Do I really need Neo HDV to edit my footage?
 

I have a dual core, 2.4 gig, 4 Gig of very good ram,
a dedicated RAID 0 capture drive and two 750 Gb Lacie for storage.

I'm using Vegas 7
Do I really need to buy Neo HDV to edit my film?
What am I missing if I don't buy it?
What kind of problem am I going to have if I edit the M2t footage raw?
Thanks
Larry

Not really. if you read their vegas page on www.cineform.com they explain well what the differences are between the cineform bundled with vegas (its transparent so you dont its there i believe) and Neo hdv. I have found that i get much better de-interlacing of footage with Neo, and slightly faster performance reading the files.

Larry...

It depends. Some users, myself included, get chronic red frames/dropped frames when using m2t files(from my HD110) in Vegas8. I have no choice but to use Cineform. It always works.

OK, but other than those red frames that I've heard before, I need more reason not too edit in M2t.

I've heard it's "easier" to do color correction with the Neo. Well, I've corrected some footage, all in m2t, and I don't perceive the difficulty or any problems.
I'm not a pro and not an expert, it's quite possible that I'm missing something. What could that be?

The .avi format that Cineform codec converts to much less lossy than .m2t formats. The way I understand it, each frame of .avi format is complete, where as in .m2t files, you have a group of frames that relies on a single frame to fill in its information. The result is much higher processor involvment, and risk for mistake. Then, when you cut and merge clips, that creates a risk of problems. Finally, it is well documented that rerendering .m2t footage repeatedly, as you might do in a complicated edit, will cause resolution loss. So this intermediate codec is preferred by many to essentially freeze the losses inherent with HDV in the first place. I use it, and like it, and it is less processor intensive.

the fact that it's less processor intensive makes it interesting now. I've noticed that even though I do have a relatively powerful package, when I have a long clips or several clips, there is latency and delay when I play the time line.
I guess I should download the free trial version and see how it perform.
I just wanted some opinions before buying something that might have been another stuff not needed.
L.

Larry, if you render to AVI, and select the HD Intermediate (?) template, click the custom button, you'll see that you're using the cineform codec. Doing some comparisons with this will tell you lots about timeline performance, generational loss, etc.

What Neo HDV adds is a slightly advanced version of the codec, but more importantly, a solution to capture directly to cineform. If you go to an all-cineform workflow, this is pretty important. Their capture also adds some on-the-fly utilities for 24p pulldown removal, 30p conversion from 60i (um, I think, I don't have it open right now), and image flipping for 35mm adaptor users.

I have downloaded the trial version of Neo HDV and I have to say that my processor breathe way easier. I can put the cursor anywhere on the time line and all the commands react instantly. Before with the M2T files, I had to wait, it was not playing smoothly and the time line used to build more slowly. Right now very little time is needed. THere's no question I'm going to have to buy it, no way I'm going back to M2t files.

I do have a fast processor, plenty or decent ram, a RAID 0 configured array of drive for capture, one hard drive for the OS and several LACIEs for storage, so I would have thought that editing M2t would have been smooth, but it wasn't. I really love the workflow. Totally convinced here, unless something unexpected comes out ?
What could that be, uh?
L.