The top pros in this Forum have long advocated use of intermediate editing codecs for handling of HDV. Is there anything in Vegas 7 that is changing that opinion ??

Yes- native HDV editing. Sorry, I'm pointing out the obvious.

On the Sony Madison Software site, Spot chips in with his opinion on the topic. I don't really have an informed opinion since I haven't looked into whether an intermediate codec would deliver better results.

Native HDV editing is great for non-color correction intensive work, for non-composited work, and for non-recompress-oriented editing.
If you're working on a slow machine, plan on compositing, intend to do intense C/C, or intend on rendering to new track...then an HDI is still the better option, IMO

DSE: Thanks. This is similar to the conclusion I have come to on the Premeire Pro 2.0 side.

I tested the demo version this afternoon, and HDV playback (m2v) is indeed a lot smoother, but on my machine not quite as smooth as it should be (Cineform still gives more comfortable editing)

I run a AMD 64-bit 3.2 GHz with 1 Gb RAM and a 256Mb video-card (2 monitors at 1280*1024) - I think I desperately need an upgrade (with Cineform editing in HD (1280*720 25p) is 'possible' - but not quite as nice and smooth as I would have wanted it - SD has spoiled me for a long time). I was thinking about some dual-core AMD64 with 2 Gb of RAM and perhaps a 512 Mb video-card (that should do the trick I suppose) - Can anyone give some suggestions?

I tested the demo version this afternoon, and HDV playback (m2v) is indeed a lot smoother, but on my machine not quite as smooth as it should be (Cineform still gives more comfortable editing)

I run a AMD 64-bit 3.2 GHz with 1 Gb RAM and a 256Mb video-card (2 monitors at 1280*1024) - I think I desperately need an upgrade (with Cineform editing in HD (1280*720 25p) is 'possible' - but not quite as nice and smooth as I would have wanted it - SD has spoiled me for a long time). I was thinking about some dual-core AMD64 with 2 Gb of RAM and perhaps a 512 Mb video-card (that should do the trick I suppose) - Can anyone give some suggestions?

Werner:

I haven't been using Vegas for HDV editing to date, but with this version, I may be doing so. In PPro 2.0, and editing HDV "native" I have great results with rendering for preview quickly with my AMD 3800 + Dual core self built, with 2 gigs mem, and a ATI PCI express card with 256 mgs of memory. It is not the real time previewing I got in DV with my Pinnacle Pro One editing board in the old days, but I don't feel there is an inordinate amount of time spent in rendering a project..

I tested the demo version this afternoon, and HDV playback (m2v) is indeed a lot smoother, but on my machine not quite as smooth as it should be (Cineform still gives more comfortable editing)

I run a AMD 64-bit 3.2 GHz with 1 Gb RAM and a 256Mb video-card (2 monitors at 1280*1024) - I think I desperately need an upgrade (with Cineform editing in HD (1280*720 25p) is 'possible' - but not quite as nice and smooth as I would have wanted it - SD has spoiled me for a long time). I was thinking about some dual-core AMD64 with 2 Gb of RAM and perhaps a 512 Mb video-card (that should do the trick I suppose) - Can anyone give some suggestions?

Very easy solution here is to AVOID AMD CPU's. I have nothing against them and have been a proponet of AMD for quite some time, but the new Core 2 Duo chips from Intel are not only MUCH faster for the $$, but typically geared toward this type of work. Definately go Core 2 Duo.

Very easy solution here is to AVOID AMD CPU's. I have nothing against them and have been a proponet of AMD for quite some time, but the new Core 2 Duo chips from Intel are not only MUCH faster for the $$, but typically geared toward this type of work. Definately go Core 2 Duo.

I don't know what status is now, but 8 months ago I was planning on Intel chip, but my research indicated the Dual cores were actually having problem with speeding up video editing... some reported slower speeds than single chip processors... Point is, do your research to find out what current view is...

Native HDV editing is great for non-color correction intensive work, for non-composited work, and for non-recompress-oriented editing.
If you're working on a slow machine, plan on compositing, intend to do intense C/C, or intend on rendering to new track...then an HDI is still the better option, IMO

When you say "rendering to a new track" do you mean renderinging into another format as well? Like Mpeg-4, Sorenson 3, etc ?

Jon

I don't know what status is now, but 8 months ago...The Core Duos are a whole new ballgame. Until this summer, AMD was the clear winner. Intel has done a major leapfrog. The new chips are fast, cool and economical. My son just built a Core Duo system with the least expensive chip (about $185). It can render three instances of a crazy, flaming Particle Illusion test (in SD) in near real-time. His old 32-bit 1400+ AMD system could only manage about one frame every other second.

