The Axio system isn't relevant to Vegas, so I'll leave it at saying that the processing built into the hardware has a different impact. It's also being managed differently.
Also realize that:

1. Recompression is a huge deal, so you'll lose quality in compositing, new tracks, ect. A single, final render won't cost you any quality per se, but it is also very slow to render by comparison.
2. Rendering time of the m2t file vs converting and using a 4:2:2 intermediary don't sum themselves. It's faster to process the lesser compressed 4:2:2 than it is to process the heavily compressed mpeg.
3. m2t on any computer, screaming or not, heavily taxes the CPU, contributing to above, and contributing to render failure, but this is more of a "maybe" than a fixed-in-stone fact.
4. Editing "native" is more a bullet point than a useful feature. This is changing, and eventually we'll have better decoders. Apple does a reasonable job. Liquid does too, but Liquid's main benefit in the past has always been editing mpeg, as it inherited that feature from FAST, which was a broadcast-level mpeg system that worked very well with Beta SX. Premiere, Ulead, Vegas, Canopus, Avid all use some form of intermediary with good reason. Faster, more accurate, and able to render multiple streams as a composite without taking a quality hit.

Thanks for the reply. Sorry to make you answer on more than one forum, but not eveyrone reads them all (like you and I do, apparently :-))...

Douglas, I greatly respect your opinion, however....

Points 2 and 3 that you made contradict the assumptions I asked you to accept in my post. I agree, HDV is more intense on the CPU, but this is a problem that has been and will continue to disappear, especially with faster machines and hardware like the RTX2.

To your point #1. I agree if we're talking about multiple generations of recompression, but if you are compressing only once (ie: HDV to WMV with cuts and dissolves) why should it be any different than converting from HDV to Intermediate and then to WMV? Especially when we're talking about these new 'optimized' programs like PP2 that make native HDV editing a feature.

Best,

Ben

Like I said, this will change, eventually. Maybe sooner than later.
I don't care much about the hardware, because most of my editing will continue to stay in Vegas, and Vegas doesn't use hardware assistance. I'm not interested in changing full-time to PP2 for hardware benefits, sacrificing stability and speed for instability and bloat. PP2 is a much better app than it ever has been, but it's not up to par with Vegas on most fronts. Additionally, just spend a little time in the various PP2 fora, and see how many people are *thrilled* with the native HDV performance of PP2. People are still buying CineForm for PP2, because they've recognized that in spite of Adobe dropping it from the package, it's of significant benefit.
Just because I don't fully accept your #1 and 2 doesn't mean that they're not viable for *you.* We've got a workflow for our clients and delivery, and intermediate will likely be a part of that for quite a while. 4:2:2 is much more processor friendly than m2t, and will be so forever.
As far as "why should it be any different...." test it for yourself. Use a color sampler to measure original image, 4:2:2 image, and final wmv image. Compare all three.

Native m2t editing is going to find a home with people editing with a sort of single line of video film-like narative approach. For anyone using more complex structures with any kind of layering, an intermediary codec is still going to be necessary.

In order to do the m2t native approach, you need to limit yourself layer-wise, and equip yourself with a set of whatever transitions you need in a GPU accelerated format.

If you want to use this approach you will be further ahead moving to PP2. Like Spot however, I am going to stay with Vegas. I don't use a whole lot of layers very often, but I do enough not to want to give this capability up. I think that Cineform is a better mastering format. Smartrenders with the new Cineform 3.03 codec are lightning fast and very light CPU-wise. I like the way things like crossfades look better in Cineform and I hate the little playback glitches you get when you try to play a native m2t edited file as your player tries to deal with the wierd GOP sequence. In order to get a properly GOP sequenced m2t output file you need to rerender anyway, and Cineform looks better for rerenders.

Plus, I LOVE Vegas. The scripting alone will keep me with in the fold forever!

Howdy...

Douglas, you seem to feel like I'm trying to 'convince' you of something. I understand that you may personally 'not care' about this or that, but what I'm trying to is bring clarity to the choices for everyone, not just what I or you want to do. This, also, isn't a religious debate about Vegas vs. Premiere. I have both, and use both. You CAN use Vegas with native HDV if you have the horsepower. If not, of course an intermediate is the best way to go.

I agree with Laurence. Native HDV editing works, if you have the hardware for it, and are not doing a lot of compositing, etc... Especially with some of the newer systems out there that are designed to handle HDV's structure.

