VSCChris
2012-09-13T05:39:55Z
I've recently taken over the video processing duties for the Virginia Skydiving Center's drop zone. TandemVids is nice, and I'm still learning the ins and outs of it. Coming from a sysadmin background, I was hoping to get some info to help facilitate a few things I'd like to set up.

Where does TandemVids store its settings? I can't be there all of the time, so I want to make sure I can back up the configuration for someone else to restore if necessary.

Currently, I'm using the "USB" output from TandemVids to send high-quality customer videos over to a video kiosk where they're queued up automatically. At the end of the week, we upload not-as-high-quality versions of the videos customers can access on the Internet, again using TandemVids' USB output. It's trivial for me to switch the render settings on the USB tab when I gather them up at the end of the week, but I'd prefer someone subbing in for me not have to futz with it.

Obviously if I can get at TandemVids' settings externally, I can set them as desired with a little scripting magic just before the program launches. Failing that, it occurs to me I could utilize the separate settings of TandemVids' different Instances to pretty much do the same thing. Is there any way to start TandemVids up directly in Instance 02 or what have you without requiring previous instances of TandemVids be already running? Maybe by passing a command line flag?

Thanks,
Chris
Mick Hardy
2012-09-14T13:09:20Z
Hi Chris,

That's actually a bit of a tricky request and I'll need to test some configurations before I can give you a definite answer. We have a busy jump weekend scheduled but I'll have a think about it over the weekend. I don't see an easy way of doing what you require with the current system.

Most of the settings are or were stored in the registry under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Swoopware" but I've recently started moving them to the "user.config" file recommended for DotNet projects. At the moment it's a mixed bag between the two locations. TandemVids runs as a process inside Vegas so the "user.config" file for TandemVids is stored in the Sony Vegas AppData folder for the current user. Modifying this file directly is not recommended and it isn't guaranteed where the location will be, especially with different versions of Vegas.

There are further settings stored in the database itself, which is located in "C:\ProgramData\Swoopware\TandemVids". The database is currently locked but this will change at some point. There are plans to create a backup-and-restore feature for TandemVids to quickly fix accidental configuration changes but it doesn't exist as yet.

There is no way of specifying an instance at startup because this is determined programmatically by the number of current running instances.

One potential way would be to configure two separate Windows users and then switch between them to run different rendering engines. This is how some dropzones offer both NTSC and PAL.

Mick