[John Rofrano]

How powerful is your computer? Is it at least a 2.4GB+ Dual Core or Quad Core with 2GB or more of memory to handle the AVCHD media? Also editing WMV is the source of a lot of render issues. You might want to try rendering with just each format separately (in a new project) and see if you can reproduce the problem. This may narrow it down to which media is causing the problem.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Add the Cookie Cutter FX to the event and adjust the shape and size, and choose the method: Cut away section. This will create a transparent hole in your video which will show through to the track below.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

WARNING: This is not legal advice. If you need legal advice you should contact a lawyer. I am not a lawyer and I don’t even play one on TV. 😉

Now that I got that out of the way…

If this was just for your own personal videos to use in the comfort of your own home then it is legal for you to use the music. Unfortunately, you want to use it on videos that you give to friends and it doesn’t matter that this is a hobby and you make not money from it, you are still stealing because you are giving away something which is not yours to give. (i.e., if you give me a song then I don’t have to buy the song so while you didn’t make any money on the deal, neither did the song writer, musicians, or publisher because you stole a sale from them)

The other problem is that you cannot synchronize music to video without a sync license. This is because you are creating a new derivative work and when you purchase a song, you are purchasing the right to listen to it. Nothing more. Certainly not the right to make a derivative work from it. So you currently have no rights to use those LP’s in the manner in which you intend.

It is possible that some of the music is public domain, but even then, you still need to get performance rights from the musicians to use their performance of the song, and then mechanical rights to reproduce and distribute the the song on media. If the song is not in the public domain, you also need to get sync rights I mentioned above which are almost impossible for a single person to get (the publishers simple have no time to deal with you). If you are interested, contact BMI (https://www.bmi.com), or ASCAP (https://www.ascap.com) or SESAC (https://www.sesac.com) to find out which publishers own the rights to the songs (many times there are more than one publisher and you need to get all of them to agree or no deal). Then try and contact them to request a sync license.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

The Sony HDR-UX3 is an AVCHD camcorder which requires a Dual or Quad Core computer. Even the Sony requirements for Vegas say this. A single core 2.0GHz computer is inadequate to handle this cameras’ output. You should seriously consider upgrading to a QuadCore computer, or shooting in SD MPEG2 mode.

As for the swap file… this is file that windows uses when it runs out of real memory. If at all possible, you should not keep your projects and media on the C: drive because as Vegas needs more memory to read your HD file, Windows swaps memory out to the same hard drive that Vegas is trying to read the file from. This results in the hard drive trashing between reading your HD file and writing to the swap file. It can only do one or the other but not both at the same time. Having your media on a second hard drive allows Windows to do both at the same time and greatly improves editing performance.

The good news is that your camera also shoots SD DVD quality MPEG2. If you want to edit on your current computer you might consider forgetting about HD for now and recording in SD mode. Otherwise you really need a new computer to handle HD.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

> Maybe it is dvd, its a sony dcr sx40.

OK, the Sony DCR-SX40 is just an memory stick Handycam that shoots MPEG2 (not DV or DVD). Have you ever rendered anything from the camera before? What format are you trying to render to? I would start a new project, place a single clip on the timeline and render the clip. See if that works first.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

I don’t understand how this helps Vegas users because this is a DirectShow filter and Vegas doesn’t support DirectShow. Is it a stand-alone application?

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

> All films, amateur and professional, were copied using MagicDVDRipper and converted to an AVI file for Vegas to use.

What codec did you use to make the AVI files? MagicDVDRipper loves to use DivX as AVI and Vegas doesn’t support DivX so rendering is very hit and miss. If you converted them to DivX AVI this could be why they won’t render all together.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

> I am using a sony dv camcorder that records in mpg format. I have saved movies out before and have had mixed results.

That doesn’t seem right. DV camcorders shoot DV. Did you mean DVD camcorder? What model? How are you capturing the footage? If you really are using MPG footage and chroma key that could be the problem. DVD quality MPG is a poor format for editing. You really should consider buying a different camera if you intent is to edit and chroma key footage. Otherwise, convert the MPG footage to DV AVI before you edit it.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

This has nothing to do with chroma key (green or blue screen). This is call “difference” keying and yes it can be done in Vegas. The problem is, you need a scene of just the background to use as the difference. Without that, it won’t work. So the answer to your question, “will this work with pre-recorded footage” is “only if the footage contains a static background and there is at least one frame of just the background without any foreground objects”.

Here is a tutorial on how to create a difference mask on the VASST web site:

Difference Masking Unmasked by Dave Hadden

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

> What do you mean Vegas doesn’t support Divx ? It supports it perfectly fine, I can load Divx files into the Vegas and render clips from Vegas into Divx (I’m a bit confused here).

Maybe DivX worked better in Vegas 3 but in later releases you would get green squares blocks randomly appearing and the answer from Sony was, “we don’t support DivX”. So “officially” it is not supported and it has been the cause of all sorts of corruption and render problems for people.

> Are you suggesting that I should erase from my PC all software that is post-2007, or that I should update all my software to the newest 2009 versions?

I was suggesting to get your PC back to the versions that once worked but you don’t even have the same PC anymore so that’s impossible at this point.

> Well, I always anticipated that Divx is not the most professional tool there is, and thanks for confirming me in this belief with your words, …

The real point that Steve is trying to make and the one that you should take away from this conversation, is that it doesn’t matter what your delivery format is… or what YouTube required several years ago… you always archive to the highest quality source format that you have.

For example: I have lots on DV files that I shot with my miniDV camcorder. I made DVD’s from these files. I did not archive the DVD MPEG-2 files. I archived the source DV media files. This way if I need to re-purpose for the web, I start with my original high quality DV files (compressed at 5:1) instead of the much lower quality DVD MPEG2 files (compressed at 25:1). So archiving DixV because YouTube needed DivX was not the best approach. Always archive to the highest quality possible. You’d be surprise how many people keep the DVD as an archive and delete their original high quality footage and then come here complaining that they can’t get good quality for a compilation video their doing for grandpa’s 90th birthday. 😉

I realize that you probably only worked in DivX back then but you could have used other free codecs like Huffyuv which have high quality lossless compression at the expense of using more disk space and disk space was way more expensive back then than it is now so you probably made the best trade-off at the time given what you had to work with.

Your best option now is to stop worrying about what caused the audio to be out of sync and just spend that time putting the audio back in sync. One thing to try would be to re-encode the DivX files with a tool like Super(c) to Huffyuv or M-JPEG or some other format that edits better in Vegas. Then substitute those files for the original in your project and see if it syncs up. Worth a shot.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com