[Don Bloom]

There is virtually NO difference between DV and DVCAM as far as quality. Not only have others tested it but I have run tests myself and found the only noticable difference is DVCAM runs thru tape faster than DV. I’ve done a number of TV spots on DV and have had it transfered over to either BETA SP or DVCPro depending on the stations needs. Instead of running DV to DVCAM why not just shoot DV and have it transferred over to BETASP. Any reputable dup house can do it and its not that exoensive -just build it into the cost.

Don

[Don Bloom]

ahhh, different question. Yes, after editing render to MPEG using the proper bitrate setting (per Edwards newletter Vol 1 # 7) with AC3 audio for DVDs

Don

[Don Bloom]

I second Jeremy. Capture your footage and edit in the AVI format that you’ve captured THEN render to MPEG. Mpeg is quite frankly, at least in my opinion, a lousy format to edit in. As for multicam work, again I agree, Excalibur is a great peice of software not only for multicam but for many other things you might need to do. You can however do a multicam edit without it but it just makes thing so much easier. It’s pretty much 1 button editing.

There are some very good tutorials on color correction by Edward posted in his newsletters. Click the link under his name (find a post by jetdv) and download and read them. they’re chock full of good info.

Don

[Don Bloom]

You are right! In Vegas you can set the parameters you want for rendering to MPEG. As for the settings, well, there’s no one setting that works for everything-it depends on what the project is—-single pass, 2 pass, bit rate, AC3 audio or PCM audio, make sure to use the right template to get started and then customise it to fit the needs.

There is no cookie cutter answer but you might want to look at Edwards newletters-especially VOL 1 number 7 to get you started with a bit rate chart just to get you started.
HTHs
Don

[Don Bloom]

perhaps its just my setup but when I look as just about anything in DVDA preview even at GOOD setting TEXT especially looks pretty bad. Looks fine on the finished DVD and looks great on up to a 55 inch TV (don’t have anything bigger so I can’t tell after that) but 1 key is to use something other than a fine line script text-that breaks up pretty bad-other than that I really haven’t had a major issue once I figured out that the final product came out fine even if it looked somewhat bad in the preview
Don

[Don Bloom]

Make sure to place the Generated Media-Text on ta track ABOVE the video track.

Don

[Don Bloom]

More often than not tapes recorded in LP mode will show some type of glitch when being played back in something other than the machine it was recorded on. At least thats my experience. What I’ve done in the past is actully capture it 2 times as it never gave the glitch in the exact same place so I could do a bit of slice and dice to get one good piece of video.

Don

[Don Bloom]

I believe that the things you wish to do can be done in Movie Studio in the same way as the full version of Vegas so here we go;
(a) I would like to take a single video clip and split it at any given location
Set the cursor where you want to cut the footage and press “S” goto the next place and do the same-highlight the footage to remove and delete-grab the other footage and move to new position OR use AUTO RIPPLE and it will automatically move forward on the timeline.

(b) I would like to have a video fx operate at the beginning of a video clip but then get rid of it sometime during the clip
Keyframes are your friend. Set the FX you want at the beginning of the clip and set the first keyframe to a zero or no effect setting by adjusting the setting and then set another keyframe where you want the effect to finish and set the effect to the amount you want.

(c) how do you change the speed of a clip during it. In other words, I start out with the clip running at full speed and then 2 seconds into a 20 second clip I want to change the speed to 1/2 speed and then at 10 seconds change it back to full speed
Use a velocity envelope and again use keyframes on the envelope to set you speed adjustment.

Again, I’m not all that familiar with movie studio as I don’t use it but I THINK these things are the same as the full version of Vegas and 2nd, just play a little with the program-right click-go into the menus-try TOOLS-whatever you want to try and keep in mind that it is a non-destructive program so anything you do can be undone. Control Z is a good friend of mine. Also if you ssave the work as you try things save under a different name each time, I use the name of the project and numbers; 1,2,3 etc.

HTHs,
Don

[Don Bloom]

To me the most obvious is critical focus which I, at least, have never been able to do with an onboard LCD.

Don B

[Don Bloom]

Well to address 2 issues here. FIRST to get the shake look, you can either use keyframing in PAN/CROP and move it around yourself or look around and find the VEGASQUAKE script which was free. I don’t recall where I found it a couple of years ago but it should do the trick.
As for the bombing and shaking and the camerapeople not moving around, having spent a “bit of time” in RVN I can tell you from personal experience that 1) after a while you got to be able to tell which were out going and which were incoming, it was the latter that “shook” you. 2nd, I doubt sriously that the camera was locked down, I NEVER saw that and I saw a few TV crews come thru but the camera operators were for the most part some of the balliest people I even met. Some were vets of Korea, some WWll, some just had spent a lot of time in RVN and knew when to run and cover and when they didn’t need to. More than a few neople on these crews were wounded and some were KIA-and all they had to shoot back with was a camera.
Don’t make the shake too pronounced because unless it was a 1000 pounder landing with in a kilometer they would have heard it but probably not felt it.

Don