I miss my Aussie Co-Pilot (audio)

[KTVA]

Dear fellow professionals,


My apologies if this has been previously addressed but all topics I could find under "search" were of little hope.

I was a devoted Amiga-based Toaster/Flyer user for 16 years. Some of the BEST tools for the Flyer were developed by "Aussie" (Bless your heart, wherever you are!).

Currently I am most in need of the Co-Pilot Audio tool of dropping the audio level of background music when narration comes in and goes out.

Is there a script that offers this, please? Please? Please?

Please?

Please?


Rick

[prospector]

I think he works for Newtek now, so a 1 year paid standing order to the local Krispy Kreme shop to deliver a doz every workday morning, just might get ya what your looking for. :D

[Ivan]

It appears that there are a number of features that were started in VT3 that have been abandon. If SE is any indication, don't expect them to be finished in VT5 but be sure to pay for the upgrade anyway because they may finally get to them in VT6 or 7 or...

Ivan

[Ed Wallick]

Hi Rick,

If I understand your situation why don't you use the Control Tree? You can do all kinds of things there both in Audio and Video. That's where I lower the audio levers during voice over.

Ed

[Ed Wallick]

Ahh... Audio Levers? How about audio Levels?

Hey, it's Saturday and I just happen to be in the office - not a normal work day.

Ed

[Danic101]

Ivan why do you have to be such a downer, NewTek has given us hundreds of New Features since VT2 many of them in free updates. IF you don't like your VT/SE then buy something else and get a life

[Ivan]

I did. I unfortunately advised a number of people to buy VT5 upgrade because I believed that Newtek would come through. So far this has not been the case. I am not a dealer. I charge nothing for coming up with content for the monthly VT user group meetings, I have done this since VT2 shipped. I advised people to upgrade to VT5 based on the belief that features would finally be completed that were started in VT3. If SE is any indication of what will or won't be in VT5 I am very sorry for advising people to spend their hard-earned money in this way. VT5 will be my last Newtek upgrade unless they really suprise me. I understand that coding is not an exact science and I understand that Newtek is not a software giant but how long does it really take them to put this stuff out??? Bob Tasa has written plug-in after plug-in for features that are standard in other packages and Bob does this part time on the train, doesn't Newtek have someone working on this full time?? Bob has made plug-ins like the Multicam, Three Wheeler, Color Replace, LW Connect, and 3rd Channel, something Newtek said couldn’t be done with VT4.

If you want an RTV plug-in for LW that does not have a luminance shift you NEED Bob's LWConnect because the Newtek’s LW RTV plug-in is unusable with VT. WHY can Bob fix this and Newtek can't? Didn't they write the original code?? And why is this OK? If you were an Auto manufacturer and you couldn't get the paint on the front door to match the paint on the back door you would be a laughing stock! For some reason this is ok for Newtek. It would be one thing if it was AfterFX or another companies product but IT"S THEIR SOFTWARE.

Newtek took orders AND money for VT5 almost a year ago. I challenge you to find anything on their site talking about features in VT5. The one VT5 link on the home page leads to a VT4 article. Don't you think it would be at the very least a decent thing to acknowledge that they have some idea what VT5 will have? Please prove me wrong.

Here (http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60672) Jim Plant gives us a great post explaining SE and PROMISING an update in January about the VT5 shipping schedule. In fairness he didn't say what year but one might be inclined to think it would be this year. It is now MARCH. Again, I understand that coding may take more time than expected but how long does it take to post back and say "well we don't have any further information but we are still working on it". Leaders lead. If meeting a deadline doesn't mean anything to the leaders why should the rank and file feel any differently? I know it's a small thing but it is an indication of larger problems in my opinion.