It all reminds me of when the Z1 first came out any the popular wisdom was that you couldn't use it for green-screen work because of the artifacts... completely untrue, as I use it for keying all the time with excellent results, yet it was the 'accepted wisdom' at that moment...

Best,

Benjamin


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http://www.neo-fight.tv [The "Techno-Debate" Video Podcast]

One more thing to throw into the mix--currently, Vegas6 doesn't like having lots of m2t clips on the timeline. I found that it would crash with about 80 clips. Not only that, but it takes FOREVER to show the m2t thumbnails on the timeline when you start approaching this number..

No doubt some future version of Vegas will find some way to bypass this limitation, but it's there for the current version.

I agree. While I LOVE Vegas, and use it as my main editing platform, I am surprised at how much better Premiere handles HDV. If Douglas has only used Vegas for HDV, I can see why he'd always want o use an intrmediate.

I have installed both Vegas and PP2 on the same Core Duo 2.0 laptop (2gb Ram, x1600 graphics), and Vegas stutters with standard playback of HDV (in preview mode) and completly crawls during a simple disolve. PP2 on the same machine plays HDV smoothly in a preview window twice the size, and displays disolves in realtime. Very nice...

I'm not bashing Vegas here. Still my main system, but PP2 definately has the edge with Native HDV editing...IMHO....

Best,

Benjamin


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http://www.neo-fight.tv [The "Techno-Debate" Video Podcast]

Vegas just doesn't understand MPEG of any flavor. Even Womble, which is very crude, just sails through MPEG, including the m2t HDV files.

Hopefully this will get better over time. It pretty much HAS to.

Hopefully Vegas 7 is just around the corner with some sort of Directshow approach replacing the tired old VFW pipeline that should have been retired years ago. Good mpeg playback is not that hard. All you need is a pathway to accelerators like NVidia's PureVideo. Ideally Vegas should be able to use either approach, just like Premier Pro 2.

sigh....Douglas hasn't only used Vegas for HDV editing, Douglas has (and does) use Avid Express Pro HD, and on rare occasion, Pinnacle Liquid. Members of Douglas' team showed Avid Liquid at NAB 2006, using HDV footage over a network., and his company has training he produced on Avid Liquid. Douglas also produced a DVD for Canopus on Edius, and he and his team did the Final Cut Studio series which contains titles on editing HDV.
third person off...

As far as the claims of the Z1 not being able to shoot chromakey being accepted wisdom, I certainly never accepted that, either.
If you are comfortable with your color correction and transitions on native m2t, then by all means, go with it. Since we end up delivering a fair amount on HDCAM, it makes more sense for us to work in other intermediates, but taking the CineForm files out to the various computers ranging from a laptop to very tweaked out systems works better for us. If you've got a single desktop and that's your workflow and workstation, fine. But regardless, an HDI is virtually always the best way to work, and will virtually always be so, due to the decompression required.
Long GOP simply was not designed as an editing format. When you are cutting between I frames, you're not cutting an actual frame, but a representation of a frame. Perhaps you don't see color shift requirements over 15 frames that needs to be accurate, or perhaps you're not concerned about hitting a B or P frame during composites. These are all things that can be caught by "oops" during last minute project deliveries, and using a 4:2: 2 stream all the way through not only makes these more obvious, but most importantly is that it can be easily shared, rendered, etc across numerous computers when you've got multiple inputs to a project.
You asked, I answered. I'm sorry my answer isn't the one you wanted to hear, or accept. Your mileage may vary, but you'll find in most multiple editor/multiple workstation systems, workflows are defined and rarely deviated from, simply for simplicity and lack of confusion. I'm sure someday, we'll move away from having to use HDI's, but for the time being...
In closing, you're asking about Axio in multiple Vegas forums. Therefore I apparently mistakenly assumed you were thinking you could somehow use Axio with Vegas. You can't. If you were asking a more broad question about the generality of HDI, then I missed that point.

I think there's a great danger in this approach.
Certainly using GPU grunt for a variety of tasks will speed things up dramatically however you're then stuck with what the GPU does, that might be good, or not. No doubt certain GPUs and video cards are designed for speed rather than accuracy, accurate color rendition is probably not a high priority for games.
The only applications that I've toyed with that use GPU power are Truespace and Fusion5.
On one PC Truespace is pretty much unuseble using the GPU although it runs an aweful lot faster.
The good engineers at Eyeon suggest using the GPU for preview renders but not for final rendering due to quality issues.
I've no doubt that some manufacturers of video cards will target our market segment but until the dust settles this could all be a support nightmare. At the moment the quality of our rendered output is pretty much in the lap of the Vegas programmers, using GPUs for rendering takes that away.

