Help Me Render!!!
 

Shooting off-road videos with SD helmet cams and HD from Sony HDR-HC1's, using Vegas 6. My newbie question is there are so many render options and all that I use seem to be less than the source DV tape quality. Also is it normal to have great picture on smaller tv's but on big screens it falls apart?

Moved here from Open Discussion.

Very common to have a great picture on small screens because you're squeezing things down, vs being closer to native.
You need to describe what the picture is doing.
If you're rendering in Vegas, you MUST use the HDV render templates.
If you're converting to SD in Vegas, you virtually MUST use an HDV timeline prior to converting.
More information about what you're doing and what you're wanting to do would be most helpful.

From what I've seen of my single chip dv footage, it looks great on a standard TV set, however, when viewed on a HDTV set, I feel like I'm watching a VCD at it's worse setting.

Of course we're talking 480i compared to 1080i for resolution.

I don't know what kind of halmet cam you have but the cheap ones I've checked out were pretty low in resolution. I wanted one for a bungie jumping I was going to do when I will be going on vacation to Korea this April.
I believe the Sony Vegas allows for upconverting a SD to HD format but not sure on the Vegas Movie Platnum version. Of course any upconverting still won't look as good as original HD footage.

Unless you're working in a professional production setting, I think the only available option is to render for HDV setting back to your camcorder.

John - Is your HDTV an LCD or plasma display?

It's a rear projection crt Hitachi 60".

I was looking at footage from my Cannon Z10 with the letterbox format and without.

I also took a look at some older DV footage from my JVC camcorder, which I think outdoes the Cannon Z10, for picture quality. I can't remember what model it is, but it was one of the first Mini-DV camcorders out. It doesn't even have a firewire port on the camcorder!

Please, let me know what model number of Hitachi has a 60" CRT. Rear projection and CRT cannot be used in the same product description.

The model number for my Hitachi is 57S715.

Oh, Ok, im doing it now. Im using 720 line res bullets for helmet cams. Does it even matter how big and bad my comp is for these ridiculous render times? Im rendering 6 minutes of footage with allot of slow mo and its at 2 hours for render? Pent4 2gigs RAM...

Pentium is half the problem, unfortunately. Yes, that's quite possible, if you're doing slo mo, remember that there are a LOT of new frames to be built.

Thank you! There was so many options and I didnt feel like trying them all. Im shooting 720 line res bullet cams in race cars and course footage from Sony HDR-HC1's, my final product is good just not quite as sharp as the DV tape straight into composite ins on 60 inch HDTV. I know I dont have the camera to get crazy with, I just want the best bang for the customers buck so to speak?

Im having new PC built with ASUS dual engine and raid rack. My builder says maximum ram is not necessary and 2 gigs is more than enough even for HD. Is this true. I was unde the impression the more ram the better? (speed)

sd typically can't handle anywhere near 720 lines of resolution... what brand and model of helmut cam are you using? is that 720 number just marketing speak from the makers of the helmut cams?

what i'm doing is waiting for the solid state hd cameras that record in the h.264 format... if you look on the hdv acquisition forum, sanyo has a solid state hd camera out now, but it records to mpeg4 instead of h.264.

hang in there for another year, and you'll be able to put a wide-angle lens on a solid state hd helmut cam, with no wires going down to a seperate recording deck.

WOW! im using Viosport HC3's. The MPEG4 stuff is real bad, almost video phone quality..How much is this new wireless helmet cam? My business is helmet cam/In Car cams.

FRED,

We use sony lipstick cameras(540 lines, i am pretty sure) for onboard motorcycle racing. We have one mounted to the front of the bike and one on the rear. Each camera is connected to a mini-dv camera in the trunk of the bike.

We tried doing it wirelessly but the quality is no where near the same as going straight to the mini-dv camera.

Jon

US too, got some web media clips up at www.beerbellyracing.com if your interested

i've been doing onboard camera for over 10 years now, here is some footage from a turbo'ed fwd drag racing honda that i shot, give it a minute to download: http://www.oceanstreetvideo.com/import/import.html

that was recorded on solid-state mpeg2, no tape... the mpeg4 you are referring to is low bitrate garbage, not the pro-level stuff i am talking about.

Pro Level Stuff? What kind of budget we talking..? i have $1000 into every set up we use (6). Im happy with it but im stuck at 60 minutes of footage due to the obvious

Ram
 

I have an alienware MJ12-7700 mobile desktop and with 2.5 GB of RAM I NEVER use even 1/2 of that while runnign Vegas. It doesn't matter how big the project is, Vegas simply cannot use that much ram. Either it isn't programed to expad to fit available memory, or the OS is not allowing it to use that much.

The only way I can use up all my system's RAM is to have two instances of Vegas opened and to have both rendering at the same time. Not that I am complaining much.... but I am disappointed that Vegas cannot seem to fill into the available space. I don't think it is a matter of Vegas not needing the space either. Try the Dynamic RAM preview feature which renders teh selected portion of the timeline directly into RAM. I can only pre-render a few seconds if there are several layers and color corrections and slow motion effects applied, but I still have over a1GB of RAM free.

You may be limited by your hard drive read / write bandwidth. Are your video files on the same physical hard disk as the directory to which you render? If so, then that drive has to pull double duty and read the data, then pause reading long enough to write the render. Consider storing the HD files on one drive (not just a partition, but a whole different hard drive) and rendering to a second drive.

jason

good info thanks man...the new comp will have hot swapable 400g twins. I plan to work on one and store on the other. I guess 2g ram is good. on a different note, I have ben really struggling with edge break up only after render. I shoot off road videos intended for DVDA. I render in Mpeg2 with custom bitrates high 8mpbs and low at 4 with 2 pass...I cant seem to fix the3 edges!!!!!!any ideas?