[Al Bergstein]

Philip, I’m running Vegas 9.0e on an HP with i-5 and a Samsung i5 laptop. Both work fine. Make sure that you have an outboard drive, as the laptop seems to have difficulties with playback on the internal system but plays fine after rendered out and played on anything else (like a standard WMP or Quicktime player file played on a DVD or external drive). I’ve had a bit of aggravation with playback on the desktop machine even with the external drive, as Vegas seems to be having some problems with that using either MOV or transcoded AVI, but I assume that Sony is working on that issue,as I’m not the only one complaining about it. I work around it for now, but it appears that Vegas might need to start making use of video graphics cards better, as they have always claimed to not need high end video cards to playback. I must say that the same footage, moved to Final Cut Pro on a high end Mac Pro, plays flawlessly on the monitor, no jumpiness. With both machines having tons of Video Ram, it’s not the footage!

On my Windows boxes, I’ve gone to the eSata doc, running off an eSata internal card add on for the desktop and the newer Samsung has an eSata port, but I’ve experienced a few problems with it going to sleep on me.

As to the question of 5400 RPM drives on the Mac, if they are firewire as opposed to USB, you might have the snowballs chance. The Canon T2i (550d) footage does seem to work fine with my older slower drives on my Mac (I have both newer faster drives and some older slower ones, all not the drive that holds the OS, remember). My Mac has 12 GBs of RAM by the way, so that may be also be an issue if you don’t have a lot of RAM. My older MBPro is pretty much useless except for Pro-Res Proxy, which is a pain. I’m in the midst of transitioning to Vegas for laptop field use. Much easier to use than FCP in the field!

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

On the other Vegas board where I also posted this, the answer appeared to be “ignore this”. So I will for now. Appears to be a Youtube problem, and not something inherently wrong with the Vegas render. Case closed, but would like to know if anyone finds out the ‘reason’ this error is thrown on Youtube.

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

Not sure whether you have spent a lot of time with this camera and other NLE’s, but DV on these ‘lower end’ cameras (although the camera is a 3 CCD camera it is a higher end consumer camera), the quality is never going to look as good on the final render as it does on the small LCD on the camera, nor on perhaps the smaller screen size you use with WMP. (at least that’s been my experience). And with HD footage all around you to compare to, it’s easy to be disappointed. You might try rendering out to BluRay in as uncompressed as possible, as I’ve seen DV become better looking on B.R. But not dramatically. Ultimately, the footage is probably going to look best displayed small on a monitor, like YouTube, rather than large. It likely won’t hold up as you ramp it up in size. With all the inexpensive HD cameras around, it may be that you want to consider moving to a better camera. Even your smallest HD cams like the Kodak is going to outperform that camera, I figure. I’ve seen footage from helmet cams for $200 USD that outperform my old SD Sony. Best of luck! Hope you find the right setting for your use. It always is a pain to have to upgrade cameras. And with 3D around the corner!

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

Carlton, I am running Vegas 9.0e on Windows 7 on two different machines, and have had less problems than any other setup, better than XP or Vista. Not to say that your particular situation isn’t painful, but it can be better, and probably will be, when you sort out the issues with your particular driver situation. Anyway, hang in there, and don’t worry about the license situation, if you think you are doing the right thing, you probably are.

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

I believe that Carlton is talking about the network rendering aspect, and as I read the agreement, that’s fine. It’s just that you can’t have two people running Vegas legally on two machines (say at a home office or office) without licensing it on those two machines and paying Sony for two licenses. But if you are simply using a second machine for network rendering, then that would not necessitate *purchasing* a second copy of the software. Is that accurate Mike?

For example, I have a desktop machines and a laptop. I use one *legal* copy of Vegas on both, both registered, but I don’t use them simultaneously. However, I could use them both for network rendering on long projects without buying a second license.

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

Thanks Ty, that’s sort of what I thought.I’ve spent a great deal of time manually setting each interview level. Didn’t know if I’d buy better sound (not that it’s that bad) with compression.

