Kevin

please feel free to "mirror" the wmv files on the Sony site. I have not found a solution to my media server bandwidth problems. I have an open support incident with my hosting company to investigate why my server cannot pump out more than 5.7Mbps (it has a 100Mbps port)... and until that gets resolved the server will be "underperforming".

I have also provided links to allow people to download the video rather than streaming and that has certainly allowed many more people to view the video. I am sure that due to my servers bandwidth issues it is taking people a lot longer to access the videos than I had planned.

Thanks for you help.

Liam.Kennedy_@_ImageBEAM.com (remove the "_")

Here are some mirrors for the streaming version.

Vegas 5 Session
DVD Architect 2 Session

Ben

Thanks for doing the mirror... I am sure it is helping. If you can send me some stats on how many views you get that would be great.

Out of interest... how is your media server configured (your own dedicated server / co-lo / bandwidth available?)

I am still <really> bummed that my own media server is not functioning the way it should be (which I am sure comes down to a network config issue with the data center.

Liam - London UK here - didn't get to NAB. THANK you . .. just viewing reviewing the educational tutorial on V5 and DVDA2. This is EXACTLY what I've wanted for these products .. . you've made me very very happy - GREAT WORK!

Grazie

Grazie

Glad you liked what we did.

You are <the> reason why I decided to do this... well... erm... not <just> you... but what "you represented". A fellow Vegas user who wanted to be here, with us, experiencing first-hand what was going on... but was unable to do so.

I do have some video I took of the Monday night Vegas Users party put on by Sony at the Paris hotel. I was using the on-board MIC (so the audio is not stellar) on my PD170 without a lamp (so the video is a bit dark at times) but I believe it will also serve as a great equalizer and allow many others to get the sense of what we got by being there.

Besides... I can't let my "home" country down. Gotta do something to make up for the guilty feeling I get for abandoning the UK 10 years ago.

> how is your media server configured

I don't really know. I have these guys host my media:
www.playstream.com

Here's the stats so far:
DVDA2 Unique hits: 10
Vegas5 Unique hits: 34
Average buffer time 1.48 seconds
Average view time: 250 seconds

Most people were using XP but at least one person was using Win98SE. :)

Playstream! I remember you said that in a prior post... just forgot.

Are you <paying> to have this hosted? Their charges (while reasonable in the scheme of things) could be pretty high for files as large as these. Are you on a free trial or something?

Liam, you aint abondoned us . .you're an excellent ambassador! Bl@@dy Good job you're doing too! - Yes, the open "democratic" approach you've applied to this project has NOT been lost on me. I hope the same is recognised by Sony - yeah? Just 'cos I couldn't make the time/financial comitment to visit NAB does NOT mean I've NOT wanted to be part of it - far FAR from it! You're initiaitive and self-starting is truly invigorating. I really hope to meet up with you one of these days - yeah?

Best regards,

Graham Bernard

Grazie

I'll make a point of getting in touch with you when I next come over (sometime end of July..ish).

It would be great to meet up.

-Liam

> Are you on a free trial or something?

I have an account for business - plenty of bandwidth. It doesn't get utilized that much. I'm just glad to get some real use out of it.

Liam - big thanks!

I know it's not an easy task - we do a similar thing at Music Industry trade shows http://www.sonicstate.com/news/videos.cfm (using Vegas to edit the vids, of course ;-) and it can be a PITA editing, rendering for the web and uploading as quickly as possible - you did a great job!

Andy

Liam, July sounds GGGrreeeattt! - Get in touch in the next month if you have something "firmer" to tell me .. yeah?

Grazie

I want to say I am incredibly grateful for all the efforts to make these streams available.

May I offer some camera work advice, though? (I offer it with all due respect...)

1. I don't have to see Gary Rebholz throughout the whole video. It was nice at the beginning to attach a face to a name, but his image takes up valuable real estate and serves no purpose. He's a good narrator and we don't need to see him thru the rest of the journey.

2. With that in mind, the camera should really remain stationary and focused on a full screen shot of Vegas and remain there. Gary would playback the timeline, and we were looking at the timeline and couldn't see the preview window. By the time the camera panned to the preview window, he was back at the timeline doing something we couldn't see again. Most people interested in these streams are familiar enough with Vegas to understand what Gary's doing, and his narration fills in the gaps.

REMEMBER, I'm still grateful!!! Thanks again,

Dan

Everything you said makes perfect sense and I agree entirely with your comments on both the editing and the camera work.

However there are <reasons> why we did it the way we did.

You may think that we just threw this together without any kind of planning or thought... but you have got that wrong if that is what you believe.

Let me share with you our (my) thought process on this and perhaps you will understand why it is the way that it is.

1). Why did we leave Gary in the shot for almost the entire video?
If we had all the time in the world to edit this... there would have been times when we would have switched to show Gary only and other times when we would have had switched to the PC screen only. To save us editing time... we simply decided to show Gary and the PC screen all the time (pretty much anyway) while still minimizing the impact of his PIP on the PC screen. Having him in the lower left corner seemed to achieve what we wanted.