As for GIVING us hundreds of new features since VT2, I would say that $500 to upgrade to VT3, $500 to upgrade to VT4 and $500 to upgrade to VT5 is hardly GIVING it away. Under your definition I have "Given" away a lot of things as well, aren't I great?? And those amounts are only if you bought the Software upgrade. Hardware is extra as is LW. Now let see what your $200 would buy you last fall if you upgraded FCP4 to FCP5 which I did by the way. With that upgrade I got Compressor with distributed Rendering, DVD Studio Pro4, Motion, Live Type, SoundTrack Pro. Not to mention that FCP5 is the second version with HD not the first. FCP has Multicam and a feature that allows you to remove wind noise directly in the timeline. Any chance we'll see those in VT5? We don't know do we because in spite of the fact that Newtek will take your money for VT5 now, they haven't release a feature set.

As for getting a life, maybe I should. As for being a downer, well I guess the fact that I feel I've let people down by advising them to go with something that appears to be last year's technology, by a company that won’t tell you what you spent your money on I should really be down on myself shouldn't I?

I really would LOVE to be telling people how great Newtek is because I know how to use the software and I love to teach others how to use it but I have seen and used other products and quite honestly they are falling behind. Please don't make me give you a complete list.

Ivan

[Danic101]

RTV Writer does have NOT have issues my animators have been using it since the frame factory days with NO Luma Issues. Go complain to Apples forums and they will ban you. You forget all the builds between VT 2.0 -3.0 4.- 5.0 Apple rarely adds new features in dot upgrades only bug fixes.

[Ivan]

As for added features in dot upgrades I agree that Newtek has been pretty good about that. Some of the added features simply didn't make it into the shipping version and were promised but some were truly added as a bonus. The down side would be that you have to purchase the upgrades to get some of the bugs fixed but I guess even Microsoft does that.

RTV Writer does have NOT have issues my animators have been using it since the frame factory days with NO Luma Issues.

I'm glad to hear this. Please do a test for me. Capture an RTV with your VT and load it into LW. Make it a background or map it on a plane and render it full screen like you would at the end of a 3d transition. Put the resulting RTV on the timeline and compare it to the original. When it goes from the LW rendered file to the Captured file there is a noticable shift. I have not been able to get this to go away without Bob's RTV plug-in. If you have, I would like to know what I'm doing wrong. If you notice a difference it makes LW unusable for creating custom transitions. 3d Arsenal and normal animations have no problem it is only when you try to match footage.

I am willing to be wrong and in fact would be happy to be wrong, send me a scene file so I can see how to do it correctly.

Thanks,

Ivan

[rbartlett]

Levels issues are a bind. I'm glad Bob has fixed RTV passage between LW and VT.

I give some slack where the application is designed to handle different levels or ranges in those levels for each need. LW does serve print, film, video and shades in between. These have entirely different lens, gamut and PAR features. SpeedEDIT probably isn't designed for print, but it ought to have more in common with LW than NewTek video products have ever had before, IMHO.

I'd hope that the levels were correctable with a preset without cramping or exceeding the latitude of the 8bit format. It would also seem fair that when LW writes to RTV that it assumes the same video level pre-processing that VT-Edit would do if it were converting stills into that format. Another factor is that going forward, SpeedHQ and the DV codec will be the predominant formats native to NewTek video workflows. So fixing this might be a distraction, much as perhaps it should be. Bob could say what he fixed, or we could all buy LWConnect without waiting for VT[5] to move past the last development gate.

[Ivan]

LWConnect is certainly a purchase that you won't regret. I think it is one of those must have plugins and I am pretty sure there is an SE version either available now or soon.

The levels may have been correctable through lighting and such but that did not appear to be the case. Bob actually rewrote the RTV plugin. I think it's a little unfair to ask Bob to just tell how he got it to work correctly without compensation, how many here want to work for free?

As for Speed HQ, I can only hope that the LW team and the video team are now talking to each other at Newtek.

:hijack:

Back to the original topic, Rick, sorry for going so far afield. If you go to ToolShed you will see Audio types. They have been there since VT3. They do nothing. If SE is any indication they will do nothing in VT5. This is one of the features that it would be nice to get finished, anyone that had it in they Flyer knows how powerful it was and is disappointed in the fact that a 10 year old application can do it but their new high powered application can't. I'm sure it's on the list somewhere after user defined colors for the interface which has already been implemented.

Ivan