Proxy editing vs. preview

[Anibal Rivera]

So, I have been reading a lot of proxy editing and its benefits.

I still can't understand/see what exactly is the benefit of editing using the "proxy" method versus editing just by looking at the preview window.

Thanks for your help and time!

AJ

[Mike Kujbida]

Proxies are very handy if you're trying to edit footage (AVCHD, DSLR) on an under-powered computer.
They convert difficult-to-edit footage into something much easier for your computer to handle.
Make sense?

[Anibal Rivera]

But the preview "function" in Vegas does have the option of "previewing" your edited footage in a lower resolution. Why wouldn't that be sufficient?

[Jim Merchant]

I think what it comes down to is that Vegas and your computer have to do a lot of work to decode the AVCHD files during playback and using a low quality preview such as "Preview (half)" doesn't entirely make up for this extra work. If instead you convert your files to mpeg2 standard def you can get smooth playback and a better picture in the preview window. The difference is especially noticeable when you are using a lot of effects and transitions.

[Gerald Webb]

Even though now I use neoscene, Im still a fan of proxy. If you are going to have a multi cam edit with lots of different codecs, giving them all a quick render at 640x360 mpeg2 makes for a heap less stress when editing. It comes down to this,
your 1080p AVCHD will look like rubbish at draft quality- but your PC still has to read it, convert it and display it for you.
640x360 will playback at best quality even with fx and crossfades.
And unless you have the I7 chip made by the hand of God himself, you will never natively edit 4k footage from a RED cam.
Proxy editing is here to stay for a while at least.

[Jeff Harper]

we need to know what you're editing before we can recommend it for you or not. If you are not experiencing issues, you don't need it. If you're doing single cam edits and have a sufficient processor for your type of video clips, you don't need to use proxies; forget it in that case.

As mentioned if your editing AVCHD, etc you might benefit especially if you're doing multicam edits.

[Bill Koehler]

Originally Posted by Anibal Rivera

But the preview "function" in Vegas does have the option of "previewing" your edited footage in a lower resolution. Why wouldn't that be sufficient?

You are assuming being able to decode the source footage fast enough in the first place is not an issue and that creating frames of lower levels of resolution and detail from the decoded footage and pushing that to the screen will solve the lack of CPU speed problems.

Bad assumption. I know, for instance, that my current machine handles footage from the Canon 5DM2, Canon 7D, and even the Canon HF-S200 poorly. And I know why: Because it is high bitrate (25 Mbps and up) MPEG4 and that simply demands more CPU horsepower than a 2.4 GHz QuadCore Q6600.

[John Wiley]

Proxies also give you an advantage with offline or mobile editing.

So, one example is you can film something on-location in an African Jungle. Then you make proxies and send them over the internet to your editor back home on the other side of the world. He can start building a rough cut and almost have the edit locked in before you arrive home with the original footage.

When I was doing work experience with a TV station news team a few years ago, they were using cameras (I think Sony XDCAM's) which generated proxy files for every scene. So they would do the shoot, then on the drive home, the journalist would log all the proxy files and build a rough cut on his laptop. Then they would walk into the station, hand the tape into the ingest department, give an EDL (edit decision list) to the editors and go straight back out on assignment. Prior to this they would've had to hand the tape to ingest, wait for it to be captured and logged, assemble a rough cut on a computer attached to the server and then give an EDL to the editors.


Proxies don't just speed up your timeline performance, they can speed up the entire workflow. There's also advantages with disk space, as well as transfer speed of smaller files when sharing footage. It might not make a big difference to one-man-band operations but when there's large teams involved working on strict deadlines it can make a world of difference.

[Bruce Phung]

How do you create proxy in Vegas Pro? My desktop i7 920 6gigs is running 100% load with 3 tracks all are avchd. It run ok but the preview video are craps.

PS. I did a google search about proxy in vegas. Found it but seem complicate process.

pss. I did this with multicam. Multicam with avchd , take alot of hp out of the cpu.

[Chris Barcellos]

Try the $45 Epic program from DVFilm.com. My initial reaction to this was that I would rather just use Cineform, but this works well for quick edit projects. You do have to wait a bit for Epic to turn everything into proxies, but you can still be doing editing as it is working in background.