Looking forward to is as well as I am just getting the vegas 6 demo to compare with my prem pro 1.5
Now does Vegas 6 require SP2??? :) Just kidding.
I have been a long time Canopus user (dv storm), but since I got the FX1 camera I am not sure I want to use a hardware solution again right now at least.

Jeff , the Vegas 6 demo does not do HDV only DV. Sort of pointless have a demo of something that isn't available for demo!!!! Had a long talk with support and pointed out that Vegas was the only manufacturer where the demo wasn't a real demo. I am now using Edius Pro 3 which does a nice job of mixed HDV and DV and has batch capture too. Works with my DVRaptor RT2 or just IEEE1394. Am waiting to upgrade PC with dual core so my present XP2500 is not up to capture with either Premiere Pro 1.5.1 or Edius but capture with capDVHS or Cineform HDlink work fine.
Ron Evans

Sure Vegas 6 demo does HDV *IF* you have an mpeg decoder installed. Even for demos, they have to pay for the license. So, Sony is supposed to pay for thousands of licenses for demo mpeg decoding?

Steven, we'll probably make the update as a free download to start with, and then incorporate it into the current book. It's mostly a JVC addition, plus a few other minor things. Keep in mind, having the book be currrent is important to me, and the state of the HDV state is changing rapidly, so we'll just do our best to make sure we stay on it.

Spot,
I have several mpeg decoders and encoders on my system. Premiere Pro 1.5.1 with the Mainconcept encoder/decoder, Womble with their encoder/decoder, Ulead 6.5, Edius Pro 3 with Procoder, plus several standalone, Mainconcept stand alone, CCE, TMPgenc etc. And at the time I was trying the options for HDV I had Pinnacle Edition 6 Demo and the Cineform Demo for Premiere Pro on the system too. None of these was seen or were usable by Vegas 6. As with Cineform I would be happy with a very short trial period of just a few days or have the program smart enough to see all the other paid up licenses for MPEG on the system. Neither was the case. I would be quite happy to accept a limitation on export or saving or even a time limit on encode etc but nothing in my opinion is a little poor. My interest in evaluating NLE's for HDV was to see how easy was it to incorporate HDV in a DV project and crop a 4x3 DV image from the 16x9 HDV. Then how fast was the rendering to do this for a DV output. Clearly I was unable to do this for Vegas 6 but after trying the Cineform Demo decided that Edius was faster and now use Edius Pro3 with my DVRaptorRT2 since any of the pure DV video does not have to be rendered only the HDV to DV which even on my slow XP2500 is reasonable at about 2 times realtime for the crop from m2t file to DV.

Ron Evans

From the OS and security standpoint, you should install SP2 if you attached to the internet. I have seen some reports of Firewire issues with some cameras, but the FX1 is in the stock inf files.

Once detected on any XP system, there is a custom inf file stored on the system, so it will not need to be reinstalled.

Note that many SP2 issues actually occur because of the Windows Firewall blocking ports.

I'm sure there is some merit to this, but at the same time, I'm not buying. We have 13 computers on our network, not including laptops, and of those, 9 of them are PC's using IE. No SP2 on any of them, all connected to the net 24/7. Panda Firewall only.
Common sense, a little bit of care, and this isn't an issue, and certainly no where near the issue that SP2 has been bringing about for people that use a lot of video product. Vegas, Ulead, Adobe, Camtasia, Serious Magic....all report issues in various forums with SP2.
I can't recommend that no one install it, but we won't be putting it on our system anytime soon.
If you DO install it, be sure to download their latest Firewire patch.

DSE: Thanks
 

Spot,

That's cool. Thanks. I haven't even received it yet. Y'all ship slow boat from China? :)

I figured I better get around to reading it. It might come in handy, and any chance I get I want to take advantage of, because this trip to Greece is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. We'll hit lots more countries before we die, but probably never get back to Greece. I want to shoot the best footage I can, and if your book gives me even one good tip, it is worth the wait.

Okay I have the full version of Vegas 6 installed and sure enough, with the default settings it does not want to capture HDV from the FX1 (if you have HDV to DV conversion turned off on the FX1 menu).

I had to go it and uncheck the "use external application box for capture" and then open the capture windw (which will now open at the bottom right of the screen in Vegas) and right click -> Device -> IEEE 1394/MPEG2-TS Device -> Sony HDR-FX1.

And yes I still had to do this even though I am using Windows XP SP2.
Now in Premiere, the FX1 shows up without any of this tweaking so I don't know why vegas is having such an issue with the FX1 in HDV mode.

Only problem now is that I can't seem to set capute in and out points... Anyone now how to do this? The icons are greyed out.