MEDIASTUDIO 6.5 "Best" According To VIDEOMAKER

[Technoid]

I have seen a lot of "broken" comercial DVD's...

We have a nordic manufactor of dvds containing "B" movies....

They must have something wrong in their authoring progs..

The computershop where I work is wall to wall with a videorenting shop and we usualy checks "scratched" dvds for the owner...

and 90% of the dvd's that people say won't work in their players are from one publisher.

[IM_Riktar]

farid :

Thumbs up for VV3. It is a challenge to relearn a new interface, but the end results have been worth the effort (So far).

Jerrold Jones:

I agree that the demo isn't too much "fun" since SOFO puts too many limits on it. I think they would do better by releasing a full demo that would be restricted by time or filesize instead of crippling the features.

My take on the "full" package has been a positive one from the results I have produced.

As a caveat to anyone who uses MSPro or Premiere and looks into trying VV3:

For lack of a better analogy you will be going from speaking Mexican (MSPro) and Spanish (Premeire) right into German. The timeline interface is somewhat confusing and the controls work quite differently in Vegas. However once you learn some of the basic editing techniques with this software the confusion will disappear and you will begin to appreciate the features this product offers.

I would be interested to hear how this software works for first-timers who don't have to "unlearn" the "standard" interface of current NLE software.

Let me close by saying that this is not meant to be a ringing endorsement for the product. I have a ways to go before I completely ditch my current software (MSPro 6.0). But so far the initial impressions are positive regarding Vegas Video 3.

[wkulecz]

Name names!

I've a weakness for B movies, and have several old Three Stooges and WC Fields disks. The quality of the originals wasn't very good on most of these but I've seen no clearly "digital" glitching like I see on DVD-R or DVD+RW or the XP Monty Python disk (also not from pristine originals) which I've not had time to test elsewhere.

"Cult of the Cannibal God" with Usurla Andress and Stacy Keatch (sp? on both, I stink on trivia) is a bargin basement encoding -- 2x zoom is unwatchable, but it plays glitch free and still looks better than VHS tape at normal playback.

My homemade DVD's are pretty bad at 2X zoom also, but this is perhaps asking for too much. Insisting on glitch-free playback is not.

Name your 90% bad disk publisher so I can be on the lookout.

Crap is produced everywhere in everything, my wife has bought some pretty poor VHS tapes of old Bonanza episodes.

Physical damage to the disk don't count, we've had several Blockbuster rental DVD's that didn't play right and obviously had been mishandled on casual examination. OTOH some pretty ratty looking disks have played fine so seeing a scratch doesn't necessariarly mean there will be a problem.

Disks out fo the burner are as pristine as one can get.

--wally.

[Jerry Jones]

REVISED POST:

IM_Riktar:

What angered me about the Vegas Video 3.0 demo was Sonic Foundry's *apparent* lack of options in connection with the selection of specific RGB values for color clips and borders... essential to stay within legal luma and chroma.

I would suggest anybody who is really interested in the legal luma/chroma topic check out the articles in DV Magazine by John Jackman:

http://www.dv.com/magazine/2001/1201/jackman_legalstills_pt1_1201.html

Both Premiere and MediaStudio Pro give the editor the ability to manually select values that are broadcast legal.

With Vegas Video - it *initially* appeared to me that one had to "guess" when using the Sonic Foundry color choosers.

But upon further conversations with more experienced Vegas Video 3.0 users, I was advised the "window" that automatically pops up when one drops a color clip into the timeline *hides* the numeric values selector.

To solve this, one has to *grab* a corner of the window with one's mouse and stretch the window and enlarge it... to reveal the numeric values selection spin boxes.

Vegas Video - to me - seems like a multi-track audio program with some video functionality grafted-in.

Its tool set doesn't even begin to compare with that of MediaStudio Pro when it comes to titling or DVD authoring.

True - the audio tools are superior - but if you really think about it... great audio is obtained during the *shoot* with proper microphone placement and many other factors...

Audio tools in computer programs help one to *fix* mistakes made in the field, but they - by themselves - don't add up to great audio.

And Vegas is not supported by any 3rd party plug-ins except Pixelan.

[Technoid]

Scanbox!
Recogbised by their Swan logo!

Lots of B movies and "not mainstream"

Overall bad VHS quality and very badly authored DVD's...

BTW:

Don't you all hate when the DVD disc hijacks your player??

One scanbox movie I rented disabled everything when the movie started:
Play, pause, stop, eject, etc, etc
Had to pull the cord to get the dvd out of the player

Don't remember the title,
It was about some bozo stealing a F117 Stealth....
Don't know much more, even PowerDVD BSOD'ed on this movie....

[Patrick]

Ummmm....

"Cult of the Cannibal God"

Wally, you need to get out more!

[IM_Riktar]

Jerrold Jones :

WOW! Nice article. Thanks for the link. After reading this stuff and going back through VV3 I found a selection under the Video FX tab that has "broadcast colors" section that allows me to use the "clamp" filter. This results in the color range being set to 16-235 or "Broadcast" legal. At least according to the Histogram I am checking it against. From my limited experience (That is to make the analogy, I sure know how to drive a car, But I don't have all the mechanics down just yet.) This would seem to fulfill that aspect you mentioned?

If I am missing something let me know.

For myself I am finding VV3 a very interesting choice in NLE. So far I am finding the speed and quality and output of my videos to be very good.

I wish their was a way to set up the interface to a more "standard" look like MSP or Premeire. But that is just my personal opinion. And for that matter the intuitiveness of the interface becomes moot once you figure out the "where and how" stuff is.

But that's me.

[Jerry Jones]

I had some conversations with some experienced Vegas Video 3.0 users and they advised me that I had missed the numeric color values selectors because the default window to adjust color clips *hides* them!

Sure enough - I tried it again.

I dragged the color clips to the Vegas timeline and the window was sized so that the spin boxes were completely hidden!

I grabbed the corner of the window with my mouse and stretched it out and - lo & behold - the spin boxes became visible!

Although I found this to be non-intuitive, I was happy to learn the engineers at Sonic Foundry had not overlooked the importance of including numeric selectors.