[Al Bergstein]

The update to NE meant that I had not updated it from 1.0 with a number after it to the latest version. I tried to do that but the serial number was *required* to upgrade. I cannot find the email from Sony that gave me it, I’ll try again today or contact Sony. It is not listed in the Sony web site where all my other serial numbers are listed. Obviously I had one to set it up in the first place. But it’s frustrating that NB does not list the Serial number somewhere on a screen as all other software packages seem to.

If I get a chance I’ll work on it today. But I have a full day of editing and will work around it as I can to get things done. At least NB works when I put it on it’s own project.

You should help them understand that by putting artificial blocks in users ways, like being unable to even load the new version without the serial number present (many other packages give you a full working version with a time bomb in them), they are simply pushing me away, and making me work around their product to get things done. I also have Adobe Afteraffects on my Mac, and if I need to get something done today that can’t be done on New Blue, I’ll simply craft it on a competing product, render it out and move it to Windows and Vegas to get my work done. That doesn’t help them, and it surely doesn’t make me feel that they are doing great customer service, beyond of course your offer of help! My thanks to you for that.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

A good way to think about this is that you are buying tools for a toolbox. There is no ‘right’ answer, and there are people shooting weddings with either or both. Your ability to do depth of field on HDSLR’s is fabulous, and the reasons noted above are strengths of the camcorder world. Canon AF100 is a good bridging strategy to get both in one camera, but lens are extra. Which makes it a very pricey tool for weddings, unless you are doing a lot of them. I’m not sure I would want to do weddings, which are more ‘run and gun’ in nature with an AF100. Maybe someone on this thread that uses one can speak up.

You didn’t mention if you are working in a team, which is often common these days. One team I’ve heard of puts the wife of the team on a stedicam product with a HDSLR while the husband shoots with a second camera, which I believe is a camcorder style.

For between $2 and $3k you can find a bunch of great camcorders, including the xf100 and the newer Panasonic cameras, the 160. Those would be my addition to a HDSLR set of tools. Dual slots IMHO are *critical* in wedding shooting. The last thing you want to have happen is card failure. I’m not aware of any HDSLR’s that protect you from that, other than possibly the newest cameras from Canon which I don’t believe is out yet. Don’t know if the Nikon D4 actually does dual card recording simultaneously.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Ed, I had a few minutes today and find that there is an update for NE, but it is asking me for a license and I can’t find a record of one anywhere. It is not listed in the product anywhere, and I have no idea how I downloaded it when I bought the Sony upgrade that included it. Any idea how to track it down? NB’s web site doesn’t seem to include a way to find out about the order that generated it for me.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Well, Ed, that didn’t take long. I just went into my timeline, pulled up New Blue and did a title with an animation. I’ve pasted my crash dump info below. I hope that I’ve included enough information. I didn’t know if you wanted this posted here, or sent to your email, but I couldn’t find an email listing under your profile, so I assume this is ok. If not, feel free to delete the post and copy it off. Hope this helps! I’d prefer not to have to start a new project for every titling effect! If there is something in particular I need to change in my system, like if it’s *srongly recommended* to get an advanced CUDA card, rather than the ATI card, then I’ll do it. But to be clear, I was experiencing an inordinate amount of crashes with nVidea, and these new blue crashes are so far the only ones I’ve encountered in over a week of editing with the ATI card.

Also, my system is extremely stable, *other than this issue*. No blue screens, crashing of any other sort.

The key statement is at the bottom, “unamanaged exception”. This is what I always seem to get.

So the overview of my system is as follows. While I no longer am using nVidea (due to the amount of crashes that were seemingly video related issues), I’ve moved back to an ATI 1 GB card.

I am running two internal drives, both have lots of free space on them. Vegas is on C: drive along with the OS.

