[Mike Kujbida]

Ray, here’s the specs for my (now 1 yr. old) quad core.
I’m still VERY happy with it.
BTW, if you can hold off for another 2 weeks, Intel is supposed to be dropping the price of this CPU by half!!

Case: Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black

Power Supply: SeaSonic M12-600 (600w) ATX12V (low-noise, SLI-Certified)

MoBo: Intel D975XBX2 Extreme Series

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme (QX6700 QuadCore)

CPU Cooling: ZALMAN CNPS9700 NT LED 92mm Heatsink

Memory: CORSAIR XMS2 2 GB.

Hard Drive 1: Seagate SATA 250 GB.

Hard Drive 2 & 3: Seagate SATA 500 GB.

Graphics Card: MSI Geforce 6800GT 256MB

DVD burner: Plextor PX-755A

Sound card: M-Audio Revolution 5.1

OS: XP Pro SP2

[Mike Kujbida]

Do you have DVD Architect installed?
If you don’t, there’s no way you’ll be able to render to MPEG,
If you do, you have to select “MainConcept MPEG-2 (*.mpg, etc. etc.) in the “Save as type” dropdown box.

[Mike Kujbida]

The feature you’re looking for is called “First Play”.
Here’s how the DVDA online help describes it.
Note: There are some symbols displayed that can’t be shown here so you’ll have to look for yourself.

Set the DVD introduction (first play) media

Use the Insert Introduction Media option to choose a media file that you want to use as your DVD start item.

Select an object in the Project Overview window.

Click the down arrow next to the Insert Object button and choose Introduction Media .

The Introduction Media is displayed in the Project Overview window.

[Mike Kujbida]

All the windows in Vegas can be undocked and moved around anywhere you want.
The layout can then be save and recalled at a future date.
The online Vegas help says this about layouts:

A window layout stores the sizes and positions of all windows and floating window docks in the Vegas workspace.

You can store any number of window layouts on your computer, and up to ten window layouts are available in the View menu (and via keyboard shortcuts) so you can quickly recall frequently used layouts. For example, you could have a layout dedicated to multitrack audio recording and another for ADR work.

Save a window layout

Arrange the windows and docked windows as desired.

Press Ctrl+Alt+D, release the keys, and then press a number on your keyboard (not the numeric keypad) to save the layout in that space.

From the View menu, choose Window Layouts, and then choose Save Layout As from the submenu. The Save Layout As dialog is displayed.

Choose Save Layout from the submenu if you want to update the current window layout. A bullet () is displayed next to the current layout.

In the Name box, type the name you want to use to identify the layout. This name will be used in the Organize Layouts dialog.

Choose a setting from the Shortcut drop-down list to set the shortcut that will be used to load the layout.

For example, if you choose 4, you could press Alt+D, release the keys, and then press 4 on your keyboard to load the layout.

The Folder box displays the path to the folder where the layout will be saved.

Window layouts are saved in the following folder by default: C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Sony\Vegas\7.0\. You can click the Browse button to choose a different folder.

Click OK to save the new layout.

Load a saved layout

From the View menu, choose Window Layouts, and then choose the window layout you want to use from the submenu.

To load a layout quickly, press Alt+D, release the keys, and then press a number on your keyboard (not the numeric keypad) to recall the layout saved in that in that space.

If you’ve modified the current window layout, choose Window Layouts, and then choose Reload Selected Layout from the submenu to reset the window layout to the last-saved version.

[Mike Kujbida]

How big is the “border”?
Just because you can see it on your computer doesn’t mean it’ll show up on a TV set (due to overscan common to all TV sets).

[Mike Kujbida]

“The videos aren’t from a camera, they are .avi files stored on my computer from DVDs.”

What program was used to do the conversion?
What type of AVIs are they?
If you don’t know, please run GSpot and report the result.
I had a student come to me with a video that he claimed was an AVI but Vegas refused to open it. I ran GSpot and it turned out to be an XVid which Vegas will not work with.

