Best NLE for A1?
 

Hi!
I'm about to buy an A1 and I'm also soon going to buy a NLE. I work on PC and my budget is somewhere between 500 and 1000 $ for the NLE. I've been considering Canopus Edius with a SD card to it (realtime editing).

Premiere Pro seems to be the other alternative (which would make HDV editing possible also). I have a fairly fast computer and am very used to PrPro.
But the problem seems to be the 24f mode? I don't have a deck and I need to export things to tape; for backup and for distribution.
What are your advice? Thanks.

Are you PAL? I', PAL and am happily using Sony Vegas and not having any problems whatsoever.

Yes, we have PAL here. Can you export 25f to tape and then play that tape in a Sony deck?

Vegas is brilliant - editing HD is a breeze compared with Premiere Pro (of which I am still a huge fan). Premiere pro can do lots of things (I love the multicamera thing that allows you to work it a bit like a vision mixing gallery) but premiere pro is VERY slow when editing HD. Vegas is very fast and stable, too, which saves throwing your computer through the window.

More importantly you may find premiere pro won't let you write back to the XHA1. This is a known bug in premiere pro 2 and isn't going to be fixed except by buying CS3! I only discovered this because dumping back to tape in HD and then reexporting using the camera's HD->SD downconvert is the quickest and probably best-looking way of getting an SD version of an HD edit.

"Can you export 25f to tape and then play that tape in a Sony deck?"

Sorry, pardon my ignorance, I'm not really understanding what you are saying. I haven't run anything back onto tape as of yet. I film in HD, edit in HD then render to MPEG 2 DVD Architect Widescreen PAL SD, which I then burn to DVD using Sony DVD Architect. All the comments I am getting back are that the footage quality is AMAZINGLY detailed and sharp.

If you get Ultimate S3 from VAAST it will allow you to do up to quad cam editing in Vegas along with a whole PILE of other stuff.

I'm genuinely finding working with HD a complete and utter breeze in Vegas. My workflow has barely changed from when I was working with SD. I capture I edit I burn. Doesn't get much simpler!

Consider Avid Liquid Pro?

... or not Pro. You only need Pro if you connect an external video monitor or if you input a signal other than through Firewire / IEEE-1394. There is a $/€500 price difference between the two, for exactly the same software.

BTW, Avid just added support for the Canon 24F, 35F and 30F formats in Liquid 7.2 (free upgrade if you have Liquid 7.0 or 7.1).

Don't underestimate the impact of HD on editing.

I've been suffering for months to do anything decent with HD on a PC. After about 5 years of editing with PrPro and trying out a lot of other NLE's, I was very disappointed by the shortcomings nearly every PC/XP-based solution.

Most of all, XP and surely Vista is not making your life easy. At least half of your performance is eaten up by virus scanners and other services.

The more I tried to stay with PrPro, the more I got convinced this software isn't really built to do HD. At least not the 1,5/2,0 versions in those days. An upgrade of the complete suite was costing more then the entire Final Cut Suite... And without spending additional money to the full blown intermediate codec stuff.

Maybe the only exception was Vegas, but excuse me Vegas fans... the interface is not a typical NLE interface, it didn't convince me either. If you can get used to it... fine, but? And what's the credibility of Vegas-based projects in a (semi-)pro world?

Being an IT/Windows professional, it was a huge step, but I finally switched to Mac & Final Cut Studio. THIS REALLY WORKS without any hurdles. Every HD codec is what it should be. You're editing real 'long GOP' HDV streams without any problem.

Oh yes, Edius. You know what... I asked a specialist show to compose an Edius workstation ready to do HD in full fledged mode (as possible on Mac). Raid disks, lots of memory, special cards... the solution finally turned out to be more expensive then a Mac + FCS !!!

I had to make the choice over again, I still would take the same decission. And going from PrPro to Final Cut is like changing from one car to another, in the same category. Two days in the manual, and you're halfway.

Avid Liquid does NOT write back to tape, at least for the progressive formats. Here is a very recent thread on using Avid Liquid with the XHA1:
http://www.avid.com/exchange/forums/thread/230478.aspx

There is a post in the thread from one of the people of who works on the code in Liquid in Germany about how to use the XHA1 and Liquid.

What is most disconcerting about the thread is that it seems not to be a cut-and-dried issue, is a little wishy-washy and is on the border of needing workarounds just to get started. The people giving technical advice on the forum don't seem to have clear answers on the subject, and that's a bit scary.

If you are considering Edius, go to the Grass valley forum and put up your plain and direct questions. You will get plain and direct answers from Grass Valley employees... unlike what you get on the Avid boards. Here is a link to the Grass Valley forums:
http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/

I own and use Liquid almost daily, and while it can do a good job, it can take weeks to figure out the workarounds you need to make it work, and Liquid is very, very finicky about the computer it is running on. Unlike some of the other NLE companies, Avid doesn't put up a known list of issues and workarounds. The user must search through the user moderated forums or get lucky while experimenting.

I have heard a number of people mention positive things about Vegas for working with the new cameras, such as the XHA1 and the V1U.

I have used Edius in the past, it is a very "clean" and "neat" editor. I don't own it now because my computer won't accept the NX card.

"Oh yes, Edius. You know what... I asked a specialist show to compose an Edius workstation ready to do HD in full fledged mode (as possible on Mac). Raid disks, lots of memory, special cards... the solution finally turned out to be more expensive then a Mac + FCS !!!"

In Edius, playback, effects, color correction are realtime with no rendering, does FCP have realtime playback in full frame full HD like Edius? on my current dual zeon 3.6, it takes 2 1/2 hours to render a 1 hr. timeline so you can record back to HDV camera, how long does it take FCP to render a 1 hour timeline so you can output to HDV camera for archive.
Thanks.

"I've been suffering for months to do anything decent with HD on a PC"

I've not...hee hee! Vegas......cough....I repeat....VEGAS!

Try popping over to the Vegas forum on here and ask for opinions.

I'm happy with Vegas...I started on Avid then PP the switched to Vegas. I would rather spend my time shooting new work than spending extra time editing.

I throw my two cents in. I personally own the XH A1 and am editing nicely with Vegas.

Another two cents
 

Just another two cents ...
and given the current exchange rate, that's not much!
Personal experience: I just added a HV20 to my XH A1. Chaos with Premiere Pro 2; something awry with my Cineform (will have to reinstall that, I suppose). HDV Split threw a tantrum. Rebooted, started Vegas 7, and watched it happily ingest verything that I could throw at it.
OK, now I used to be blonde, so that may explain a lot, and I know that I'm probably still getting a lot of things wrong. But for some strange reason Vegas seems to be the only one to forgive my obtuseness.
Also in PAL country, shooting in largely 50i - 1080i.

Carl
Jo'burg

Hi,

I prefer to use Premiere Pro 2...Heres my video tutes, so you can see just how easy it is to use.
I also have XH-A1.

http://www.esnips.com/web/Premiere-Pro-2-Video-Tutes