Your array needs to provide 30+Mbyte/sec per timeline track. Many folks aim for an array that can deliver between 150MByte/sec and 250Mbyte/sec. This can be SATA or SAS based. However you'll get more clip-chop capability with realtime preview if you acquire 15k RPM Seagate Cheetahs with a suitable PCI-X or PCIexpress SAS controller card. 3 or 4 drives is usually the order of the day.

As for acquisition/PTT. I'm usually less than impressed with the fluidity of uncompressed Y'PbPr source SD clips inside the RGB pipelined Vegas. YMMV.

My approach rather than the decklink/kona or even FCP route would be to pick up a 2nd hand NewTek VT card. (for deck control / batch you'd need a COM to RS422 adapter or the appropriate BoB). VT is capable of live switching of uncompressed D1 sources. So it may come as no surprise that the editor is also realtime pretty well all of the time. No field/frame drops. You'd need to learn a new editor or at least the recording workflow, but you'll be certain of capturing AVIs from your DigiBeta/BetaSP deck. Folks with more than one VT seem to be selling them more than ever. Mostly due to SpeedEDIT providing HD/HDV and folks moving on. You could profit from what has become a legacy to them.

If you don't want deck control then a BMD Intensity Pro may suffice. Probably still better to have the drivers for a Mac rather than Windows but the price is right to try this as an experiment.

I'd recommend you render some DV as either uncompressed or SonyYUV (light but still compressed) and see how well your system behaves with this format of clip. That'll tell you whether you want to stick with Vegas or build for possibly Apple FCP or NewTek VT-Edit.

Perhaps I am unusual in having more than one NLE in my arsenal? However it seems to be the best way for me while capabilities are still slowly converging. BTW: VT-Edit does support markers in a frame-server form that will be accepted by DVDArchitect as chapters. This is through uncompressed AVI serving, not MP2.

There's almost no way to edit either of those formats "uncompressed", the SDI interface in the deck requires the video on the tape to be recompressed. Your goal is gone before you get started. I only mention this so you'll know anyone trying to sell you something that claims "uncompressed" is telling fibs unless they're including decks with SDTI and matching ingest.

I edit DB from time to time, current project is from DB. I'm using a Decklink card in a dual 3.0GHz Xeon CPU systems. Supermicro mobo and case, much better than Boxx and Tynan mobos. For disks just regular SATA 7,200 RPM off Highpoint RAID controller. Very smooth with DB, probably smoother than DV.

For a VCR just a J30 will do.

BetacamSP is more problematic. The J30 will play SP, not really recommended for serious work though as no dropout compensation etc. A UVW 1800 through a SD Connect from Convergent Design isn't such a bad way to get from component to SDI. We've got a BVW 75 with the SDI card but the audio isn't embedded, right PIA. Can't really offer much advice on SP as down here it's pretty much a dead format. Also keep in mind that Vegas's 8 bit pipeline isn't too kind to SP anyway. DB seems to hold up OK but I've never tried heavy grading on DB camera tapes to know for certain.

All this aside, what are you doing with the footage once you have ingested it and are you working in PAL or NTSC?

Bob.

Rob,

Thanks for the advice on Decklink. We have a Final Cut with a Kona card, but I have not been the operator on this system. But I will investigate it as well. This would involve getting a new computer as well, so I am not trying to make a current system work for this.

Dave T2

RBartlett,

Thanks for the specific speed and hardware information. I am hoping to stay in the Vegas realm because the purpose is to create a low cost editing system to pick up our clients who aren't willing or able to pay the rate for a High Def system just to work in SD.

I am not familiar with NewTek or SpeedEDIT so I see I have a lot of research ahead. Thanks again.

Dave T2

Bob,

I realize some of the misnomer of Uncompressed DBeta. We currently have about 12 Digibeta decks, as well as pretty much any other format available right now so access to material is not a problem. I am trying to convince them to put in a low cost, full rez system for picking up more low end clients and fill the gap between the DEMO REEL projects and the HIGH DEF projects. Grading of projects is primarily done through our DaVinci color correction suite.

Thanks for your input.

Dave T2

Getting a new computer is probably in the cards. Pardon the pun ;-)

Take a read though the FCP wins again thread. It's a good example of someone not looking before they leap. Maybe the most telling thing is that there were some comments about FCP-created Varicam footage not being easily used anywhere outside of FCP.

The other thing you might read from between the lines is that the original capture of footage went from HDCam to the Panasonic HD format, presumably to save space and make the footage workable with their available array. And this leads to a point I want to make about working in SD "uncompressed". I think (and I could be wrong) that most people work in 4:2:2 formats that are compressed. The tradeoff is usually an accepatble loss of quality and an acceptable CPU overhead for better storage efficiency and disc throughput.

Although the decklink site is a lot more helpful (or maybe just easier to find the help), I'd probably favor the AJA cards because of the good word-of-mouth and because your company probably already has some sort of relationship. Much easier to get help from them on interoperability issues if the FCP and Vegas systems both use their cards.

But I don't have personal experience with either card. I'm a fairly casual Vegas user in a shop full of PPro/Axio systems. We do have a system similar to what you're contemplating and I have to say that making sure your vendors are accountable is crucial. The person people complain to should be them, not you.

