[Larry Brewer]

Thanks John R. I may have to do that. It will save a lot of time.

Larry Brewer

[Larry Brewer]

Thanks for double checking that. At this point I’m just glad it’s not me or my system, but it would be nice if there was a way to accomplish that task. A script maybe?… So what is the function of the disk icon on the properties window?

thanks

Larry Brewer

[Larry Brewer]

John

Thanks for the reply. I had seen these instructions weeks ago and frankly forgot the procedure. Kept trying from the timeline.

Now that you’ve refreshed my memory can you tell me why it still doesn’t work? I select a mov in the Project Media list. Right click, select properties, click media, set alpha to straight (or premultipied) and click the disk icon, and click OK. It sets the alpha properties for THAT clip, but not for the rest. What gives?

thanks again
Larry Brewer

[Larry Brewer]

You are absolutely correct. Been there. Sometimes you just want to put a camera in front of the monitor…

I assumed he was referring to stills since he mentioned “slideshow” and the Shift/printscreen method I mentioned does work very well.

For the purpose of capturing powerpoint animation and builds I recently purchased Presentersoft PowerVideoMaker.

https://www.presentersoft.com/download.htm

I’ve only used it once but recall it performed very well. It might be the ticket.

[Larry Brewer]

Yes, USB drives has many short-comings…..A firewire drive is what i would highly recommend.

I would not disagree with your conclusion. And if speed were the only factor, Firewire external drives would always be the best choice. As I take inventory around my studio I have counted 15 external drives acquired over the last 4 years or so. 2 are firewire only, 2 are combos and the rest are USB 2 drives.

The recent issues I’ve had with external drives, “Media Offline” and Vegas locking up, involved USB drives for sure. But… in both cases the drive continued to performe just fine as far as my PC was concerned. The data, media, was always there. I could access it and play it with WM player. It was Vegas that was confused.

And when Vegas 8 wasn’t confused, the USB drives performed just fine. DVCam media and HDV media played in realtime, full frame, with “good” setting on my preview window. I can access media from the USB drive and render back to the same drive with predictable results and good speed.

The only real and fatal problems I’ve ever encountered with external hard drives were with the firewire drives. Admittedly they are much older and early generation drives. I recall several occasions where I needed to reconnect or cycle power to the FireWire drives for the PC to bring them online.

I appreciate everyones help. I have simple work arounds that will get me through my current projects. I’ll try the firewire port on my combo drives to get an apples to apples comparison in the near future.

[Larry Brewer]

Zipedit

I’ve used a lot of powerpoint slides in my productions and have tried all the suggestions above and more. The best way I have found to import the slides is to run PowerPoint full screen. Shift/print screen to save to clipboard, then paste and save in PhotoShop to your favorite format. Import these to Vegas and I think you’ll be pleased. Hope this helps.

[Larry Brewer]

Steve R

Thanks for the suggestion. I had already unchecked the “close media files when not the active application” box on preferences and it did help with a lockup problem I was having earlier today. (opening any other application would freeze Vegas)

But the media offline after each capture problem persisted. The files were going offline the instant I hit the “done” button on the Capture Complete window after batch capture. So… I unchecked the “Add captured clips to Project Media List” box in the Capture Complete window and all is well. I now import the clips into the Project Media List window manually.

I would rather not open and close Vegas 8 everytime I capture clips. Some of my projects are very large, closing and re-opening can take a while.

This problem is certainly a bug that needs to be fixed. A nice feature of Vegas Capture 6.0 was to have the clips fall into the proper media bin in the Project Media List after each capture. This feature has worked quite well in the past. I’ve used it successfully many times. Did the problem begin with Vegas 8? Is it my USB drive?

[Larry Brewer]

When you render, check the box in the “render as” window that says “stretch video to fill output frame size” this should take care of the black bars. Hope this helps.

[Larry Brewer]

Danny

Yes, that post was advice for me and a somewhat related problem. ie Vegas 8 would lockup whenever I opened any other application on my PC. I unchecked the box and the problem was fixed. Now I can multitask my a** off and no lockups.

Now I’m dealing with my video clips going offline whenever I decide to capture a new clip. Vegas doesn’t freeze or lockup, just all my clips in the project media window are grayed out and the clips on the timeline are marked “Offline”. Saving, closing and re -starting vegas brings it all back and I can go on. I’m hoping there is another box somewhere that I can uncheck and fix this issue! Thanks for the reply.

[Larry Brewer]

Had the same problem. I just put the powerpoint into full screen mode, used the PC function Shift/print screen, paste the clipboard into photoshop and saved as whatever. Import that file back into Vegas with very good results. (no jaggies)