Geoff, thanks for the insight on the floppy, that make perfect sense to me. I guess it was precisely at high tide! On the box thing, that is right I did have special artwork for the boxes, not just a full screen bkg. Never thought of feeding it into the DVEous though that would be a good solution. I have since solved the problem and figured the steps to the combining process(with a little help from the manual). Here is what I was trying to do. I needed to key the fast forward over the boxes, then font over that. The director wanted a "live bug" from my framestore over the entire ME. I wanted to put the boxes on the a row, key the FF over that CG1 keyed over that.. That is where I ran out of keyers. Like I said the CG operator helped me out a bit. Your explanation to another way to do it would have worked great, I will try that when I get a chance. thanks greg

[quote=""greg""]Can you think of a reason that the disk would load initially, and then not be recognized by the DVEous?[/quote] Yes. 3.25" floppy disk technology dates back to 1982. I'm sure that in 1996 when the DVEous went on the market, Abekas chose that format because it was universally available at the time however outdated it might be. The internal storage format never changed but eventually a port was added for an external drive. Usually there's some combinations of rebooting, re-inserting the disk, and gentle massage that will get it to read the disk, but it's always susceptible to factors like temperature and moon phase. -- As for the effect you created, I'm not 100% clear what you were trying to do. Here are instructions for two of my guesses at what you were doing: 1. The fast forward has a background, and you're putting two cameras in boxes OVER the background... Put the fast forward into your 2A channel, and leave it full screen (and select the FF as the input for 2A... more later) Put one of the cameras (or tape machines, whatever) into the 1A channel Put the other box's source into the 2A channel. Size 1A and 2A individually to line up with the background. Note on routing sources: In MOST trucks with a 4K, switcher Aux 1A would feed DVEous input 1, 2A would feed input 3, 3A would feed input 5. So in this scenario, punch left box source on switcher Aux 1, and select "1" in the DVEous input menu for 1A, right box source on Aux 2 -> DVE input 3, FF to Aux 3 -> DVE input 5. 2. There's a fancy key/fill 2-Box and the boxes aren't rectangular... Punch FF1 to Aux 1, Left Source to Aux 2, Right Source to Aux 3. Set DVE 1A input to 1, 1B to 2, 2A to 3, 3A to 5. With 1A & 1B selected on the DVEous, go to the "KEY" menu, and select the V+K mode with the softknob. You should now see the 2A channels showing through the holes. Position 2A and 2B to fit in the two holes of your FF graphic. Remember that by default, a DVEous will put input 1 in all 4 channels. You have to set them how you want them in the input menu. Good luck and happy button mashing! Good luck!

Seth, thanks for the reply In the monitor wall I saw the correct inputs into the Dveous. The background was off, that was the first thing that I thought of and I was working in video video mode. Here is what I had, which was the reason for wanting the combiner. On the A buss I had DVE1 (this eventually was a composite of input 1 and input 2) The fast forward was keyed over. I had a bug keyed over(was in the framestore) and the director wanted font keyed to identify the boxes. I thought about using layer mode but I try to stay away from that and I didn't want to burn another ME for just a bug. since I didn't have enough keys my cg operator helped me out a bit and put the bug in with the fonts. Like I said I did eventually get it to work I just wasn't sure of the steps I took to get there since I kinda stumbled onto it. I am on the same truck in a few weeks so I will have another chance to work on it. The only other thing I can think of is that there was another effect loaded and I didn't normal up all channels. As far as the drive concern. Thanks for clearing that up. Can you think of a reason that the disk would load initially, and then not be recognized by the DVEous. Bad disk maybe? greg

[quote="greg"]I am very new to the DVEous, I only played around with it a few times. This past weekend I was on a show with a 4k, dveous, and fast forward. the client wanted a two box, fortunatly I was given enough time to set it up. I thought no problem I just use the combiner and key that over the fast forward. The problem was I couldn't get the combiner to work. I did manage to stumble onto it and it worked out but I couldn't figure out what combination of buttons I pushed to get it to work. Can anyone step me thhrough this process so next time it doesn't take me an hour of stumbling to set it up.[/quote] In most trucks, you don't need to do anything to use the combiner. If you were not able to key your boxes, two potenial problems come to mind - - 1) check the Background setting in the ENG menu. This should be OFF. 2) If you were working in Video-Video mode, did you have any of the 4 channels @ fullsize? If the problem doesn't relate to either of these issues, you may need to be more specific about how you attempted to create the boxes. Be sure to describe what you saw from the Dveous in the monitor wall vs what was happening when you attempted to key the Dveous in the switcher. [quote="greg"]The other question I had was when I went to save the effects to disk It wouldn't recognize the disk. I know it had something on it for I had loaded it earlier in the day. On the save screen it said internal but when I turned the drive soft knob to get external drive nothing would change. Then panel would then lock up and the screen would go "funky". I would have to turn off the aquire button and back on again and it would resume all functions except the ability to save to the external drive. I even tried another disk and that wouldn't work either. thanks greg[/quote] An "External" drive would be an outboard drive connected to an external port. The "Internal" drive is the one built into the Control Panel.