capturing in Vegas Video 3

Joni wrote on 4/3/2003, 6:08 AM

I have a firewire card (pinnacle dv). When I capture video from my dv cam (canon XL1) will vegas capture in full resolution?I am asking this because a friend of mine says that these type of programs do not capture "like the profesisonal editing software". He mentions some king of compression or someting. Is this true? Do I lose quality by capturing with my dv card and vegas compared to an expensive DV card and expensive software?

thanks in advance

djoni

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 4/3/2003, 6:14 AM

DV is compressed, however, this compression happens in the camera before being recorded on the tape. When you capture through firewire you get a bit-for-bit copy of what is on the tape. Your capture quality will be limited by the quality of the camera and has nothing to do with the equipment used to capture.

Joni wrote on 4/3/2003, 6:20 AM

thanks Chienworks,

So any dv capture card will capture with the same quality - quality determined by the camera used. Am I right?

And what about vegas video? after editing with vegas, will the original video lose some quality???

thanks

djoni

Chienworks wrote on 4/3/2003, 11:08 AM

Correct. Get the cheapest firewire card you can find as long as it's OHCI compliant.

Quality loss depends on what sort of editing you do. If you use cuts-only editing, no effects, transitions, fades, titles, cropping, compositing, etc. then the rendered file will be a bit-for-bit copy of the source. If you make any changes then Vegas will have to decompress and recompress the video. However, Vegas will use SonicFoundry's DV codec which is considered by many to be the best in the known universe, so quality loss will be extrememly minimal.

Joni wrote on 4/3/2003, 1:46 PM

Chienworks,

thanks a lot for your help.
I am a professional musician just trying to have some fun with video and maybe work a little bit with it.
My friend was saying that he would work offline with something like vegas but then he would go to something more professional to do the master (or online work). From what I understood he doesn't need to do that. Anyway, all is doing is tv ads for small business'which are fine.

One more question if you don't mind :-)
When I see my movies (already rendered at BEST quality) in windows media player (win xp) why is the image so crapy???

thanks once again for your help

best

djoni

Chienworks wrote on 4/3/2003, 1:57 PM

By default, MediaPlayer displays DV files at 1/2 resolution. This is probably a holdover from the ancient days (a couple of years ago) when computers weren't fast enough to handle DV at full resolution. You can change this by clicking Tools / Options / Performance / Advanced. Move the Digital Video size slider all the way to the right, "Large".

Joni wrote on 4/3/2003, 5:31 PM

Chienworks,

thank you once again

regards

djoni