I wanted to see what would happen if I connected my Sony V1 to my laptop and record live. So, I connected the camera and hit record in vegas, but I didn't hit record on the camera, it recorded the clip as a m2t clip while on standby directly to vegas, I am wondering if I gained anything since there is no tape involved, but I have the clip to render, I rendered it to a wmv file hd 6.4 mps 1080 24p. It sure looks like I might have gained an advantage. I sure would like some opinions

The biggest advantage I can see is that you don't have to capture after the fact. Otherwise, you should be getting exactly what you would have gotten if recording to tape first except you don't have to worry about the possibility of dropouts.

Any signal that is captured over firewire has already been compressed within the camera. What you get is EXACTLY what you write to tape. The biggest advantage that I can see is that, with no tape in the drive, your headwear is zero. Problem is, with HDV, no tape, no timecode.

I put the clip taken directly by Vegas side by side with one from the tape, to me there is a difference, the color is better, and sharper, closer to the actual image, in this case my cat, than the clip from the tape, and seems it has more detail. could it be the picture profile setting is being captured on the tape and not when captured directly.

huh!!!

You're on firewire, not HDMI connection?

I connected my Panasonic GS500 up to the computer via firewire, then switched it on. I was asked what program I wanted to record via and I said, V8 - so V8 opened. I then hit the record button in V8 and an audio window opened and audio was recorded, but no video. Should it have?

Straight capture on the Vegas timeline is audio only. If you go to File - Capture, you then have the option of choosing SD or HD and the appropriate capture app opens. SD opens a separate program for capturing. HD opens a new tab within the main Vegas app.

Thanks Edward.

Ok...so I've got video coming in...but I don't have any audio with it.

What am I missing?

Have you checked your recordings?

There is a "preview audio" choice in the options menu in the external capture program (for standard def) that determine whether audio is previewed.

In the internal (HDV) capture function I don't think you can preview audio, but it should be capturing it if it is coming down the firewire.

Yes, the Options>Preview audio is ticked.

However my audio device is greyed out in Audio>

I've fiddled around a bit and there is audio there but it is pretty faint. The wave form is minimal.

I think I may have an issue with my audio device as I tried recording some audio yesterday for my radio station and couldn't get it right.

Whatever audio is on tape, is represented exactly in Vegas.
Tape to HDD over firewire is only a data Xfer. Nothing is done/processed in the Xfer. It's a bit-for-bit copy.
Same goes for capturing live vs tape. It's a bit for bit Xfer, whatever the firewire of the camcorder is outputting is identical.
Connect camcorder, capture live, while capturing to tape. Capture tape, and make a color comparison using eyedropper values on the same pixel, they should be/are identical.