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

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

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)

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 (http://www.jetdv.com/tts) to see a similar effect using the cookie cutter.

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.

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?

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : How does that look? -->>>

This looks excellent. Thank you. I think I'll have to play with the resolution sizes a bit, because there are small thin black lines on the sides when I followed your exact measurements -- but this was exactly what I was looking for.

Pretty cool effect. Looks great to me. What effects did you use to create this?

For my WMVs, I just set the pixel sizes in the Custom tab of the WMV 9 template. Save the modified template after you make changes so you can use it again. For 1/2 Widescreen, I set 436X240. For full widescreen, set 872X480. I haven't tried this with MOVs but it should work pretty much the same way.

Certainly, just render the video to HuffYUV and import into VirtualDub and let loose xvid / divx on it. Obviously, all these codecs need to be installed first. I usually render and compress the audio track separately.

I assume you merely mean MPEG-4 video, not the MP4 container.

<<<-- Originally posted by David Jasany : Pretty cool effect. Looks great to me. What effects did you use to create this? -->>>

In order I used:
Cookie Cutter (Oval Side Cut away all but section)
Brightness and Contrast
Color Corrector
Glow
Light Rays

I mainly just fiddled with the Brightness and Light Rays settings to get what I wanted. I also used the feather setting in the cookie cutter without a border to try and give the cutout that seamless look.

-Kevin

Can anyone here tell me how quickly a video clip with some of the Magic Bullet looks renders on a 3ghz P4 800fsb HT? What kind of performance is there on previews etc? For reference I'm using an old 1.33ghz Athlon!

As some of you may have read from other threads I am still deciding on final components for my new editing system build. I just want to know what I can realistically expect from such a CPU.

I haven't tested it yet, but I've always heard about MB in general
that it is REALLY SLOW. But it delivers great results. To me
rendering time is NOT important since I'll let it do overnight for
the final render or longer if it has to.

I doubt you will find the MB in Vegas speedy... Such things take time!

Thanks.

It's not so much actual render time that I am worried about exclusively, but what it is like to edit with. At the moment with a 1.33ghz machine it is pretty painful just to scroll along the timeline to make sure shots that use such picture adjustments retain clarity.

With the cpu that i mentioned could I expect anywhere near RT performance in the preview window at even a reduced size?

Simon, I'm running Vegas 5 on a 3.0ghz 800mhz FSB, w/ 1032mgs of PC3200 ram and 320 gigs of Serial ATA hard-disc space. Even with all this Magic Bullet is sssslllllowwwww. Sorry to disappoint you. I can say, however, that typical performance is excellent- I can run footage with a single Color Corrector filter run on its in "Best-FULL" mode at full frame rate (w/o prerendering).

There was another user (not sure if it was from DVinfo or the Sony boards) that was recreating all the Magic Bullet effects using the built in video filters in Vegas 5. You can then save them as an effects set and apply them whenever you please...with MUCH better performance. He even posted his results comparing HIS renditions of MB effects created in Vegas- and I'd be darned if I could tell the difference between the two!

I was wondering if I took my native 4:3 footage and added the 16:9 Pan/Crop preset to it how would I go about rendering out a 16:9 MPG1 or WMV. Not a 4:3 clip with black bars but a clip that actually has the dimensions of 16:9. I'm not sure that the MPG1 template has any presets for 16:9, I believe only the MPG2 template does.

I asked a similar question in this thread: 16:9 and Vegas (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28483). Both replies given work well.

You may also want to look at the tools available at http://www.zenote.com. These tools are MUCH faster and can be used to simulate the same looks found in Magic Bullet.

Thanks for the advice guys.

Yeah, I've often recreated similar effects to MB for my own projects in Vegas and used some of the alternatives (before Vegas I used to use Film FX in AE). None of them offer the subtleties the MB (at least the full version) have.

Such a shame that Digital FIlm Tools don't want to make their plugin for Vegas. The email I had back off them when I enquired was, to say the least, not much in favour of the Vegas system!

It's not essential that I use the Magic Bullet looks. It's just nice to have some of the presets there without having to try and recreate them.

Here are a few shots from a community video I did recently with my own combinations of filters (ie no MB done in Vegas 4)

http://www.freewebs.com/fallenangelstest/snap1.jpg
http://www.freewebs.com/fallenangelstest/snap2.jpg
http://www.freewebs.com/fallenangelstest/snap3.jpg

Is Vegas slow on your 1.3 *with* MB applied or without? I had
it running fast enough without on a 433 mhz celeron and a 900
mhz pentium 2. Again I don't know about MB.

Do you have Vegas or not? Otherwise you might try out the demo
on this 3 GHz machine? Or are you just asking what you can
expect when this machine arrives?

Sorry I can't be of any more help.

You can do this easily from within Vegas if you have DiVX (MPEG4)
installed for example:

- Save as type: Video for Windows (*.avi)
- click Custom
- Video tab
- Video format = DiVX / XviD etc.
- click Configure

Hi Rob. Just want to know what to realistically expect from a 3ghz machine.

On my 1.33ghz Ahtlon the Vegas interface itself is fine. But apply even a simple filter and previews can become a pain. I do a lot of community funded videos which involve a lot of very fast shooting with kids in schools and half term workshops in mostly unprepared locations with no lighting setups etc. Because of the wide variety of situations I find myself shooting in with varying lighting conditions I often find myself doing a lot of colour correction due to mixed lighting sources, or just generally having no decent light to begin with.

It's pretty much a case of people expecting miracles from nothing! So my 1.33 is pretty stretched a lot of the time. That coupled with often having many jobs to do, I'm sure you can understand that I want to vastly reduce the rendering times and make running a second version of Vegas at the same time feasible.

Forgot to say in answer to your question that yes, I had Vegas 4 and have recently upgraded to Vegas 5 and DVDA 2. I also realise that some might think that the effects I want to do with regard to community videos is overkill. But I prefer to give all my videos a decent look rather than making them look flat and 'standard'.

Further I will also be working on my second DV feature in the coming months.

I don't have DivX or any other codecs installed, where do I get it from and how do I install it?

Thanks

Vegas rules.

http://www.doom9.org/software.htm#codecs

xvid is a good MPEG-4 codec if your source is clean, but it degrades with noise and shake.

Get DiVX here (http://www.divx.com/divx/)

I would not go with XviD since it is less distributed than DiVX.