Any experience w/HDV in Vegas Movie Studio+DVD Platinum?

[BJ Elliott]

I'm looking for a simple, low cost HDV-editing solution. It seems my PC is probably too slow for Premiere Pro 2.0 and Pinnacle (Avid?) Liquid 7. Has anyone here tried Movie Studio+DVD Platinum Edition? Sony claims it supports HDV and the system requirements are decent. I'm not sure if it will let me include SD and HDV clips in the same timeline, then upconvert or downconvert.

Also, are there any other low cost solutions that you can suggest? Perhaps Pinnacle Studio Plus 10?

Windows XP-MC SP2
Pentium 4 2.53 GHz (can upgrade to 3GHz)
512 MB PC1066 RDRAM (can upgrade to 1GB)
160GB primary drive with 160GB RAID0 for capture
ATI 9600XT AGP w/128MB
Sony HDR-HC1

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

yes, Vegas Movie Studio +HD works great with HD. We just released a training DVD on this product, and in it we demonstrate capturing HDV. It works great. Were it me, I'd avoid Pinnacle like the plague. Read their forums for a while, and you'll see a lot of unhappy campers. Read the Vegas forums, and you'll find it's mostly "How do I do....?" and not "I wish I could do...." or "Why is this crashing..."
For 100.00...it's very hard to beat this application.

[John Kang]

Douglas,

Read your book. It's great source of information. I try to use what I've gleaned off of your book when I'm shooting with the Sony Fx-1.

Still, I don't really see any artifacts with quick pans. A real fast pan does cause problems as you stated.

As to the platnum version. I've used it and it works great. I've used it only once on my desktop. A straight edit with no special effects and it captured and played beautifully with no hick-ups that I could see. The preview screen played smoothly as well, once I reconfigured the memmory for the preview screen to 375 megs. However, when I did try it for a second time, the preview seems to be jerky. Not sure why. The second time was for a different project...

My desktop system is a P4 3.04 gig with 1 gig of ram...

I've also tried my Toshiba laptop with a 3 ghz and 512 mb ram system. I havn't tried working with the HDV format but it runs smoothly in DV format.

I love Vegas. I wouldn't have converted if Adobe hadn't been such prudes and not supported the Elements users with their 2.0 upgrade. I don't see how hard that could have been since they could probably port over the HD support from their Pro version.

Now I just need to find out how to get a plug-in like Vegas 6 offers to edit in DV and render back as HD. I thought I saw it in the manual but have been too busy to go back and search.

[Mark Birkedal]

BJ, I've been using VMS Platinum on some simple HDV editing for a little over six months now. I still have a couple of DV projects to finish so it's just been editing out some highlights of my son's basketball season with some zooming and slow motion but it works great.

John: "Now I just need to find out how to get a plug-in like Vegas 6 offers to edit in DV and render back as HD. I thought I saw it in the manual but have been too busy to go back and search."

If you're talking about Gearshift, it unfortunately won't work in VMS Platinum. The intermediate DV formats that you'll want to use are already included under the render to AVI option.

I was wondering if anyone could tell me if any of the six freeware products in the Vasst web site would work with VMS Platinum? I know some of them won't for sure but I was particularly hoping for the DoubleTake editor and was curious about the SubText editor.
Thanks,
Mark

[Edward Troxel]

Originally Posted by Mark Birkedal

I was wondering if anyone could tell me if any of the six freeware products in the Vasst web site would work with VMS Platinum?

NO script will work in Vegas Movie Studio.

[Mark Birkedal]

Originally Posted by Edward Troxel

NO script will work in Vegas Movie Studio.

Thanks Edward. Yeah, I know that but I didn't notice any mention of script in the descriptions and I was really hoping. That DoubleTake looks pretty handy.
VMS Platinum does everything I need it to so far but those VASST products sure do tempt a person to upgrade!

Mark

[Chris Barcellos]

I've used all three in native editing.

Studio 10 plus- Not bad, is fairly fast with preview background rendering and good for basic editing and titling. It uses Liquid engine. With a recent beta update, there were still some bugs-- but Pinnacle has always been great at working out problems in updates

Vegas Movie Studio + DVD Platinum - In native HDV edit, not as good as PPro 2.0 due to slow final render time. Last night I took a 25 second clip, and put it on same time line twice, and overlapped the them to create transition. I rendered the total 45 sec edit back out to a new .m2t, and it took about 5 minutes. That is a lot, since I am running a dual core AMD 3800 + system with 2 gig mem, and an ATI 700 256 mg PCI Express Vid card

Premiere Pro 2.0: Using the captured clip captured with Vegas, I created a similar time line in Premiere Pro 2.0 I added a cross dissolve transition, and again rendered back out to a new .m2t 50 second file. Total time was under 2 minutes. I heard somewhere that PPro may use resouces from the video card, and if that is so, that may be the difference.

I will try to do the same in Studio Plus 10 at my next opportunity.

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Chris Barcellos

I've used all three in native editing.

Studio 10 plus- Not bad, is fairly fast with preview background rendering and good for basic editing and titling. It uses Liquid engine. With a recent beta update, there were still some bugs-- but Pinnacle has always been great at working out problems in updates

Vegas Movie Studio + DVD Platinum - In native HDV edit, not as good as PPro 2.0 due to slow final render time. Last night I took a 25 second clip, and put it on same time line twice, and overlapped the them to create transition. I rendered the total 45 sec edit back out to a new .m2t, and it took about 5 minutes. That is a lot, since I am running a dual core AMD 3800 + system with 2 gig mem, and an ATI 700 256 mg PCI Express Vid card

Premiere Pro 2.0: Using the captured clip captured with Vegas, I created a similar time line in Premiere Pro 2.0 I added a cross dissolve transition, and again rendered back out to a new .m2t 50 second file. Total time was under 2 minutes. I heard somewhere that PPro may use resouces from the video card, and if that is so, that may be the difference.

