Conversion in-camera:
You can never recapture frame accurately to have an HD master. YOu can only ever have an SD master.

Conversion in Vegas:
you can have an HD master, SD master, HDV master.

The rest is debatable. Although it takes longer, I prefer to convert in Vegas.

Basically...SD is now pretty much the only delivery opton, but with viable HD delivery options in the near future it is good to have an HD back up. You are actually not rendering the video to dv (atleast I don't believe) in vegas. You would use an intermediate codec which is similar to a layer in photoshop. You can then edit the video without degrading as much as you would by rendering the HD to DV. You then, from there, can go back to tape as HD or render to SD for DVD purposes (or for computer, etc..)

If it is a ConnectHD issue you should uninstall, which I am sure you have done. You also may need to get rid of the registry entries that are left behind which I will not get into since there is a risk involved with this. I just recently reinstalled Sony 6 without issue and had a trial version of ConnectHD onboard. What is the exact error you are getting?

Okay so what stops me from doing the following:

1. Do the conversion in camera during capture.

2. Edit in Vegas.

3. Render as needed in SD.

4. If and when I need an HD version in the future, simply recapture the original footage in HD and replace all the SD footage with the HD footage in the Media bin.

5. Render to HD.

I'm not sure I understand why this wouldn't work.

I load the cd and the intro vegas screen pops up along with the funky music in the background with the selections. I click on install vegas there a very long pause then an error comes up and reads: "Set up.exe Application error. The application failed to initialize properly (0XC0000006.)" That don't look so good. Should I reboot again?? This is so time consuming spent all day trying to figure this out.

You were right John, Gearshift does force the files to be placed in the same folder. Silly me must have rendered both the DV proxy n CF files together is a different folder, den deleted the CF n tested if I could swap to m2t. Its working fine. Now to find out my other question on FX1 converted DV before I make a conclusion. Thanks again for the quick support!

Oh yeah.. thaz a good tip I forgot. Anyway. I cant tell because my mini preview window at the lower corner doesnt have the 2 black bars when I have a m2t or Cf files on the time line, just like DV-PAL. Thaz why I cant tell the difference. I'm not sure if there is something wrong with the preview screen.

Nothing that I can see. Many will say you get better results letting vegas do the conversion but many say they do not see a difference. Not sure about any editing you may do from the start though. If you had a lot of editing you may want to put it back on tape afterwards rather than redo everything. The experienced on here can give you the advantages and disadvantages.

the lack of frame-accurate recapture would prevent you from accomplishing this at this time.

Ahh. Now that makes sense.

Maybe this will all be moot in a year or two when the computers have caught up to HD.

Why doesnt H.264 rendering work in Vegas?
 

I'm trying to render my 1080-50i to Quicktime H264 but an error pops up. No matter what settings I apply for the rest of the parameters, the error comes. Is there a specific set of parameters to ahere to?

Do you have Quicktime 7 installed?

Color correction in vegas
 

ok, still looking at different editing options before i buy. I was wondering how involved is the color correcton in Vegas. I ran across a sample of color correction doen useing a program called magic bullet. Is vegas on par with this, or is magic bullet a special software made for color correction. Any help would be great

Magic Bullet isn't for color correction, but rather color "enhancement." MB is for generating filmlooks more than anything. That said, with a little creative ability and a fair amount of time, you can get Vegas to do the same thing. The color correction tools in Vegas are plentiful and very good, and generally real time on a reasonable machine.

I would agree. There's little you can't do with Vegas's own tools.

Ed, glad you are back. Hope you are feeling ok. I decided to remove the desk top icon and just leave Vegas 5 on the computer, it really does not take that much room on the drive. Bob

Magic Bullet Editor's 2 is a filter/plug-in that works in many NLEs, including Vegas.
MBE (the original) renders very very slowly. About 30:1, but it depends on what settings are on and what machine you have.
MBE2 allows for GPU acceleration... but with specific graphics cards. See the website for information on how to get 'real-time' performance out of Magic Bullet.

Magic Bullet Suite adds 60i to 24p conversion. Vegas does a very good job of that type of conversion itself. Vegas is *much much* faster and (I believe) a little lower quality.
I think MBS is After Effects only. It'll work with any NLE if you just export files into AE for processing.