According to the tests Ive read, that $185 chip is rougly the equal to AMD's latest 4600+ 64-bit dual core.

That said, I've been an AMD guy for many years. I'm looking forward to seeing AMD's next release put them back in front!

BTW, we chose the Asus P5NSLI motherboard. http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2820 It works great, and is fanless. The only downside is that it lacks 1394. We added a Pyro PCI 64 1394 card, since it was relatively cheap, and uses the TI chipset. To move up to an Asus board with 1394 would have cost another $100 or so, the P5NSLI and 1394 add-on was an easy choice.

Yes, the new Core 2 Duo chips are built on a completely different architecture than what you saw 8 months ago. There aren't any benchmarks out there that show this chip to have any weaknesses against it's AMD counterparts. Worst yet, AMD is a LONG ways away from having a truly competative chip. Back to the old days, Intel is now King again.

Jon

Yes, the new Core 2 Duo chips are built on a completely different architecture than what you saw 8 months ago. There aren't any benchmarks out there that show this chip to have any weaknesses against it's AMD counterparts. Worst yet, AMD is a LONG ways away from having a truly competative chip. Back to the old days, Intel is now King again.

Jon


Thanks to both of you... I hadn't been following this that closely as I hadn't been considering a new system, and have been happy with what I had built.. Guess now I will start making up excuses to move to the next level. :)

First off, something's up if you can't view a single m2t at full rate on an Athlon 64 at 2.0GHz or above.

On my Opteron (admittedly quite quick) and Woodcrest (obviously quite quick) machines, preview half, I can generally handle in the ballpark of six m2ts at full rate (PIPping like crazy). 2 clips crossfading at preview full holds around full rate with build 115, depending on the source drives.

Secondly, on the m2t vs. intermediate debate, native footage with a never-compressed chain is always best. If you can't color-correct in-project (or don't want to), nested projects (just as expensive to preview as doing it in-project) or uncompressed renders (only as fast as your hard disks) are going to be your best bet. These will keep the data in shape better than any lossy compression can. If you can't swing that, Cineform intermediates are going to degrade your data less than m2t intermediates.

When I put together a really hard-hitting composite with multiple steps (happens far less with nesting and unlimited track parenting), uncompressed AVIs are my intermediates. It soaks a lot of disk space, but you don't have to keep the files around forever. Just keep the projects that you made them with.

I don't think it's the PC, but Vegas:

If I play an m2t or Cineform avi in mediaplayer, it runs fine.

If I play a Cineform in avi, it says it runs at 25 frames (as it should, it's 1280x720 25p), but it glitches every second or 2. When I have the preview at full resultion (preview auto or, preview full), that is. When I have the preview at half everything should be okay.

The problem is this:

When I put a clip on the timeline (even without any effect or transition - just a plain clip) and I try to play it in the preview (again, expanded to full resolution - preview full/auto), the displayed framerate droppes to 3 or 4. When I preview at half size the framerate is something about 15 - not enough, but that's just fine for editing - 3, 4 or perhaps 5 frames per second is undoable slow for editing....

The CPU seems to be running at 90-97%, RAM usage increases while playing, but I keep it under 1 gig with my setting for RAM preview. All drives are clean and defragmented (besides, if the problem was that the amount of data of the cineformfiles was to much to transport in such a short time from the harddrives, it wouldn't play fine in MediaPlayer - so I rule out the problem is with the harddrives).

Only thing I can see is that it's got to be vegas.

The biggest shame is this: When working with DV in SD, there was no recompression, so whenever you played something in the timeline that didn't have any effect on it or any transition - it would play as well as in (say) MediaPlayer, because that was all vegas was doing. With CineForm AVI files that isn't the case anymore (recompression turned of in properties window doesn't seem to make any difference) - perhaps it's got something to do with the native color space of the application (vegas in this case)... ?

hi
i have tried new vegas 7 with cineform and with native HDV, i can defenitely say native HDV has become faster with my new dual core 1,86 prestigio laptop, ati 256MB, 1 GB ram, and wuxga 1920x1200 display. more response in timeline and faster render to .m2t, than cineform .avi, and it is even not core 2 duo,
i can say i am very satisfied with the result.

So the advantage of the new V7 is you can edit mt2 easier, and not have the hit of the huge file sizes of the Cineform avi files?

11Gb/hr mt2 vs. 40Gb/hr Cineform

So the advantage of the new V7 is you can edit mt2 easier, and not have the hit of the huge file sizes of the Cineform avi files?

