[Jean-luc Oudin]

You can try the Color Corrector plugin. Apart from the color wheels (which you may or may not need) there are four other controls at the bottom for Saturation,Gamma, Gain and Offset. Try each control individually to get a feel of what you can do with them. You’ll have to spend some time trying differents combinations of those settings until you find something close to what you want, just don’t expect miracles.
You can also try this : Duplicate your video track and then change the compositing mode of the top track to something like Multiply or Hard Light, I really couldn’t tell you which one will work if any. The end result of Compositing modes is somewhat of a guessing game. Little side note, if you actually find one that works but you find it’s too much, try lowering the Opacity of the top track , it should tone down the effect.

[Jean-luc Oudin]

If you’re up to doing one more test, try this:

Render your 20 seconds test clip using these settings in Vegas

( you can include the audio stream if you want, but render as separate elementary streams if you do).

Once your render is done, play the file ( .M2V) to make sure it is actually up to par. It would a waste of time to put it in DVDA if it doesn’t look good to begin with. I usually use VLC to do that.
If that’s to your satisfaction, than start a DVDA project the same way you have so far using the preset NTSC Widescreen 720*480. Once the file is loaded, hit the preview icon and check if it looks any better, also make sure the preview quality is set to HIGH and not LOW or MEDIUM (the setting is in the upper right corner of the preview screen). If it looks good, than you should be set. If it doesn’t, there’s one more thing thing to do. Click on the MAKE DVD icon, than click PREPARE. Select a folder (or create one) that you can easily access, and than just follow the instructions in the following pages. Once the DVD is prepared, navigate to the folder, open the VIDEO_TS folder and play the VTS_01_1.VOB file (that should be your test clip), again I use VLC for that, and see if you like it (or not).
I know it is a bit of a long process, sorry about that, but at least if it doesn’t fix your problem it should narrow down where the problem happens.

[Jean-luc Oudin]

“I just split it and apply the relevant FX to it. However, I then want to the video to continue playing and smoothly fade from B&W to colour”, since you’ve already done that, you might just want to do a crossfade between the to video events. The technique is explained on page 41 of the manual. they explain it for audio events, but it also works for video events. Keep two things in mind, I am not sure if the demo version will allow to do it (although I don’t see why not), and it might slow down the preview during the crossfade.

[Jean-luc Oudin]

You might also want to check if your tracks aren’t locked. Just right-click on the video, go down to “switches”, and make sure that the “lock” option is not checked. You can do the same for the audio track.
As far as your icons are concerned, you should be able to see them again by going in the menu under View and checked on “Event Buttons”, or using the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+C.

[Jean-luc Oudin]

“how do I enlarge all the buttons”
There’s a least a couple of ways to do that :
1- With the SELECTION TOOL ( Ctrl+D ), “lasso” your buttons, go to the properties panel, transformation, and change the X-SIZE and Y-SIZE (use the up-down arrows, the slider or simply type the values ).
2- With the SIZING TOOL, “lasso” your buttons and resize as desired.

“Is there a way to position them all the same on each page?”
Taking page 1 as a reference, select all your buttons and go MENU EDIT-> COPY (Ctrl+C), go to page 2, select all your buttons and go MENU EDIT-> PASTE ATTRIBUTES-> SIZE AND POSTION. Do the same for pages 3 and 4.

“is there a way to change a preference or setting to make the arrow keys move elements in smaller increments?”
Use Ctrl+arrow keys.I am not aware of any settings or preferences that would allow you to change the increments. Maybe someone else knows.

“when you have a image in the background of a menu or button what format does it need to be saved in (I use photoshop) so you can darken, lighten, etc. the image?”
Any format that can be imported, should allow you to do it. I have tried with a jpg, tif, tga, bmp, png, gif, psd and even multi-layered psd with transparency and layer effects (stroke, satin, bevel, etc…), they all allowed me to use the adjustments.
Also, if you are using Photoshop, may I recommend looking at the help file ( F1 ) under the section “Creating Custom Menus and Masks”-> “Creating Custom Menus and Buttons Using Layered PSD Graphics”. It might make your menu creation a little simpler.

“& type the same amount on each page?”
I didn’t answer that part of your question, because I didn’t understand what you were asking. Could you please elaborate.

JL.

[Jean-luc Oudin]

With a purchased CD in WMP, it wouldn’t surprise me if you even saw the album title, artist name and much more if your computer is connected to the internet and WMP is set to retrieve and display media information ( I think it is set to do that by default on install ).

You could try a simple test. Disconnect your computer from the internet and other networks it might be connected to, and put a purchased CD that you never used in your computer before and see what happens. Please let me know what happens, I try it with 7 different CDs last night, and all I ever saw was ” unknown album track 1, track 2, track 3, etc… (you get the picture)

As for I-tunes, since I don’t use it, I really couldn’t tell you what goes on, seems like I have a little bit more research to do. If I find anything to explain it, I’ll keep you posted on this thread.

[Jean-luc Oudin]

I took a little bit of time researching this, and it would seem that the short answer to your question is: you can’t.

Before you run off to buy another app to do audio cd, you have to understand that the problem is not Vegas. The problem is the audio cd itself. As far as I could gather, the data structure of an audio cd, what is actually recorded, does not include track names, or album name, artist, genre, etc… or any information of that kind. CD-DA comply to the standard as discribed in the RED BOOK, as such, you me and the rest of the world are stuck with it.
It is not my intention to explain the data structure of a CD-DA or explain the RED BOOK, there are web sites that are doing that far better than I possibly could. Here’s a sample of some of those sites:

https://www.chipchapin.com/CDMedia/cdda1.php3

https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci514667,00.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc

https://library.thinkquest.org/C0112823/greatbooks_cd.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB

If you need more info, try a google search for ” AUDIO CD DATA STRUCTURE “, ” RED BOOK ” and ” CDDB “.

Hope that was enough to answer yours and the ” poor fellow’s ” question.

[Jean-luc Oudin]

You might want to take a look at this web page:

https://www.dolby.com/resources/tech_library/index.cfm

in the drop down list look under Cinema or Encoding/Decoding,
there are a few PDF you can look at, or you can go to this site:

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56020

( a little less to read but well done )

[Jean-luc Oudin]

Here’s something you can try.
First, since you have no copyright issues, copy the VIDEO_TS
folder from the DVD to your hard drive ( it will speed up
the process ).
Go to the following site and get VirtualDub-mpg ( while you’re
there, you might also want to get the AC3-ACM codec ). BTW, they’re both free.

https://home.comcast.net/~fcchandler/stable/index.html

VirtualDub doesn’t need to be install. Just unzip the folder, I usually put it in the program files folder and create a shortcut for “virtualdub.exe” on my desktop.
In Virtualdub, go File-Open video file, navigate to the VIDEO_TS folder and and open any one of the VOB files. Once the file is loaded go Menu Video-Compression ( or Ctrl+P ), select a compressor and then go Menu File – Save as AVI. Do the same for all the VOBs.

You should be able to import the avi files into Vegas and render them in any format you want.
Hope this helps.

[Jean-luc Oudin]

I don’t think there is an actual way to turn text into a button,
at least, i couldn’t find one. But here’s what you could do :

_ Select your text – then hit F2 – Ctrl+C – F2
_ Then go Menu – Insert – Empty Button
_ While that new button is selected go F2 – Ctrl+V – F2
_ Right-click on the button, choose Button Style – Text Only
_ Delete the original text