At least in terms of color space, first tests have shown me that there seems to be minor differences between the m2t footage and an mjpeg-avi codec (if any). However, I use the mjpeg-avi files not as intermediates, but as proxys.

What happens in terms of quality loss for mjpeg-intermediates is not explored well at the moment (beside company internal tests by Cineform, I think).

Render losses from m2t -->m2t compared with m2t-->Cineform Intermediats --> m2t are still underway. What I have seen at least is, that in Cineform -->Cinefom a small color shift seems to take place, as far as I have seen in tests (nothing dramatically, unlikely to be seen by eyes, but you can measure it).

I can see the point of using the Cineform codec for editing on medium to fast machines, but are there reasons to use it for rendering from, rather than swapping back to the original m2t files?

Sure, there are also some reasons to work with the Cineform codec, and render to the final product from Cineform files directly.

Fist of all, even on high-performance PCs, Cineform files will show better preview capabilities. You simply can edit more streams in realtime, compared with m2t. Especially Vegas performs poor here - playback capabilities from the timeline are about 50% of the playback capabilities if you put an m2t file in the media pool (I have in PAL 25 fps from a m2t file in the media pool, but only something about 10 to 12 fps from the same m2t file, if I play the same file in the timeline). Edius, for example, seems to play m2t on the same PC with full preview quality in the timelin too.

Second, at the moment you have the 60file limit within Vegas for single m2t files - what can be handled wih workarounds, but what is still a constrain.

Third, with Cineform you can make a real scene separation (to a file on the harddisk for each scene). That works out with either AV-Cutty, or with the additional Cineform products (for additional money, off course). The advantage of a real scene separation is, that you can use all possiblities of media management in Vegas, like to organize and sort the clips in a bin structure.

On the other side, there are some disadvantages of using Cineform intermediates:
- additional harddisk space
- additional render time
- additional step for scene separation, if you wish to do so
- there is a small quality drop if you render from m2t to Cineform intermediate
- there is a small color shift if you render from m2t to Cineform Intermediate

Especially the last two points are not well explored up to now. I have been able to measure such a color shift, but I have also to state that it seems to remain minor (it is unlikely that you will be able to see it really). Quality seems to drop similar if you render from m2t->Cineform, compared with a workflow m2t->Cineform->m2t, but that is still under exploration.

To add one point: it is possible to use the Canopus HQ codec in Vegas, if this codec is installed on your PC. The disadvantage is, that Canopus sells that codec with its products only (with Edius). And it is a little bit expensive, to purchase Edius only to purchase this codec, I think. In addition, as far as I know we have no comparison between these two intermediate codecs at the moment (another thing that I will test if I find the time).

Yes, Wolfgang, what you described is what I meant by using Cineform for EDITING - I know about these reasons, and I use DV Widescreen proxies for my slower machine.

I was asking about reasons to use it for rendering from, and from what you say there is a slight dropping in quality, so better to swap back to the original m2t files for this purpose.

It depends, what workflow you prefer. If you wish to work with single scenes in the bin strukture, then you have an additional point for the Cineform intermediates. That is due to the fact, that you cannot do that with proxys in a simple way.

If you tend to cut and organize your material in the timeline, then this will not harm your workflow.

The slight drop in quality - relativ to other render ways - and the slight color shift must be explored better. At the moment I think, that this effects can be measured. But I do not really think, that you will see the quality difference (but that is hard to assess - depends for example also on the TV you will use, its size, if there is a quality processing in the TV or not and so on).

Yes, thanks for your comments Wolfgang - confirms for me that I'm at doing the best thing at present. I have the Connect HD software - I had to get it to capture before V6 came out, but I haven't used it since. Although it renders intermediates faster than Vegas/Gearshift does Widescreen DV avis, it doesn't play back smoothly on my machines, so I'm happy doing overnight renders with Gearshift.

Capturing or working with separate scenes is not an issue for me - I always capture tapes as a single file and assemble projects from the Trimmer.

FYI, while the Canopus codec is quite nice, it's not wavelet based like CineForm and
1. Won't provide the performance
2. Doesn't look quite as good
3. Isn't frame information based, so files are managed a little differently.

Since you're already using GearShift, hopefully you'll be extremely pleased with some of the upgrade features coming your way shortly.

