[Ted Snow]

Yes, you can delete all the source tracks once you’ve finished editing. I usually just mute them just in case I need to refference back to an edit somewhere. If you delete them, then save your work, your original layout of tracks will be gone. As Edward stated, Excaliber does in essence what I am doing but does obviously save some time by doing the work for you. I just don’t have Excaliber “yet”.

[Ted Snow]

I forgot to mention that once I get all the video edited the way I want it I mute the original video tracks.

[Ted Snow]

I know Ed has much more experience at this than I do…plus the fact that he uses the Excaliber program…but the way I have found that works best for me is to put each camera on a seperate track, get them sync’d up (I use the audio to sync the tracks with), if you have “dead” spaces in the ceremony that you want to cut then you have to do as Ed stated and cut them from all tracks at once (with either auto ripple or post ripple). Then I insert a blank video track at the very top and turn off auto ripple. I Then “cut” the sections of video I want to use from each individual video track and drag it to the top track. Then I pick the next scene from the best video track and repeat the process of cutting and moving to the top track. This way I can see exactly where each section came from (which camera track). If you want to do a cross fade transition instead of a straight cut you can drag the edge of either adjoining clip to create the cross fade. Once I get the video portion the way I want it I then work on the audio. You can even edit the audio in the same manner if you choose to but using the volume envelope on the audio tracks works fine.
The reason I started editing this way is because the very first mulit camera wedding I did I ended up having to re-edit the whole project because I was trying to use the opacity envelopes on each video track to fade in and out for the edits. For some reason this created a very “choppy” looking final video even though I made sure that the level of any video track that wasn’t being used in a particular scene was pulled down to zero. Once I changed my way of editing to my current way everything comes out great.

[Ted Snow]

Margie,
One thing you might do in the future, especially for a wedding video (since the ceremony is usually less than an hour)…once you start the cameras recording…leave all of them in record mode, do not stop any of the cameras even if you’re walking up an isle with the camera pointed at the floor. Then once you capture your tapes, you can sync them up once and they will be synced throughout the entire ceremony. Makes editing much easier in my opinion.

[Ted Snow]

Also check the menu on your camera…make sure DV in is NOT on.

[Ted Snow]

I have an Alesis HD24 in my studio. Great machine. When I bought mine, Alesis had a promo going on…buy an HD24 and get the Firewire adaptor port free with a mail-in coupon. It is an extra step transferring tracks to the PC, but it’s a simple process with the included software and is MUCH faster than using the ethernet port. Actually the transfer speed is the same as copying from one PC hard drive to another, which in essence is what you are doing…besides the fact of having to use the ADAT FST software. I still do most of my mixes from the ADAT HD24 thru my Mackie 32X8 analog console…stereo out to the PC for the stereo mix. But Vegas is a VERY powerful multitrack audio program but you really need a midi fader controller or you end up spending hours tweeking a mix one track at a time with the mouse.

[Ted Snow]

You might try downloading the latest firmware from plextor.

[Ted Snow]

Do you possibly have V6.0 installed and started the project with it? I think that is the message you get when you try to open a project in an earlier version of Vegas.

[Ted Snow]

Thanks Steve…good thing to know.

[Ted Snow]

Thanks for the replies Ed and Rick.