1- You can download the demos for the various NLEs out there. Vegas and Premiere Pro for example have pretty functional demos.

For Vegas, the shortcut keys sticky at the top might really help you out.

Premiere Pro: version 1.5 seems to have fixed things. I'm not sure about this.

2- What camera to get: Check out the main forum here (the open discussion one).

There's many threads on which camera to get. Whatever camera you get shouldn't really affect which NLE you pick. Most NLEs can handle 24p editing if you really want that.

3- You will want to put more RAM into that laptop if you go Premiere Pro.

For Vegas I think you can actually get away with 256MB RAM. If you want decent RAM previews in Vegas then you'll need to add more RAM.

4- Mics: check out the audio forum, lots of great discussions on mics there. As far as wireless mics go, the Sennheiser ones are the most popular recommendation (the Evolution and the newer G2 series).

Another alternative to Grain Surgery, although not quite as effective, is the median tool.

Nice work, Michael! I loved the colors, lighting, and camera composition. The story itself left me a little baffled, probably because trying to see it in a small quicktime file embedded made it more of a visual effort than an emotional one from the viewing side.
Any chance of an HD WMV that could be either downloaded, or at least streamed at a decent rate?

Douglas,

That is fine praise, indeed, coming from you. Many thanks, sir.

Good comments on the narrative. I agree the film is a bit obscure and first time director Robie Kentspeth and I agree the first act setup runs too long before we see our principle characters' conflict. As the D.P., I did my best to capture Robie's esoteric vision, but she had some very specific ideas about camera movement and coverage. I think she did a pretty good job, however, on her very first short film project.

[ disclosure: Robie is my girlfriend too. :-) ]

I've not tried a WMV file and am concerned about migrating away from a "universal" format. If a film clip can't be played by absolutely everyone who visits my site, I'm doing my visitors a disservice and only harming myself.

I understand/agree about "universal" delivery, however some things to consider:
To get a great Quicktime stream, you have to have massive file sizes, and risk non streaming, but rather full downloads for many users.

Quicktime is less ubiquitous than REAL, although I hate REAL like most people. But, REAL can deliver HD streams for about the same file size as your very small QT.

Windows Media, while not universal, has by far and wide the lions share of streaming formats, owning more than 72% of the streaming market, according to Marken & Associates. (research firm) And, WMV can deliver a 720p stream with surround, for less bandwidth than your QT can deliver.

So...may I suggest that you deliver in QT for those that insist on watching through very small previews and have lots of bandwidth, and a second option for those that want the best experience possible on the broadest use platform available?

On our Mac/PC training tools, we deliver in both, realizing that QT will always be demanded by some folks. But the majority want Windows, based on internal and external research.
Our Copyrights training DVD has both, and interestingly enough, there have been 61 downloads/streams of the QT file.
there have been 860 streams of the WMV file. Quarter the size, quadruple the quality.

Just my nickel's worth. But the stream does look very good, which is hard to do in QT for that length a project with that small a file size.

V4 audio ?
 

OK is it me or does Vegas 4 not have an audible audio scrub
i.e. when trying to trim an event ,“clip”, sound bite

Thanks

Vince

Countdown
 

Adobe Premier 1.5 has a countdown generator that works great.
You can customize it with ease. Saved me a bunch of time since I didn't have to design one.


File, New, Coundown generator....


Thanks

You have the CTRL-Drag option in preferences. You can also playback a loop region. Plus there's the thumb control below the timeline headers.

Excellent advice drawn on thorough research.

Fortunately, I have quite a bit of space on my Yahoo-hosted site. As you suggest, I will add some full-rez streams to my half-rez QT's.

Thanks again.

Thanks Edward

Vince

Vegas Crashes during rendering
 

Heres an annoying problem that I have been dealing with for the last week or so: While rendering my timeline out to a standard NTSC DV file Vegas hard crashes(takes the OS down, back to the bios startup/bootup screen and re-boots) This only seems to happen when I use the "glow" filter, although I have had some trouble (Vegas_ SOMETIMES BUT NOT ALWAYS crashes but the OS is left standing) when I try to use a TGA graphic on the timeline. System has been quite stable up until now, but this is the first time I have tried to use this filter. Kind of a a pain since I need to use this filter for editing weddings....

Heres my system and what I have done so far:

MSI K7T turbo2 MB w/VIA KT-133A chipset, latest Bios.

