Sony Vegas 7 and XDCAM at IBC

[David Mintzer]

Just pulled this off the Sony board----I wonder what they mean by a "robust" XDCAM workflow". Anyhow it looks promising.




"See the newest version of Vegas® software! Vegas 7 includes key enhancements that provide better editing solutions for HD, increased playback performance for both audio and video, a robust XDCAM workflow and advanced editing functionality for increased productivity. Also on show is DVD Architect™ 4, which is included in the Vegas+DVD Production Suite. Vegas 7 is available in late September, with French, German, and Japanese versions available in the following weeks."

[David Jimerson]

More importantly, I wonder what they mean by "better editing solutions for HD."

[Glenn Chan]

HDV:
If you believe in native HDV editing... Vegas could be better in that regard (i.e. real-time performance). Final Cut for example (supposedly) does some tricks in indexing the HDV as you capture, which allows it real-time performance.

And if you believe in intermediates then... maybe you're getting something like the whole cineform with Vegas???

HD:
I haven't done this myself, but the performance could be better here??

Or maybe Vegas will capture DVCPRO HD over firewire... ;P (Hell would start freezing over when that happens IMO.)

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Glenn Chan

Final Cut for example (supposedly) does some tricks in indexing the HDV as you capture, which allows it real-time performance.

Apple definitely formats HDV to their advantage do they can pull off some stuff that other people have trouble with.

For instance, exporting a Quicktime formatted HDV movie directly off the timeline takes scarcely more time than exporting DV. One can only assume they are not re-encoding GOPs at cuts, but merely slapping things together in a way that Quicktime can deal with easily, but true HDV decoders would choke on.

Working with native HDV in FCP5 is only a tiny bit slower than working with DV on my dual 2ghz (not exactly a new machine). Given that you can make a final uncompressed render of your project for FX and GFX to tape, there's not really much of a downside to working in HDV.

[David Jimerson]

Originally Posted by Glenn Chan

Or maybe Vegas will capture DVCPRO HD over firewire... ;P (Hell would start freezing over when that happens IMO.)

Yeah, no kidding. Well, dare to dream . . .

[Glenn Chan]

Well, maybe it would be able to capture TWO streams of DVCPRO HD at once...! :D

Xpri did it (for SDI), before it hit end of life and Sony stopped making the hardware for it (that allowed you to capture two streams at once).

[Nate Weaver]

I expect that in two years, half of us will be working file-based to IT derived stores..."capture" issues as it were will be a memory on my rear-view mirror.

These days I'm becoming of the opinion tape based HDV/Firestore solutions will be short-lived indeed.

[Glenn Chan]

I expect that in two years, half of us will be working file-based to IT derived stores..."capture" issues as it were will be a memory on my rear-view mirror.

Well, you still have linear editing kicking around... it's faster for news. On the other hand, IT-based workflows would be a lot faster than linear editing... Sony is likely pushing XDCAM HD + whatever NLE as replacement for betaSP + whatever editor (i.e. linear).

2- Tape may still be a preferred delivery format... betaSP may still kick around for a while, as will 3/4" (because their workflow is already setup to handle that).

But really, file-based workflows would make more sense if people can get everything working, reliable, and compatible.