Project files are stored on F: also internal 1TB. Lots of free space.
Original video files are stored on X: which is a 2 TB drive, RAID 1.
This particular timeline is working with both Canon 7D MOV footage, and AVCHD footage shot on a HMC150.
7D Streams example:
Video: 00:00:22.923, 29.970 fps progressive, 1920x1080x12, AVC
Audio: 00:00:22.923, 48,000 Hz, Stereo, PCM
Streams
Video: 00:00:36.537, 29.970 fps progressive, 1920x1080x12, AVC
Audio: 00:00:36.537, 48,000 Hz, Stereo, Dolby AC-3

Project Properties: Custom (1920×1080, 29.970 fps)

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name AL-DELL-DESKTOP
System Manufacturer Dell Inc.
System Model Studio XPS 8100
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz, 2934 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Dell Inc. A05, 7/8/2010
SMBIOS Version 2.6
Windows Directory C:Windows
System Directory C:Windowssystem32
Boot Device DeviceHarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = “6.1.7601.17514”
User Name Al-DELL-DESKTOPAl
Time Zone Pacific Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 7.96 GB
Available Physical Memory 4.11 GB
Total Virtual Memory 15.9 GB
Available Virtual Memory 10.9 GB
Page File Space 7.96 GB
Page File C:pagefile.sys

Here’s the Perfmon report on the graphics card:

AdapterCompatibility ATI Technologies Inc.
AdapterDACType Internal DAC(400MHz)
AdapterRAM 1073741824
Availability 3
ConfigManagerErrorCode 0
CurrentBitsPerPixel 32
CurrentHorizontalResolution 1920
CurrentNumberOfColors 4294967296
CurrentNumberOfColumns 0
CurrentNumberOfRows 0
CurrentRefreshRate 60
CurrentScanMode 4
CurrentVerticalResolution 1080
Description ATI Radeon HD 5670
DitherType 0
DriverDate 20100517000000.000000-000
DriverVersion 8.740.0.0
InfFilename oem82.inf
InfSection ati2mtag_Evergreen
InstalledDisplayDrivers aticfx64.dll,aticfx64.dll,aticfx64.dll,aticfx32,aticfx32,aticfx32,atiumd64.dll,atidxx64.dll,atidxx64.dll,atiumdag,atidxx32,atidxx32,atiumdva,atiumd6a.cap,atitmm64.dll
MaxRefreshRate 75
MinRefreshRate 50
Monochrome 0
Name ATI Radeon HD 5670
VideoArchitecture 5
VideoMemoryType 2
VideoModeDescription 1920 x 1080 x 4294967296 colors
VideoProcessor ATI display adapter (0x68D8)

___________________________________________________________________
CRASH DUMP – Vegas 11.0 (Build 521 but it could be any of the last 11.0 builds. It’s happened since I upgraded).

File: C:UsersAlAppDataLocalSonyVegas Pro11.0gpu_video_x64.log
File: C:UsersAlAppDataLocalSonyVegas Pro11.0dx_video_grovel_x64.log
File: C:UsersAlAppDataLocalSonyVegas Pro11.0svfx_video_grovel_x64.log
File: C:UsersAlAppDataLocalSonyVegas Pro11.0dx_grovel_x64.log
File: C:UsersAlAppDataLocalSonyVegas Pro11.0vst_grovel.log
File: X:video raw footageCentrum_explorations3 Vegas Project Filecentrum explorations V3.veg

Problem Description
Application Name: Vegas Pro
Application Version: Version 11.0 (Build 521) 64-bit
Problem: Unmanaged Exception (0xc0000005)
Fault Module: C:Program FilesCommon FilesOFXPluginsNewBlueTitlerPro.ofx.bundleContentsWin64TitlerPro.ofx
Fault Address: 0x000000003466238B
Fault Offset: 0x000000000000238B

Fault Process Details
Process Path: C:Program FilesSonyVegas Pro 11.0vegas110.exe
Process Version: Version 11.0 (Build 521) 64-bit
Process Description: Vegas Pro
Process Image Date: 2012-01-17 (Tue Jan 17) 00:51:16

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Ed, I just got out of a client meeting. I’ll pull that info together for you later today. In fact, I’ll try and duplicate the crash(es) and send you the crash dump directly. I’ve forwarded them onto Sony, they should have them in their internal developer bug report db.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

They need to keep upgrading it. I upgraded on Sunday due to crashes that were happening on a particular timeline (a previous different timeline I had been editing on Saturday and Friday had no crashes at all).

