TechTV: The Screensavers

Luxo wrote on 8/9/2002, 3:47 PM

Did anyone catch The Screensavers a few days ago when they reviewed Cool Edit 2.0? They were head over heels about the real-time mixing and audio effects processing, and when asked about which apps compete with Cool Edit's functionality, the reviewer said something like, "Sonic Foundry has Sound Forge, but that's just a sound file editor." No mention of Vegas, which has Cool Edit beat hands down.

It gets under my skin when Vegas doesn't get its due, especially in the media. I wrote the reviewer, but have heard no response. Just wondering if anyone shared that experience.

Luxo

Comments

Shredder wrote on 8/9/2002, 3:57 PM

I know, it's like VV is the bastard child of the editing world.

I really don't understand it, it's so incredibly easy to use, full featured, priced well etc, and comes from a company with a solid programming background with SF.

For whatever reason, it sucks. I want SoFo to be wildly sucessful so they keep adding cool features to VV!

- Jon

dcrandall wrote on 8/9/2002, 4:56 PM

One hopefull sign...for the first time ever, I actually saw a retail package of VV3 at a local Fry's Electronics today.

psg wrote on 8/9/2002, 4:58 PM

Excellent points !!!

I moved from Studio DV/7 to Premiere and then back (Premiere was pain to use and unstable). I've just started using VV based on a few reviews and trying the demo.

I'm extremely impressed at the features, capabilities and the quality of VV. It blows away a lot of software I seen and used over the years. But if SF doesn't think about some serious marketing, we could end up with an "orphan".

BarryB wrote on 8/9/2002, 5:17 PM

They definitely need to bolster their marketing and become a household name like adobe

gnfoster wrote on 8/9/2002, 10:17 PM

I actually bought my first copy of 2.0 at a Best Buys. I had never heard of it before and had to look it up on the net to know what I was going to get. 3.0 is awesome!

I've often wondered why TechTV doesn't ever have a review when they quite often review these types of programs.

Anybody here know anything about using a dual monitor system with VV 3.0?

later...

TalawaMan wrote on 8/11/2002, 11:11 PM

I caught that too... Yes, I was quite perturbed myself, especially since I use both VV and Cool Edit. There are two features of Cool Edit that I use when mastering an audio CD that if VV had I would drop Cool Edit in a heartbeat. The first is it has a great hard limiter that I have not been able to duplicate in VV. Second is the ability to batch render out a complete mastered track at CD frame intervals so that I can have a one track bleed into the next with out a glitch in audio.

Talawa Man

Shredder wrote on 8/12/2002, 12:22 AM

TalawaMan,

I'm not sure what you mean about the batch render, but I've been able to make gapless CDs using VV3. CD Track Markers dropped with the 'N' key snap to the CD frame intervals perfectly.

I have done this many times with VV3, I make continuous mix CDs where I custom fade each track into one another. When I play it on a CD player, there is no gap whatsoever between tracks.

One main point is in this case I burn the CD with VV3. I have heard of some issues if you render the track regions as WAVs & then burn with another app, but that's the problem of the other burning app.

As far as your hard limiter, you can always get even better 3rd party DirectX compression plugins. 3 that are quite popular are:
iZotope - Ozone http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/directx.html
Sonic Timework - CompressorX - http://www.sonictimeworks.com/products.html
db-audioware - limiters & others http://www.db-audioware.com/products.htm

I think that functions like these are best left to 3rd party plug-ins that are geared specifically for the task. If that's the 'bread & butter' of the company, they'll make it good.

Let me know how these stack up compared to CoolEdit's hard limiter.

- Jon

TalawaMan wrote on 8/12/2002, 11:08 AM

What I mean by batch... What I usually do in VV is take my rendered stereo audio from each song and combine it into one project so that I can fade between songs as you described (I believe this is traditionally part of the mastering process but I have taught myself so I’m not real sure). Then I rendered the whole thing down (with markers) so that it one huge wav file. Then I take it into Cool Edit and the markers show up on CD frame boundaries. Next I merge the sections in Cool Edit so that I can batch write out the sections as wave files, where each wave is a track on my CD. I then use the CD writing software that came with me burner to burn the CD. It sounds like you are doing every thing I'm doing in VV, but probably saving about a half hour or more of time. I plan on looking into it. Also, thanks for the plug in links.

Talawa Man

jetdv wrote on 8/12/2002, 11:36 AM

To use Vegas to burn the audio CDs with the seamless tracks where you want, try using "N" to add a CD Track Marker instead of "M" to add a regular marker. Vegas will create a new track whereever you press "N" and there will be NO gaps at that point.

HeeHee wrote on 8/12/2002, 4:49 PM

gnfoster,

<<Anybody here know anything about using a dual monitor system with VV 3.0?>>

I don't use dual monitors at home...yet, but I do know how to make it work. Getting dual support depends on the video card and OS. What OS and Video card do you have or going to get?

Once you get the dual displays working in your OS, all you have to do in Vegas is undock the features, like the preview window, by clicking and dragging on the left edge of the window. This will undock and you can move it over to the other display.

SonyDennis wrote on 8/14/2002, 10:07 AM

I'm thinking Wave Hammer Mastering Tools (now included w/ Sound Forge 6) would solve your hard limiting problem, and it can be used from within Vegas.

As far as your other issue, Vegas Video 3 does Disc-at-Once burning from the timeline (using CD Architect technology), and has no gaps between tracks, as others have mentioned.

///d@