I will try to do the same in Studio Plus 10 at my next opportunity.

Okay, I got my own curiousity up, and I tried the same thing in Studio 10 plus. Since the transition was rendering in background before I could actually render back out, there was about a minute wait there. When I rendered to the new HDV file, it took no more than a minute !!

[John Kang]

Hi Chris,

Just wondering if the files you are working on were actually m2ts format? I still can't believe that Studio and Premiere would take that little time where as (I agree on the render time) Vegas Movie Studio takes close to half an hour.

I think Sony works in straight m2ts format where as the other programs work on a DV format first and then randers it fully when you are ready to export back to tape.

But then again...You have been doing this a lot longer than I have. :)

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by John Kang

Hi Chris,

Just wondering if the files you are working on were actually m2ts format? I still can't believe that Studio and Premiere would take that little time where as (I agree on the render time) Vegas Movie Studio takes close to half an hour.

I think Sony works in straight m2ts format where as the other programs work on a DV format first and then randers it fully when you are ready to export back to tape.

But then again...You have been doing this a lot longer than I have. :)

John:

Yes, I am sure...

PPro 1.51 captures HDV in primarily in an intermediate codec (it is actually the Cineform codec producing an .avi file). 2.0 has native capture as it primary HDV capture format, though you can add the Cineform capture capability with Cineform Aspect. My times were with the native .m2t capture and render throught.

[John Kang]

Well, that kind of puts a downer on Vegas Movie Studio...

How about the pro version of Vegas? I would assume that people using the pro version of Vegas would be working in the field of media. Time is valuable to them (as well as mine, even if I'm not using a pro version). I wouldn't think people will stay and work in Vegas if Premiere does it faster and is comparable to what can be done on Vegas.

Anyone else getting differing results?

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by John Kang

Well, that kind of puts a downer on Vegas Movie Studio...

How about the pro version of Vegas? I would assume that people using the pro version of Vegas would be working in the field of media. Time is valuable to them (as well as mine, even if I'm not using a pro version). I wouldn't think people will stay and work in Vegas if Premiere does it faster and is comparable to what can be done on Vegas.

Anyone else getting differing results?

John,
Sounds like you've got a lot to learn about HDV and how it works. Yes, Premiere 2.0 works on native HDV. So does Vegas Movie Studio. Those experienced in the field of editing know you shouldn't edit native HDV. It's a marketing bullet.
Cineform is by far the best editing option there is. You can:
1. Buy the CineForm capture tool for 200.00 to use with VMS
2. Use the free version that comes with Vegas Movie Studio
3. Edit native HDV

If you're doing a lot of editing, option #1 is the best. HDV is an m2t (MPEG 2Transport stream) which is not designed for editing. There are myriad problems with editing m2t files.
Currently, Vegas handles HDV without hardware better than anything out there, excepting AVID, and they also convert the m2t to a different format on capture.

[Chris Barcellos]

I think that unless you are actually delivering product in HDV, the programs and methods I discussed can give you an entree into working with HDV. We are told by the experts like Douglas Spotted Eagle that we loose benefits by not using Cineform or another intermediate format to edit with. I know nothing about color space and other technical aspects of capturing and editing HDV. To me, it is not worth having my system grind away for 17 hours to get a 1 hour project, as many have indicated in this forum, to render an end product. I am using HDV currently to learn, and having a bit of fun doing it. I think we will have a whole different editing landscape in the next two years, and I suspect that that will mean the development of advanced procedures in editing natively. I think Premire Pro 2 and Pinnacle are looking at it from that standpoint, and until I see insurmountable proplems, or actually have to deliver product that requires a higher level that is claimed is in the Cineform process, I can live with working with these processes.

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

Currently, Vegas handles HDV without hardware better than anything out there, excepting AVID, and they also convert the m2t to a different format on capture.

Doug:

1. When you say hardware, are you referring to advanced dual core processors and processors and such, or are you talking about editing board solutions.

2. Have you actually compared a native edit from Pro 2.0 and a Cineform edit with same scenes and transitions, and been able to detect the difference ? I assume so, because end product is what it is all about. Are the problems with washed out color, artifacts, or what. I understand that each HDV frame depends on the ones before it for some information, and I understand that's what makes the problems that may arise in editing, but I 've never heard a satsfactory answer as to why those concerns can't be met by algorythmic manipulatiion in the editing ststem itself, rather than by requiring individual frame rendering in the intermediate capture file. Are we always going to be stuck with massive intermediate files, or will get to the point that natve editing will be as good?

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by Chris Barcellos

Doug:


2. Have you actually compared a native edit from Pro 2.0 and a Cineform edit with same scenes and transitions, and been able to detect the difference ? I assume so, because end product is what it is all about. Are the problems with washed out color, artifacts, or what.

Of course I've tested this, as have others. You can too.
Render m2t to m2t, and render m2t to Cineform, and apply a difference mask. Then do the same with the m2t to m2t.

That's not the only issue. Another issue is the potential for color shift in the 6 or 15 frames of the GOP.
Additionally, m2t is slower to playback because of the lack of power for decode, unless that decode is shuttled off to hardware on a video card.
If speed vs quality is your game, then no doubt, m2t is likely your best bet. However, if speed AND quality are your goal, then edit with CineForm or 4:2:2 YUV and a fast RAID system.