[Rob Mack]

The preview window is a video overlay. When you grab a screen shot Vegas just grabs the buffer and either saves it or puts it on the clipboard. Either way, you only get what’s in the buffer and if you have the preview window scaled down and in draft mode then that’s what you’ll get in the still image as well.

When you save the buffer as a still image file, Vegas adjusts the pixel aspect ratio and adds the file to the media pool. Generally handy if that’s what you want.

Rob Mack

[Rob Mack]

Ed,

Watching Media100 folks work, I see this sort of project all the time. For instance, we do a quarterly training video for one of the large computer companies. All of the timelines for all of the movies are contained in one project. The project has a collection of bins and they are all shared amongst the 20 or 30 timelines. If you save a preset, it’s avaiable to all the timelines.

You can get around all this working in Vegas, but there’s no centralized project file.

Think AfterFX. It has multiple comps in a project file.
Think Flash. Multiple “scenes” in a project file.
Think Dreamweaver. Multiple pages in a website.
Think Excel. Multiple worsheets in a workbook.

A lot of NLEs work on a project level rather than a timeline level. I think Vegas is actually kind of rare in this regard. Again, you can get around it with Vegas but if you’ve actually got 20 or so movies in a CD you’re authoring it might be really handy for them to share resources more easily.

Rob Mack

[Rob Mack]

5 years is great coverage.

HP’s pixel policy is something like 0 dead pixels but there’s a bit of fine print, maybe no white pixels but some black pixels allowed. I’m sure they don’t give you a five year warranty.

anyway, ask about the mnufacturer’s pixel policy before you buy, and yes this may be a good thing to get the extended warranty for.

Rob Mack

[Rob Mack]

This system also has a PCI-e x16 slot so you could get a card for it later. That means you could use it as-is for now until you’re ready to get a card.

The onboard graphics uses something Intel calls DVMT or Dynamic Video Memory Technology. In BIOS you can set various combinations of memory usage for graphics. One of them will probably limit it to a range of 8 to 64 MB which should be more than enough for two screens and a video overlay. Because it’s dynamic, the system will let go of memory if it isn’t using it for graphics. It’s not too bad for use with Vegas and you could add a card later on.

You should consider adding another hard drive and another half GB of RAM would help as well, although 512 is certainly enough.

Sony offers customized builds here.

Here’s the specs:

Specifications

[Rob Mack]

In fact, after trying to edit mpeg2 for a minute, you may decide to call it impossible.

Rob Mack

[Rob Mack]

BTW, if you’re working in NTSC, change your default still length from whatever it is now to a number thatmakes a whole number of frames. For instance, if it is currently set to 5.000 secs, increment it up to 5.005. The idea is to increment it up or down until the frame count changes. You want these new events to add up to a whole number of frames.

5 seconds = 149.85 frames
5.005 seconds = 150.00 frames (really 149.99999999985 frames, but it’s as close as you’ll get)

Rob Mack

[Rob Mack]

Mary,

Have you noticed the option to save project info in the rendered file?

Try going to the project you want to nest and rendering it with this setting turned on. Then you can drop the rendered file into the master timeline. If you need to change it you can right click the event and open up the parent project. You’ll have to render again of course.

It’s a half measure, but it’s something. And it might be a little more convenient in the long haul.

Rob Mack

[Rob Mack]

Thanks!

Rob Mack

[Rob Mack]

Ahhh,

I’ve been ignoring Virtualdub. This would be a nice solution if you can then put the AVI onto the timeline and record the translation on another track.

Rob

[Rob Mack]

The multirender tool in Veggie toolkit would probably do it and give you individual clips. I think there’s also a setting to add more head and tail. I think there might be a demo of it available at the peachrock site.

There may be other scripts that are free.

The Save-As tool in Vegas isn’t so great. I don’t really see why it has to render as wav64, but it does. It’ has always seemed to me like a vestigial tail in Vegas.

Rob Mack