Actually, MPEG-2 is senseless for HD videos, IMHO. And HDV definitely is MPEG-2 with a highfalutin name. Only the relatively high bitrate of HDV video keeps it from becoming total cr-p. I gave up on hi-def MPEG-2 some time ago (except from HDTV broadcasts) because I could never get decent image quality in anything (especially material shot in AVCHD to begin with) that's transcoded to MPEG-2/HDV even at 40 Mbps. If I ever transcode anything to MPEG-2 again, I would keep the final result to no higher than standard-definition so that regular DVD players can play back the videos (when anything HD gets converted to standard-def, most of the image quality gets lost in the resizing rather than in the transcoding). It's so sad that any codec which delivers higher image quality at lower bitrates ends up being a lot tougher to work with than those codecs which deliver inferior image quality at relatively high bitrates. (And, as I stated early in this paragraph, working with any lossy compressed format that's allegedly easier to work with meant that I would be starting with material which were already relatively poor in image quality to begin with.)

And I also agree that AVCHD is tough to work with. My current workflow involves converting all "compressed" HD files to uncompressed (or "lossless"-compressed) before tinkering with them.

this is a great read.
I learnt Vegas first and have invested a bit of time trying to learn FCP and Premiere,
FCP because everyone says its the best,
and Premiere because I love After Effects and the integration is so good.
Im back in Vegas now and just move to AFX for the bits I need.
64 bit Vegas still has some dramas, but not as bad as a lot of people make out.
It seems to get more and more stable the more I learn about this craft, so now I ask,
Was it me or the software?
I will prob end up in Premiere for one simple reason,
Vegas IMHO cannot be considered a real professional tool until it has fully adjustable Bezier keyframing like in Premiere, AFX or 3ds Max.
Actually, if they wanted to really nail it,
Allow the addition of a camera track to make better use of the 3d source alpha mode,
Have a built in motion tracking tool that can be used for smoothing, stabilizing or applying to a null object.
Be able to see the alpha channel in the preview window.
Being able to set how often you want it to auto save ( wow, does that mean it crashes to much? lol )
Being able to disable resample at a project, or at least track level would be huge as well.
Im asking alot hey?
I know, someone put some perfume on Vegas, Give After Effects a Viagra, lock them in a room together and let nature take its course.
I can only dream. :)

The only people I've heard say that are people that have invested in it. For sure it's not true, they all offer different things at different price points and it's impossible to say what is best, only what is your favorite.

Gerald, I too have Premier and would love to learn it...I just don't have the patience.

yes Jeff, I know what you mean. Each project i start, I say to myself.
"This is the one, Start in Premiere, and see it through."
10 mins later I hit a snag and go running back to Vegas like a sissy little girl! LOL.
Dont get me wrong, I love Vegas, I just really could use the Bezier keyframing that Premier provides.
Im starting another project this week!
This is the one!
Im also going to get fit, eat less bad food and do my bit for world peace. ;)

In other words, don't hold my breath to hear about your first project done in Premier :)

I started with a hardware/software package from Canopus - somewhere in the mid-90s - about $2200, as I recall. When computers got fast enough to forgo the hardware PCI card, I used several others, then wound up with Premiere for a couple of years. Combersome; never liked it.

Having been using Sound Forge, I decided to give Vegas a try at version 3. I've never looked back, even though in the meantime I've fooled around with Ulead and some of the others - and upgraded Premiere several times before dropping it entirely . . . having used it less and less frequently.

I almost gave up on Vegas at 8c because of the rendering problems. My long, complex projects were dogs to render, requiring that I cut them up into 2-min. segments for rendering to Cineform intermediate. Even some of the 2-min. segments wouldn't completely render, and I'd have to cut-n-paste them into an entirely new instance of Vegas and render out little pieces. Finally, I'd assemble all the pieces and render into one long Cineform .AVI, which then I could render into any final delivery formate, usually using TMPGenc for creating SD DVDs. I spent hours doing all of this for each project.

Then came Win7-64 bits and Vegas 9c-64. Suddenly I had the best of both worlds. I now use 8c for editing - so far always stable under Win7-64. Then I open 9c-64 for rendering the .VEGs that 8c produced. Almost never a hitch on my old Q6600.

One other change I've made since going to 60p: I use 9c-32 to open the files that my Sanyo cameras create (8c won't open the video track), then render using an intermediate. I was using Cineform NeoScene's codec for this, but now I prefer PicVideo, by Pegasus. The PicVideo files are smaller (they play rather smoothly from a fast hard disk - no RAID stripe 0 required) and, even after 6 generations down, the images are almost as good as Cineform. I put the PicVideo .AVIs on the 8c timeline, and 9c-64 opens them even though I haven't paid for the 64-bit version of PicVideo (9c now has native MJPG decoders). You can buy PicVideo 32-bit for $40 if you do a little search on the web (or do a search over at the SonyCreativeSoftware forum).

Now I'm again a very satisfied Vegas user.