advice needed. midway throough, going to re-encode

pjrey wrote on 1/10/2010, 4:47 PM

i could start from scratch, not too much time has been put into this project, im just more curious than anything...
i have a project im working on, its around 25 minutes in length, single video track, no audio. im using vegas 9
the video is from a canon rebel 500D h.264 MOV files (dont ask me how i got as far as i did with that! man, what a pain!)
so, im curious, with the filenames named as they are, is there a way to re-encode (batch), all the clips in my project folder.. so all my edits will still be there when i re-open my project?
is there a smarter way? (with just vegas, no 3rd party apps)
i just need to be able to edit...
what does vegas like the most,
the MOV clips are 1920 x 1080
final output can be 720x480
what is the best setting to edit in vegas, what does vegas like the most/.
hope i make sense..

thanks!
pj

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/11/2010, 7:29 AM

This is what products like VASST GearShift do for you but if you want to do it yourself, here's what you can do:

One by one, render all of your files to another Quicktime format in another folder. It doesn't matter what format because you will not use these to render your final project (these are proxies for the real files). You might want to render them to DV Widescreen in Quicktime to make them easy to play and the same aspect as your original files. Use the same names as the originals. Then exit Vegas and move the original files to a safe place and move the rendered files into the existing folder. Now when you start Vegas it will use the "proxy" files that you just rendered. Now edit your project as normal. Before your final render, move the original files back into the source folder, restart Vegas, and it will use the originals to render.

This is the simplest way. If you render to another filetype like AVI then you will need to replace all of the media in the project one-by-one. This is what GearShift does and why some people feel it's worth buying. It can save you a lot of time rendering and swapping.

You might also seriously consider buying Cineform Neo Scene if you are going to work with Cannon 5D/7D files on a regular basis. Neo Scene will quickly (faster than Vegas) convert them to Cineform intermediaries. You then edit and render with the Cineform intermediary files never needing the original files again.

~jr

Byron K wrote on 1/11/2010, 10:09 AM

Before your final render, move the original files back into the source folder, restart Vegas, and it will use the originals to render.

Another way is to just have 2 folders, an "O" (original clips) and a "P" (proxy clips).

Convert all your proxy clips to the "P" (proxy) folder. Now rename the "P" folder to something like "1" (Primary Edit Folder)

Open Vegas 9 and edit away using the the proxy files in the "1" folder. When you're ready to do the final render just rename the 1 folder to P and the O folder to 1 no moving of files. You can go back and forth very easily.

As Johnny was eluding to this only works if the extensions and file names are exactly the same other wise you'll have to rename each and replace each of the media.

pjrey wrote on 1/11/2010, 10:09 AM

thanks for posting back johnny
i guess my question is, is there a way to batch re-encode all my clips using vegas.. keeping each filename, but just re-encoding.. and then do what you say, switch the files out, and when finished editing, switch them back again..

would you always wan to to use the original files?
you say with gearshift, that they would be re-encoded...
its true that h.264 are nearly impossible to edit...but when it comes time to the final render, dont you want the origianl in its place? is that always the best?
i would think the proxie idea is always the best, in terms of quality.. im sure the final render will be SLOW SLOW SLOW..
thanks again
pj

pjrey wrote on 1/11/2010, 5:01 PM

thank you bryon K, we posted at the same time, i hadnt seen your post when i was posting back..
is there a way to render all my mov clips to something else within vegas? i thought there was a batch render script, i will look around..

thanks again
pj

JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/12/2010, 6:39 AM

> is there a way to render all my mov clips to something else within vegas?

The Batch Render script will render your project to several different formats. It can also render regions of you project to files. It does not render files from the file system (that's what GearShift does for you). What you would have to do is place all of your files on the timeline. Then place a region around each clip and name the region with the filename that you want to use. Then use the Batch Render script to render the regions using your proxy video format.

~jr