Al Bergstein
Forum Replies Created
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I’ll see if I have time to get out the two comparisons, but my take on this, having used both a 7D and now a xf305 is that the 4:2:2 space of the xf305 is got a lot more latitude and ability to handle green screen. Guys in Hollywood are routinely transcoding 7D and 5D footage to 4:2:2 and even 4:4:4 if I remember right, using Neoscene (see Act of Valor), so getting it shot in 4:2:2 should help a lot. and it’s cut down on my use of Neoscene. I found I couldn’t tell a difference on the screen sizes I am shooting for. t think that the edge keying is probably where you’ll see the most artifacts. But I was able to do it with Vegas and with FCP. Probably depends on whether you are going to show a theatrical showing on a large screen. You probably should run some tests. If you live near a city, go rent the camera you don’t have and do some trials.
Al
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To be clear, I cannot say for positive that multi monitors on one card is an issue, but I have a lot of circumstantial evidence. I stopped using nVidea for a while. I’ve gone over to the Radeon 5670, for the time being. I backed off two monitors just for a fluke, as I read something that clicked that idea into my head. Most of the people that were not complaining (and some of them telling us it was us and not Vegas) were not running two monitors. So I tried it and it did cut down my crashes substantially. I still get them, but far less often, without changing anything else.
The last nvidea upgrade totally blue screened my box when I installed it. That was the last straw.
So I sprung for Premiere. It is a *vastly* different work flow, one that takes getting used to, and is no where as easy to use as Vegas. But. To be clear. It has not once crashed on me in two months of work on the same computer with the same video card.
I still am using vegas for *quick and dirty* jobs that I am being paid a low rate on. But continue to cut my teeth in multi camera with Pr. And yes, it runs on both my Mac and Windows platforms natively. Not that that is a make or break issue. The built in titling is nice. Very nice. Vegas needs to update their titling, maybe buy NewBlue and fix their issues. NB is buggy as heck.
I really hope Vegas can fix these issues. It has the fastest workflow I’ve worked on, which includes FCP, Pr and Vegas. Actually much faster. And when it works, it’s great!
Al
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Daniel, you really didn’t clarify what kind of recording you are going to do, but it seems like you wanted a boom pole mic, as that’s what the choices you described were about. Do you plan on booming all your work? I don’t think I’d spend that money on using those for shotguns. Would you?
For me, the “first mic” had to be wireless lavs, and a wireless mic plugin for a handheld for standup interview purposes, which I rarely use. Plug into a dynamic EV-50b for field interview hand held (and sometimes attached to the wireless adapter).
Oh, and along with a good shotgun for the camera itself (Audio Technica).. Good inexpensive and reliable. Records quality sound for something on a camera, as opposed to a pole.
While none of my mics are in the price range you are describing (and that’s wonderful you are considering that price range), I usually hire folks to do the audio when I have to record that quality of work. If you are considering being in business as a field audio guy rather than a shooter, that probably is worth the investment.
For example, my videos of the Brother’s Four artist Mark Pearson (https://www.youtube.com/user/MarkPearsonMusic?ob=0&feature=results_main)
were shot in a theater we rented, and I convinced him to bring in a studio sound engineer to record. Mark brought a pair of performance mics that he uses that are in the range you describe, and the sound engineer had a wide range of mics. I think that I could *never* have done the quality of sound that these mics in the hands of a good experienced sound engineer produced. We recorded onto a Tascam HDP2 for most of these, and the engineer said he *loved* the quality of the pre’s on it. I just sold it (maybe that was dumb) but have a Marantz PM661 coming this week, and will see whether we get the same quality. I think that the specs and quality of the 661, including the much sought after true ‘line in’ will be the go to recorder, since I’m not willing to spend almost $3k for SD quality (though I probably should have!). I feel that my next buy will be a used 4 channel mixer to feed down to the more portable 2 channel 661.Also, a *first or early buy* would be a field mixer, as virtually all cameras have too much hiss for my tastes. I try to run all my work through a field mixer, and split it to a field recorder, unless it’s being mic’ed directly to the recorder.
But for audio recording in the field, I think I would spend a little less until the jobs show up, as I doubt that the difference in mics will be that noticeable for video use. The mixer will do more to bring your work up to studio quality than tons of money on mics. Of course, this is my limited, advanced amateur thoughts only. I know the pros on this board would beg to differ (G).
Al
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maybe don’t update the drivers, but use what shipped with the card, or the next to last drivers. Sorry for your headaches, but I think once you get that card installed correctly, you will have far less crashes.
