That is exactly my point. Doing color correction on a preview that is wrong will give you wrong results on render. Its essential to preview in correct color space.

I am really sorry to beat this horse to death, but, herein lies my exact complaint. How can a "bug" like this be allowed to happen, then do nothing to acknowledge it, or do nothing about it.This is more than a weekend hobby to me. This is my livelihood. Any software maker I can't depend on, isn't gonna get my $$$. Instead, Sony has let endless amounts of time and effort go into trying to decipher this. You guys deserve a medal for hangin' in there. Not once, in all the threads on this topic, has SCS offered a single word on the issue. Nothing. No, "we're working on it", no "stop slamming Vegas in this forum"...nada. They've totally lost my respect.

So, go ahead, Serena, make your veiled insults, if you wish. I doubt you'd buy an Edsel if they were still being made....would you?

edit..OK, I'm not really sorry.

Sami:

What you say is true BUT....................... Only if you capture with the crappy ClipBrowser!

IF you do not use ClipBrowser but convert your mpg4 files on the SxS card direct to avi with NEO HD then all this is avoided. The NEO captured footage on the time-line looks identical to the original camera image and when rendered to Blu-ray from the NEO HD the final product looks exactly the same super quality in 8 AND 32 bit. Get the NEO HD trial and see for yourself just how superior it is over ClipBrowser.

When you get into color space conversion you loose something. Just try doing a Vegas color space conversion back and forth a couple of time and see what your footage looks like.

Your not sorry Bill, you wait in the shadows waiting to pounce on any opportunity you can find to bash Vegas. Why start your post with a lie?

Obviously a solution from Sony earlier would have been welcome but perhaps, just perhaps, they didn't know the answer either. If it took you endless amounts of time and effort with everything you seem to know, then maybe they initially weren't quite sure either. But you seem to imply that just about every piece of software on the market doesn't have it's own set of problems or shortcoming. Just about every piece of software requires work-arounds in one situation or another. Wouldn't it be great if everything we bought did everything we wanted it to right out of the gate? I'm not making excuses, I have my fair share of gripes with Sony. The difference is that I realize that no matter what program I use it will have it's shortcomings, issues will arise, and inevitably I will be forced to find another, perhaps unconventional way, to achieve my desired outcome.

Obviously I'm in the wrong here. I probably have no idea what I'm talking about. Having to change the colorspace or use a plug-in is just way to much work and I agree, you shouldn't give them your money. But then, you host your website on geocities so apparently you don't like paying for a lot of things.

http://www.geocities.com/ravens202/

- Ray
Some of my stuff on Vimeo
www.undergroundplanet.com

>IF you do not use ClipBrowser but convert your mpg4 files on the SxS card direct to avi with NEO HD then all this is avoided. The NEO captured footage on the time-line looks identical to the original camera image and when rendered to Blu-ray from the NEO HD the final product looks exactly the same super quality in 8 AND 32 bit. Get the NEO HD trial and see for yourself just how superior it is over ClipBrowser.

Ive tried it and indeed it yields good results. But now that I know how to get what I need Im happy with Vegas. At the moment my projects dont require an additional codec.

I agree that Sony should adress this issue and make it A LOT easier, being that we're talking all Sony products from start to end! Its been one hell of a tester to get good and consistent quality out of EX1+Vegas combo.

>When you get into color space conversion you loose something. Just try doing a Vegas color space conversion back and forth a couple of time and see what your footage looks like.

My workflow starts with doing an unwrap in Clip browser to MXF. Edit in 8bit (for faster preview) and when I start color correction I change the project to a 32bit project. Then I do a render and all the formats i need (Mainconcept MP4, Quictime uncompressed and WMV give desired results). Im happy with how this works.

I've spent a lot of money on EX1 (very little money on Vegas luckily) I really hope Sony will somehow ease the workflow with updates. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Talk about making a rod for your own back guys.
I've been editing my EX1 footage just the same as I edited DV and any other HDV. Never used 32bit for anything, it achieves next to nothing. If you think it does you're doing something seriously wrong.
Preview monitors are for EDITING, not color grading. Anyone making critical grading decisions based on a preview monitor should have their licence cancelled.

