[John Magee]

Ray,
Widescreen is great. A 22″ widescreen is roughly the same height as a 19″ standard.

The aspect ratio is not an issue as letterbox will occur when it needs to.

For a two monitor set-up, usually there will two outputs on your video card – one is DVI and one is RGB/analog/VGA. (check your video card). So, with the right cables you’ll plug one into each of those.

Many people love the 24″ but I honestly felt it was too big for me. My eyes were searching too far and wide. What I did was get a 22″ (widescreen)LCD and set it next to my older 19″ (4:3) LCD. It just so happens that they are both the same height and so I get a nice flow from one to the other.
I think a two monitor set-up is a good idea. Being able to dedicate your second monitor to Scopes or Full screen Preview, or Pro-Titler, or anything you want is great. Some even stretch the timeline across the two.

People seem to like the Dell stuff, I’m used to Samsung, I didn’t like the Westinghouse 24″ some were recommending. I got a Samsung 226BW. It’s not perfect, but there’s always soemthing not perfect in these sub-$1000 screens. I’m happy with it, as well as my 19″ Samsung 930b (discontinued).
If you get more into editing you may eventually want a ntsc reference “broadcast” monitor, aside from these others.
John

[John Magee]

Thanks Allen,
So I did lower the levels to 204, in Pro Titler, and I’m still clipping. I think something in Pro-Titler isn’t right or understood by me.
Here’s what i do:
-select text
-style tab,
-color,
-click and drag sliders down to 204 204 204 255
-histo still shows clipping (this I don’t understand)
-render out,
-throbbing and bleeding on crt,

And how do you adjust the background Black? I tried checking the “background, color” button and setting thses to 16… but I don’t know if that’s doing what I want either – it seems more for “highlight” area behind each letter rather than the whole screen.

[John Magee]

Thanks, Rick
Yes, they look a whole lot better that way on the LCD tv.
Now, I still have an issue with a throbbing, mushy glow when viewed on a CRT tv. These are white letters on Black background. I lowered the white levels to 203 203 203, but do I need to do anything with the background to help with that?
Also notice a choice between HSV and RGB. Does it matter what that is set to?
I’d do a test, but I don’t have a crt tv handy.

thanks,
John

[John Magee]

Just want to suggest you might try Sweetwater.com for your audio needs. They tend to hire knowledgable people who you can actually talk to on the phone.

[John Magee]

Edward,
It looks like that only works with folders. Individual clips wouldn’t drag n drop. However, I was able to copy and paste a subclip from one timeline to another.

Thanks

[John Magee]

Well, I messed with it some more and it’s still happening.

It worked OK with a fresh capture, straight from the capture window to project media.

Then I tried it again, with other, older clips I’d captured a few days ago, and the old start-at-zero was back again. (I checked their timecode properties to be sure)

I need further tests, but it seems as if it only works with brand new clips that have never before been added to a project.

[John Magee]

I found out DVCAM (sony, not panny) runs 50% faster, so that must be the problem. I’ll have to have someone else capture.

Thanks for checking in.

[John Magee]

Mike –
I seem to have worked it out.
I did your Batt/clock test, everything looked good. I ran the script on the test clips and it worked. I grabbed some other clips from capture bins and it worked. I’m not sure what was going on, but OK for now.
Thanks for your time,

John

[John Magee]

Mike,
I think we are on the same page here.

Vegas has the timeline “clock” that you can dock, etc, that shows where on the the timeline you are. But I am talking about TC that identifies what frame of the captured 60 min DV tape one is looking at. That’s all I need. That TC should go from 00:00:00;00 to 00:59:58:17 or something like that. I should be able to move a clip with a TC of say 30 min to the beginning of the project and still have it labeled in that little “burn in” window as being at 00:30:00;00.

For some reason, when I apply the script to the clips in the pool, each clip, when added to the timeline, begins at 00:00:00;00.

So I just tried doing this: I opened a new project, went to “capture” window, selected a clip from there, viewed the properties and it showed timecode IN and timecode OUT, which cleared up for me that Vegas does know the actual timecodes. I selected two clips to be sent to the Project Media, I ran the script, moved the clips to the timeline, and the window-burn shows 00:00:00;00 instead of the 00:43:24;16 TC IN point.

I should be able to rule out the problem being in the camera since Vegas recognized the TC properly in the “properties” tab of the clip

Thanks

[John Magee]

Mike,
Yeah, I was used to Media Pool too.
So you’re saying that after you run the script, then drag your clips to the timeline, you go from zero to whatever the total length of all the clips is? Rather than each clip starting at zero?

So, I checked the timecode on the tape, Mini DV standard def, playing back in the camera, and it’s continuous, with about 14 clips.
I am stumped. I’m running Pro 8b, I used the script, I also tried the “Show timecode on Thumbnails” in the Preferences/Video tab, but it does the same thing – each clip starts at Zero. Hmmm…

If I understand correctly, Vegas does not recognize any actual timecode from the DV data that comes out of the camera. It just adds timecode to a given clip or group of clips that sit in the Project media of a given project?
If so, it would seem to follow that if I want to have usable timecode for reference,ie, which approximates the “original” TC, I need to make sure all the clips from a given tape are in the pool (it’s easier to say) when I run the script. And that if I bring in other assets later, they will have to be content with starting at zero. Make sense?