And I believe there's also Misfire, which adds film damage and transitions.

2- You can get the same idea as the MBE looks in Vegas using Vegas' tools (the maths are slightly different).

VASST Celluloid uses Vegas' tools to create looks, and makes the process easier. Because Celluloid uses Vegas' tools, it can render much faster (unless you have a Geforce 7800 and GPU acceleration working).

But anyways, if you use Vegas you definitely have options. If you like MBE or MBS then you'd be able to use those tools.

*Disclaimer: Incidentally, DSE David and I are all affiliated with VASST.

3- You can get an idea of what you can do with Vegas' tools alone in the following clip:
http://www.glennchan.info/Proofs/dvi...comparison.mov
11.3MB download (my web server is very slow unfortunately, so it'll take a while to download)

Sean, There should be no guesswork in what the footage actually is regardless of your preview window. Just right-click on it as I said and read the properties from the file. What do they say? Does the format say DV? Does the pixel aspect ratio say PAL DV or PAL DV Widescreen? That will tell you what it is.

~jr

Yeah. But it 7.0.4. Downloading 7.1 to try it out now.

If you have Vegas 6.0d, it now includes the MainConcept AVC codec, which is H.264.

So render to Mainconcept AVC .mp4 instead. Works fine.

The MP4 container format is preferred over MOV for H.264, even by Apple.

"The MP4 container format is preferred over MOV for H.264, even by Apple."

Makes u wonder hey.. lol

Image size
 

Hi,

I am planning on doing some timelapse still image capture on my Sony HC1. This sequence when assembled will be added to a project using the HDV 1440i template -capturing the compressed output from the camera. Eventually I aim to output to a Blue-Ray disk although for the next 12 months I will have to settle for standard PAL DVD or play output from Hard Disk

My question is this: for best quality what image size should I select in the HC1? Options that look likely are:

1. 1920x1440
2. 1920x1080
3. 1440x1080

The first looks sure to squash the image in the vertical direction but what would 2 and 3 do? (HDV 1440 uses 'rectangular' pixels...)

Any help appreciated.


Regards, Nick.

Oic.. I'll give it a try. Trying to toy with this as the HDwmv doesnt run well on my 1.83Ghz laptop. Works fine on the 3GHz desktop. I hope the mp4 will work better.. Thanks!

If you have a horsepower issue, and WMV doesn't play well, then H.264 is going to be even harder. Try an older MPEG4 codec like XVID instead. Single pass mode with quantizer at 2 or 3 is very good quality. Don't use single pass mode with a fixed bitrate.

H.264 is nominally part of the MPEG4 standards, but actually has little in common with previous MPEG4 codecs (eg. Divx, XVID, 3ivx). It requires more CPU to encode and decode, but is more efficient in terms of quality/size.

I am not familiar with the HC1 (I have a Z1) but my guess is that the still image capture is using a pixel aspect ratio of 1.0 so 1920x1080 is the way to go if you are going to output to HDV.

~jr

Finally..I am up and running full speed with Vegas again. I ended up downloading the updated Vegas 6d from sony's site and was able to install. Lesson learned: Becareful when downloading/deleting free triall version plug-ins for your Vegas!!!!

HELP - AC-3 Rendering
 

I have Vegas 6.0D. I rendered a Mainconcept MPEG-2 file for use in DVD architect. Now, when I try to encode the Audio in dolby digital AC-3, it wants me to "buy" the AC-3 encoder - for $200!!. This comes with Vegas+DVD, doesn't it? I even re-entered my registration online and serial #, but it still wants me to buy the AC-3 encoder. I've used it before, but I recently traded in a defective mobo with ASUS - under warranty. While I was waiting for this, I relaced my 160g IDE with a new 500G IDE and used Norton Ghost to copy software (including Vegas) over to the new drive. I have a SATA raid for the Captured Video files. Are the new mobo or HardDrive the problem?
How do I fix this?

Thanks

Real time preview?
 

I am a Tech director of a youth center and we are intending to teach kids video production this summer.

I use Vegas and we have 2 FX1's.

I am ordering a computer for this task. I am looking at an Alienware workstation configured as follows:

dual amd opteron 270s (quad core!)

