Questions

Jeff Waters wrote on 8/7/2005, 3:04 PM

Hi Gang,
A few unrelated questions. Appreciate any help.

1) I'm using Vegas 5 and am creating a fitness video. The instructor is mic'd with a wireless lavalier. In Vegas, the audio only comes through on the left of the stereo channels. I "combined" the channels to make it mono. When I play back the DVD on my home theatre system, his vocals come just through the center channel speaker. Should I be duplicating this left and right stereo so it comes out the front left and right speakers as well? Any tips?

2) Are external firewire/usb2 hard-drives fast enough to be used for actual video editing... or should they only be used for storage?

3) I've seen a few DVD's out there devoted to learning Vegas. I'm reasonable with it now, but would like to expand my skill. Any opinions on good ones to purchase are much appreciated.

Thanks!
Jeff

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 8/7/2005, 3:16 PM

1. if you're encoding to stereo AC3, the voice should be equal on both sides of the mix in a stereo playback, unless you've got a phase issue going on. Rather than combining channels, you might consider choosing "Use Left Channel Only" as opposed to combining. Have you checked the mix in Vegas in mono before rendering?

2. External Firewire drives are plenty fine for editing. Some folks have great luck with USB2 drives, others don't. I guess the same can be said for Firewire drives; I routinely stack them several drives deep. One thought to consider, Firewire doesn't use CPU resources, USB2 does.

3. Lotsa DVD's out there. www.vasst.com and ClassonDemand.com offer DVDs, plus there are 2 books on Vegas out there. (Disclosure, I wrote one book, and co-authored the other, so I'm somewhat biased)