Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 3/24/2004, 10:12 PM
I had to reformat my hard drive a total of FOUR TIMES over the year!

When a tech support person tells you to do this, you should call his/her boss and ask that they be fired!! Except for a virus that overwrites the boot sector, I cannot imagine ever needing to do this. I suppose there might be times when you have to reinstall the operating system, but even there, a tech support person that understands which end is up should know that Windows supports "repair" installs which let you keep most of your settings intact so you don't have to spend days tweaking everything back to the way you had it.

If you have Windows ME or Window XP, you can also enable the System Restore feature. Usually I am not a fan of anything that steals computer cycles and slows performance, but the performance hit is neglible, and the ability to save your tail is enormous. System Restore lets you go back in time, sometimes weeks or months, and lets you put your system in the state it was in before some program got installed that screwed it up. It usually takes less than five minutes to "roll back" you system using System Restore, and if it doesn't fix the problem, or if it makes matters worse, you can completely reverse the process.

Don't EVER let some bozo tech support person talk you into doing such nonsense again.
jester700 wrote on 3/25/2004, 5:23 AM
There have been a couple times that I've recommended this. Some people have systems that are so full of spyware, unused installed software & shovelware, and various clutter that it's just as quick to start from scratch than to fix whatever problems are being reported. Another consideration is how customized the system is. If there are many used programs, that's one thing. But for those who just use e-mail, IE, and office, it's another story.
cbrillow wrote on 3/25/2004, 5:48 AM
For those Studio refugees who like to use Smart Sound -- assuming that you could get it to work -- and would like to use it in Vegas or Screenblast, you can. (with just a little effort...)

Here's one way to do it:

1) In Vegas or Screenblast, find the length of the video clip that you want to back up with Smart Sound.

2) Open up Pinnacle Studio, and create a title, using one of their templates. Adjust the duration of the title so that it matches the length of the clip in step 1.

3) Select the Smart Sound variation that you want to use and drag it into place in Studio.

4) Write an AVI file from Studio, making sure to uncheck the "Include Video" box. This will leave you with an audio-only avi file that can be read into Vegas/SB, and dragged into place to go with your clip.

This has probably been posted here before and I apologize for wasting your time if it has. Just visting for the time-being, in anticipation of purchasing Vegas 5 in the near future.
johnmeyer wrote on 3/25/2004, 8:08 AM
There have been a couple times that I've recommended this. [reformatting the hard disk]

Even in the cases you mention, destroying absolutely everything by doing a re-format and reinstallation of the O/S and all applications is way too drastic. I would highly recommend that you first have them follow the directions given in this Microsoft Knowledgebase article on how to do a "repair" install of Windows XP:

How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade 315341
cubelodyte wrote on 3/25/2004, 9:39 AM
Don't EVER let some bozo tech support person talk you into doing such nonsense again.

I consider a good system flush to be a good regular maintenance regimen. I'm on 2000, so I don't have the luxury of that wonderful restore capability.

If you are going to do this, invest in Ghost or Disk Image. Keep an image of your system at fresh install with all the drivers and basic necessities. This way you can just drop the image, and save yourself about 6 hours.

Another alternative would be to take an image just before installing potentially damaging software.

I'm sure this all sounds extreme to XP users, but it does seem to keep the system more stable.
jester700 wrote on 3/25/2004, 10:03 AM
Now that I think about it, the times I've wiped the drive also corresponded with an OS update. IIRC, it was a case of "well, we might as well take this opportunity to move on from win95 (or winME)". So I guess the PC befuddlement wasn't the sole reason for doing this (and I do not ever do OS "upgrades" except Service Packs).
jester700 wrote on 3/25/2004, 10:08 AM
"I'm sure this all sounds extreme to XP users, but it does seem to keep the system more stable."

Not extreme at all. I don't use the restore feature, so I treat my win2k notebook and winxp desktop the same - weekly rotating DVD+RW backups after checking for virus, windows, and other updates, a spybot check, etc. Then a monthly backup on DVD+R. This all takes about an hour, but allows me to not have the restore function using resources. It may work much better than it did in ME (which left a bad taste for me), but I don't need it.
Maverick wrote on 3/25/2004, 10:31 AM
Thanks for the help.

The only difference from what I had done before is that I never added a title first.

Now for the problems.

Firstly, S7 refuses to preview the sound.

Secondly, there is nothing smart about it. The clip pre and post render just plays for the length of time and cuts.

Oh, well - what did I really expect.

Cheers