Ah! So the logic is that there must be some items that get saved to a VidCap file, but not others? Well, at least this quite eseential bit of info about directories - that I've specifically set up for a session.

I've been using AdvCap quite a bit on this present complex project, and yes, my capture file info is there, excellent when needing to recapture, however not having the Directory info is a tad galling and rather silly. But there maybe a very good reason for this. Presently it is beyond my thoughts on the matter.

Thanks for the reality check Liam,

Grazie

It's worse than that. Open an old veg file with offline media and try to recapture the media. Vegas opens the last used vidcap file and adds all those offline clips to the file. How dumb is that!

I think that the person in charge of Vidcap must have a lot of other jobs as well. Maybe Vidcap get's looked at once a year, "whether it needs it or not".

Rob Mack

There's no good reason for it but there might be some bad reasons.

I think that no one really thought you'd want more than one vidcap file. And since it chokes if you get too many clip entries in it, I think they thought users would go find a better app before a year was out.

The media locations are just saved with the program prefs rather than the project file. Turns out it was a bad idea.

Rob Mack

So, people, can we list that which is kept in Vidcap and that which is Lost ..

I'll start it:-

Kept: Clip info

Lost: Directory info

. .Grazie

I always run VidCap standalone, maybe I'm nuts doing that but anyway, yes this sort of thing really bugs me, and DVDA as well, it always creates some temp folder on the system drive for the DVD image. This is a pain on a system with 6 drives.

Now I know I'm a bit of the odd one out but I can have 10 projects running at once and work on at least 4 in one day so having to remember where everthing is is bad enough but then having to coax Vegas into rebuilding it's Most Recent files and folders is a pain, by the time it's got it's act together it's time to move on.

And here's another gripe, why does it always have to assume the name of the file I want to render is the same as the project? I might split a few hours of audio into 100 files (like track 001.mp3, track 002.mp3) and it really becomes a pain. But wait, there's more!
If I decide in the midst of this process to save my project with a new version number (Big Job-04.veg etc), firstly it wants to save the file in the same folder as I'm putting all my tracks into and then next time I go to render, guess where it wants to put the file!
I know this sounds trivial but at 2 AM trying to meet a deadline it is b****y annoying and leads to lots of errors.

/end of winge/

Bob.

Here's the thing - Bob - I've been up since 2:00am working with VidCap, now when I want to create a New directory also on my F: drive, why does it send me the C: EVERYTIME!? Why? . .. Now, I can set up V5 to do its pre-renders to D: and it will keep this - "Start All PRojects With These Settings" - setting until such tiome as I wish to change. Not with VidCap.

Please, please, dear readers, do not interpret my words here as wishing to sound off against Vegas - Hell's Teeth! I love it! - it is I want it to get some of this basic stuff outta the door. Apart from that it just appears as illogical.

ok .. now you can talk behind my back . . . I'm off . .

Grazie

I am a bit confused with this - let me tell you what I have and see if I am getting what the issue is here.

I have a project and I have many capture directories. I break it down scene by scene. So in the vidCap file for the project I have something like F:\VA\titles, F:\VA\music, F:\VA\Death scene, F:\VA\police station and so on. Now for me all of this always comes up fine in the saved project file - VidCap project that is. I never get kicked out to the C:\ directory and it also loads up all the tapes I have logged. Capture directories are fine, going into the settings for Capture lists all the correct directoires. All I have to do is change to the one I want, or add a new one.

So - what I am getting here is that you can't do that? You get dumped back out to another unused directory? Or am I not understanding this.

Now what my gripes are, and maybe this is what you are saying, is that everytime I open vidcap is *always* opens the "default" project - which is whatever you worked on last. So, for example, I start a new project and I open VidCap - now it sits there while it loads up the last projects files. I complained about this before because I have something like 20 hours worth of footage in this project and it pisses me off that is opens every time. And on the other side we have the "Error. Cannot open 'default.vidcap' file" message that will pop up if you move, or change, the location of the project (i.e - it is on a removable drive) and at *that time* it defaults to the C:\ drive. So what my real issue is that you can set Vegas to open, or not open, last saved project when it loads but you *can not* do this with VidCap.

Or am I still not getting it?

You are very forgiving.

Ok . . When I save a VidCap project - MyProj1 - and have the directories for capturing "assigned" to MyProj1 saved - saved as say MyProj1, when I open my next VidCap project, MyProj2, and assign it its own directories, say MyProj2, save it and close it and THEN reopen MyProj1 this VidCap project will have the directories FOR MyProj2. - That's all, nothing more, nothing less.

My way of thinking is that if I save the parts of a project - here the Directories - I would think that on reopenning it, it would still maintain details for executing THAT project, meaning the directories.

Ok, onto the other thing, when I want to Create a Directory for Capturing, it now, in my terms, refuses to go to the drive it has been throwing back at me - that is, from the explanation above - and now tacidly throws me at the C: . . ? Why? You know I've been capturing on the F: drive? Why not, at least, put me back there? So, open a project and the directories will be the last ones used . .go create a directory and I get the C: drive and its tree! . .So, one way I get the "old" last used directory; but make a New Directory I get the C: drive . Now this, in my way of thinking, doesn't make sense. But then again, filmy, you couldn't understand what I was saying .. so, perhaps it IS me.