Matrox AGP G450 16 MG dual display card, latest drivers

2 Hard drives on controller 1

DVD recorder on Controller 2

2 hard drives on Promise TX133 controller(PCI)

Allied 450 W true-power supply

768 PC133 ram

Vegas 4.0E

WinXP (fresh installl)

Serial ports, paralell ports, legacy sound and USB1 disabled

M-Audio 24/96 sound card

USB2 card

Pyro firewire card

Have updated Vegas from 4.0c to 4.0E

Updated DirectX from 8.1 to 9.0C

Updated drivers for Matrox Card

Have had SOME success by tuning off the video preview during rendering and rendering in sections instead of trying to render the whole timeline at once...obviously this workaround adds a lot of time to my edit. Anyone have any ideas?? my memory useage stays right at 270 MB , so there seeems to be plenty of ram on the system without having to go to the page file...I suspect:

video card

lack of available video ram

KT133a chipset conflict

Any suggestions?? feel freeto write directly or forward your reply to:

Steveleone@aol.com

Check the temperature of your CPU. Sounds like it may be getting too hot and shutting down. First, make sure ALL of your fans are working correctly. If the CPU has a fan, also make sure it is working. Make sure the airvents are not clogged with dust and debris. As a test, you can always take the cover off and blow a fan toward the computer.

Vegas Crashes
 

Thanx for the input...I checked the temp immediately after the crash and its was 114 F...I am sure it was already falling...I have the unit set to shut down at 176 F...also, I have 2 fans on the power supply, 3 large fans in the case, and a Volcano 9 running at full bore on the CPU, along with a couple of HD fan enclosures; I have a lot of air moving around that case....I keep the room temp around 68-70 degrees. that along with the reasonable CPU temp and the fact that it only crashes while rendering with that specific filter(gausian blur works just fine even tho its very CPU intensive) makes me suspect that Temp is not the problem..but again, thanx....

1- Try updating the latest drivers for your KT133 chipset. You should do this anyways if you haven't done so already. The chipset has some known problems, one of which can cause dropped frames for you I believe.

http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=2

2- XP will automatically reboot on a serious error. You can tell Windows to show you a BSOD (blue screen of death) instead.

Go to Start --> settings --> control panel --> system --> advanced (tab) --> startup and recovery --> settings --> uncheck "automatically restart"

If you get different BSODs every time then it's probably a hardware problem. If it's the same error code each time then it's most likely a software problem.

Example BSOD error code (the 3 most important lines):
---
***STOP: 0.000000D1 (0x00000000, 0xF73120AE, 0xC0000008, 0xC0000000)

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage
to your computer

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
---

3- Try running the following two programs to check for hardware problems. The first is used to stress test your computer.

Prime95
Prime95 is a distributed computing program that tries to find certain prime numbers. Its 'torture test' stresses your computer with mathematical calculations and checks the output against known results. This makes prime95 a good diagnostic for instability problems from your CPU and your RAM. Download it from:

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

Run the “torture test” through options --> torture test --> Ok
Prime95 will stop immediately once it detects an error, and continue indefinitely if it does not. I suggest running Prime95 overnight as you do not need to watch this program run. Prime95 will log errors in results.txt in the installation directory. The icon will also turn from red to yellow when it detects an error.

Motherboard Monitor (MBM)
This program monitors your computer's temperatures and voltages. You want to get readings when your system is being stressed, so run MBM with another program like any recent 3d game or prime95. Download it and install it off:

http://mbm.livewiredev.com/download.html

Interpreting readings:
Right click the MBM system tray icon and click on settings. Click on high/low. Mouse over the alarm bells to see the tolerances of the temperatures and voltages (5%). Are any of them past their tolerances? Ignore all the zero readings. If many of the readings are zero then MBM may be too old to be supported.

*To get Motherboard Monitor working, you may need to know what motherboard you have. The utility CPU-Z can help you determine what model your motherboard is:

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

**Abit should have a motherboard monitoring program that should be just as good.

This is almost certainly a form of a hardware problem. Basically
it should be impossible for Vegas to "crash" (which it probably
is NOT doing) and reboot the whole PC.

Glenn has some very good pointers, tips and suggestions!

I would either say:

1: virus / trojan
2: heat problem (you mentioned it will shut down at a certain thres hold => which the prime programd should nicely test)
3: your promise card
4: problems with your mainboard
5: memory chips are faulty

Do you get ANY message at all before it reboots?

Vegas Crashes
 

Thanx to all for your input!!!...I have followed the suggestions so kindly offered....I installed and ran Prime while monitoring with MBM....MBM reports pretty average numbers regarding temperatur...CPU is averaging 113F , which sounds about right for an Athlon. High is 134, low at 109...turn-off temp is set for 158F I believe...I have it set at 176 in my Bios. Core voltage varied between 1.54 and 1.58, with an average at 1.58. Unfortunately, My system failed the Prime Torture test 2 out of 3 executions with inaccurate reporting of expected results....does this sound like a Chipset problem??? My original MSI mainboard died last year, and this current board is a replacement given to me by MSI under warrenty....
BTW...I had already installed the latest 4in1 drivers when I installed this OS last week, and I have been unable to find a virus or Trojan using AVG and AdAware. Should I start shopping for a new MB?
Thanx to all!!!
Stephen
PS...
even tho my system failed the Prime test, it did not crash as a result of the testing.