How-To Articles and Videos: September 2009 Archives

Submitted Question:

Rob, We left the system this summer and everything worked fine. Construction has permitted us from getting set up. We got it hooked up today and we can not get an output screen to work in the top left of the program. 3 of us have tried and failed. Can you please help?

Sounds like you might have the fullscreen out enabled?  Look under the setup tab--Video.  At the bottom is a checkbox that says enable fullscreen output.  If that is checked, you only see a black box on the main interface, as no video will appear there anymore.

Also, in the Settings--Application Settings area, there is a checkbox to "hide output window" which might be checked?

If all else fails, you can reset VC to all defaults again by deleting the appsettings3.xml file, see this article on how to do that:

Submitted Question:

Thanks again for the excellent workshop opportunity this summer.  I wanted to ask you a
couple of questions regarding the workshop.  I know we discussed this, but I
can't find it anywhere in my notes.  We talked about if the program isn't acting
correctly and we wanted to correct it we could do something besides unistall and
reinstalling the program. 

This is a bit of a "hack" so be aware...

You can delete the appsettings3.xml file to essentially reset Visual Communicator back to it's original defaults.  First locate this file using the Start--Find Files method in Windows.  Be aware that this is a hidden file, so you may need to use the advanced search options and be sure your PC is set to reveal hidden files/folders.  By deleting this file, it will get re-created next time you launch VC successfully.  It gets updated each time you exit out of VC too.

On a related note, if ever having troubles publishing shows, there is a pubsettings3.xml file you can delete too using same method as above.

A bit of a hack, but it works and saves you time so no need to uninstall/reinstall.  I even think that uninstalling does NOT delete the xml files anyways...

Also, if ? marks show up, you mentioned saving it to
a common location.  That didn't work for me, could I be doing something wrong?

Not to sure why you get the ? marks, unless you are attempting to save onto removeable media like flash drives or network drives.  Sometimes I find that if I replace the effect (left side of tray) all gets better--try that maybe?

Let us know your results by posting comments or questions below...

Submitted Question:

Out of interest, I noticed on a couple of your videos that you use Ultra 2
virtual sets. I also have Ultra 2.
To use Ultra 2 virtual sets in VC3 do you simply use the Browse tab in VC3
to locate and insert the virtual sets?

You are correct, I use photos and tracking shot videos I "borrowed" from my Ultra CS3 software.  We should point out that at the moment, Ultra hasn't been available since Adobe released CS3 suites, and they are working on this technology to reappear in other Adobe products...not sure that status of this but we REALLY need to see it come back!  So many are disappointed that Ultra had disappeared, but according to Karl Soule's Blog at Adobe, it should resurface (hopefully!).

Now for my workflow:

1.  Open Ultra

2.  Load a virtual set (trak shot or photo).

3.  Load an input clip that has an empty greenscreen shot.

4.  Trim the input clip down to only 1 frame of video, and set key.  It disappears completely which we want.

5.  Now under the output tab, you can choose AVI for video, or Jpeg for photos.  This will output a file that can be used in Visual Communicator (or any video editing software).

Hope that helps! 

Submitted Question:

I just got started with Visual Communicator and I understand everything but I can't seem to get my lower thirds titles to work the way I want. Is there anyway that I can get the lower thirds title to stay there and not disappear after like 5 seconds?

Absolutely!  Looking at any "tray" you will notice it has a left image (transition) and right image (lower third or whatever content). 

Now that we understand those parts, we can proceed.  Left click on the transition, and notice that the bottom left of the screen now gives you options under the Action tab?  You need to set the pause time to be what you'd like (default is 2 seconds).  The pause time is how long the content "hangs out" on the screen, whereas the duration is how long it takes to come in and reverse out.

I cover this in great detail on training DVD volume 2, as well as ways to use PowerPoint slides, popups, bullet lists and more as graphics in your VC shows.

Hope that helps!  Let us know below where you can leave comments.