Bob.

Darn! Does this mean my computer license I took at high school will have to go :)

aCk ... I thought he was talking about my drivers license. =)

- Ray
Some of my stuff on Vimeo
www.undergroundplanet.com

I agree Bob for video being edited for tv,,, but .... more and more stuff is being edited for the olw puter screen... so what do ya use ,, the external montor or the computer monitor... this issue comes into play me thinks... pls dont revoke my license!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry guys,
I'm being a bit harsh I know but that's as much out of frustration than anything. So many words written about nothing, people trying everything and then spitting the dummy.
I just edit my EX1 footage like any other, the camera's great but it's still 8bit 4:2:0, no mojo in that. It puts the best looking image I've seen into that but there's no reason to handle it any differently in post than any other camera.

For quick and dirty CC I just use my SD 4:3 monitor, connected over firewire.

If you want to do serious grading then you need:
The proper room.
The proper monitor, calibrated.
Feed the monitor over a known standard connection like HD SDI.
Very deep pockets.

I don't have any of that and nothing I shoot goes to air. If It did and I thought it needed CC the client can pay for it to go through a grading suite.

For myself and my clients my current setup is good enough.

Just getting back to the topic though. I don't understand what this has to do with the EX1 specifically. I've shot with all manner of cameras and so far the EX1 records just like everything else.
The only camera I do feel causes me some concern with Vegas is the 709, that records SD 10bit YUV. For that I can see a good reason to sweat over what happens in 32bit.

Bob.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I just edited an EX1 project in 8bit using only preview (24" Dell Monitor) and the footage, including colour, looked great from beginning to end.

So any ambitions I might have had to slam Sony, or Serena, (who hasn't even posted in this thread) remain unfulfilled.

Serena is busy updating the engineering designs she did on the Edsel so I will respond and say that in this modern age of great $1000 LCDs I agree with Peter. I edit and CC (even thought with the EX1 it's seldom necessary) on my laptop with a 1980x1200 WUXGA screen and test my renders on a 42" 1080p LCD TV. The image on my computer in Vegas (best full) and the LCD look almost identical, and either way it looks some of the best video footage I've ever seen. I really think $5000 CRT monitors are for special apps only now.

You have to do a test render, 15-30 seconds or so, no matter what you do, or which NLE you use. That is video editing kindergarten stuff.

Colors will look different on final render depending on which file format/codec you use, so it's pointless to go through to final render by just relying on a preview window or without doing the test render, no matter how accurete or not accurate the preview seems to be. This goes for a laptop screen or a $10 000 monitor.

Test renders are the only way of knowing what it will really look like, and that goes for every NLE.

Michael said:
What you say is true BUT....................... Only if you capture with the crappy ClipBrowser!

Well, I cannot agree with that. If it were for the way Clipbrowser "captures" EX1's files, they would look washed-out also in players like WMP, or other NLE's like Edius. They don't!

So, is an EX'1 mxf clip anything special in Vegas? I don't think so, either. It so happens that the EX1 and Vegas 32 bit video arrived coincidentally at the same time (roughly). First, we saw how 32bit timeline preview can look more vivid with HDV (due to the underlying conversion to Computer RGB), and a few weeks later we started playing with our first mxf's. It's then where all the confusion started - whether to do 32bit or stay in 8bit, if one should convert colour spaces before rendering or not, etc.

As Bob said, this has nothing to do with the EX1 - it's just the 4:2:0 MPEG2! When I do my old V1E's pieces in Vegas Pro 8, I can see exactly the same effects; we just didn't realize it with Vegas 7 (well, most of us).

Bob said:

"I've been editing my EX1 footage just the same as I edited DV and any other HDV. Never used 32bit for anything, it achieves next to nothing. If you think it does you're doing something seriously wrong."

Well, partially denying my own post above, I can't agree with his statement, either. I have rendered two versions of a serious project (shot with the V1E, not EX1 BTW) - in both 8bit and 32bit, but without any other processing whatsoever (no CC, no colour space conversion). Burned BD images in Vegas, authored BDs with Ulead...