2) Why did we not just leave the camera stationery on the whole PC screen?
Because... at the resolution of the windows media file you would have found it almost impossible to read what was being refered to. We simply <had> to zoom in to cover the points. Or did I get that wrong?

If we had been working on this for far longer we would have figured out beforehand exactly which parts of which seminar would benefit from us viewing the entire screen and which parts would have required us to zoom in. Instead... we were pretty much going on instinct and sometimes we got it wrong.

We actually discussed (I had planned) to do the shoot using three cameras. The 3rd camera (which we did not use) would have been locked down capturing the entire screen. Then in editing we would have switched between the wide and the zoomed shots as appropriate. In the end... without the use of DV hard drives I decided it would take far too long to capture let alone edit using 3 cameras.

We also discussed the possibilty of doing this as a live-to-tape mix where we would have the video from all 3 cameras being fed to a mixer and we switch to the appropriate shot. That would have ebeen ideal as we would have then only had one tape to capture for each seminar and it would have already been edited. But... in the time we had available to plan for this (no time basically) and the budget (none) what you got is what you got.

So. Understand that what you got from us was a compromise between what we would have prefered to do for the highest quality experience over what was appropriate/possible to do based upon how quickly everyone expected (and I wanted) to make the video available.

Maybe we'll do better next year.

And you did a great job, Liam! You don't have to worry about me - I'm in the business of shooting PPT presentations / live demos! I understand the contention between field of view and resolution. These issues are sometimes unavoidable.

Dan, your advice is almost on target, but it's a "live" thing - as my associate who does the shooting likes to say ;)

> the camera should really remain stationary and focused on a full screen shot of Vegas and remain there

With all due respect, I disagree. I’m glad they didn’t stay on the full screen shot because we would have missed some important timeline info that is new to Vegas 5, like transition envelopes. I think they made the right call under the circumstances to zoom in on the transition envelope and sacrifice the preview. I can now recreate the envelope and watch my own preview window. If they had stayed full screen, I would have seen the preview and wondered, “how’d he do that” because I could not have seen the envelope shape in full screen mode. IMHO, they did an excellent job.

You definitely have to present differently for video than a classroom. It would have been nice if Gary left the video preview torn off and up by the timeline so the camera could have gotten both the timeline and preview in the same shot. The only other option was to use a third camera that was fixed on the preview window. Then you could cut that into the video as needed in post.

I didn’t mind the talking head throughout the video. It gave you something to watch while nothing was going on in the timeline view. It would have been nice to remove the talking head during some of dialogs like the Mask dialog because Gary was changing options that were behind the talking head and we couldn’t see what he was doing. Just a dissolve off and then back on after the changes were made would have helped show us what he was doing. Just an idea for next time. I really loved it and appreciate it.

~jr

Let's also remember they were trying to get this thing up and available pretty much immediately. You can always do more refinements, but I saw the poll results... not everyone wanted to wait long enough for a refined edit! :D

I watched the video last night and loved it. It helped take some of the anxiety away for having to figure out the new stuff in Vegas. Thanks again guys.
Cheroxy

It would have been nice to remove the talking head during some of dialogs like the Mask dialog

Given more time we would have scrubbed through the timeline to find the spots where we had Gary over the top of something important. We (Matt) did that when we were editing the DVDA2 seminar (you will see I think about four spots when the PIP of Gary is faded out/in). I did not do that on the V5 edit (which I did later and was more in a rush to finish).

Anyway... good suggestions on the Video preview. That may have worked out better (although Gary may also have found it more inconvenient as I bet he would have needed to keep moving it out the way).

I was planning on producing a DVD for the Sony training manager (which he asked for) so I'll do a quick re-edit and clean up some of those problems.

Maybe we'll do better next year.

Hell, I'd be just as thrilled if you did the exact same thing all over again next year, for those of us who can never get to NAB!

Despite my critique, I will reiterate that I am grateful for all the trouble you went to. I never expected any editing at all to the stream. I also thought as I was watching, "Gee, wouldn't it have been easier on these guys just to lock down the camera and enjoy the presentation themselves while the tape was running?"

Instead, I saw your continuing concern over correctly composing the shot (much appreciated).

BTW, I learned something in the above recent posts about videotaping presentations. It IS more complicated than I thought.

Thanks again,
Dan

Terrific job, I understood the entire content and it sure makes me anxious to make the purchase. In the meantime I used the trial versions while Gary talked. Any chance we could download his classroom example files?

TomG

It IS more complicated than I thought.

Dan, yep, if you have never done this thing before I can appreciate why you posted the comments you did. I am glad you found the subsequent explanations and discussions cleared that up for you.

That is one of the good things about a forum such as this. Without your prompting of the issue there may have been many other forum members who were wondering the exact same things that you were.

I am glad we got an opportunity to go over this, for the benefit of everyone.