Dale Mcclelland
Forum Replies Created
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I, for one, understood what you meant, but your clarification does make it more clear. By ignoring Mercalli’s invitation to install KLite, you were wiser than me.
By the way, the first time I got the message about having an out-of-date KLite, I clicked “Ignore” and didn’t install it, but then SAL couldn’t open .mts AVCHD files from my Sony camcorder. It said a codec was missing. (Which is odd because the plug-in handles the files fine.) That’s when I went back and installed KLite.
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>>1) what do you users do about KLite as demanded by Mercalli? Does the Prodad website KLite install damage Vegas at all?<< I can speak to question 1 that asks whether KLite damages Vegas. I am using Vegas Pro, but I suspect the same answer applies to Vegas Movie Studio. Based on my experience yesterday (detailed below), KLite will break Vegas. I have been using the Mercalli 2 plug-in for Vegas Pro for a couple years now, but never installed the SAL. Yesterday I decided to try the SAL. I installed it and the first time I ran it, I and got the same message you got about having an out-of-date version of kLite (I also had never knowingly installed KLite even though the message claimed I had an old version.) I foolishly ignored the common advice to never install codec packs. I figured since many Vegas users use Mercalli SAL, it must be OK in this instance. Installing KLite made SAL work, but broke Vegas Pro. It would not even launch. I had to uninstall KLite, then uninstall Vegas Pro and re-install it. I did some research about this on this forum and on the Sony Creative Software Vegas forum and found discussion about this very issue. One recommendation was to just install Matoska Splitter and ffdshow. I downloaded and ran the ffdshow installer but it has some installation options you have to choose and I wasn't sure which options to select, so I canceled the installation. Hopefully someone can tell you (and me) how to get SAL working without breaking Vegas. In the meantime, I would advise against installing KLite.
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The OP didn’t indicate whether the voice-over track is one continuous event or a series of discrete events, but I think it is relevant. Based on one review of Voice Assistant on their website, and the tutorial provided by VAAST, it seems to work like Excalibur’s and Vegasaur’s ducking (both of which I own and have tried for ducking). As far as I can tell, all these tools do ducking based on the presence of a series of discrete events in the voice-over track, and they expect gaps in the VO track where you want the music to go back to normal volume.
If the VO track consists of one continuous event, with the narrator pausing as needed, they don’t work like you would expect a ducking tool to work in a DAW. You have to split the VO track into discrete events containing the spoken parts, and discrete events containing the silent pauses, then delete the silent events to leave gaps. Or you could record the VO track by starting and stopping the recording as required. Either approach is somewhat tedious. (Although less so than creating a ducking volume envelope manually. To that extent, these are useful tools.)
Since all these tools have this limitation, I’m guessing that it must be because of a limitation in Vegas that doesn’t allow them to do the ducking based on volume changes within a VO event. If that is the case, I suspect that VST ducking plug-ins will not work in Vegas either.
Hopefully I am wrong about this and there really is a way to do auto- ducking with one continuous VO event. I just haven’t found a way. Comments?
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Thanks, Steve. I agree that Continuum Complete is a good value, and is probably cost-effective for people who derive income from video editing. But it’s just a hobby for me and I don’t think I want to spend $595 for it.
I’m not sure how many of the tools in the package I would find useful for the video editing that I do (my own vacations and family events). I do think I would find use for 3D Objects, based on the limited testing of the trial version that I have done so far. It would not be worth the $399 full price to me, but for $99 I can justify it.
If Continuum Complete went on sale for a substantial discount, I would consider it. I’m just not sure whether it ever goes on sale, and how deep the discount is.
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I think the Sony stabilzer is based on Mercalli, which is what I use. The process of stabilizing requires zooming in if you don’t want any borders, i.e., if you want the video to continue to fill the screen. It has to move the video around to offset unintentional camera movement, and it zooms in to avoid borders.
I don’t know whether there is a border option available in the Sony stabilizer, but in Mercalli you can choose to have it make a border. In that case I think it doesn’t have to zoom (never tried it, so I don’t know for sure), but you end up with borders around the video — it doesn’t fill the screen.
As far as the graininess, it may just be a result of zooming in, thus reducing resolution. If find that if my 1920×1080 HD camcorder video is quite shaky, it starts looking more like DVD quality if the stabilizer had to zoom in a lot to steady it.
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Thanks, John. I kind of figured that the nature of that particular plug-in would be a limiting factor in what Production Assistant can do with it. What I’d like to see is for Mercalli itself to have a batch processing option. I’ll send a feature request to proDAD.
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The registry key was missing so I added it. The Production Assistant installer now can find Vegas Pro.
Thanks for checking on this and for providing the specific information that fixed the problem.
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Hi, John and thanks for responding. I originally downloaded the trial a couple days ago. I just downloaded it again and encountered the same problem with the fresh download. This is the error message:
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Forgive me if I misunderstood your question, but based on the screen shots you posted, it looks like you are expecting the preview for the FX to appear within the FX window. The preview of the impact of the FX appears in the regular preview window that you see when playing the timeline. (The pan/crop window does show an image along with the pan/crop controls, as you illustrated, but the FX window does not.)
The FX window may be covering up the preview. Did you try moving the FX window to another part of the screen (or dock it, or make the FX window smaller) to see if the preview window is hidden under the FX interface window?
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Couldn’t edit my original reply so am posting a separate rely.
I re-read your question and see that it looks like the desire is to view the video while on the cruise. In that case, unless you have a laptop with you that can run the conversion software, my suggested solution won’t work. You’d have to wait till you got home to follow the process I suggested.
Sorry, I should have read your question more carefully the first time.
