[Jim Greene]

Yea, I know when I give a Sony ACV file to a Mac person and they try to bring it into iTunes, it takes a long time to convert it. And the QT render from Vegas isn’t great, especially audio. Not fun, this PC-Mac issue. I see so many other posts about this here. OK, I’ll try the Avid codec. Thanks!

-Jim.

[Jim Greene]

I just played the Sony AVC .mp4 using VLC and Windows Media Player, both look great. When playing with the QT player on my PC and it stutters, the image looks grainier, and the audio is still off by a beat. Will a Mac play it correctly? I might try QT Pro, but I don’t know the best format it will ingest from Vegas, any idea?

-Jim.

[Jim Greene]

Thanks guys. I dug a little deeper and found the setting. Went to Windows Volume Control, then “Options”, “Properties”, then in the “Adjust volume for” section I selected “Recording”. In there is a “What You Hear” that needed to be checked. Works great now, thanks!

-Jim.

[Jim Greene]

I don’t use the “save as” in Vegas for saving multiple versions of a project. I keep a Windows Explorer open at that saved folder and copy/paste the last currently saved veg file. I can then rename it if I want to give it a specific name, or just keep it as an archived snapshot with the name Windows gives it.

-Jim.

[Jim Greene]

Yes, I like the feature of editing outside of Vegas and having it pick up those changes, I do that often. But I simply set the preference temporarily then set it back to keep files open so I can switch between projects faster.

As for the Windows handles, I was trying to logically determine the cause as it made no sense. Then my 20 years of computer software development kicked in and I thought of the answer. It’s still strange behavior, and really a small bug, because if I shut down both projects then open them again, project 2 doesn’t need to rebuild the peaks — it’s just an anomaly when the project that first built it doesn’t allow the 2nd to see the peak file until the first project closes the file handle of the event. And the peak file isn’t locked during this period because project 2 will overwrite it. Just the event file is locked. Weird.

-Jim.

[Jim Greene]

I haven’t heard of people with audio drift problems with the Zoom H4, but I have an old H2 that drifts terribly. I use it for recording live musicians at ceremonies and for the length of a single song or two its fine, but not much after. It does a great job of recording live audio but not good at keeping sync with my cameras. I now use Edirol R-09, Tascam DR-07 and Zoom H1, which all keep sync for my needs.

-Jim.

[Jim Greene]

Thanks, I never use the the explorer in Vegas, I always use Windows Explorer to drag files. But I just tried it and it didn’t make any difference.

However, I have found the reason it happens. I normally use the preference to *not* “close media files when not the active application”, that is, this option is unchecked in preferences. So it seems that any other Vegas instance can not see the .sfk file if the associated media file has an open Windows handle. That’s too bad, as the preference to keep file handles allows me to switch back and forth between projects without much reloading delay. I always edit with two projects open, especially to help synchronize portions using PluralEyes, or to use as an event trimmer since the one in Vegas is always Full Resolution and basically useless for h.264 files.

-Jim.

[Jim Greene]

Maybe a better way to mark the clips (events) is to put the region of that event into the Trimmer and then set start and end markers. These markers will then show up on the event in the timeline and will move when the event is moved. They just aren’t as easily seen as timeline markers or regions as they are embedded in the event itself.

-Jim.

[Jim Greene]

You can probably import a couple of the 7D files into version 6, but multiple files will crash or hang Vegas up to at least version 8. No doubt, you should upgrade, there are SO many more improvements now over version 6.

I have ver 10 and the files do work well in the editor, but don’t expect miracles, it’s still a tough codec to work with. Your timeline preview will be a little sluggish and the playback in the trimmer is basically useless because it always wants to play at Best quality. But I no longer need to convert everything in Cineform. My projects contain 4 cameras with about 100GB of data and several audio tracks, so I’m happier…just wish version 10 was as stable as version 8.

-Jim.

[Jim Greene]

I’ve been using Vegas since version 4. In fact I first used “Video Explosion” which was really Sonic Foundry’s Video Factory. Anyway, I have loved (still love) Vegas. Every new version was so much greater than the previous, and the stability also improved. I was extremely happy with Pro 8. Pro 8 almost never crashed. When Pro 9 came out, I intentionally skipped it as I didn’t see any benefit over Pro 8.

Then when Pro 10 supported the Canon 5D MOV files, I bought the upgrade immediately, as I no longer wanted intermediate files. For the most part, it works OK with these files. A bit sluggish, but still prever that over intermediate files. However, the stability of Pro 10 is so much worse. It crashes aften with some projects. Oddly enough, some audio-only projects will crash or hang. And these are just .wav or .mp3 files. I’ve also had issues with empty audio tracks when nesting certain projects.

So maybe it’s my machines because of bad driver interactions, or from using old plugins, not sure. It’s just my perception that Vegas Pro isn’t as stable as it used to be. If I didn’t have a 32-bit PC I would now be using Premiere CS5 (which only supports 64-bit).

-Jim.