I did a couple of my old VHS movies a while back. They were Lawrence of Arabia and How the West Was Won. Both were each over 3 hours. Had to cut back a little on the resolution to do it on 1, 4.7 DVD each. Routenly I do mostly 1.5 to 2 hours wit Vegas.

Wish I could do long projects brother. So far I can't even capture video using SF VV/VC. So, uhhh, my current project length is like - 00:00:00:00. Good Luck!

I've got a big long project going right now, about 1h 15m and 19 a/v tracks, lots of cuts and hundreds of subtitles. Yes, Vegas bogs down. About 6 seconds to add a clip from the Trimmer, longer yet to undo an operation. Stability seems fine, though. Using a 1.6GHz P4.

I've done up to 2 hours in Vegas. I use premiere 6 at work and it maxes out at 2.5 hours, then the timeline won't get any bigger.

LT7,

Your problem certainly seems to be an exception. However, have you tried Scenalyzer?

http://www.scenalyzer.com/

They have a demo version available for download. It puts a watermark on you footage, but you can see if it works. For $39 its also a great capture tool.

I regularly do projects of 75 to 130 minutes. I do not see any difference in performance as the project gets bigger.

I've done many two hour (and over) projects. The time of the project makes no difference to Vegas' performance. Cuts don't seem to make much difference either. However, if you create the project from hundreds of individual files, each only a few seconds long (which is what you get when you enable scene detection), I have found that Vegas bogs down.

Now when I say "bogs down," the slowdown is nothing compared to what I used to experience with the Pinnacle products. They became usuable after the project got longer than thirty minutes. I would assume that Premiere is not as bad (I've only used is casually), but I'm sure it is worse than Vegas, just knowing the high level (and therefore slow) approach that Adobe takes when they code programs.

My recommendation: If you need maximum performance, and don't absolutely need scene detection, then capture into one big file.

Using Scenalyzer is a great work around. You'll be able to tell using the demo whether you can capture or not. If it works you can buy the program.

I don't know if you can use scenalyzer to recapture offline footage. If you can then you're set.

But this is off topic.

On the long project front...I couldn't say. I keep about 3 hours of material on a timeline as reference material but it's not edited in any way. My performance is fine but I'm not doing anything special.

I wouldn't say that Vegas does anything special that would make a long project easier-but I'll bet it doesn't bog down.

Rob Mack

I really, really have to disagree about scene detection. Here's why: if you have to come back to a project and recapture offline footage you'll have to get the entire big file. Furthermore, if you have ANY dropped frames during capture you'd have to go back and recapture the entire tape. With scene detection you can just select and recapture the bad clips as a batch job.

The other way to do it is to log the clips manually and then capture. A hassle but sometimes worth it. You'll be able to recapture just the same as with scene detection.

But your point about lots of files does make some sense. Does Vegas bog down just because the files are in the media pool or must they be on the timeline? I can imagine that vegas might have a limit to the number of files it can keep track of.

There is a setting in vidcap for minimum clip length. If you use it you might be able to combine many of the short shots into one clip.

Rob Mack

rmack350:

I wasn't advocating not using scene detection. I totally agree with you as to its merits: I generally find it almost indispensable. I was just pointing out that, if performance is the ultimate goal, capturing as a single file will make the program (Vegas) run faster.

For many reasons, I have often wished that SoFo would put the scene detection information in a separate file, much as they do with sound information (SFK files) and much as Pinnacle does with their scene (SCN) files. While there are some advantages to having separate files for each scene (like being able to delete scenes you don't need in order to save disk space), it sure complicates the management of large projects.

Having said all that, having the scenes in separate files is not a big deal, one way or the other. The only thing that really matters (to me) is performance (speed), which is why I'm a die-hard fan of Vegas. Nothing even comes close when it comes to speed (PC Mag's recent bogus rendering time comparisons notwithstanding).

Ahhh. I see.

I'm sure you're right. Also, one big file probably will stay defragmented.

Vegas' capture utility leaves a lot to be desired but I was really happy when I figured out how to show dropped frames in the clip explorer. Now I can just recapture those clips.

I'd like to see it (optionally) make an index of a tape before capture and then export and import text files to base a batch capture on. You could export to a text file and then change the clip names. Or you could log as you shoot and then import the log for batch captures. You'd get files with the names you've chosen.

Another good thing would be to make the capture tool work like a disk recorder: buffer 8 seconds of image and start rolling when the operator pulls the trigger. This would be great for conferences where the cameras are in fixed positions and it would save hours of capture later. Time is money, after all.

Rob Mack

Scenalyzer does the batch capture. The delyed capture is one I'd never thought of. I wonder if any of the companies that sell Firewire disks for direct connection to DV camcorders have thought of this.

Yup! We do projects routinely from 1 to 3 hours long with absolutely no problems.

Mike

Vegas works very well for long projects. We finished a series of DVDs, each of which contained up to an hour and a half of content. No problems on 2.4 GHz PC.

I don't have a lot of hands on experience with the newer versions of Premiere, other than using 6.0 to print a Vegas Project rendered to AVI from the timeline when I an in a hurry. I can tell you, though, that Premiere 5.1 and 6.0 coupled with the Pinnacle DC1000/DC2000 struggle with long projects, crashing and hang up endlessly. A friend had several hours of wedding footage shot with Hi8 and miniDV. He got so fed up with the blue screens he transferred all the footage to Betacam and cut it on tape (yes, we still have a BVE 910 and Beta decks for A/B/C Roll editing.

I have just started using VV for long form projects and will probably go back to Premiere in the future unless VV 5 makes some major changes. I know this will cause flack but frankly my needs seem to be different than most users posting on the threads.

I think it depends on what you do on the timeline and what you are expecting to do. Fo me cutting a feature is becoming a big CF. There is an issue of cuts and how they work, or don't work, on the timeline. You can either have transitions on or off and the problem is that if you drop two items next to each other they do not 'butt up' to one another. By comparison with Premiere all you have to do is drop it on the timeline and move it until it 'stops'. With VV you will get an overlap. Now combine this with a little VV bug that I just discovered, but others have known about for a while, that is when you drop several scenes on the timeline you will find that there are gaps in between. Not a good thing for a long form project.

The other issues that I have are more minor things but still can be real issues with long form projects. In VV pre-renders will vanish if you change anything on the timeline. Premiere nicely keeps track of them and will change with the chages or if nothing changes they will stay. Try that with VV. Sneeze the wrong way and *poof* - all pre-renders are gone. Another issue is the audio renders when doing a PTT from the timeline - if you have a final locked cut rendered out you will still have to wait for the audio to render out to *.w64 format. Than there is lack of EDL support for those who need it - I have said before I would not have even attempted edting a feature with VV if I had to supply an EDL.

So for me editing a long form, feature length, project with VV does not work too well. Premiere 6.5 has been wonderful for me at long form and short form projects. I have found my work flow has actually slowed down with this new project because of using VV. Sorry guys - but that is just how it is on the long form editing front for me.

I have doine a 1:45:00 DVD that started out as 50 DV tapes of footage. The only problem I had was hard drive space.

You know it's wierd, but I prefer Vegas over Premiere for the exact oposite reasons you like Premere over Vegas. :)

oh, a tip for the "butt up" thing. I had the same problem at first *where clips wouldn't butt up easly). I enabled all the snaping options (to grid, markers, snapping itself) and the quantize to frames, and now all my clips "snap" next to eachother when they get within a couple pixels. Took me a months to get that doen though and figure it out. :)

I use Vegas for ALL my project--short and long (90 min.). It works, period!

Thanks for all the comments everyone.

Marc