Rob Mack

Do check out NewTek's VT[4]. Either component-YUV (8bit YUV pipeline with expansion internally to 16bit YUV throughout) or SDI with an optional add-on (either SDI or SX-SDI). VT uses a PCI card and requires a free bus mastering PCI slot, ideally 66MHz capable in the most current release. This very fact tends to drive owners down the "dealer" route. If you're less than savvy with PC architectures, then I'd recommend talking to a NewTek dealer. If you have one nearby, discuss what you intend to do and ask if you can attend for a demo.

For batch capture and layback, RS422 control can be from your COM port (3rd party adapter, can be USB) or slightly more elegantly using the SX8 or SX84 break-out box. If you've got multiple decks, you can run up to 8 YUV sources through the SX BoB. If you have good composite cameras or VHS sources, you can run up to 24 of these through or (in the camera case) rig them up in a studio environment. Very neat and at an unprecedented price point.

There are TV standards format transcoding opportunities in there also.
SpeedEDIT is more an early view on how VT[5] will look and is essentially standalone software. Nothing in the way of batch capture or control of high bandwidth decks.

NewTek is one of the industry's well kept secrets. Folks often attribute and restrict what they think of their abilities to the Amiga days.

Going back to Vegas. Render some uncompressed RGB24 AVI out of Vegas and drop it back on a new timeline. My experience is that this is too sluggish. However the same computer with VT installed will run through it like silk. It will be more representative if it is a YUY2 AVI. Probably due to lower level code.

Given your Apple situation Dave T2. The lowest risk option of all would be to grab one of the latest Mac Pro computers. FCP may not be for everyone, but you'll have greater latitude with >8bit support. Irrespective of whether the DaVinci has been applied already. This is probably the largest hurdle Sony have to get over to bring confidence to the video professional that Vegas is the best choice for all jobs. (ignoring some of the misgivings of DVDA).

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big Vegas fan. I have no first hand Mac/FCP experience to really guide you well. If you like Vegas, there is no reason why you couldn't edit in Vegas but ingest/PTT via another mechanism. You might need to bolt down whether you use AVI or Quicktime containers for your files.

I wouldn't expect even one stream of RGB24 or 32 (uncompressed AVI without or with Alpha) to play back well on a plain destop system. You need at the very least a Raptor drive or an array.

Not to cast doubt on the test, just to define what that sluggishness would be caused by. Testing is GOOD.

BMD and Avid have free codecs on their sites. You can try rendering in different codecs to compare file sizes and spriteliness.

It might be that setting up a newtek system would be counterproductive politically if your goal is to use Vegas, I don't know. On the other hand, Vegas can often be installed on the same system alongside another NLE, so maybe you can actually create more flexibility.

Rob Mack

Rob,

Again thanks for your time and response. I at least now have enough information to start asking intelligent questions. I see more research and maybe some more questions coming.

Dave T2

RBartlett,

Thanks again to you for taking the time to answer my question and providing all of that information. As I told Rob, now I at least feel more comfortable in persuing my options on this. I will definitely follow your suggestions on checking out NewTek.

I appreciate everyones input.

Dave T2

Given that the original post menioned the requirement was for uncompressed acquisition from high bandwidth tape and for what disk storage would be comensurate with that. I'd say that the VT would be an option.

Yes, Raptor or 10k or 15k RPM Cheeteh drives, as singles or striped (for media management of multiple clips stacked all through your project). Definitely recommended.

You'll get away with a lot less (almost any 7200 rpm drive even dating back to IDE that is >20GBytes in size). It is quite easy to sustain between 22 and 30+ MBytes/second. The choice is about headroom and budget.

To clarify, comparing all things equal computers, VT will be more capable of acquiring the original 8bit YUV imagery without transcoding what comes out of the ports and will scrub through uncompressed D1 without dropping frames where the same system will not be so good with a Vegas preview. For instance, fields are preserved and well represented on preview in VGA and window mode. Very smart even if you don't have a broadcast monitor plugged into the analogue, SDI or firewire options.

Vegas does a good job of handling the YUV based DV formats in an 8bit RGB pipeline. RGB is where the world should go now that tape is dying. However with MPEG/DCT based compression taking it's place, YUV still has a place. So it'll be a long time before RGB is the best fit. Yet this is what we have with Vegas and at 8bits precision (higher within no doubt).

A YUY2.AVI captured into VT. Then frameserved into Vegas using the project wrapper would be an elegant workflow that wouldn't require multiple renders. It wouldn't make up for what Vegas (to the purists mind) isn't good at but it would allow all those plug-ins and editing experience to be used.

So far we have:

Decklink
Convergent+Decklink
Kona + FCP (add one Mac Pro assuming Kona is PCIexpress, otherwise sell it!)
VT[4] ideally with SX-SDI or SX8/SX84 (original/latest)
Intensity Pro
SDI-HDMI adapter then Intensity

I'm sure there are more options too ( Harris(Leitch/DPS), Matrox (Axio), Thomson (Canopus) Edius with NX, Avid )


None of these options preclude the use of Vegas and some of them would allow you to stay very close to Vegas for the whole workflow.

I'd say that if your expenditure is heading towards or past $2000, then go on a tour around the dealers and make your comparison. You might even arrange beforehand to take one of your many DB decks to really test the mettle of the saleman!

Happy hunting.

Ugh. Do I keep saying Kona? The Aja card that Vegas works with is the Xena, not the Kona. Doh!

Rob