Stephen Mann
Forum Replies Created
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CTRL-Z crashing is usually a memory problem. Not necessarily a bad memory, it could also be a bad driver that has invaded some of the memory that CRTL-Z needs to use.
Run Prime95 to torture test your RAM, then DriverDetective to check for driver updates.
The free program: Prime95, available at https://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=103 will torture test your PC. If you have bad RAM or a heat sensitive component, this program will find it. While you may not be overclocking, Vegas is very processor intensive – more than Premiere. If you have a PC on the edge of stability, Prime95 will push your PC hard. If you can run Prime95 for an hour, then your PC hardware is probably not the problem.
If you have a problem driver, I recommend running Driver Detective from https://www.drivershq.com/ (Actually a good plan is to run Driver Detective periodically. I doesn’t do anything to your installed drivers unless you tell it to.)
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
First make a backup of your veg file.
You have to “un-multicam” your existing multicam track. When asked to preserve takes, I say “No” then you can add the new camera to a new track.
I am sure there’s a more elegant way to handle this, but the Multicam track uses “takes”, and I’ve never mastered takes.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
I never use the anti-alias color in the color sets. As you have discovered, the resolution is too low to get good results.
Here’s how I would do this:
In Photoshop, you will create two files. One is the menu image with strategically located menu labels. Highlight them, shadow them, make them glow, whatever…. The second file is your button mask. This will be the pointer that you move from menu label to label. (You can have as many masks as you have labels, or they can all be the same). The size is irrelevant since DVDA will scale the image to match the image frame. (This will be clear later).
Making the mask:
B&W Image, save as PNG file. The black areas of the mask will be the color in Color Set 2.In DVDA, insert a new menu, or select the top menu.
Replace the background media with your menu image that you created in Photoshop.Insert your media or sub-menu in this menu. You will now have one or more buttons on your menu each pointing to a media, sub-menu or navigation.
Select the Menu Page Properties.
General Tab:
Selected Buttons: Color Set 1
Activated Buttons: Color Set 2
Inactive Buttons: Transparent or Color Set 3One at a time, double-click on the button to select that item.
In the Properties Window:
Media
Button Style:
Image Only
No Thumbnail
No Mask
No Frame Media
No Frame MaskHighlight:
Style: Custom
Mask: Replace with the mask you created in Photoshop.
Mask Mapping: TransparencyHint:
You can right-click on a “finished” button and copy button attributes, then right-click on another button to paste the attributes.Using this process, I can pretty much replicate most Hollywood-style DVD menus.
Steve Mann
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
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I don’t think you can attach an image to this forum. You need to post it somewhere else and put the link here.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Good point. Also, if you do use an external drive to move work back and forth, make sure that Windows mounts the external drive as the same drive letter on both machines to avoid having to constantly search for files. You can do this with the Disk Management tool in Windows.
I’ll do you one better. Here’s a batch file that makes the current drive letter “B:” Put this in the root of your portable drive, and when Windows finds the drive, double-click on the batch file and open drive B: in Windows Explorer.
Most of my projects are run on 1Tb drives in a desktop external USB dock. I generally never know which drive letter that Windows will assign to the drive in the dock. So, with this batch file, every project is on drive “B:”.
It’s my new floppy drive.
@ECHO OFF
:: MakeDriveB.BAT
::
:: Substitutes CURDRIVE with NEWDRIVE
::
SET NEWDRIVE=B
::
SET CURDRIVE=
CD | CHOICE /C:ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ > NUL
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 SET CURDRIVE=A
IF ERRORLEVEL 2 SET CURDRIVE=B
IF ERRORLEVEL 3 SET CURDRIVE=C
IF ERRORLEVEL 4 SET CURDRIVE=D
IF ERRORLEVEL 5 SET CURDRIVE=E
IF ERRORLEVEL 6 SET CURDRIVE=F
IF ERRORLEVEL 7 SET CURDRIVE=G
IF ERRORLEVEL 8 SET CURDRIVE=H
IF ERRORLEVEL 9 SET CURDRIVE=I
IF ERRORLEVEL 10 SET CURDRIVE=J
IF ERRORLEVEL 11 SET CURDRIVE=K
IF ERRORLEVEL 12 SET CURDRIVE=L
IF ERRORLEVEL 13 SET CURDRIVE=M
IF ERRORLEVEL 14 SET CURDRIVE=N
IF ERRORLEVEL 15 SET CURDRIVE=O
IF ERRORLEVEL 16 SET CURDRIVE=P
IF ERRORLEVEL 17 SET CURDRIVE=Q
IF ERRORLEVEL 18 SET CURDRIVE=R
IF ERRORLEVEL 19 SET CURDRIVE=S
IF ERRORLEVEL 20 SET CURDRIVE=T
IF ERRORLEVEL 21 SET CURDRIVE=U
IF ERRORLEVEL 22 SET CURDRIVE=V
IF ERRORLEVEL 23 SET CURDRIVE=W
IF ERRORLEVEL 24 SET CURDRIVE=X
IF ERRORLEVEL 25 SET CURDRIVE=Y
IF ERRORLEVEL 26 SET CURDRIVE=Z
IF "%CURDRIVE%"=="" ECHO Error checking current drive
IF NOT "%CURDRIVE%"=="" ECHO Current drive is %CURDRIVE%:subst %NEWDRIVE%: /d
subst %NEWDRIVE%: %CURDRIVE%:\
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
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Also –
You only need to copy the media once. As long as both PC’s have the original media files, all you need to pass between them is the veg file. Easily handled in an email attachment.Steve Mann
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
It might help if we could see a screen shot of your problem. Also, just what style of DVD menu are you trying to achieve?
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
“Why isn’t there a blog devoted to Vegas users?”
Uh, aren’t you there now?
“It’s easy enough to say that you should do this or that, but it’d be great if someone timed out renders with different drive configurations, different graphic cards, SLI, how much RAM doesn’t matter, etc. I’d like to know these things”
Processor power is the primary determinate in render or encode speed. More RAM helps, as does lightning fast hard disk, but nothing beats processor power for render speeds. Go to the SonyCreativeSoftware.com Vegas forums and look for “Rendertest”.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com