Unable to Print to Tape.....Help!!!!

Cobra71 wrote on 7/17/2002, 1:40 PM
Very new to this so maybe I am doing something wrong, hopefully someone can help me out. Just finished editing my 1st DV tape from my holiday and now I am trying to print it to tape. It renders the video ok then it prerenders the render video. It will print to tape but the video is choppy and part are cut out. The audio is also choppy.
I have a Athalon 1700 pc with 30g drive dedicated to video editing. My system is a raid 1 with 512 ddr ram. I would assume that would be efficient to run Video Vegas 3.oc properly. I have also defragged my drive but to no avail. If it means anything I am using a Canon ZR40 is my camera. I have messed with the settings in my options but nothing has improved.
Any help would really be appreciated.

Thanks in advance
Warren

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 7/17/2002, 3:41 PM
Are you printing to tape from the Timeline or from a rendered file?

I have a Canon ZR45 and it prints to tape flawlessly from a rendered file. I personally see no advantage rendering from the timeline. I actually do two renders. One as a AVI DV which gets 'printed to tape' and stored as archive on DV tape. Then I render a second copy as MPEG-2 DV keeping a backup of same on a removable hard drive then burning to a DVD disc. So in effect I end up with three copies on three different mediums. DV tape, DVD disc and one last copy on a hard drive. The odds against all failing are astronomical.

While I have a RAID motherboard I haven't bothered to implement it. Printing to tape demands the full attention of your system so anything going on in the background even if measured in millseconds may accounts for what you're seeing. Like when burning a CD or DVD you should shutdown all other applications, before starting, especially things like anti-virus, screen savers, disk indexers and if you have broadband, anything that may either accept or ask for automatic updates. Of course you don't touch the keyboard either. Just walk away and give Vegas time to do its thing. :-)
KingCobra71 wrote on 7/17/2002, 6:11 PM
How do you render to an AVI DV or is it the same as making and AVI file? Once thats done do I just import it into Vegas and then print to tape or is there another way to print an AVI file to tape?
BillyBoy wrote on 7/17/2002, 9:45 PM
While your project is on the timeline and you're finished, just select AVI as file type under 'save as type' then pick either the PAL or NTSC DV template. The file will get written to your hard drive in whatever folder you tell it. When it is done go to the Media Pool Tab, click on the 3rd (camera) icon. From there click on File, open the file, be sure your camera is connected via firewire, is turned on and in VCR mode, then just click on the print to tape button and way you go. It will only take as long as the tape is in real time, the rendering is already done.
KingCobra71 wrote on 7/17/2002, 9:57 PM
Thanks

I will give it a shot tonight after I get home from work.
wcoxe1 wrote on 7/18/2002, 12:06 PM
I was having largely the same problems you describe in the first message of this string. It took months, and more than one software company, but when I got to VV and SonicFoundry, well, this is the solution to MY problem:

Windoze is on C:
VV is on C:
Capture to D:
Render to C:

This of course assumes that you will be using proper subdirectories, which I left out to simplify.

I was trying several different things, but once I tried this, which separates reading from writing on the same disk, my problems went away.

Oh, there is one other thing. I had a relapse after I got another program, recently. This new program went in and turned up Hardware Acceleration to the MAX on my machine. The new program was working fine, but VV would not render smoothly.

Again, SF fixed it by suggesting that I turn OFF acceleration. I didn't even know it had been turned on, but they figured it out. This fixed VV, but killed my new program.

I have to MANUALLY reset acceleration to either on or off, depending on which program I use.

The interesting thing, both are video editing programs.
wcoxe1 wrote on 7/18/2002, 12:11 PM
Oh, one other thing. Every once in a while when I tell VV to Print to Tape, it gives me an error message something like: Error in last input.

Well, I hadn't changed anything in the standard defaults: so, Whats up?

Turns out that this only happened when I opened a file and then immediately told VV to Print to Tape. Took me a while to realize it was this simple. Mainly because it didn't happen EVERY time.

The solution, believe it or not, was to simply click on any track header (to catch VV's attention?). Then it rendered properly.