A Mini Review of Sony's DV & Audio Production & a Question

[solarblast]

I'm about 110 pages into the hands-on guide, third edition. I ran into a snag, and thought I'd post it here. However, it may be an appropriate time for me to present a mini-review of my impressions so far. I'll do that first before asking my question.

On an Amazon five star system, I'd rate it 3.5 stars. It does the job of getting me hands-on experience, and is good in the material and the order it's presented. The hands-on examples are found on a CD. As needed, they are brought in by the user to operate on them according to the instructions provided in the book. I like this approach for getting started. The idea is certainly helpful.

There are some snags along the way. Some of the sections have the feel of being written by different persons. Occasionaly transitions seem abrupt. Several examples seem to provide no insight to the subject. One enters them, does a few manipulation, and is left saying, "So what?" It would be helpful in some examples to tell the reader what he actually accomplished by following the instructions. In several places it appears as though the example file needs some adjustment to the setting it's placed in. That is, some initial set up is assumed, but may not correspond with what's is presently set up. This appears to be the case in the paragraphs on ripple. Some sections seem a bit sparse, for example, moving events and snapping. In some places the written description of what happens is not what happens. All and all though, one can for the most part work their way through some writing miscues here and there.

In comparison with other computer books that use the hands-on approach, it's a little spartan. For a 3rd edition it seems a bit loose.

Occasionally, I hit a snag on some reference I can't find earlier. It helps to then the "Vegas 6" 370 or so page manual provided with the software. The index is good and the explanations generally quite decent; however, its approach is not hands-on.

All in all it will suffice with a little attention and the support of the Vegas 6 manual.

OK, end of review. Here's my problem.

On page 106 it asks me to load the file m06task015.veg. This is to practice marker operations. Instruction 4 asks me to drag the event in track 1 to the right. All 3 (4 but the fourth is barely protruding above the bottom) events move to the right, unexpectedly. This is not right and the following steps cannot be completed. What's going on here? I checked the right-mouse click Group menu item but the choices are greyed out. So clearing the 4 events from a group is not possible. What's up?

[guns1inger]

Turn ripple editing off and have another go.

[BJ_M]

if this is the book by douglas spotted eagle - the missing veg files are posted on their website (at http://www.vasst.com/ )

[BJ_M]

darn if i could find them though ....

start checking here http://www.vasst.com/sony/default.aspx

you can ask at the forum also @ http://www.dmnforums.com/cgi-bin/displaywwugindex.fcgi?dire=4&endday=14&forum=sonic-foundry_vegas

[solarblast]

It's soley authored by Sony folks, whomever they might be.

Changing ripple doesn't seem to do the trick. It seems like there should be a reset to defaults operations somewhere. Ah, I did get it to work, but it doesn't seem quite right. There are three events numbered 1, 2 and 3 on the first track. I can move 1 to the left, but 2 and 3 remain behind. Nah, that's OK according to a figure in the example. That's another weakness of the book. Not enough figures at various steps to know what to expectt. The other book, Vegas 6--a freebee, is much better in that regard.

Another thing I find suprising about Vegas is that New doesn't reset to default values, and neither does Close. When I open the example, the same old choices from previous operations (tool bar at least) are in effect.

[BJ_M]

in the manual and help file are the key commands for reset to default as well as saving and recalling screen layouts and personal pref.