Hi all. This weekend, I was taping a wedding for a friend using my Sony FX-1 and forgot to adjust the gain control. The reception was held in a large tent outside and had lighting affixed to the masts shining down. The video on playback is dark and I have some way to make it look better in post. Any suggestions in using version 9? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Apcipriano

What version do you have: EMC 9 or Creator 2009?

When in Storyboard or Timeline, select View then Settings from the menu bar. Select a video clip and then use the settings sliders to make adjustments to brightness, contrast etc. You can also dock the settings on the right side of the screen.

Thanks for the suggestion, Grandpa Bruce. I'm been using EMC9 and it sounds like I'll have to do this adjustment for every frame and there's lots of them! Unfortunately, I didn't adjust the gain at the wedding, not really trusting my own settings and relied on the cameras AGC. I've learned a lesson from this about using gain but when you're shooting "run and gun" stuff like this wedding where events, due to the weather were happening non-stop. I didn't have the opportunity to sit back and make adjustments "on the fly" but I'm learning to do that now!

I've been a faithful user of EasyCreator Version 7.5 since 2004 and went to EMC 9 because I'm of the FX-1 and the need to edit in 16:9 widescreen (something 7.5 doesn't). I am, however, discovering that in the rendering process in MYDVD in 16:9, two things: the video isn't very sharp and the aspect ratio on a 50" plasma is smaller than the size of the screen; ie: the image doesn't fill the screen on either side. I'm using a new Dell 630 quad processor desktop; 2 gigs of memory and 512 mb of video memory using an ATI Radeo 8600 and a 600 gig hd. This video shouldn't look this bad and it was all HDV orginally as well. For this wedding, I shot DV at 4:3 aspect on my cam as
I was also using a VX2100 which is only DV and is crappy in widescreen mode and I want the two to mesh in the video. Any idea why the video shot in HDV was not sharp? Thanks for your kind comments and attention.

Anthony
Anthony

Hey, I am not Grandpa bruce

I don't understand what you mean by "I'll have to do this adjustment for every frame". The adjustment is applied to the whole clip not every frame. Of course you can't adjust every fram considering there are 29 frames for each second of video

I have never worked with 16:9 video but I would think that mixing 4'3 and 16:9 will create problems.

Gary has done much work with 16:9 and I have not. But some things I have picked up on…

There could be a problem with the camcorder. Both in that it is not True 16:9 and/or it doesn't properly set the 16:9 flag in the file.

Likewise some DVD Players do not present 16:9 to the TV automatically. I have one that I have yet to get it to properly display 16:9 even when they are commercial DVD's!

Your V7 is an old comfortable shoe, Throw it out and move on. 2009 is far better but you will have to learn it.

Sad but true and I am learning version 9 by working with it full time. Do you fellow know if, in editing in Videowave again, having forwarded the project onto Mydvd, that any editing in Videowave will be reflected on the other side as well? It seem that after I re-edit in Videowave, when I save the project and then to on to MyDVD that a whole new project menu opens up. Thanks.

Anthony

If you do any editing in myDVD it will not be reflected back to the original dmsm file you created in Videowave.
Also assume you "forwarded" you project from Videowave to myDVD and then saved the myDVD project as a dmsd project file. If you now go back to Videowave and do some editing and then later launch myDVD those edits fromVW are not reflected in myDVD. You would have to "reload" the new VW project in myDVD

Anthony: The way you are doing it, it is a New MyDVD Express Project each and every time.

The "proper" way is to edit in VW, Save and Exit VW.

Open MyDVD and Add the VW Project file (dmsm).

Now having said that, herein lies a big flaw in Roxio… Once you save in MyDVD you can go back and edit in VW till the cows come home and it will never be recognized in MyDVD!!!

There is a trick

Do the edits in VW and save the Project file. Open MyDVD and the MyDVD Project file. Click on that menu button and Edit.

This takes you into a limited version of VW. Click on the clip and delete it! Use the Add Photo/Video and type in the name of the dmsm file including the .dmsm. It will balk about it, but it will load the newest edit and when you go back to MyDVD you will see the new dmsm in place!

The limited editing version of VW you enter from MyDVD will not allow you to load a dmsm file/ What you have done is force it open a dmsm by a flaw in the program.

I intend to write up the procedure w/pictures and post it in the How To section one of these days…

Sorry this reply took so long to come but thank you. I'll try that step because I agree, it is a big waste of time to have to re-aurthor a dvd in MyDVD after you have again edited in VW. I used to edit in MyDVD in version 7 until I learned, the hard way, that that program was highly unstable and you could lose all your new edits!

One new thing. I recently downloaded HDV material from my Sony FX-1 and an FX-1000 to my computer, part of it as an AVI file and the other as MPEG2.When I went from VW to MyDVD, I couldn't set chapter point as the program would then freeze I would get coding errors when attempting to burn a dvd. Is that because you can't mix the two coding formats? HDV is such a huge file that I thought MPEG2 was the better way to go after having difficulty editing the AVI files in VW. Thanks.

apcipriano

You have a HD camcorder so when you cature to mpeg2 you are losing all your HD! Of course HD video creates huge files.
I believe that EMC 9 does not handle HD video at all so no wonder VW has problems.

Thanks. I guess it's time to upgrade to EMC 2009 then?

acipriano