11Gb/hr mt2 vs. 40Gb/hr Cineform

Yes - this is one advantage of V7. As DSE said earlier in this thread there are still many reasons why one may still prefer to use a Cineform intermediate file (intense color correction, multiple generation renders, etc). But V7 makes native HDV editing a much more viable option than it is in V6.

Note that the speed improvements in V7 require the processor to support SSE2. If your processor doesn't support SSE2 you won't see much improvement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE2

Pentium 4 and Pentium M processors do, as do newer AMD processors..

Thanks Mark, very helpful.

Just tried the new V7 with mt2. My computer handles the m2t files better than the Cineform. With Cineform I was getting about 20fps playback, with V7 I never get less than 25fps, even in transitions, color correction, etc.

Pretty cool indeed.

Would you suggest jumping to Vegas 7 or keep Vegas 6 and purchase CF Connect HD. These are my specs:P4 2.8 HT/ 2GB RAM/Ext HD 500GB. Budget is tight cause unlike the rest of you I do this as a hobbie capturing family events.

I upgraded from Vegas 6.0d to Vegas 7.0.

I am very pleased. Some of the new features are very useful. I especially like the color line that indicates you have two events aligned properly. I also appreciate that you can import a four channel (polyphonic) ".wav" file properly. This was not possible in Vegas 6.0.

I am now doing all of my editing in Vegas 7.0 and have not any problem other than an obscure problem with using 192k audio files (this problem exists in Vegas 6.0d also). (I was just testing 192k-24bit audio while I was recording a world class singer, generally there is no need for 192k audio, as far as I know.)

In the cases where you want to edit M2T, the system is much more responsive. This was painful with Vegas 6.0, but is possible with Vegas 7.0 depending on your computer's performance.

However, for serious work, I recommend using the Cineform Intermediate Codec, which is included in Vegas 6.0 and Vegas 7.0.

There is an advantage, in your workflow, if you purchase the Cineform Connect HD, as the Cineform files are created directly when you capture. Without this, you capture M2T files, then render them, in Vegas 6.0 or 7.0 to the Cineform files. This is an extra step that is eliminated by Connect HD.

I recommend purchasing Vegas 7.0. If you do decide to purchase it, do it soon while the upgrade price is only $150 (packaged price).

Personally, I will probably purchase Cineform Connect HD sometime in the future. I held up on this purchase prior to Vegas 7.0 being released since I did not know if Vegas 7.0 would eliminate the need for Connect HD or not.

Fred, to answer your question directly, you can stay with 6.0d, and you will not even need to purchase Cineform HD. If you feel that $150 or so is in your budget, purchase the Vegas 7.0 upgrade.

Fred, to answer your question directly, you can stay with 6.0d, and you will not even need to purchase Cineform HD. If you feel that $150 or so is in your budget, purchase the Vegas 7.0 upgrade.

Thats the delima. I can either have one or the other. If I do get Vegas 7 then I will not intend to get Cineform down the road. Reading what others said about 7 and HD there is no need to use intermediate files. I check the upgrade site and it said $249 with the DVD. I guess I missed the boat.

Dear Fred,

Sony's website is confusing, and wrong at times.

When I purchased my upgrade, I expected it to cost $249.95, but it was actually $149.95.

The $149.95 price for upgrades is good until October 31, 2006.

The following is from an email from Sony:

"As a Sony Media Software registered customer, you qualify for special introductory pricing through October 31, 2006.

Upgrade from Vegas for only $149.95 $100 off!"

My opinion is if you can only buy one of them, buy the Vegas 7 upgrade over Connect HD. The main reason being that you already have the Cineform codec in Vegas, so you can use it for cases where you need it, but likely you'll find you can do most of your HDV editing natively in V7. Plus you get a bunch of other nice enhancements in V7.

Thanks everyone. I plan to get the upgrade 6 to Vegas 7. The site still says 249, I must have deleted that email for the promotion.

Dear Fred,

Just call Sony Media Software, they should give you the $149.95 upgrade price for the packaged edition.

You can also get the discounted upgrade pricing here
https://www.sonymediasoftware.com/shopping/item.asp?PID=416&keycode=63003-1100

Hey everyone, this is my first post. User of Vegas 7 and Cineform Connect HD. Nothing much to say other than Vegas rocks and the Connect HD app aswell...

http://www.cineform.com/products/ConnectHD.htm#CHD_Enhances_Vegas6

Will probably hear from me in the future, great to be here...

Regards
Van Zijl

Got extra money this month from jury duty. To support my habit...took the plunge and getting my upgrade to Vegas 7. Can't wait....

