Wayne Morin
April 22nd, 2006, 10:16 AM
Thanks to all of you for your tips and feedback on the HD1. I’m enjoying using it and the portability.
After trying the bundled Ulead software to create a DVD from my HD1 clips, I purchased Vegas Movie Studio + Platinum DVD to continue my learning curve in video editing.
The Ulead was easy to use, and rendered at 3X on my system. It allowed me to cut clips and connect clips together easily. Unfortunately, The resulting DVD resolution was less than what I desired when displayed on my plasma TV, containing a lot of artifacts. It did playback widescreen, but was letterboxed.
Vegas is less intuitive, but after reviewing the tutorials and manual in hand, I was able to complete a short DVD project. The render time was approximately 5X (15 clips -9.5 minutes of video took 40 minutes to render). After rendering, DVD Architect is included to provide burning options.
Vegas uses a HDV intermediate codec ( Cineform??) that improved the resolution dramatically compared to the Ulead product. It has an option to match resolution to source material. It also allows you to display the resulting DVD in widescreen; with or without letterbox , as well as allowing you to choose to stretch or not. I chose the widescreen without letter box, and the DVD filled the screen of my plasma without any stretching or letterboxing. The difference is resolution is significant, similar to comparing SD content to HD.
One thing I did not like was the preview monitor. It uses a much lower video resolution, so previewing it shows very choppy playback which isn’t visible in the final result. I also found that using other windows outside of the software caused the software project to sometimes hang up, or take a long time to recover when the Vegas window is restored. My system is a 3.2 ghz PC with 2mb ram and ATI 9800 pro 128mb video card. Overhead was 52% during rendering.
I feel this software is an excellent alternative for those who choose not to buy the full Vegas 6.0, but want to display the quality of what the HD1 can produce. There are several features not supported in this version that are available on the full version, but it works fine for my applications at this time.
After trying the bundled Ulead software to create a DVD from my HD1 clips, I purchased Vegas Movie Studio + Platinum DVD to continue my learning curve in video editing.
The Ulead was easy to use, and rendered at 3X on my system. It allowed me to cut clips and connect clips together easily. Unfortunately, The resulting DVD resolution was less than what I desired when displayed on my plasma TV, containing a lot of artifacts. It did playback widescreen, but was letterboxed.
Vegas is less intuitive, but after reviewing the tutorials and manual in hand, I was able to complete a short DVD project. The render time was approximately 5X (15 clips -9.5 minutes of video took 40 minutes to render). After rendering, DVD Architect is included to provide burning options.
Vegas uses a HDV intermediate codec ( Cineform??) that improved the resolution dramatically compared to the Ulead product. It has an option to match resolution to source material. It also allows you to display the resulting DVD in widescreen; with or without letterbox , as well as allowing you to choose to stretch or not. I chose the widescreen without letter box, and the DVD filled the screen of my plasma without any stretching or letterboxing. The difference is resolution is significant, similar to comparing SD content to HD.
One thing I did not like was the preview monitor. It uses a much lower video resolution, so previewing it shows very choppy playback which isn’t visible in the final result. I also found that using other windows outside of the software caused the software project to sometimes hang up, or take a long time to recover when the Vegas window is restored. My system is a 3.2 ghz PC with 2mb ram and ATI 9800 pro 128mb video card. Overhead was 52% during rendering.
I feel this software is an excellent alternative for those who choose not to buy the full Vegas 6.0, but want to display the quality of what the HD1 can produce. There are several features not supported in this version that are available on the full version, but it works fine for my applications at this time.