In all humbleness on my part, I truly think that you are using the s/w as it should be used. Vidcap is a coverall programme for capturing. You quite correctly have many directories for this programme to use. I, on the other hand, NAME each VidCap session/project with the name of the that which I'm capturing. So, if I'm capturing "Cutaways", then, guess what?, I name the VidCap file "Cutaways" - expecting that this "Cutaways" VidCap WILL have the Directory "Cutaways" assigned to it. Now, when I come to capture "Interviews" I don't expect the "Cutaways" directory to be showing .. I expect the "Interviews" directory to be assigned to it.


I've lived with it since Video Factory, you do faaaarrr more editing than I will ever do, so taking your experience as being the high water mark on what is acceptable I defer to your awareness of the s/w.

Ok . . what do people use the option for naming VidCap? Is it to easily "use" a preferred method of capturing for a particular session - forget about my thing with the dirtectories for the moment - I can see the potential value of creating a specific ANALOGUE capturing VidCap with the preferences being set as, say, not having Dv Control enabled - that sounds neat? Eh? And we could go down this road and set up all sorts of of option for capturing and make them tailormade for a particular type of capturing - yes I can see the value of that. I think I may even cionsider using that too. Then why can't I assign a directory in prefs and have it remain for that VidCap.

Look I've lived with it since Video Factory. You do faaaarrr more editing than I will ever do, so taking your experience as being the high water mark on what is acceptable I defer to your awareness of the s/w.

Best regards,

Grazie

[SNIP]...save it and close it and THEN reopen MyProj1 this VidCap project will have the directories FOR MyProj2. - That's all, nothing more, nothing less.

In the words of Emily Litela - Oh...well that's entirely different....Never Mind.

I see what you are saying. I never noticed this before. When I open a new project, if I capture, I also create a new vidcap file. I will have to check to see if it is actually saving settings from other projects...this is for sure not something that should happen.

I wanted to see this happen so on Vegas 4, open vidcap. Default capture directory in XP is the usual "C:\Documents and Settings\[USER NAME]\My Documents". I delete that and make a new location. I save this as "test1.sfvidcap" . Now I open an old project, load vidcap - same settings as "test1.sfvidcap". But that makes sense because VidCap is also a stand alone piece of software - annoying yes, but makes sense. But now - mmmmmm - I open another saved projects Vidcap file - Holy ****!! Yes Grazie - I get capture settings for the "test1.sfvidcap" file. Wow. And you say this does this in Vegas 5 as well? How come no one ever noticed this before? This is like a *major* bug - and I never noticed it before. LOL!!!

So I turned on a removable drive with a large project on it. Loaded up the sfvidcap file...and my god..this is so very bad. The only capture directory is the one from "test1.sfvidcap". Well, this is not good because clearly when I send off this hard drive with all the files on it it isn't going to link to the correct capture drives.

Wow - and all this time it is beyond me when no one has noticed this and complained. I am speechless that even I didn't notice it.

"RE: Grazie has a bug!! We all do!"

BOIL SOME WATER, GET THE ANTISEPTIC, GET THE IODINE.

=)

Dave

It's not that no one noticed. It's that no one complained.

The capture directories is part of the vidcap program prefs, not part of the project settings.

It's dumb. The problem is that people had just accepted that Vidcap was a scabbed-on piece of software that didn't really fit very well with Vegas. No one expected much from it.

Here's something similar, but in Vegas. When setting the default length of a still image, Vegas starts out with a round number like 5.000 seconds. That's great for PAL but if you switch to NTSC then this equals 149.850 frames. You would need to set the default length to 5.005 seconds to get 150.000 frames.

This setting should travel with the project file instead of with the program prefs. That way if you work on a PAL project in the morning and an NTSC project in the afternoon you don't have to go into the program prefs and reset this number.

I'm sure there are some other settings that would be better moved to the project file.

Rob Mack

It's not that no one noticed. It's that no one complained.

Ah, but they have. After my initial post in the thread titled vidcap bug?, I sent a feature request to Sony asking for this to be corrected. I never did hear back but, then again, I'm not sure if I would.

Mike

Don't think that the suggestion was ignored. Sometimes these things get fixed or added. I've had a couple of specific suggestions implemented and I'm sure I'm not an exception.

As the Vegas user base builds up a stock of experience and projects, these things become more important. This is essentially a project management issue, isn't it.

I just don't think that Vidcap has had much attention paid to it.

Not that I want to make excuses, but remember that in the run-up to Vegas 5.0 Sonic Foundry was in bad financial shape and was eventually sold. It's a wonder that anything got done at all. As always, I'm hoping that the Sony Vegas programmers are paying attention to core functionality rather than adding dubious new features.

Rob Mack

The reason I never noticed is because I usually work on a project by project basis. And I got a new system so I moved everything over...I never thought to just open the old projects capture file and look at it. I would have noticed this a few years ago had I been opening more than one project and capturing.

Maybe we should start a new thread called "VidCap bugs/grips/feature request" or something.

1> This problem - the lack of project based capture directory info that is saved.
2> The lack of being able to "open last project" or not when VidCap opens.
3> The accepted but annoying pop up about not being able to find the "default.sfvidcap" file when the last saved project is not found.
4> Deleting capture info doesn't always work. (i.e: Type in something, enter ins and outs, start capture - but something goes wrong. So you delete this info and/or try to do a recapture. You oft times get an error that the file you are trying to capture already exists or you capture but find out instead of "myfile.avi" you get "myfile_1.avi")