Actually, the m2v's aren't capturing correctly in Vegas, so the native editing solution isn't any good. On about 10% of the clips, the captured audio is longer then the captured video, preview on half size (a quarter of the pixels) is fine, but on full res it is a disaster...

If I try to import over 20 m2v files in a project, an error occurs and the project and vegas shut down...

I am currently running Vegas 6.0D. Just purchased the $149.95 upgrade to V7. Just wondering if those of you that have already upgraded, have any tips on the procedure. Are there any caveats, or special tricks to getting the best upgrade? Can I just upgrade, or do I have to remove program-V6 first. Thanks

No need to remove Vegas 6. None at all.

Also, when they put out minor version updates (e.g from 7.0a to 7.0b) you can install it on top of the existing one. (That only applies to minor versions, do not install V7 on top of V6).

A couple of things for installing Vegas 7 (which you may have learned from the other posts in this forum and thread), all of which you can think about AFTER installing Vegas 7:

* If you are using plugins from 3rd parties (like VASST, Pixelan, etc.) check for updates, download them and install them
* If you use .mov files on your timelines, you need to have QuickTime 7 with authoring components installed (free download from Apple website)
* If you are using Cineform's HD Connect product, download their 3.2 update. If you use a prior version, you can get crashes in Vegas 7.

Werner, what error do you get when you try to import over 20 m2ts? Is it an exception error?

Once you open a Vegas project in Vegas 7.0, one that was originally created in 6.0, and then you save it, you will no longer be able to open it in Vegas 6.0.

If this could be a problem, then I recommend that you copy your "Projects" folder to another folder before using the projects in Vegas 7.0.

Generally, this should not be a problem, but if you are in the middle of a large editing project, this is good insurance so that you can go back to Vegas 6.0, if necessary.

Will, I can't remember exactly, but it could be an exception error. When I import 50 m2v files at a time I get this error. When I import those same 50 files 10 at a time (5 times of impoting) it doesn't pose a problem.

Usually my projects have 400 or more clips, so it is too much work.... (400 is really the very least. 700 to 1000 clips is a good average... so you can guess it is a hell of a job importing it in 70 times... and even then it doesn't go flawless)

Werner, try 7.0b. My suspicion is that you were using hardware that falls back onto an older decoder (because of a lack of SSE2 support). This has been corrected in 7.0b.

Yep, updated to 7.0b. I haven't run test on capturing, but the performance of preview hasn't really improved.

I was looking at another PC. I've always run AMD, but perhaps this time the Intel? Anyhow, Dual core for certain, because Vegas will take advantage of that (and that's the only software that will run on that PC). AMD is 64bits, but is the intel E6600 also 64-bits? Anyhow, 64-bit won't improve the performance of vegas, because Vegas doesn't support 64-bit rendering (as I understand it).

I don't want to fuel a Intel - AMD war, but which one has the best features for working with vegas? The intel E6600 or the AMD dual core 4800+ or 5000+? And what are the differences?

L2 cache is 4 Mb on the E6600, but I don't know what it is on the AMD and it seems to me that is an important key in rendering...

The rendertest.veg benchmark for Vegas (it's the only Vegas benchmark with lots of results / data points) shows that Intel's offerings are clearly in the lead.

2- Cache size is not that big of a deal when it comes to video rendering, although it might depend on the effect. Clock speed is a good way of figuring out relative performance **WITHIN A PROCESSOR LINE***. By within a processor line, I mean a single product line out of the many processor lines a manufacturer may have. And unfortunately, it's confusing since each manufacturer has slightly different product lines (i.e. different size caches) and the naming systems are confusing.

All current Athlon 64, Opteron, Core Duo, Core 2 xxx, Xeon, and P4 processors support SSE2, so you're covered there. Just about anything you buy right now will cover that for you.

If you're looking at AMD, look at AMD64, Intel, EM64T. You may not want to run an x64 OS right now, but the 64-bit capable processors are the quickest of each maker's line. AMD's been solid 64-bit for quite some time now. You have to work pretty hard to get a non 64-bit capable AMD processor.

The non-SSE2 support (are you running an Athlon XP?) in 7.0b doesn't make things really fast, but it does keep you from crashing with too many files (a problem that Vegas 6 had).

As far as performance is concerned, it's worth looking at the benchmarks and examining what you're doing. For instance, my Socket-F Opteron and Woodcrest machines (2.6GHz and 2.66GHz, respectively) are more closely matched than one might expect. In my testing, the Woodcrest is generally faster, but not by as much as an E6400 vs. a 4400+.

There is, of course, the argument for going really cheap (single-core Athlon 64 3200+ for $50, for instance) and riding the back of the performance wave. It comes down to how you value your time vs. your money.

