I think I am almost there! Can I/Should I render MPEG4 footage out to AVI?

I ask because I may render 1-2 times before final project completion. When I shot SD, I could render 1-2 times to AVI without losing quality. If not AVI is there a different "wrapper" that will allow me to accomplish this? I assumed if I rendered 1-2 times to MPEG4 I would lose quality with each render?

I understand there are many ways to ingest and edit, but I would like to initially stick with my workflow as I experiment with other NLE's, etc.

I am so close I can taste it.......

I'm slightly unsure what you are asking here. If you are shooting in Mp4, can't you just import it into your NLE timeline, edit it, then export to your chosen format? Why do you need to keep rerendering to AVI?

Roger

Its my crazy workflow. I would have 4 tapes after a wedding, then ingest as AVI. I would edit 1 tape at a time, add transitions, then render as Edited1, do another tape, render as Edited2, etc. Finally, I would take the 4 edited files and create finished project and use for DVD and web video.

With SD, I could do this by rendering as AVI and not lose any quality. I would like to do the same with HD. New camera uses tape so I ingest as MPEG4.

So how much total original footage are you ending up with and are they recorded as mp4 or are you downsizing at the ingesting stage?

Roger

Why don't you just do them as separate timelines and then do a single render when you are finished? Why multiple renders? Why AVI? And why Mp4? None of this makes sense. With all due respect, your workflow makes no sense and isn't how most pros would do it, even if it is most comfortable for you. Why would you need to render anything in the middle of a project? Are you sure you don't mean "preview"?

If you are shooting HDV (and you are) you should not be -- and most likely are not -- capturing as mp4. You are capturing as m2t, which is mpeg2 transport stream. You can render as mp4 for some forms of distribution, i.e. Blu-Ray or YouTube, but you should not be editing in this format. Rendering is absolutely the last thing you do when you are done editing, for export, if only because of the interframe compression of HDV which makes rendering sort of destructive every time you do it.

If you use the Cineform plug-in product for Vegas or Premiere, you would be capturing as m2t and then converting -- actually sort of decompressing -- to their proprietary CFHD AVI, but that's not what you are thinking of now. But with today's fast PCs and the latest version of, say, Premiere Pro or CS5 or better, Cineform is unnecessary for most users. Although with Cineform, multiple renders are indeed less problematic.

Error on my end:

My first ingestion via Sony Movie Studio, it ingested as AVCHD M2T

However I have discovered my other NLE (Corel VideoStudio Pro X5) ingests as Mpeg at 1440 X1080 at a variable bit rate of 25000. It also creates a proxy file which drastically reduces resources during editing.

The final project goal is about an hour for the DVD and 3-5 minutes for the music video for the web.

Adam, we must have been typing at the same time :)

Does it make any more sense after my last post?

For me, the Corel program is super easy with their thumbwheel for multi-trimming, my "editing" is currently nothing more than multi-trimming, then adding transitions between clips. I then like to take that video and drop in my Cyberlinks program which is much better for adding music tracks, titles, credits, an opening and closing intro and outro, and finally producing for web and authoring DVD.

I do wish to upgrade the more pro programs, but until I am "good" at them, I temporarily need to finish current projects with my familiar workflow. With that said, if I start with an mpeg file, is there a convenient way of rendering to be used again without significant loss of quality? Can I use AVI at all with HD?

My first ingestion via Sony Movie Studio, it ingested as AVCHD M2T

If Vegas MSP thinks this, then you have your project settings wrong. It should be expecting HDV, not AVCHD. It may or may not make a difference.

And no, sorry, it doesn't make sense to me. You capture your files. You edit. If you have two sub-projects you can create different timelines and copy and paste between them, and in Premiere you can "nest" them. There may or may not be similar functionality in Vegas and Corel. But you never render until the end and you never, ever change the native format because you destroy the quality. Ever.

For our Videos, we often do long and short versions, so we edit the long versions and then copy the timelines and create short versions from them. We "render" but in Premiere these are only preview files and they aren't exported or used for anything and aren't saved in any particular format because they are temporary and for viewing only. When we are done we do the real render to the format of choice, and of course this format is different for each distribution channel or medium.

I have to admit that I sometimes render out parts of my project to .avi, but perhaps for different reasons. I might get a wedding ceremony completed, then export as an .avi to a different drive, so if my edit drive fails mid-project, I at least have a copy of what I'd completed so far before I move on to the reception edit.

However, I do not string together those .avi clips for the final export to DVD - I still use the original timeline. In Premiere CS6, I sometimes use individual sequences to break up the edit and then splice them together, but that does not involve any rendering/generation loss.

If you feel compelled to maintain your current workflow for whatever reason, you can install a free codec such as Lagarith or UT to render out your HD video to .avi format. Note that the resulting files will be much larger than the originals. The quality of these codecs is "visually lossless". I don't feel this will have any noticeable impact on the final DVD quality, but it does of course fill up your hard drive and takes more time.

If Vegas MSP thinks this, then you have your project settings wrong. It should be expecting HDV, not AVCHD. It may or may not make a difference.

It also might be that the latest versions of Vegas Movie Studio (as opposed to Vegas Pro) no longer support HDV natively. (This, in effect, means that ingest from tape is now limited to 480i SD, and HD footage must come from a tapeless source.) Therefore, HDV footage is automatically transcoded to another lossy format upon ingestion. This will cause quality loss no matter what.