Editing 1080p in Vegas 6d

Infinite5ths wrote on 9/11/2008, 8:25 PM

My company has a 3D animation short film in the works. We are using Blender 3D to model, rig, animate, composite & render movie frames in 1920x1080p - as PNGs [in a MOV wrapper]. The project will then be edited in Sony Vegas 6d.

The are two questions I need answered:

1) Would Cineform Neo HD 1080p editing in Vegas significantly out-perform editing a PNG sequence wrapped in a MOV file?

2) Is there any pressing reason (stability, performance, efficiency, etc.) to upgrade to Vegas 8 Pro before editing this project? [Currently I'm using Vegas 6d.] Does the Neo HD decision (above) affect this?

EDITING SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS:
Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad
4GB DDR2 (3GB accessible in Win XP SP2)
Nvidia Asus GeForce 6200TC 256MB PCIe dual-head video card
x2 Samsung 22" 1680x1050 LCD panels
Multiple 7200 RPM SATA HDDs - dedicated OS/programs & video drives

Any thoughts or advice would be great.

Thanks!

Comments

Infinite5ths wrote on 9/12/2008, 8:43 AM

UPDATES:

I tested with the MOV-wrapped 1080p PNGs. The playback rate is definitely too slow for serious editing. However, rendering to 720p Cineform HD intermediate and editing that works much better.

I own Gearshift; but Gearshift only works with HDV/AVCHD source files. I need the same switching functionality as Gearshift; but I'm switching between MOV-PNG 1080p source files and Cineform HD 720p "proxy" files. Will the Media Swapper in Ultimate S allow me to switch between my MOV-PNG source files and Cineform HD renders -- essentially using the Cineform HD files like proxy files?

Does Media Swapper work in Vegas 6d? (Yes, I'm still on 6d.) Are there any other similar scripts or ideas that I should consider?

JohnnyRoy wrote on 9/12/2008, 10:09 AM

> Will the Media Swapper in Ultimate S allow me to switch between my MOV-PNG source files and Cineform HD renders -- essentially using the Cineform HD files like proxy files?

Yes. The Media Swapper in Ultimate S Pro has all the capabilities of GearShift with the advantage that you can define your own swapping templates. MOV to AVI would be very easy to set up/

> Does Media Swapper work in Vegas 6d? (Yes, I'm still on 6d.)

Yes, Ultimate S Pro fully supports Vegas 6, 7 & 8.

~jr

Infinite5ths wrote on 9/12/2008, 10:49 AM

Thanks for the info jr.

UPDATE:

I talked with VASST. Their rep (Dave) showed me how to use Gearshift for this task. I skipped a step when I tried it on my own (earlier), so it didn't work.

Gearshift will render its own intermediate file(s), then switch between that intermediate and your choice of proxy. By creating custom templates in the Vegas Render As... dialog you can set up custom Proxy Media and HD Media templates for Gearshift (see the Gearshift users manual). The custom templates I had figured out. But Dave showed me how to [successfully] convert anything on the timeline with Gearshift.

So at this point my workflow is:

1) Render 1920x1080 24p PNG image sequence from Blender
2) Import PNG image sequence into Vegas
3) Use Gearshift within Vegas to create uncompressed AVI & Cineform HD proxy files [all in one step]
4) Use Gearshift to switch between Cineform proxy (for editing) and full-resolution uncompressed AVI (for final renders)

[EDITED TO REFLECT REQUIRED WORKFLOW CHANGES]

Infinite5ths wrote on 9/12/2008, 10:54 AM

One more question for the group:

In order to use Gearshift as described above, Gearshift MUST create its own "HD Media" file from the PNG sequence. The move obvious HD Media template choice is:

HD 1080-24p YUV (Gearshift)

But that doesn't work. When I select that option, render the HD Media and Proxy Media in Gearshift and then shift gears BACK to the HD files (replace the proxy with the full-resolution HD files), then I end up with "Media Offline" messages on all of my events.

So I created an uncompressed AVI template for now which works fine but takes up a ton of space. Are they any other AVI codec options in Vegas that I should consider?

Keep in mind that my options are limited to codecs/formats that support full 1920x1080p frames. Spending $600 on Cineform Neo is not yet possible for this first project.