[Josh Meredith]

Yes, you can print your short to DV tape, and watch it on your television. There are two ways of doing it. You can render an AVI, and then use the Vegas capture utility to print the AVI to tape. Or you can print directly from the timeline, by going to Tools, and then Print Video to Tape. It will go though some rendering and finally print the timeline to tape.

You camera, of course, has to be connected via Firewire, just as it is when you capture. And make sure the tape in the camera is either blank, or that you don’t mind recording over whatever is on the tape. Vegas will warn you that you’re about to “destroy” any data currently on the the tape.

[Josh Meredith]

I can’t offer much help, other than to confirm that your problem is not unusual. DVD issues like this make me wish that clients still wanted their videos on VHS tapes. I’m not suprised the DVD worked in your client’s computer. In my exprience, computers play DVD’s better than any set-top player, especially burned DVD’s. All of my burned DVD’s play 100% correctly in my laptop and my desktop computer, but at least 80% of them skip horribly in the player attached to my TV.

Did you put an adhesive label on the DVD(s)? They are known to make burned DVD’s even less reliable than they already are.

You may consider your burner. I am constantly disapointed in the lifespan of the burners I buy. I usually get about 1 year of use out of them before they start spitting out terribly flawed discs, and I don’t really burn that many DVD’s before they go bad – usually about 100 or so. Also try different brands of blank DVD-R’s. For some reason, I’m currently having the best luck with red labeled HP DVD-R’s in my external Memorex burner. Ironically, Memorex blank DVD-R’s don’t work very well in this burner, but they work OK in my computer’s internal Pioneer burner.

I usually tell clients that if playability issues are going bother them, the only real solution is to get the DVD’s pressed, which is expensive, but results in a DVD that any player can read.

[Josh Meredith]

I tried Avid Lite a couple years ago. I’m very good at teaching myself software. I spent about 30 minutes without figuring out how to insert a clip onto a timeline. At which point, Avid became dead to me.

[Josh Meredith]

Try this one:

https://www.archive.org/details/ChallengerAccidentandInvestigation

I haven’t watched the whole thing, but I assume it will show the footage you’re looking for. It claims to be public domain, as well.

[Josh Meredith]

Have you tried Archive.org? I think some of their stuff is license free:

https://www.archive.org/details/movies

[Josh Meredith]

I’m surprised by that as well. Especially considering how easy it is to sell a friend on Vegas. I’ve shown this software to audio & video guys, and converted more than a few of them just by letting them watch me at work.

As is often the case, the masses are misguided.

[Josh Meredith]

I’m not an expert in this, but I’ve had similar problems. The two best solutions for me have been to render in “Best” mode, which you may already be doing, and also to dumb-down the resolution of the problematic pics, and sometimes change their format, in Photoshop.

I recently had shimmering issues on a tv spot I was working on. I realized that a lot of the graphics I received from the client were 300 dpi. They were in various formats, mostly intended for high quality printing, and some were in CMYK instead of RGB mode. It seems like a lot of the problem went away by lowering the resolution to 72 dpi on the problematic ones, and making sure they were all in RGB mode. Since I saved the Photoshopped images as new files, I had to reinsert them on the timeline, and re-do the pan/crop settings, but it worked and I didn’t see a problem in the quality on screen.

[Josh Meredith]

All you need to do is turn off the “Device Control” in the prefferences of VidCap. I capture video like this all the time with both my VX2100 and a cheap TRV460.

That is very good to know! And here I thought the inability to capture live was one of the very few shortcomings of Vegas.

Thanks, Ted.

[Josh Meredith]

So the footage you want to edit is already on a DVD? I have used Vegas’ build in feature (File, Import, DVD Camcorder Disc) to convert a DVD somebody gave me containing their kid’s wresting footage into an AVI for editing. The disc they gave me wasn’t from a DVD camcorder, but it technically worked, and there was audio. The video quality was very poor, though.

I had much better results by dubbing the DVD in real time into the computer. I played it from a regular set-top player, ran it into my Sony VX2100 camcorder (which can act as a analog-to-digital pass thru), and captured the video as if I was capturing a miniDV tape. I think I had to use a different video program to capture it, though, because I don’t think Vegas will capture from a camera if the tape mechanism isn’t running. If I didn’t have an alternative capture program that let me do that, I would have just dubbed the DVD onto a mini-DV tape, and then captured the tape.

So the biggest obstacle in your way is whether or not you have a camera (or any device) with analog inputs that will act as an A-to-D converter.

I hope I’ve understood your problem, otherwise none of his is relavent!

[Josh Meredith]

Star Wars: Episode III 😉

Ha! I remember laughing at some of those transitions. It made me feel a lot better about my own editing!