Thoughts on the Vegas manual.

farss wrote on 4/29/2004, 6:56 AM
I can understand the economic reasons behind not being able to purchase a printed manual, I'm quite happy to print my own even thought it does take a fair amount of time to print it out in color.
However the manual is laid out to suit double sided printing which isn't economically available to most of us so quite a fair amount of paper is wasted on blank pages when it's printed out single sided.
Also the pages are formatted for letter but in many parts of the world A4 is the standard so again quite a bit of paper is wasted. I don't know if this is feasable or not but also having it available as a Word doc would mean we could reformat it to suit the larger size paper and hopefully use less paper.

Only a minor point, apart from that now that I've fired up V5 for the first time and used DVDA 2 to make my first multi language DVD I'm impressed, don't quite know why all the gripes about the HKI. I'm also using SonicFire Pro, now there's a HKI if ever I saw one, but it still gets the job done.

Comments

TorS wrote on 4/29/2004, 7:34 AM
I agree wholeheartedly - but I did think the Acrobat print facility would upscale or downscale docs neatly to fit the paper size of you printer. Isn't there a way to get round the left-right page thing?
Anyway, I just had a quote for the printimng of 1 manual professionally (full colour). It matches the price of the upgrade (Vegas 5 + DVD production suite)!
Tor
Jsnkc wrote on 4/29/2004, 7:37 AM
"However the manual is laid out to suit double sided printing which isn't economically available to most of us so quite a fair amount of paper is wasted on blank pages when it's printed out single sided."


Pretty much every printer I have ever used has an option in the printer settings to print only the odd numbered pages, or only the even numbered pages. Just print all the odds, then flip over the pages and print all the even's and there ya go, perfect double-sided prints.
barleycorn wrote on 4/29/2004, 7:48 AM
> double sided printing which isn't economically available to most of us

How does it cost any more to print double-sided? Can't you just print the odd pages, reload the paper, and print the even pages?

> having it available as a Word doc would mean we could reformat it

It's a FrameMaker document saved as a PDF. FrameMaker can export Word documents but I wouldn't expect it to be a pretty sight.

Have you considered printing it 2-up? Too small? Can your printer handle Letter? You could have some trimmed for you.
farss wrote on 4/29/2004, 7:58 AM
The problem with printing double sided on a non duplex printer is if you get a single error on the second run things get very mixed up, I do it occassionally with my own manuals that are only 40 or 50 pages long but doing that with 350 pages is a bit of a worry.

Must admit I haven't tried doing it 2 up but that would make it harder to read not just from a point size but also the page is rotated 90 deg.

None of these are huge issues, but with every release the manual gets that much bigger and its fast approaching the point where it doesn't fit into a large binder useing 100gsm paper which I prefer as it's coated inkjet paper which means the pictures come out that much better.

But I see SOny have a very nice looking eBook reader coming out, maybe thats the answer, all the manuals loaded into that. Only downside is I think it's only B&W.
GaryKleiner wrote on 4/29/2004, 8:33 AM
>The problem with printing double sided on a non duplex printer is if you get a single error on the second run things get very mixed up<

What I do is print 20- 30 pages at a time so if there is a misfeed, the waste is kept to a minimum.

Gary
Jsnkc wrote on 4/29/2004, 9:19 AM
Yeah, that's what I do too on large manuals. I usually go in batches of 50 pages at a time and I am fine.
ken c wrote on 4/29/2004, 10:57 AM
http://www.fineprint.com/

does a GREAT job of 2-sided printing. It will also do 4-to-1 prints, which I use for ebooks. It's great..

http://www.fineprint.com/products/fineprint/index.html

ken
rextilleon wrote on 4/29/2004, 11:34 AM
Haven't printed version 5.0 manual but I did print version 4.0 and it cost me 25.00 bucks at Kinkos--bound but not color.
PeterWright wrote on 4/29/2004, 11:01 PM
I had both V5 and DVDA2 manuals printed at Snap Printing - two separate spiral bounds cost A$74.

This is Black and White of course, Colour would cost a lot more, but it's not necessary for me - if I need to look at a colour pic, there's always the pdf on screen.