Somewhere a lot higher up in this thread, before it turned into an AMD vs. Intel discussion, somebody was asking about the pros and cons of using .m2t native vs. using an intermediate (like Cineform). Here is an interesting and relevant quotes from Sony on their Vegas forum:

If you are doing a render to new track or something similar that requires multiple generations of intermediates , you would be better off using uncompressed (the best option) or some format with less lossy compression for these intermediate renders than long-gop MPEG-2.

However, you are not going to get _better_ quality that the original source by compressing to any intermediate file first, and then applying fx, and then rendering to your destination format. No matter what the source format is, it gets processed in Vegas as RGB 4:4:4, and from there it gets rendered to the output format you choose (WMV, DV, M2t etc etc).

It is true you might get a different look by rendering to some compressed intermediate format first (due to dithering or whatnot), but you'll never have a _cleaner_ source than pristine native original file. Compression = data loss- you might not be able to see it in one or even 50 generations but it is occuring, and it does add up.

Summarizing: If you are rendering to new track, applying fx, rendering to new again, applying fix, rendering to new again, applying fx, and then rendering to output, you are better off using uncompressed, Sony YUV or a visully lossless codec like Cineform for these intermediate steps than you would be if you were rendering to a highly compressed format like HDV m2t for each of these intermediate render steps.

If you have a timeline with a variety of original sources (m2t included) and you apply fx and titles etc and then you render to your output file, you'll get the cleanest possible result (because you didn't compress in any intermediate steps).

My interpretation, the real question is: will you be doing multiple generations of rendering?
Yes => use an intermediate.
No => use native .m2t original.

Prior to Vegas 7 it wasn't practical to use .m2t sources because of lackluster playback and edit performance, but that limitation is gone. And since the playback performance of the Cineform intermediate in Vegas 7 has degraded significantly (compared with Vegas 6), it is no longer the preferred option unless you are doing multiple generations of rendering.

Some have stated that complicated color correction and compositing warrants the use of an intermediate. After reading Sony's comments about the inner workings of Vegas, I don't see any basis for that.

Dear Jay,

Quote from your last post:

"Prior to Vegas 7 it wasn't practical to use .m2t sources because of lackluster playback and edit performance, but that limitation is gone. And since the playback performance of the Cineform intermediate in Vegas 7 has degraded significantly (compared with Vegas 6), it is no longer the preferred option unless you are doing multiple generations of rendering."

Has the playback performance of the Cineform intermediate in Vegas 7 degraded significantly? Is this Sony's position, or have you seen this yourself?

Dear Jay,
... Has the playback performance of the Cineform intermediate in Vegas 7 degraded significantly? Is this Sony's position, or have you seen this yourself?

I haven't seen Sony comment about it, but I have observed it myself. As have others on both forums (Sony and this one). You can check some of the commentary in the Cineform Software Showcase area on this forum. Their CTO comments that Sony has changed the way Vegas is making program calls into the Cineform codec, and the result is slower playback.

I don't have actual playback framerate comparison data to share. Some people might have posted these observations in the forums..

For a project I'm working on that does require multiple generations of rendering, I am using Vegas's "takes" feature to put both an .m2t and the Cineform intermediate on my timeline. When I do playback, I view an .m2t take. When I render, I switch active take to the one with the intermediate. I did all this because it was necessary to run the footage through DeShaker in VirtualDub, making the original .m2t not an option for final render.

I ve been monitoring this thread, having asked the original question. And yes, my question was intended to address intermediate v. "native" editing.
Of course, coupled with that is equipment needed as well as the way Vegas 7 now handles both methods of editing...

Jay's and Dan's posts are getting to the heart of things. It is interesting that Jay's post indicates that Vegas 7 seems to have taken intermediate editing a step backward. Does anyone else have an indication or comment on this ?

Dear Jay,

Thanks for the udpate. I did not know that the Cineform intermediate was slower under Vegas 7.0.

Thanks for everyone who pointed me to the right choice. I got my upgrade and what a big improvement as far as using native m2t. In Vegas 6 I get a 8.8xx frame rate playback on raw m2t..now with 7 I get 29.4XX-29.9XX. These are all under the preview auto quality. I'm very pleased!!

It is interesting that Jay's post indicates that Vegas 7 seems to have taken intermediate editing a step backward. Does anyone else have an indication or comment on this ?

A good friend is having difficulties with this very issue. According to him, the Cineform forums have additional information on this.

And yes, he was screaming along at full framerates on a custom build Athlon X2 box with Vegas6.