[Markschneg]

That’s right – I read that FAQ a few weeks ago and said “I gotta store that in memory on the off chance it happens to me!” Needless to say, I promptly forgot (since my Vegas install has always behaved remarkably well, fortunately). Good call.

DavidD – did you try Mike’s suggestion? It could save you a bunch more running around.

[Markschneg]

Your system seems to have problems that run deeper than just Vegas, then. Sounds like it’s time for a fresh reformat and windows install. It’s near impossible to troubleshoot the one problem (exporting) when there are a slew of other things that seem to be contributing. With a fresh install of OS + software, you’re at least setting a better test bed for diagnosing the weird issue.

What are your system specs? They don’t show in your profile.

-Mark

[Markschneg]

Repair the install or start with a fresh Vegas install. There’s no reason to torture yourself with workarounds when you should focus on getting your system working like it should!

Just my $0.02 worth.

-Mark

[Markschneg]

I haven’t seen the commercial, but I want to say I’ve seen a transition like what you’re describing. It’s included with DVD Studio on the Mac, and it ‘s used as a transition between menus or timelines in a DVD project. I imagine with some digging on a Mac with DVD Studio installed, you could find the actual resource file (probably an .MOV) and repurpose it. But, I bet you’re looking for a much simpler solution!

[Markschneg]

Gah. Power surge just stole my entire reply to you..

Anyway, it would appear your install is hosed. If you can’t customise the export though, even the standard settings may not be all that bad for your purposes.

Remember that you can “Repair” your installation also. You don’t necessarily have to do a full uninstall/reinstall. Run the installer from your original disc or download, and it should give you the option to repair the current install.

[Markschneg]

You can’t “download” windows movie maker, or even the updates. It gets updated through Microsoft Update or through service packs, but I’ve never been able to find a standalone updater or installer for it anywhere.

https://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx is the site for it.

WMM makes a decent little clip in a pinch, but there are other free editors that do a great job too, and are better than WMM. Try Avid-DV Free – https://www.avid.com/freedv/

[Markschneg]

You can render out to any properly-installed codec you have on your system, really.

I have ffdshow installed for those rare times I need i – and it can encode pretty much any MPEG4/H.264 type you’d want.

Just go to Render As.. and pick Video For Windows (AVI) as the save type. For the template, do a custom one. Once in that menu, go to the Video tab and choose the video format you want the video to be encoded as inside the AVI wrapper (in this case, fdshow. If you pick an encoder that has multiple options (like divx or ffdshow), the “Configure…” button will become active, and you can set all your encoding preferences in there.

(These actual steps are in Vegas6, so I can’t be certain they’re all in the same menus in 7. Haven’t updated yet, and likely won’t for a while).

-Mark

[Markschneg]

Have you recently installed any “codec packs” or anything like that? Often times those can install a bunch of useless, unnecessary, pirated or otherwise inadvisable codecs on your system, as well as screwing up the associations and DirectShow playback. If you have installed one of these, nuke it posthaste and start fresh. If you absolutely *need* a codec pack for MPEG4, ogg and other “common” formats, I would recommend ONLY using one called ffdshow, as it is open-source and will not screw things up so badly.

You can also try another free media player that is WORLDS better than Real – use Winamp (winamp.com). See if playback is also screwed up with that, and you may be able to sleuth out the problem a little better. If it still only does it in WMP, you’ve got something corrupted pretty good, and you may need to start poking in your DirectShow outputs chain to see what WMP is using to play media that Real isn’t.

Also try running the DirectX diagnostic called didiag.exe. Drop to a command prompt or go to the Run.. button in the start menu, and type “dxdiag” and hit enter. In the program that starts, go to the Sound tab and there should be a big button that says “Test DirectSound.” Run through those tests and see what you get. It may report that it finds an audio problem at a system level.

[Markschneg]

I am going to be making some assumptions here on your desired output, but here goes. I apologize in advance if you already know some of this (since you’re working with HDV, I assume you’re not a total n00b, but someone else could benefit from a little walkthrough too).

Encore is going to be looking for a DVD standard file @ 720×480. You can’t burn native HDV to a DVD and have it play in a standard set-top DVD player.

Your mileage may vary, but try these settings if you’re going to use Encore to author the disc:

File > Render As.. > Save As Type, set to MainConcept MPEG2, and also set the Template to DVD NTSC. Then click on “Custom” to tweak some of the finer settings, since you want a mastering quality MPEG2 output.

NOTE: You may want to save each iteration of the encoding settings you make! Type in a new name in the box at the top, and give it a unique and informative name. That way if you find a batch of encoding settings that worked awesomely, you won’t have to try to recreate it all from memory.

Now, inside the “Custom” option:
On the video tab you can select whether your material is 4:3 (standard) or 16:9 (widescreen) in the Aspect Ratio dropdown box. Also, you may acheive best results if you also make the Field Order: None (progressive). For the best potential quality, choose Variable Bit Rate and check the Two-pass box. Set the max to 8,000,000, average to 6,000,000 and minimum to 4,200,000. This is going to give you a slightly larger filesize, but isn’t going to skimp on encoding where it counts. Setting the Max bitrate to 9,800,000 is possible, but I’ve had trouble with such files not playing back on all set-top DVD players. Some players just can’t handle the maximum throughput bitrate without barfing on themselves, locking up, or clipping like crazy. Experiment though and see what your results are. Some will argue it’s overkill to set the minimum bitrate so high, but I’m also assuming here that your project isn’t that big, and you don’t need every available bit just to fit your project onto a DVD.

In the Advanced Video tab, I wouldn’t bother anything unless you have a really good reason to.

I’ve had better results feeding Encore two separate audio and video streams, so try checking the box for “Save as separate elementary streams.” in the “System” tab. This’ll give you an .M2V file (the video alone) and an .MPA file (the audio). Import those into Encore, and drag them onto the sequence you’re making for that particular clip. It should sync them automagically.

You can simulate the disc and make sure you’re getting the widescreen aspect ratio you desire. If it’s still not right, make sure your Encore project has the correct project settings.

I’ve found that it’s still easier to get HDV to a DVD by exporting it as 4:3 MPEG2 WITH the letterboxing – that way, the client’s going to be pretty much forced to view it in the correct aspect ratio, and their TV or player will be much less likely to scrunch or stretch things abnormally.
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So, with all those assumptions made, I hope I’ve helped at least a little bit. Best luck.

[Markschneg]

From the wiki entry about Google Videos: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Video)

“GVI format and conversion

Google Video Files (.gvi) are Audio Video Interleave (.avi) files with an extra list with the FourCC “goog” immediately following the header. The video is encoded in DivX4 alongside an MP3 audio stream. DivX video players and various portable video players such as the Archos AV500 can render Google Video Files without format conversion after changing the extension from .gvi to .avi. Among other software VirtualDub is able to read .gvi files and allows to convert them into different formats of choice.
[edit]

AVI and MP4

Besides Flash Video and GVI, Google provides its content through Audio Video Interleave (.avi) and MPEG4 (.mp4) files. Not all formats are available through the website’s interface, however, depending on the user’s operating system.”

Transcode them before bringing them into Vegas, I say. If you can get an MP4 of the file (which not all will allow anymore), that’d be my first choice.

-Mark