Never saw a difference, until I bought a 50" Panasonic HDTV and watched them both on it. The 32bit version is definitely better - blacks are deeper, colours are more juicy; better latitude!

Now, go figure... What have I done wrong in my 8bit version of the project, Bob?

Wrong question I think.
It's what you've done wrong in your 32bit version.
The next question would be why haven't you adjusted your HDTV correctly?

What you have done is effectively applied a StudioRGB to ComputerRGB conversion which will make the image 'pop' as you've noted. If your HDTV was setup correctly it should cause the image to blow out somewhat, not good.

If you want that 'look' you could do the same thing in 8 bit using the above conversion and get the same result.

Bob.

Absolutely right, Bob - but my point has been that (Vegas preview configuration problems aside), [b]there is a difference[b] between the final renders of 8 vs 32bit projects.

But I guess this is obvious; of course your point on the display device setting is also valid (I was comparing the two outputs using the same, possibly most neutral, settings of my Viera).

I don't want to stray to far off topic here, but maybe somebody can answer this:

Will the 64 bit version of Vegas render 32bit projects any quicker?

I have tried 32bit renders a couple of times now. The image looks the same on my computer monitor, but I can understand how on a 60 inch high end TV it could be quite a bit better even though it may not be obvious without the proper playback equipment.

The problem is that 32 bit renders take so much longer. I have this interview that is about an hour and a half long. An 8 bit color correction renders of this take a couple of hours. A 32bit render of the same video takes around 30 hours! That is just too long to be practical IMHO. This is with a Core2Duo running at about 2.4 gigahertz by the way.

I am running Vista 64 Ultimate with 4 gig of RAM. It makes sense to me that the upcoming version of 64 bit Vegas might render 32 bit projects quite a bit faster. Does anyone know if this is the case? I will happily switch to 32 bit renders if it does. In the mean time, the 32 bit renders simply take too long to be practical.

Yes there is a difference between the final renders of 32bit and 8 bit unless you correctly use 32bit i.e. adjust for the fact that it's doing a StudioRGB to ComputerRGB when reading HDV. Such a level shift doesn't mean a difference in quality. In fact by that metric 32bit is of lower quality than 8 bit.

Bob.

"Will the 64 bit version of Vegas render 32bit projects any quicker? "

I doubt any of us could say for certain until we have the 64bit version. I'm hard pressed to imagine it will.

Bob.

there is a difference between the final renders of 8 vs 32bit projects.
In the particular situation that was outlined... rendering from and to MPEG2... there shouldn't be a difference in the final render. That's assuming that you're rendering to the Main Concept MPEG2 encoder that comes with Vegas. The MPEG2 codec will decode and encode expecting the same set of levels (studio RGB in 8-bit, computer RGB in 32-bit).
**I haven't tested the SonyAVC codec... so I might be wrong. In any case the difference is likely some studio<-->computer RGB conversion.

-----
Regarding 32-bit renders taking longer... try setting the compositing gamma to 2.222. That will help a little bit.
The compositing gamma will affect how filters and transitions behave. I suggest 2.222 because it's the old school Vegas behaviour you're used to (the new behaviour is at times unintuitive because the Broadcast Colors FX won't work and computer<-->studio RGB presets dont do what they say anymore). If you want linear light compositing (which is what the 1.000 mode aims to do), then there are some ways to do that. Check out the linear light article on my website.

Glenn said:
"In the particular situation that was outlined... rendering from and to MPEG2... there shouldn't be a difference in the final render"

Agreed, and this is exactly the reason why I was so surprised with the difference. It is NOT the obvious difference we all can see in previewing Vegas project while changing colour spaces; it's much more subtle - I have noticed it only after I first compared the two renders, differing ONLY with the 8 vs 32 bit video settings, on my new 50" HDTV.

So, to me it's a totally new problem to investigate; were it not for the 32bit taking so much more time to render, I would simply switch to and stick with 32bit processing for good, becuase the results DO simply look better.