Codec query

vitalforces wrote on 9/2/2003, 10:13 PM
I've read posts on various codecs and decided it's time I made myself look really inexperienced. I'm planning to buy a Canopus ADVC100 for analog conversion of legacy tapes, mainly because of the strong reviews in favor of the Canopus DV codec. When I bring it all into Vegas 4, is there an issue of treating the canopus codec as a "third-party codec" to avoid unnecessary rendering, or is it apples and oranges, and just let Vegas render as it will?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 9/2/2003, 11:01 PM
DV is DV is DV (more or less). It doesn't matter what DV codec was used to encode the file, the file is still DV and Vegas won't have any trouble with it. If you do cuts-only editing without effects, titles, compositing, fades, etc., Vegas will be able to copy the files bit-for-bit to the output file without rendering. It's more a case of apples and apples.
RBartlett wrote on 9/3/2003, 4:37 AM
DV decoding is supposed to be apples and apples. So your transfer from the ADVC will appear quite normally and if left untouched will even go back out to an external monitor untouched. Only analogue differences between the signal path into the external DV encoder and the path out from whichever route you go out to a TV would show anything without conveying the pure digital path. You can normally tweak controls to get what you want against the quality references that you might have.

The difference comes when you work the Vegas timeline to add effects you'd see in preview or with other options that might go into the render output. You might choose to use a Canopus encoder, but I wouldn't worry personally. Vegas is fast and HQ. Due to the codec being internal, not many other folk rave about it. Other than Vegas users that is.
vitalforce2 wrote on 9/3/2003, 10:38 AM
(I'm also vitalforces.) Thanks for the responses. I had to "relearn" that DV doesn't change unless you add an effect.