Does someone actually believe that "all men are created equal"?

. . . but sometimes I read things, they don't make sense .. to me at least . . .

Ah, but at least you tried, and that's my point! Too, I agree with everything you said regarding the forum and its purpose. You, Grazie, and many, many others, use the forum, rather than abuse it.

Yes, all those who provide the rest of us with the answers when all else has failed (when all else has been tried) are to be highly commended for their invaluable help! I for one greatly appreciate them!

J--

While I agree it is pretty frustrating I think a lot of the problem is that the Vegas manual, like so many others today, is basically a s set of descriptions of what does which. What it isn't is goal oriented.
That's probably sotheing that has been more the role of a teacher, given the students enough of a leg up to know how to use the information in the documentation to achieve a certain result.
Let's just take a simple example, say zoom in on a still. Seems bleeding obvious to most of us but you don't find a listing for how to do that in the documentation. Sure there's heaps about pan/crop, you might have read that bit of the manual, perhaps even more than once but there's a lot to digest in the manual. The difficulty is making the connection between a certain piece of information and the goal you're trying to achieve.
I have had the same difficulty with programs like Autocad and Photoshop. I know you need to spend a lot of time reading the manuals and working through tutorials to start making the connections between what you want to achieve and how the tools at your disposal can be used to reach those goals.
But what does annoy me a bit are those who don't make the effort to understand the medium they're working in.I think part of the issue is far broader than what's been raised, we live in an age of instant gratification, the idea of learning something, as in immersing ourselves in it seems to have gone out the window.

Does someone actually believe that "all men are created equal"?

Yes.

J--

But what does annoy me a bit are those who don't make the effort to understand the medium they're working in.I think part of the issue is far broader than what's been raised, we live in an age of instant gratification, the idea of learning something, as in immersing ourselves in it seems to have gone out the window.

Well said, Farss!

J--

I feel the same way lately. :) How many "my AVI won't work" post do we get, no mention of what type, then find out it's Divx. Then, we have about 5-6 new topics on that SAME THING in the SAME DAY. :( If people would read post instead of just posting, then we'd have a lot of less repeast posts (even use the search function, it works VERY VERY well).

I don't have V5 (yet), but I do know that the V4 manual (or, preferable, the help file, hit F1 while in Vegas for all those who don't know) has lots and lots and LOTS in info. Heck, they even have info on field order & the size stills should be! :)

The manual could use a brief "how do i do this FAQ" section (it was in a VERY comples game I bought a couple weeks ago, and it helps, but people STILL post questions on how to do stuff in that FAW w/o reading it). However, most likely the search function will take care of that. :)

I couldn't agree more.
Read the manual. Yes
Use the Search. Yes
Lazy - Not necessarily. This forum is so friendly that I (and probably others) ask questions just to be involved. It's much more satisfying to have a question answered by real people, people with a wealth of knowledge on a particular subject, people who enjoy sharing their experience. And has been said so many times before, Vegas offers so many different ways to skin the same cat. You can't get that from the manual.

Pupils learn from teachers, not from books. It's much more fun.

Alan

Pupils learn from teachers, not from books.

Not always. The job of a teacher to help students learn how to think for themselves. If one is always dependent on another for information, then that individual is less than whole--his intellectual growth is stunted.

It's much more fun.

It's certainly easier. ;o)

J--

I agree with Grazie that there are things in the manual that definitely don't make sense. Unlike some others though, that's when I go to forums such as these and do a search.
Sometimes though, the problem is that what I call it is not what someone else calls it is not what Sony calls it. The result is searching through a lot of posts that are irrelevant.
Another pet peeve, as has been mentioned, is the lack of documentation on certain subjects - such as batch capturing.
The manual devotes 1/2 page to capturing - and it's been that way since Vegas 3. And forget finding anything about batch capturing there either - it doesn't exist. Granted, you go into the Help menu when you're in the capture utility but I personally think this is something that should be in the manual.
My (Canadian) 2¢ worth.

Mike

My opinion: Editers do not need to know how Vegas works. The only thing they need is a manual with an alphabetical list of tasks and then blocks with small tasks written in them such as "press shift + B together" and arrows connecting the block chains. Understanding
comes later after multiple repitition. This forum would have to change its name to "copyrights and business setups for video editing" and " how to repair your computer" after this book was published. Under pan/crop for instance you might have 100 block chains on different ways to handle pan/crop variations. Hell, you can even have the index in the help section and find the chain you want and press the button after you highlight the clip and it automatically follows the chain for you.
Done deal. Bam bam bam video done. Yeah I know it's more complex than that but somebody with vision has to take control.

JJK

I agree there are some people who obviously just installed Vegas and want to immediately become productive before referencing the manual or searching the forum. But I wouldn't say the forum is overwhelmed by these kinds of posts.

I think farss nailed the real problem. That is, although the Vegas manual has a ton of information, it's sorely lacking in actual application and use information. Vegas and its manual are like a box of tools and an instruction manual describing how each tool works, but it typically doesn't tell you how to build anything. We all would benefit if Sony or a third party would develop an application manual. Maybe spot could produce such a manual/DVD.

I always try to first look at all my available resources and understand the problem before posting on the forum. If I go to the forum, most of the time I find my answers by searching. I think's it's a very common to most forums that people don't use the search capabilities enough.

Rule one of any forum is you can ignore anybody's question or answer. I always get a kick out of people that seem to go off the deep end because they get po-ed somebody "didn't read the manual".

How do you know they didn't read the manual? They may not have, then again they could have and simply not found what they were looking for or didn't understand exactly how the topic was explained.

Check the license agreement. Can anybody point to a clause that mandates you must read the manual before asking a question in the forum? Of course not. How silly would that be? There's no requirement either you must search the forum to see if the topic has been covered before you ask a quesiton.

People learn in different ways. Some love to curl up with a manual and read them cover to cover. Others never touch them. This forum, other forums regardless of topic all have the same pattern. About two dozen questions are asked repeatedly. Somebody will usually answer and for sure somebody usually gets annoyed. That's life.

. . . somebody usually gets annoyed.

Thank you, BB, for proving my point!

J--

Always happy to comment on some people starting silly threads that are just exercises in ego stroking, blowing off steam, pet peeves or whatever <wink>