Firstly regarding the Widescreen Playback issue that has been dogging me for a number of months:
The problem with making a complaint about any product is getting the developers to take you seriously. Its taken a little time and a lot of frustrating moments, but it seems that SF have actually bothered (after a while) to look into the problem that I mentioned regarding erratic playback on some Widescreen TVs. So, with the help of an updated .dll file it seems to have corrected the problem perfectly .. However, It strikes me that a lot of people who are currently happily plodding away creating video primarily being played through their 4:3 equipment.. may in the future find that that very same video footage when played through a Widescreen TV (Philips, Sony) *could* result in the problems that I outlined….
.. namely that whenever a transition point takes place, would cause the TV set to mistake it for a signal to switch to one of its other modes. This is sometimes used in advertisements when a broadcast you may be watching is in 4:3 .. only for the advertisement to be played in full widescreen mode.. there is a change of mode. The problem with Vegas 3 was that no matter when a transition point was played it would cause the mode of your TV to change from (say) 4:3 into Widescreen .. now imagine a typical generated video with all of its possible transitions and each time having to watch the screen stretch and shrink .. it was excruciating to watch! Now, if your not using the updated .dll file then I presume that you might be unfortunate to discover the same thing yourself in time.. maybe in a year or two when you change to a new TV set.
I don’t intend to go on about this any more now as its working fine.. and although SF have resolved the problem I still feel that too much time had passed and that I wasn’t being taken as seriously as I should have been in the first place. Its all very well developers coming back with the well used line of, “well mate, we can’t re-create the problem here..’ .. inferring that its your fault .. but its not good enough. I don’t know if SF could have done any more than they have, but giving more of an impression that a problem is being taken seriously would actually help convey that they are not just sitting on their backsides thinking of ways to make extra money in the 3.5 or 4.0 release.. It’s a problem that should never have been in the product in the first place.. Adobe Premiere never had this problem ..
But that aside .. :
Now they might like to sort out the frame-serve addon.. because once again, PAL MPEG encoding is simply not good enough. This is another *serious* issue with the product.. it’s a fact that the NTSC areas are being treated to a better product than PAL users.. and this *must* be addressed sooner rather than later. I don’t care much for a “help file..” on how to tweak the Main Concept codec.. I expect either the product to generate *adequate* SVCD and DVD PAL video through the program *or* allow us to frameserve to an encoder of our choice... not to have to put up with countless comments about how superior the Main Concept encoder is to others out there.. forget the others, we want to the same level of performance our NTSC counterparts are having and currently we are being treated shabbily!
So, come on SF .. put the NTSC people to one side for a moment and concentrate on PAL users for a change.
I really hope that anyone else from the Pal region actually takes the time to write in directly and voices their concerns as otherwise your going to remain a second class citizen in the eyes of SF.. Your kidding yourselves if you think that creating a frameserve addon is going to require as much effort as your being led to believe..
Lets get a little equality back into the product ..