I still think there is something horribly wrong with New Blue and Vegas. I am changing my workflow to make NewB work with Vegas. More on that on a different post.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Yep, on those big productions, in huge houses they do a great job of doing sound that is transparent. Hanging mics above the stage, I would assume, like an orchestra would? Since I haven’t seen one of those Broadway like shows in years, I would assume that they now have wireless as well, very well concealed. But with all the cell phone and other wifi interference, I would be pretty worried about using non wired, given my experience with trying to find decent channels on stages where I shoot musicians and that’s a long way from a city environment!

Where I live, for actors, the houses rarely have more than 100 in an audience, it’s all up to the lungs (G). That old “projection”.

Last great production I saw was in London and was the Royal Shakespeare Theater, if I remember right. Damn those guys and gals could project. I don’t remember there being any mic’ing, but I might have missed it.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

True enough Ty. Email/Blogs are so hard to be accurate. I meant to say that on stage is where they would be *least* likely to wear a mic, though of course, we know they do on occasion. So if they were relatively inexperienced actors, and have only acted on high school or college stages, or some local production houses, they may never have needed a mic. I took acting in high school, a million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and our teacher/director always forced us to speak to the back of the theater.

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Oh, and I agree, your talent should never balk at being mic’ed or they ought to go back to acting school. They will be mic’ed in all their work, except on stage, so they better get used to it. My talent brings their own mics, and also actors I’ve worked with often know how to set mics to get the best sound for their voice.

Here is a good starting point for showing you and your ‘talent’ what the possibilities are:
https://www.brightandloud.com/microphone-placement/
This doesn’t even touch on mounting on the chest, etc. Then there are flat table mics, etc.

If you need some advice on all this, get Jay Rose’s great book, “Producing Great Sound for Film and Video” Third edition. A must read if you don’t have a lot of experience in sound.

good luck

Al

[Al Bergstein]

Michael, all these are good ideas. Your gear is your investment in your future work. If you go cheap, like azden, you are likely to have problems when you least want it, and likely will have to invest again for better gear. Azden is fine consumer grade mics, nothing wrong with them, except they are consumer grade gear. You will get better sound with better mics, and using a mixer between the mic and the recorder, whether that recorder is in camera or not.

If you produce bad sound you won’t get more work. Your *best* choice is to save up to buy the best gear, and produce the best quality work with it. Then you will get more work. And of course, don’t discount getting out and networking for the work. But once you have networked, you have to produce.

I have borrowed high quality Edirols in the past, and bypassed the mixer, other than getting sound off mixer boards for some live performances. Even then, there is a lot to learn, as live board mixes are mixed for the room, not for recording on video.

I have a mix pre and a Zoom along with a Tascam HD-P2 for small jobs with limited mics. These tools get me about 50% of the way there, sometimes, even more with a real engineer in the sound booth. If I have to do it myself, and the need is for more mics, I have a musician friend with a 4 channel Edirol and that really gets some wonderful low noise high quality recordings, even with out a mix pre in the chain.

But, there is no excuse to not save up and buy one tool to get this job done, and that would be the Sound Devices mixer/recorder. You will not outgrow it, and you will the other tools. It’s expensive, but it sounds like you are about at the point where it will be worth it. Heck , if you don’t want it, I’ll sell you my Tascam HD-P2 so I can go buy it! On the good side, my sound engineer was blown away by the field sound quality of the Tascam. He said it matched his high priced dedicated studio system. He was very impressed with the electronics and how low the noise floor was on them. So there you have it.

Al