[John Rofrano]

My son is still using his Adobe CS6 with 10.11 El Capitan without any problems. He has a 2008 Mac Pro so he can’t go to Sierra. I was also still using my Adobe 5.1 on El Capitan so I’m not sure why you think you can’t go higher than 10.7. If you are talking about some “official” support then that’s just Adobe’s non support for CS6 in general but the software still works fine.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

This is not unique to Vegas Pro. All software with short-cut keys have this problem. It happens all the time to me where I will get into a mode and I have no idea how I got into it and no idea how to get out of it. It’s poor software design if you ask me but it happens all the time in all sorts of applications.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Michael O'Reilly] “1920×1080 (“i” I imagine since it is at 60hz)”

Computer monitors are progressive. Interlacing is a thing only televisions know about. You should be recording 1080p.

[Michael O'Reilly] “be able to do a pass through so that the user can use the Mac as they are used to and I can capture their screen activity with the Ninja Flame.”

Not sure what you mean by “pass thru”. It’s more like a “Y” split, driving dual displays in mirror mode. In other words, you actually want the Mac to think that what its plugged into the HDMI port is a display and then set the Mac to mirror it’s displays so that the same thing is delivered to both displays. This means that both displays need to be at the same resolution so the internal Mac display needs to be set to 1920×1080 as well.

[Michael O'Reilly] “how are people reliably capturing computer screen activity video ?”

I use Camtasia. (sorry)

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Alex Karlsson Mesch] “i really do not have any idea what is wrong, please help me guys. I’ve spent hours trying to solve it. mind that it happened in the middle of my editing.”

You muted the Master Audio Bus. Look at your screenshot of the Mixer. The Master Bus says “muted” in yellow at the bottom and the Mute button is highlighted. Just unmute it.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Craig Alan] “Since the last couple of updates I have just updated. In the past, I would always do a clean install. Would take me a couple of days to get things back as they were but always worth the effort. I’d end up with not just the update but cleaner and faster. And less problems with pro apps than other end users that took the simple route.

But a couple of OSes ago I could not find a tutorial or anything to help me do this including apple care. Specifically getting my library type stuff (not FC which is on an external raid) like mail and links and so forth. Would use the option-view or go menus to open up the old libraries to move over these hidden data containers. I’d also copy over my documents and keep check on each app to see if it worked on the new OS, keeping clone of my old system on an external bare drive. Is this doable? I have updated the last couple of updates and currently on El Captain. “

I’m surprised that Apple Care couldn’t help you since the instructions are pretty basic (some of which are on their web site!) Besides, you are certainly going about this the hard way if you are manually copying files.

If you want to perform a clean install, get an external USB drive that is at least as big as your internal drive and use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a complete bootable backup. Maybe boot from it just to make sure that it works. Disconnect that drive for now.

Then follow the instructions on Apples web site to Create a bootable installer for macOS

Next, reboot your Mac while holding down the Option key after you hear the chime and boot with the USB Thumb drive.

Use the Disk Utility to format your hard drive, (that’s why we backed it up with CCC first) then start the macOS Sierra installation on the clean drive.

When prompted to setup your Mac from a Time Machine Backup or External Hard Drive, plug in your CCC backup and select the external hard drive option. It will present you with the account to restore. Select your account and have it restore everything including all of your apps, your email, everything.

That’s it! You now have a clean install with all of your old apps and email accounts and it only takes a few hours with no input from you. I’ve done this several times now, usually overnight and I wake up to a new Mac with all my old files.

[Craig Alan] “That said it seems weird that a hardware issue would be so intermittent. Just wondering if a clean install might solve the problem. And even if not seems like a good practice . Is there info on getting the email and links back on a clean new system?”

I have a problem with my son’s MacBook Pro randomly rebooting and I pretty much debunked that it was a software problem by doing a clean install, not copying over any other files, and after using it for a little while it randomly rebooted again. ☹ So if it’s a hardware issue, a clean install is not going help but its always worth a try.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Steve Shamp] “So will an editor be able to fix audio, etc, from the already rough edited scenes?”

If the audio is just the dialog then it will probably be fine. If it includes other audio then it may be difficult to separate out. Not impossible, but you probably won’t want to pay for the time it takes to do this if doable at all (depending on your audio, could be like removing the eggs from a baked cake).