4 gig ram

250 gig system drive

1 tera raid 0 media drive

Nvidia quadro 540 w/ component breakout

Dell 2405 system monitor

probably a Dell 32" HD for preview

also getting a g-raid 1 tera external firewire

I intend to capture most inhouse stuff with a laptop running dvrack w/ hdv pack.

I currently convert to cineform and intend to continue with the new system.

So, the main question is: Can I expect full frame preview with this setup?

Any other comments?

Thanks


OT - Just for those that might be interested, we are a concert hall, skatepark, cafe, and game room. We have 3 50" HD plasmas and a 6000 lumen Sony projector on a 14" wide screen in the cafe area, and a game room with 4 40" lcds with Xbox 360's and gamer chairs with builtin sound.

We are intending to live switch and record our skate competition this summer. We are getting a Datavideo SE-800 to switch the HD to the displays in the cafe, and live web stream everything out via a Viewcast Niagara.

The AC-3 encoder is installed when you install DVD architect, but it has a separate registration step.

I suggest to make note of your registration number, and re-install DVD-architect.

Mark

Perhaps I'll resize it then. I'm showing my customers the samples on my laptop so I really hope to let them see the amazing difference of HDV.

Thanks
 

Thanks Mark, I re-registered DVD Architect, and now the AC-3 encoder in Vegas works again. Boy, they can confuse a simple boy like me. It just never occured to me that if the ac-3 encoding in Vegas 6 was inop, that the problem was in the registration of a different program - dvd architect. I'm sure glad guys like you are around:) - Thanks Again - PK

First of all, congrats---I mean "centers" normally dont have the kind of budget that you have to work with! Your machine should offer you top of the heap performance.

Fist Bursting Through Text
 

Hey hey. I have a question about making a fist punch through a wall of text, blowing it to smithereens, in Vegas. I'm no expert with track motion, though I can manipulate it to a degree - nonetheless, if it requires it, I can do it.

I was thinking on using or creating some sort of preset that simply transitioned with an explosion effect - but that does not answer the question about the fist, which is necessary.

If anyone has any suggestions as to how to create this effect, I would be very grateful. Thanks a lot in advance.

~Loggie B

Wow! Most youth centers around here would probably have an Iomega Buz hooked up to an eMachines iMac clone.

If you're using cineform anyways, you should be able to get RT performance with a much cheaper system. By real-time, I mean that you can see the HD footage play back real-time. For effects, more CPU is better.

2- You can get the same machine for a lot less from outfits that don't charge such a high premium on the parts... i.e. Colfax, Monarch Computers.

At the same price, you could likely get better support from going with a vendor that specialises in video production... BOXX and Promax come to mind.

You can save money by getting a different video card. Vegas doesn't do GPU acceleration, so any dualhead/dual-monitor video card will work. Some other applications do (i.e. MBE, After Effects, etc.)... see their recommended specs.

3- If the point is for the students to learn, you don't necessarily need a high-end machine. For SD editing, a 600mhz Celeron will be fine for learning. Not that it would make any sense to get a machine like that now, but that might put things in perspective.

For the same price, you could probably almost get another camera + 2 single CPU dual core AMD systems (a dual core dual Opteron might only be 40% faster than a single CPU system). It might be better because there's more kids who have their hands on gear. Not that having very nice toys is a bad thing... but maybe more toys for boys, you know what I'm saying?

Seattle Vegas Users Group
 

This post sorta has a short shelf life, but I was wondering if anyone out there is familiar with the Seattle VUG? Supposedly, they have a meeting on the 4th Thursday of each month (tonite) but their website only goes to October of last year. I've tried e-mailing them, but there has been no response to my inquiries.
I could REALLY use this, but I hate to go into town tonight, pay for parking, etc, if nothing is going on...


Thanks,

Bill

I have the same drive and went thru a process with Sony Support. They eventually developed a new set of 3 *.dll files that enabled the drive - with no problems subsequent. Contact Sony Support.

Darryl

Thanks! I will contact sony for the.dll files.

To clarify a bit, this system will not be just for teaching. It will be used heavily for regular production outside of the clinic times. We intend to create an in-house video network where we show mostly our own stuff. So we will be creating new stuff rapidly.

Graphic cards
 

Did a search couldn't find answer so thought I would ask. What role does the graphic cards will play in Vegas and in HDV. Any recommendations? Simple terms are greatly appreciated.