[John Rofrano]

> I’m currently putting the media generator on the video overlay track (with multiply mask), and the video with source alpha. However, it looks like both tracks are overlapping on each other.

That’s because this is exactly what you asked it to do. If you want the background to be behind the video track then place it on the track below. I assume the video does not fully cover the frame otheriwse the background will not be seen.

> How do I control the level of alpha on the video overlay track while the video track has full opacity.

You can simply pull down the event’s opacity. Hover your mouse at the top of the event and you will see it react to the opacity slider, then click and pull the opacity down for that event.

> Also, I’m not going to use the background throughout the video, but if I didn’t put an event on the video overlay, the video track is not visible at all.

This is because you set the top track to Multiply (Mask) but you are not providing a white mask for the length of the track. If you leave the track as Source Alpha and just use the event opacity as explained above, the rest of your video will display correctly.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

If you have a friend that will build you that QuadCore, it should be all you need to edit AVCHD with Vegas Pro. Vegas does not take advantage of a graphics card although After Effects and other applications will so having a great graphics card is not as important for Vegas. Any fairly new nVidia GeForce card should be fine. My configuration is listed on the PC Equipment page of my web site.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

I assume the source videos are using the FRAPS codec (or something similar). It looks like Vegas is having a problem blending these together for the crossfade. Try and render a small section of two clips out to a different format. Perhaps use the Quicktime Animation codec. Then crossfade those and render out and see if it fixes the problem. If it does, then convert all of your FRAPS video to Quicktime Animation and it should fix the problem.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

> What is the most affordable PC configuration that will allow me to have real-time quality previews while editing in Vegas pro 8.0c?
> Or do I have to bite the bullet and spend a fortune on a Mac and FCP

Sorry, I don’t follow your logic. Are you saying that if an inexpensive PC can’t edit HD then you need a powerful Mac? Why not a powerful PC?

Chances are that a Mac with FCP is not going to edit the h.264 .mp4’s from your camera because FCP is extremely finicky about what formats it will ingest and it sounds like you have a camera that shoots a non-standard format.

My advice is to get a modern QuadCore PC and Vegas Pro 9.0.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

You would need the DVCPRO50 codec. I believe that Quicktime only comes with the DVCPRO25 codec. Matrox use to have these available for free but the download link has since been removed. Once you have the DVCPRO50 codec installed you just render to Quicktime, use the Custom button and select DVCPRO50 NTSC as the format.

You might want to do a Google search on “DVCPRO50 codec” and see if some sites still have the free Matrox download available.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

I haven’t printed to tape in a long time (and I now work tapeless) but the concept is pretty simple: You must print to tape in the same format as the source tape. If the tape is DV the prerender files must be DV AVI. If the tape is HDV the prerender files must be MPEG-2 HDV 1440×1080 M2T files, etc. Keeping the prerender format the same as the tape format will ensure that Vegas can print the files directly to tape with no further processing.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

> I guess I will go back to hoping Vegas 9 behaves better.

Actually, it’s not a matter of Vegas “behaving” better. On Windows, I would tell people to update their audio drivers and the behavior usually stops proving that it as an audio driver problem, not a Vegas problem. I would not be surprised if Vegas 9 didn’t behave exactly the same way because you haven’t solved the audio driver problem.

This is more an issue of running Windows on non-supported hardware. When I build a PC, after installing the OS the very next thing I do is install the chipset drivers from the motherboard manufacturer which does things like tell the PC how to talk to the sound chip. Did you do you do this after installing XP with bootcamp? I’ve never used bootcamp so I don’t know but how do you get XP chipset drivers from Apple?

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

I use the standard DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen video stream template and my Sony Z1 footage looks awesome on DVD.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

It sounds like you want to use Mike’s second suggestion to Match Output Aspect. Then toggle the button on the left that limits your movement to just left and right, and then move the frame to include any action that may be cut off on one side or the other (if any action is cut off).

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

What codec does the digital camera use? It may be one that Vegas doesn’t edit well. You could try converting to the video to a more edit friendly format with a tool like Super(c). Usually video from still image cameras is very hard to edit because they each use a different non-standard format.

~jr

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