Peter,
I couldn't get the Cineform avi's to playback well on an older Athlon XP based PC until I installed Connect HD v1.7. I was getting about 10-12 fps with v1.5. Now with v1.7 I'm getting full 29.97 fps and better capture/print stability even on an old PC. So if you haven't updated Connect HD in a while you might want to give it a try and see if it helps you at all. The upgrade is free.
Greg

Thanks Greg , I've got 1.8 and I'll try it out tomorrow ....

@ Douglas,

what kind of performance will not be provided by the Canopus HQ codec? Would be intesting to know - since my intention is to make some tests with the Canopus HQ codec too - and I would like to have a hint where you see the lake of performance to build that in my testing, if possible.

Well Greg, there do seem to be some improvements.

I used the "medium" file size Cineform setting, in HD Link 1.,8 and found that playback varied with different Dynamic RAM settings.

I have 2 Gb of RAM, and Vegas reports the maximum available as 1919Mb.

If I set it to 400 Mb, playback of a single 50i Cineform avi was between 25 and 15 fps.

By reducing it to 16 Mb, playback was between 25 and 20 fps.

Certainly better than my m2t playback rate - between 1.5 and 3 fps.

I was doing some searching on HDV and I found some interesting info - sorry if this was posted around here before but I thought it might help/realte to this frame rate/playback issue. These are a few comments from a thread about Cineform, posted by Thad at Cineform:

While connect HD is about 3 times faster than editing the native MPEG in Vegas, it is still not as fast as Aspect HD with the RT plugins we have for Premiere

And asked if the faster Apsect HD will be for Vegas Thad's reply was:

Unfortunately Aspect HD is specifically a Premiere Product. If vegas goes to a more plugin based architecture in the future your request might be possible in one way or another....however I know of no plans to do this.t At this point though I think Vegas users best bet performance will be out of Connect HD.... hence sony's deal with us to sell it......

Anf the poster says they had posted here with the issue as well...but I don't think Sony would have answered the same way as Thad did.

That's not the first comment from a 3rd party developer that does leave one wondering just what it is about the internals that's holding Vegas back both on the video and audio side. Perhaps the issue isn't so much what it could be made to do but rather how much of what it does now that'd get broken in the process.
Bob.

We are at the very beginning of the HDV-Editing. Market Penetration of HDV camcorder is still low. Yes, I am sure we can expect further developments in the next years. And yes, I am sure that Vegas-6 with its actual capabilities will not be the end of the development.

At the moment, the question is a different one: what is feasible, given our actual PC performance? Have we to stick to Intermediates? Is a workflow based on proxys and rendering from the original material better, in terms of quality?

We have answers, at least for a part of the questions. But we should be aware that we will need much more experience in the editing of m2t footage; and we will see what happens here in the next one or two years.

I expect a significant improvement of both our NLE performance, but also our PC performance. Today we are back to stonage a little bit, similar when people started to edit DV-avi based on a Pentium 286...
;)

The answer to why Premiere is more adept is quite simple, and Sony (I believe) has responded to this in the past.
As Farss pointed out, it's more a question of what might get broken.
Premiere, for better or worse, has what's called a HAL, or Hardware Application Layer. This is responsible for MANY of Premiere's problems, and a benefit to hardware users as well.
Because Premiere has a HAL, CineForm is able to "trick" Premiere into seeing software that behaves as hardware. This is why CineForm can do things in Premiere that Vegas can't do in terms of speed. It also allowed CineForm to write some custom YUV plugs for Adobe, because Adobe either couldn't or wouldn't do them. I don't know the real answer there, but I'm sure David N or Thad H will jump in if I've written this incorrectly.
If Vegas had a HAL, then we'd be able to enjoy what would likely be significantly superior performance to Premiere, simply based on the lighter weight code and operations Vegas offers.
Having a HAL could be a great boon for Vegas. Having a HAL could easily slow down/cripple Vegas.
In the past, this was Vegas biggest downfall. No hardware capability. Today....it's not such a big deal. People can afford bigger/faster RAIDS and are doing uncompressed very nicely in Vegas.

> "Premiere, for better or worse, has what's called a HAL"

Didn't Arthur C. Clarke do this for them?