[Steve Shamp] “He wouldn’t necessarily have to have worked on the original audio files first before they were added to the rendered scenes, right?”

Not necessarily but providing the original audio will give you better quality if you care about your dialog. I don’t believe that Windows Movie Maker has the ability to render uncompressed PCM audio so I’m guessing that the audio is going to be highly compressed and not ideal for editing.

[Steve Shamp] “And if its not the best way of doing things, its although still doable correct?”

I would say it’s marginally doable. By rendering you have already made all of the edit decisions. The only thing a finishing editor can do is to color grade, add titles, music, foley, and master the existing audio but not edit it. They cannot extend the length of scenes because you didn’t leave them any video handles to lengthen it with so they will be limited in their timing changes. Hopefully you only used cuts and no fades between scenes because those won’t be editable at all. In other words, if you faded between two scenes that need different color grading you are out of luck!

[Steve Shamp] “When he renders the final cut, will the scenes have lost some resolution because the video clips had now been rendered twice?”

Actually they will be rendered 3 times. Once to WMV to give to the editor. Again to convert that into ProRes 422 for editing because WMV is a final delivery format and not and editing format; and then a third time for the final render. I would expect some quality loss during that process. (you used the word “resolution” but I assume you mean “quality” as resolution has to do with the size of the frame which should not change) It would be much cleaner to work with original video files.

[Steve Shamp] “Any insight or reassurance would be appreciated. “

I’d love to be able to reassure you but I’m afraid these questions should have been asked before you started shooting the film i.e., If someone else will be finishing, what should I use to rough cut?

If all of your edit decisions are final, and the audio only contains dialog, this may work out for you this time. If not, your best option is to give the editor your finished movie as a reference. Then give them all of the source and have them reconstruct it from scratch. If you plan to do rough edits in the future, you need to get yourself the same or similar tools that the finishing editor is going to use. As others have said, your best option is to get a Mac and use iMovie which can then be import into Final Cut Pro X to be finished. This would be your best option going forward.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Jeff Kirkland] “It’s worked flawlessly for me since day one.”

Same here. Sierra is working flawlessly on both my 2010 Mac Pro and 2015 MacBook Pro with FCP X 10.3.2.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

You also might want to change your projects Pixel format back to 8-bit. 32-bit is for cameras shooting 10-bit video and your camera shoots 8-bit video so the Pixel format is set wrong. Using 32-bit will increase rendering times dramatically with no improvement in picture quality for 8-bit footage (and in some cases worse picture quality due to unwanted color shifts) so I would change it back to the default 8-bit.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

Are you using a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows?

Are you using a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Vegas Pro?

32-bit applications can only use 2GB of RAM regardless of how much RAM is physically in your system. Since Vegas will always keep some RAM for itself, showing 1GB of Dynamic RAM is consistent with using the 32-bit version.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Paul Berk] “But lately been thinking of trying a WD Gold Data Center drive. 7200rpm. 128mb Cache. 2.5million hours? 24x7x365 reliability. 5 year warranty too.”

You didn’t say if this is for a Desktop or a NAS or SAN?

If for a desktop, do you keep your editing workstation running 24×7? (Some people might if they are editing all day and rendering all night!) These drives are designed for continuos use (i.e., never being turned off for years at a time). They are really designed for NAS and SAN environments with RAID setups. They don’t go to sleep because they would drop out of the RAID if they did. They are overkill for desktop video editing so why pay the additional price unless you have a lot of money and want the very best.

WD Blacks are all you need for your desktop (that’s what I use) or WD Reds if you have a RAID (which I also use in my NAS RAID 5’s) or the WD Gold for a RAID if you keep it on 24/7 and want the very best. I shut my RAID’s off when not using them. So it all depends on how you plan to use them.

4TB WD Black $200
4TB WD Red $225
4TB WD Gold $250

Each one is designed for a heavier use than the one before it. All are fine for video editing. Red and Gold are more appropriate for NAS and SAN setups. Like I said, if you have a NAS or SAN that you keep powered on 24/7/365, the WD Golds are the ultimate drive to use. If this is for your desktop, the WD Blacks are more appropriate for that workload.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com