By the way, are you running dual monitors off of one card? Or do you have two cards installed. My guess is that the best way to handle dual monitors with Vegas is with two cards and not trying to run two on one card, as I was doing. It did reduce my crashes substantially when I went back to one card/one monitor. I’m waiting to upgrade my system to put in dual cards.
Al
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Shaun, while Vegas is known for it’s crashing, this sounds like something is amiss with your video card drivers. nVidia has new drivers out in the last month, be sure your card is updated with them. Beware of beta drivers though, until you have a stable system. And make sure you have chosen the proper version of Vegas (if you are running 64 bit W7 then you should have downloaded 64 bit Vegas). Also, what footage are you working with? It could affect Vegas’ ability. What OS are you using? Also, is your footage off on a fast eSata or USB3 drive and not on the main OS drive? All footage should be on something external to the core OS drive, which I assume you are aware of. And another possibility is that you may be using a drive that spins down to save energy. This feature should always be turned off for video editing, I’ve found, if it can. While we love saving energy, I believe it leads to crashes. This is only a hypothesis at this point.
I have found, for example, that with 4:2:2 footage from Canon, and mixing it with a GH2 HDSLR AVCHD, that I can do multi cam and usually experience only maybe a crash a day, often on exiting the program. I have cut back to one monitor because of how frequently Vegas was crashing, and yes, that did help lower my crashing.
I’ve been moving to a very well known competing NLE, and just as a matter of controversy, the exact same footage on the exact same machine *never* crashes on it. So yes, it’s a Vegas issue somewhere in the bowels of the interface between the graphics card drivers, and Vegas. I’ve thrown everything at it I can to crash it, and things that routinely crash Vegas do not even phase the competition. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t something in my footage, or workflow so I have spent time trying this out.
But you should *not* be experiencing crashes continually after only 1 minute of use. My experience for lowering crashes led me to only do multi cam *first* in a project, render it out and add it to a second time line where I would then add the graphics and head and tails, and I’ve even gone to a workflow where I create any graphics needed with New Blue, etc on a separate project timeline, render them and add them back in. This seems to lower the crashes to a workable amount. And all on one monitor. Try those ideas as well, as long as you get the latest drivers. But even there, it could be a problem, some have had great success with beta versions from nVidea, some, like me, found I actually blue screened the computer when I used them, and had to reinstall my graphics drivers from scratch and fall back to the last known good production release of them. I do not blue screen *ever* except with nVidia beta drivers on this machine.
The sad part of this is that Vegas is way easier to use than any competing NLE. Once they finally get this nonsense worked out they likely could be a real contender. I like the product’s features and it’s interface!
Al
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Aaron, obviously the lawyers need to be consulted. But the historical society charges a fee to use their photos and, as I understood it (and this was true in two different historical societies) once the photos are donated to them, regardless of who owns the rights, the photos are now the property of the historical society and they may charge for use. Why this is, I don’t know. And I have no idea of whether the photos matter as to when they were taken. They are the property of the society.
The costs were small. I have a document that states I had the rights of use of the images from the historical societies. But likely there is a lawyer somewhere that might argue that they didn’t have the rights to sell. Would love to hear clarity on this. But call up your historical society and see what they say. There were different fees for commercial use vs. non profit.
Al
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I used a historical society locally for my old photos from 100 years ago. It turns out that they have incredibly reasonable rates, and might be an even better source of photos. That way, you’ve at least signed a contract with a legitimate business that deals in this. I bet the Boston Historical society is a treasure trove of old photos.
But barring that, a lawyer that specializes in rights would be a must see.
Al
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How old is your unit? I have recently experienced similar battery drain on an older Zoom H4N which seems to be the end of the life for the unit, unless I can get to some service company that can fix it cheaper than 1/2 the price of new (which I doubt).
The fact that Lithium’s are lasting 2 hours while double AAs are not is odd though. Maybe the Lithium’s would last a lot longer if the unit worked “right”.
Al
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Since you just changed video cards, that’s my guess for you. You are using an older version of the software, and it might not have been tested for issues with the latest batch of video drivers. You might either have to get used to it, or see if you can put your old video card back in to see if it ‘fixes’ the problem. That would at least allow you to figure out the root cause. Of course, you’d need to uninstall the video driver before putting the old card in, I would reckon.
In software companies, there is often no testing of older versions of the package for newly upgraded drivers, other than the most basic testing, and there might not be any testing going on for 3. They often leave that to the graphics card driver companies. You might also want to bring this to the attention of your card vendor’s tech support. They might be able to fix it, if in fact that’s the issue.
Al
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not yet. No.
Al