If you’re concerned about a potential virus, run Housecall.
It’s an online virus scanner from Trend Micro.
They make PC-Cillin, the anti virus software I use, so I know they can be trusted.

[Mike Kujbida]

Do you have a fast CPU?
3.00GHZ Pentium4

By today’s standards, that’s a slow machine 🙁
I use P4 3.4 GHz machines at work and it’s fairly easy to slow them down.
My home machine is a QX6700 quad core and it flies!!

What’s your OS?
XP Sp2

Good choice. Some folks are running Vista and still having problems with it.

Is your Preview window set to Preview/Auto?
yes
You may have to drop it down to Draft/Auto to get acceptable preview speeds. The quality will suck but at least it’ll play.

Do you have a lot of FX in the project?
No, Transitions yes

That will have an impact on preview speeds but only at the transition points.

Do you have a lot of large stills in the project?
Yes

This will definitely have an impact.
The rule of thumb is that, unless you’re doing extensive zooming in on the image, keep the images to no more than twice project size. In standard def NTSC world, that would be 1440 x 960. This still gives you room to zoom in but won’t tax your system as much.
If these are JPEG images (from a digital still camera), the other suggestion is to change them to PNG format as that’s what Vegas likes best. You can use a free program such as IrfanView to do this.
IrfanView will also do batch resizing for you if yo need to.

Are you rendering to the system drive or a dedicated video drive?
This is where I may need some education.

Gladly.
It doesn’t make any difference if you’re using a laptop or a desktop.
You’ll get much better performance using at least 2 drives for editing (I have 3 and others have much more).
Programs reside on your system drive and that’s it.
All video files go to a separate drive.
Also, go into the various Vegas prefs and make sure that NOTHING points to C:\My Documents as a storage place, even if it’s temp files.
On my system, all captured material as well as graphics and music are on drive D. All rendering goes to drive E.

…the external drive I was using via USB was too slow in transfer rate.

Are you using USB 2.0 drives?
I use USB externals all the time and haven’t noticed a lot of difference between that and firewire transfer speed.

Finally, make sure you’re not connected to the net while editing as this will slow things down.

Try the suggestions you’re able to do right now and see if that helps.
As I said, Vegas is a great NLE but it and your computer need a little tweaking to get the most out of it.

[Mike Kujbida]

…I am about ready to blow it up. 🙂

Do that and you’ll only add to worldwide environmental pollution 🙂
Vegas is one of the most solid NLEs I’ve ever worked with.
The ability to do smooth playback is dependent on a number of things.
Please answer the following questions and we’ll do our best to help you sort things out.

Do you have a fast CPU?
What’s your OS?
Is your Preview window set to Preview/Auto?
Do you have a lot of FX in the project?
Do you have a lot of large stills in the project?
Are you rendering to the system drive or a dedicated video drive?

[Mike Kujbida]

The answer is yes to both questions.

Project Manager:
When you’re done with your video, click “save as” and select the “copy media with project” option at the bottom of this screen.
On the next screen, choose a location (preferably separate from the current saved files location), give it a new name and click “save”.
This brings up another window that gives you the option to save the material as is or to add heads & tails to all media.

Sequence:
Vegas handles this a bit differently than Premiere.
The technique is called “nested vegs”.
I’ll use the example of a DVD slideshow I do for my kids school.
It’s broken into 5 separate sections.
I work on each section separately and save them as their own veg file.
Once each section is complete, I import each veg file into a new (master) project.
Each veg comes in as a single video track and stereo audio pair, no matter how many tracks the original one had.
If you want to make changes to any of the veg files, right-click it on the timeline and select “Edit in Vegas (*.veg)”.
This opens a new instance of Vegas with all original tracks. Once your changes are made, save it and exit.
The original veg is updated as well as the new master one you’re currently working on.

[Mike Kujbida]

Rachel, if you still have the original tape(s), try re-capturing the problem segments.
Right-click on the clip(s) in Project Media and select “Recapture”.