Canon HV30 and Vegas 6 questions

[Bill Mecca]

I just took delivery of my HV30 from B&H and had a few minutes to play with it. Shot a bit of HDV footage, including a quick green screen test. I hooked it up and captured, but it was a bit odd. I used the internal capture, it recognized the camera, and captured but the preview screen was blue, I watched on the LCD. It captured, I placed it on the timeline, but it did not play smoothly, audio played okay, but video just jumped.

Here's my system, HP XW6000, dual Xeon 2.4 proc, 1.5 Gb ram, 120 gig media drive.
I've noticed some choppy playback previously on occassion, and I had been using the machine for music production before I did this capture, so think maybe the RAM was a bit clogged.

But wondering a couple things, is capturing in that manner the best way? I noticed the captured m2t files were upper field first, and dv is lower field first, any issues with that? I did render it out as a wmv file, and was actually surprised at how well the green screen worked. (there was one issue, as I had the cam in auto and when I moved my arms it changed the exposure a bit so that part of the key was a bit thinned out.)

Any tips as I venture into HDV-land would be welcome. ;-) Planning on upgrading teo Vegas 8, but need a bit more $ first. LOL

[Chris Barcellos]

You will find converting captured HDV files to the intermediate codec (actually Cineform's older codec) will provide a much more rewarding editing experience. 7 and 8 also have that on board.

If you are going to shoot 24p, though, you will want to get Cineform's NeoHDV so you can remove pull down to edit in true 24p.

[Michael Wisniewski]

Originally Posted by Bill Mecca

I noticed the captured m2t files were upper field first, and dv is lower field first, any issues with that?

If you shoot interlaced HDV and are going to DVD, make sure to change the "render as ..." settings to upper field first. By default the render as ... settings for MPEG-2 are lower field first.

[Bill Mecca]

I just downloaded and installed the trial version of 8.0c.
captured HDV from the HV30 no problem (though I am still not seeing it in the preview window which I don't quite understand).

Now as to the intermediate codec, try to crack thru this thick skull of mine, are you saying I capture as HDV, then render each clip out in another format (cannot seem to find the cineform intermediate anywhere) and then edit? or am I skipping a groove?

With a quick test the system seems to be handling the HDV okay, no effects or anything, just placed two clips on the timeline. What is the benefit of an intermediate codec?

thanks.

[Edward Troxel]

Originally Posted by Bill Mecca

cannot seem to find the cineform intermediate anywhere

File - Render As - AVI as the type, look for the "Intermediate" presets

Originally Posted by Bill Mecca

With a quick test the system seems to be handling the HDV okay, no effects or anything, just placed two clips on the timeline. What is the benefit of an intermediate codec?

They will typically give you a higher playback rate and easier editing than the original file. If the HDV is working ok, don't worry about going to intermediates.

[Bill Mecca]

Thanks for that!! sometimes its all in knowing where to look (and not being dog tired at the time either!) I guess it's one clip at a time then.

One more question: so if I do go to the intermediate codec to edit, then do I replace with the original footage before final render, or just go from the intermediate codec to final render? or is it more content specific than that? ;-)

thanks again.

[Edward Troxel]

Typically you'd go back to the original footage for the final render.

[John Rofrano]

Originally Posted by Edward Troxel

Typically you'd go back to the original footage for the final render.

Not if you used CineForm as the intermediary. They are every much as high quality as the originals and there is no benefit to going back to the m2t files. In fact, NeoHDV has an option to capture and convert to intermediary deleting the original files because they are no longer needed. CineForm uses less compression and holds the quality better than the original footage.

You might be thinking about proxies. You would only go back to the original if you were using proxies. Intermediaries are not proxies.

~jr

[Edward Troxel]

Yes, I was thinking proxies.