sony vegas workflow
 

So I got my 7D this Friday and I love it for both Video and photography.
But I am not sure what should be the work flow with Vegas.
I have the pro 9 and I chose the 1080 60I templates and rendered 20sec clip to 1080 as well.The thing is that it took 10 min to render on my HP dull core 64 bit.
Do i do anything wrong?

Consider yourself lucky. I'm using a single core with 2GB ram...you don't even want to know how long it takes.

You failed to have a good novel handy. :)

BTW
The 1080 is HD or HDV

A few things.

First, Vegas supports progressive video, so you can render as 24p, 25p, or 30p, instead of 60i. In fact, Vegas does not record 60i video, so that may be a source of slow-down, as it's converting your progressive footage to interlaced.

I'm unable to understand what you rendered your 20 second clip TO, so I'm not sure what would cause the slow-down.

Now, the 7D outputs 48mbps H.264 - so a lot of people find that they choose to convert to an intermediate file before beginning editing. I've never had this problem, however.

It also matters what you decide to render it to; H.264 will take longer to render than MPEG-2, generally, though I've really not noticed that much of a difference. WMV takes FOREVER to render, which is why I don't use it unless absolutely necessary. And QuickTime takes even longer - when it works. I usually use the MainConcept H.264 when exporting for the web, and MainConcept MPEG-2 when exporting to DVD.

But in general, you should be prepared for long render times. While 10 minutes for 20 seconds is unusual, I find that even with my quad-core, it's a rule of thumb that every 1 minute of footage takes 4 minutes to render at 720p-4MBIT. (YouTube quality)

Is Vegas 9 really faster with H.264?
 

Hi Brian, I'm curious if you're also using Vegas Pro 9 and is it near realtime? I've been using Vegas Pro 8 on a Q6600 and it just isn't enough. Transcoding and proxy files just has a lot of issues with me with custom crop (2.35:1). I've tried Neoscene and I'm thinking of pulling the trigger, but if Pro 9 improves performance with H.264 maybe I should upgrade to that first.

Not on my quad core at work.
I wander what are my options as far as better work flow then Vegas.

Can someone help me over here.
I was intending on using the 7D together with fx1000 footage.
I will deliver ether on a blue ray or DVD.
What should be my project properties and what should I render to in this 2 formats.
I know it sound stupid but with this long time rendering I am a bit confused.

Hi Dror,

You should give Cineform Neoscene a try. The files are big but on a quad core I can render quickly. And none of the crashing when trying to render to MP4 or WMV. I'm using 32-bit Vista on a 3GB Q6600. My latest render on a 3 minute short took about 25minutes to write on 720p MP4 10-14Mbps bitrate with two-pass. Sure it costs money but it looks like the savings on time and aggravation would make it worthwhile versus a 'free' workflow.

I've tried intermixing transcodes from HDV (HV20) and MOV (7d) both using Neoscene and it appears to work well. I haven't tried doing any really long clips yet.

Another vote for Neoscene. Vegas seems to handle the native files o.k. but performance is a lot better with Neoscene.

I'm using Pro 8 on a Q6600 as well, and don't get real-time out of it until I go all the way down to 1/4 Draft Quality; even so, this is enough for me to make the edits I need - mostly.

Because these files are huge, I tend to run out of memory (got 4GB) if I've got like a half hour's worth of shots, but lossless transcoding wouldn't solve the problem; if anything, it'd get worse. I usually just edit each scene in different projects, and I use Vegas's nesting ability to place those projects on a "master" timeline.

I've tried to convert files via NeoScene, but ended up with a clip where the audio wasn't synced to the video.

The latest update sorted that.

Yup. Neoscene works fine with Vegas 8 but my 6600 isnt good now (due to some hardware problem I think)

I have a dual core AMD 6400+ @ 3.2GHz which isn't particular fast by today's standard, but I just process the 7D files in Vegas 8 or 9 (mostly 9 now) in native formats. I often use noise suppression software that slows an already slow HD render down about 5X.

I find I can effectively edit the file in native mode, but playback is a bit jumpy, but not horrible. If I start doing multiple tracks, it gets worse. As far as rendering, and thankfully this is a hobby for me and not a profession, I usually start a render before I go to bed and even if it doesn't finish by morning, it's usually finished by the time I get home from work.

This is one of the advantages of being a hack. Sorry Pro's. Your work may look better, I have more fun! : )

I'm starting to think about building a "mega-system" with dual i7 or whatever comes out next or jump to Apple and learn Final Cut. Love Vegas, just tired of Windows. I've spent 4 hours with Microsoft the last few days with several more hours to go to work through hanging streaming videos on internet on Window 7 upgrade. Ughhhhhhhh.