I agree with your assessment of FCP’s sound controls. I also have Protools, which I have never particularly liked, but sometimes use (which is probably why I don’t like it). I’ve recently been trialing Sony’s Sound Forge, which I’m checking out because frankly, I just don’t love the FCP interface, and find that Vegas does just about everything I need for my workflow easier and faster.

Not sure if you have experience with Sound Forge, but if you do, would love to know your thoughts on it’s capabilities. Seems to be plenty powerful. All of these, for daily use, seem to need dedicated media controller hardware devices (i.e. Euphonixs?)for best ease of use though. Would you agree?

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

The question of what guitar to buy means you have to clearly understand what music you are playing. Classical is a totally different bag than bluegrass or swing, and there is no one right answer. It’s been my impression that you will never get *real* acoustic sound once you put on a pickup. But what you do get might be just fine (listen to Willie Nelson, for example). It’s just that the style you play may work just fine with a pickup.

I was recorded for our band in the leading acoustic recording studio in the Pacific NW, https://www.davidlangestudios.com/

David is considered the premier recording studio engineer up here for acoustic recording. He mic’ed me with dual Sennheiser 914’s coming at the sound hole from two directions. The sound, coupled with my very expensive custom mandolin, made my talent the only limiting factor. I would say that it wouldn’t / shouldn’t matter whether the mics are in the video, if the quality of the sound is the goal. Especially given that a decent classical guitar (or any really high end guitar) will likely be made of something like Rosewood, Mahogany or Koa, and it seems to me that you want to capture that *tone* coming out of the hole as quickly as possible. Post processing is likely to make the sound better. On the other hand, I’ve captured excellent audio with a Zoom on a stage stand about 3 feet away. Again, the instrument in the hands of a master in the right hall/room will allow you a bit of latitude. Worth investigating, FWIW…best of luck!

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

You are right. There is no timecode in for any of my projects. While at this point it has not been an issue, I would *love* to see this fixed as I would hate to have it be an issue under deadline. In fact, with this knowledge, I would be likely to rent a competing camera if I needed to be editing with timecode sync. I’m sure Panny doesn’t want that kind of thing to be happening. It might end up being an Sony EX-3!

I prefer editing with Vegas over FCP, so this might be an issue there as well. I use either depending on the job. So it’s important to me to have no bugs of significance or without a known workaround on either platform.

I love my 150, and consider it a great investment. Please do your best to move this up the priority list with the software dev teams there.

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

these choices are always hard. Pay me now, pay me later. Depending on the kind of shooting he’s doing, it might do, and I’ve not had it long enough to know if my $65 will be money out the window in two months. I always say to over buy everything within reason, and if I were him, I’d save up for the *right* mic. A good shotgun for a small camera like this is great, but personally I don’t like to use shotguns at all. I’d rather see him get a decent lav mic. But it’s nice to have something that ‘integrates’ well for run and gun, and these DSLR’s are not ergonomically designed for that! So the Azden is the *best of the worst* for such a camera. Next up is the fabulous Rode, but that is a ugly looking thing to be walking around with all day, and I worry that it’s even more prone to being knocked off, etc, on a long day.

I treat my gear rough, and expect it to take punishment. I do my best to baby it, but I dictate where I shoot, not the other way around.

So without knowing what he shoots it’s hard to be exactly prescriptive! If he shoots indoors and in a setup scenario, then the Rode is worth saving for. If he’s going to run and gun, then he probably should buy a real Camcorder! (G). I expect the Azden won’t last at that price.

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

Sorry, it’s obvious that the ‘streams’ is the length of the clip. So I don’t think I understand what I’m looking for. Is the problem you describe only showing up if I set the timecode when shooting to something other than zero’ing out (resetting the timecode with each clip?). Once I clearly understand how to look for this, I’ll try it with a bunch of older clips (I bought the HMC 150 in December) and see if I can see any change over time, i.e. are earlier clips unaffected by the issue, and later ones are).

Hope this helps.

Alf