Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Huether
Is there any benefit to recording video on my computer in real time or should I just transfer after the fact?
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Yes, there are benefits - you now have two copies of your source footage (because you rolled tape too, right?). You are now ready to edit, with no additional transfer time. This is assuming you made the vegas copy via firewire in dv or hdv, which means that the exact same data should be on the tape and on your harddrive. There are no quality benefits to recording direct, but there may be workflow benefits, depending.
Recording live footage to a laptop can be clean, sometimes its a problem because: You didn't have enough disk space (13GB/hour), your disk was fragmented and you dropped frames on capture, or there were too many other processes using processor cycles and you dropped frames. The vegas post-capture dialogs should tell you whether you dropped frames.
For these reasons, it's always good to a) check out how all this works before you depend on it for a shoot, and b) always record to tape as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Huether
I imagine real time recording to the computer puts extra strain on the camcorder.
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Not an issue at all for the camcorder, though it can "strain" the computer, depending. All this encoding to DV/HDV, sending via firewire is handled with hardware in the camcorder, it isn't like a pc where multiple processes can slow down everything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Huether
I am wondering if I should just record my audio or if I should have video and audio streams going in at same time. The only benefit I can see to recording through Vegas is that I imagine it would sync the audio and video as opposed to me importing the video after and aligning. What do you think?
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I'm trying to parse through the workflow you're suggesting. If I understand you correctly, yes, you're right - recording audio-only through Vegas will result in later sync work, which is very heavy lifting for a beginner. Keep your audio and video together for a while.
FYI, if/when you do try some audio-only recording in Vegas, typically that's going to be done with an audio-only interface such as an internal sound card, external usb or fw preamp/converter, something like that. Vegas does not natively record audio-only from a firewire camcorder feed.
If you have further questions about why and when you might want to record directly to Vegas, audio or audio/video, why don't you tell us a little about your camcorder and what you're shooting.
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Edit for clarification: All the above was posted prior to discovery that the OP did not actually have a DV camera, and did not have firewire connectivity. Many of the comments above do not apply to AVCHD workflows.