects when applied various places. You may also want to look over the other issues as well. I have a "Beginner's Corner" series that started in issue #4. Check the link below my name.

Gary Kleiner also has some instructional DVD sets available at http://www.vegastrainingandtools.com

DSE has some instructional DVD sets and books also available from various sources.

Thanks everyone...looks like I'm over that hurdle...Stay tuned though as I'm sure to be in need of your expertise again.

Just my experience, I think a lot depends on the amount of RAM and swap file. If I've been in Vegas for a while, working with several video files that are all several GBs in size, once I'm done and close Vegas, I have to let my pc just chill for a minute or two. Even after closing Vegas, I see all sorts of HD activity from the light on the case. What it's doing, I'm not sure, but I imagine it has to do with the swap file. Explorer is slow as a dog for a couple of minutes after using Vegas, but it eventually settles down and the speed returns. Granted, I only have 512MB of RAM, so more RAM will always help.

That will certainly depend on the amount of RAM indeed. Sounds
like your PC is swapping a lot indeed Bobby!

Going for a top gear look
 

So I'm new to editing but I have access to Vegas and Final Cut Pro. I am trying to achieve a look similar to the look of the Top Gear video shoots. The sky effects, the coloring, the lighting effects... I am unsure what questions I should even ask or where to start but I'd like to know which direction to go to get to my goal.

Here is an example of what I'm talking about.
Top Gear - Evo8 MR FQ 400 vs. Lamborghini Murcielago

Correct equipment
 

I have worked with vegas for the past week. I want to make sure I have the proper set-up for my computer. This way if something seems funny I know it's me being a new user and not the equipment being not up to par.

I have a:
Sony Vaio 1.5 ghz pent4
256 ram
60 gb ultra ata/100 hd

My camera is a XL1s

Please feel free to tell me what I need or suggest a upgrade?

Most of my projects will be under 5 minutes a few might reach
15 minutes. I will not use to many transitions or special effects, I know that might make a difference with rendering times.

Also, I have no problem spending money for quality items.

Thank you for your time.
Matt

Assuming the computer also has firewire, it should work. I would look at getting more memory, though.

I have 2 i links on my computer to input video.

Imported Multimedia Clip Does Not Work
 

Hello, I've imported a multimedia clip (320x240 pixel) from the digital camera. I then imported to the media bin and to the timeline.
But the clip does not show up on the timeline and only the sound.
Only the sound plays in the timeline because the video itself is not shown on the timeline.

What could be the problem?

Videoclip Info: 320x240
Bit Rate: 88kbps
Audio Sample Size: 8 bit
Audio Format: PCm
Video Frame Rte: 15 frames/sec
Data Rate: 281kbps
.avi clip

I found the solution. :)
A mjpeg codec is required in order for Vegas to display clips imported from a digicam.

when I went to 640 megs of Ram Vegas 4 ran much better ...

Vince

DVD Authoring for VEGAS
 

I stupidly bought Vegas 5 w/out DVD Architect...I know I know. So how can I make the best of this situation since Sony doesn't appear to sell Architect seperately? Right now I'm authoring small projects with Nero 6.0, which is barebones.

You can upgrade from Vegas 5 to Vegas5 + DVD.

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.co...id=10&PRCat=30

How do you shrink and move video in Vegas?
 

I want to keep the HD aspect ratio, shrink it, move it too lower left and put a 4:3 in top right, can this be done in Vegas 5?

I have read the manual and been trying all day but cant seem to do anything but shrink it using distort plugin but it keeps it centered, pan and crop doesnt seem to do it either.

The Vegas 5 to Vegas 5 + DVD upgrade is really your only choice. It's $300 to upgrade.

yea, ok.

take two movie files and put them in separate time lines. Over lap them a bit, so the top one is the one that is going to get shrunk.

then use "event pan/crop" icon that is on the video file you want to shrink is on the top timeline. <---very important, or else your small video will be behind the large one. "event pan/crop" is found on the timeline of the actual video file, it looks like a box with some shaggys hanging off two of the corners.

in "event pan /crop" resize the picture by clicking on one of the very small blue box in one of thecorners of the picture. click and drag it to make it scale. THE BIG "F" that is overlayed on the picture- make that F bigger. This will resize the image to make it smaller, watch the size grow or shrink in your preview.

Then you need to move it to a corner. Click on the CENTER of the big "F" so you see the four arrows cursor. Then drag the "F" into the corner you want.

thats it!

unfortunately you probably can't encode dolby audio right now, correct? if you do have some way of doing that, then what you might want to do is to also look at other dvd authoring software instead of dvd architect.

$300 is pretty cheap for a good dvd authoring package, but it never hurts to compare the capabilities of everything out there... for instance, how easy is it to create menus? will the dvd authoring package allow you to use different video frame sizes and bitrates on the same disc? etc.

Same here ... and at the beginning, too.

thank you so much Im off to try it !!!

The AC3 encoder in Vegas does come with DVDA - not Vegas - so it is needed in order to encode AC3 audio.

HD migration
 

I am likely buying an HD camera next year. I know they will output DV, which makes it an easier decision. But now what I would like ot know is:

If I record in HDV, capture it as DV, and edit it with Vegas, Can I recapture the video a year from now, and just run the project file against the new captures to get the same project in HD format? Or will I have to tweak or redo the project timeline later on?

Vegas Rendering Time Examples
 

Many People perusing ths board prior to buying Vegas are probably interested in what to expect for rendering times. I thought I'd post my own experience thus far and see if anyone else cares to follow suit.

Processer: 2.4 Ghz Pentium IV
Memory: 750 Mb DDR (2700) RAM
Video: 34 MB NVidia
Hard drives (2) WD 7200 RPM w/cache
OS: XP Pro

Material:
a 98 minute first act of a stage play. Recorded with two cameras. Edited in Vegas using Excalibur to place 190 clips selected from the two videos onto the master track.

Rendering times (ratios):
6.3:1--MPEG II, NTSC DV template, rendering set to "good", video set to best (31), all other defaults
6.3:1--AVI, NTSC DV template, rendering set to good, all other defaults
10.4:1--same as either of above, rendering set to "best"

Note: I don't perceive any difference between "good" and "best" rendering for this kind of work.