Rob Mack
Forum Replies Created
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Just a side annecdote about Vista. We have a demo system here that was just barely able to run Vista in all it’s dubious glory. It really crawled along.
I turned off all the whizbang stuff so that it now looks like Win2k and it’s now quite spritely. I highly recommend you turn off all that junk if you’ve got Vista.
Rob Mack
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Right. And that can get confusing because you probably have multiple audio takes too.
It’s not always ideal but it can be made to work. It’d be better if there was also an overwrite mode so you could have a choice and cut down on the number of clicks it takes to do this manually.
Rob
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The common narrative around the fora is that the Sony computer division has had a long standing deal with adobe for Premiere Pro. Yeah, all the Vegas users think that’s ridiculous, hence the ridicule.
Adding as a take gives you the equivalent of a three point edit but it’s the rare instance where you can pick two points on the timeline and one on the trimmer. Usually Vegas just can’t do that variation of a 3-point edit — you can select two on the trimmer and one on the timeline, but not two on the timeline and one on the trimmer, unless you first do a split when you select the two on the timeline and then you’re back to using takes. That’s not horrible but it’s an extra step or two and it’s not obvious to new users and even harder for old users of other systems because their thinking is not very plastic.
Adding as a take does allow you to pick a start point in the trimmer as accurately as you would ever do, and then drag it over the existing clip. It’s just as accurate as an overwrite mode would be, and if you decide you were a little off you can slip or slide the take. It’s not much different from any other system except that you have to manually cut out the spot where the new clip goes, and you’re better off adding as a take even if that wasn’t what you thought you needed.
There is a feature request page on the Sony site: https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/support/productsuggestion.asp. It’s much more preferable to use that than it is to wail in the wilderness here.
As far as working on a scratch track, that’s fine, lots of people work that way. I’m calling it inelegant because Vegas tends to create new tracks so promiscuously. You can really end up with a lot of tracks scattered about. There are workflows where the trimmer is very compelling, and it does make for a neater timeline.
I don’t think you’re asking too much. Vegas has a very fluid workflow that is really nice compared to some other systems, but not having proper 3-point edit, overwrite, and insert features thwarts prospective users coming from other systems. That’s bad design. The better scheme is to thwart their return to the other system.
This is hijacking the thread though. Huff brings up one of the main reasons our shop moved away from Apple platforms, which was that we didn’t have many hardware choices.
Rob
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Talk about preaching to the converted!
V8 would run on your system but you’d probably want to get something faster. Even budget systems are faster these days so it’s not a great struggle to upgrade.
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Trevor, yes Vegas needs an overwrite and insert feature, it’s true, but you’re probably giving the one example where Takes actually addresses the problem. Since you’re just talking about replacing a clip you can right-drag from the trimmer over the existing clip and then choose “add as takes”.
Your manual overwrite method is a little different from what I’ve done, which is to select the region I want to overwrite, split it, delete it, select the durration from the timeline display, and then paste the duration into the trimmer display. You approach is simpler but it adds another track, which is inelegant.
Both are awkward and would be solved by a proper 3-point edit, even if there was no overwrite feature. The overlay would work (except that you might actually want the underlying clip to be split, in which case overwrite does the splitting.
Rob Mack
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And you get a quality loss wherever you have anything but untouched DV footage. For instance, all transitions will require reencoding, and you’d get better looking transitions if you went straight from the timeline to mpeg2. Same goes for generated text, the encode back to DV (4:1:1) and then to Mpeg2 (4:2:0) is not as good as going direct from the timelne to MPEG.
Consider that an unrendered timeline is essentially a 4:4:4 image in RAM. (Or at least the frame you’re viewing at the moment is 4:4:4. It’s just what’s in RAM at the moment.) Sure, that’s uncompressed frames of DV originated footage, but when Vegas generates a transition it’s uncompressed until you render it.
Rob Mack
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Take my perspective with a grain of salt. It’s just speculation.
Rob
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Ahh. I stand corrected. For some reason I thought V4 was also released at NAB. I think I started usin V3 4 or 5 months before V4 was released
Rob
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Good point. If he really just upgraded in August there’s a good chance they’ll upgrade him for cheap or free.
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It’s been a year since the last release and that’s usually been the period between Vegas releases. The exception is the period between Vegas 6 and 7 which was a year and a half.
If you remember, Vista was pushed out in the spring of that year, well before NAB. Vegas uses a lot of the plumbing of Windows and I think the Vista delay really screwed up the Vegas schedule that year. The result was probably a bit of treading water waiting for MS to get their Sh!t together. I’m guessing that the 32-bit component of Pro 8 was in development before V7 was released but wasn’t going to be released without Vista. The titler probably after V7 – I notice it uses OpenType which I’ve only seen shiped with Photoshop CS2 so far.
Anyway, I think that some of the components of VPro8 and the promised VPro64 have been in the pipeline since mid-V6.
Price? The early upgrade prices have always been less than I expected but I think it’ll be more than $150.00 this time. V7 was a lot less than I expected and I think the price reflected some of the issues I outlined above.
Rob Mack
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It’s not too late to reformat if that’s the problem, but you have to move everything you wan to keep to some other drive first. Reformatting will erase the drive in the process.
Rob Mack