Or I could be wrong but so far I'm not hearing anything that contradicts this.

Bob.

Hi, Bob...

I agree with you. I've used Serious Magic Ultra, and when used with GPU, it seems a lot less accurate than without, but it is a lot faster that way. I stick to the CPU, though...

DSE, thanks for the narrative. I think we can agree on this... If you need a consistent codec that can work across a variety of platforms and CPU speeds, or if you need to do heavy compositing work, an intermediate is the only way to go (and I say this as a registered Vegas and Cineform user). If, on the other hand, you edit primarily on one fast machine, and are doing fairly basic work, you can probably get away with native HDV, as long as your platform supports it (ie. RTX2, Axio, PP2, etc...). Many people buy a platform and edit with it. I was an RTX.100 user for several years before switching to Vegas.

My point here was not to promote a particular editing system or platform, but merely to stimulate the discussion and answer questions that have been raised before but answered unclearly. I think we've accomplished that, and I thank you.

Best,

Benjamin


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http://www.neo-fight.tv [The "Techno-Debate" Video Podcast]

I think there's another undelying issue with Vegas that has bugged me since I started using it years ago. The good lads at Maddison need to spec out a reference system.
I've run Vegas on a divergent range of hardware without problems but I'm 100% certain that not all of them were optimum. Now I certainly don't want development hours soaked up by compatibility testing AND yes I can see all sorts of political issues rearing their ugly heads. However I think we're all intelligent enough to navigate that minefield.

Maybe I have a screw loose coming up with this idea but I don't think it's ever been given an airing, so anyone else got any thoughts?
Is this worth a new thread?

Bob.

I think it is not worthwile to compare Vegas 6d with Adobe Premiere Pro 2. A better comparison will be APP2 with Vegas 7 - when Vegas 7 will be available. I expect Vegas 7 to dissolve some of the issures with HDV, as described in this thread in a correct way.

The "benchmark" will be deliveredy anyway more by Canopus Edius, even as pure OHCI version (to compare a pure software with a NX would not be fair), I think.

Personally, I want to continue to use the Cineform codec for my projects, but I'd still love to be able to do a little quick and dirty m2t direct editing for things like my son's birthday. I currently do exactly that by editing things like family events on the excellent Womble MPEG Edit program. I would love to be able to work with native m2t on Vegas, even though I would still use Cineform for any serious work.

For shortform editing (3-5 mins) on occasion I won't use the intermediary myself, just because it's a time issue. However, long form, I can't possibly imagine anyone not using the intermediary. Even the fastest machine will bog down with m2t on long form. I believe John Meyer (or someone else) verified this independently in another thread.

The good lads at Madison need to spec out a reference system ... Is this worth a new thread?

I think we've had 100 threads on this, usually titled "What's the Best Configuration for Vegas?" I agree that Madison should at least provide some guidelines on how much advantage you get with AMD vs. Intel processors; dual core vs. single-core; dual processor vs. single processor; GPU vs. standard video, and so on. This should then be extended to how these things affect preview; what they do for render; and whether you can still eke out further benefits if you run multiple instances of Vegas on a dual-core, dual processor system (e.g., if Vegas fails to use 100% of every thread, can you get work done faster by running more than once instance?).

A really good white paper is definitely in order, I think. I have occasionally written them for clients (last one was for Santa Cruz Networks describing their multi-point videoconferencing technology). I'd be more than happy to write such a paper, if Sony would like me to sit down with the engineers and learn all the secrets about the inner workings of their technology.

All that needs to happen is for Vegas to switch from a VFW to a Directshow GPU compatible mode for previewing video and ALL of the decent CPUs will work just fine (given you have a decent graphics card). I'm more concerned about previewing than I am about accelerated rendering by the way. I imagine that if and when Vegas finally employs GPU acceleration, there will be some sort of tab to check on whether or not you want the GPU used for the final render.

I completely agree with the need for better preview in Vegas. It was great for DV but it seems to be a bit of an issue for HDV, even with Cineform. I would love for some way to get consistent full res/full framerate preview in Vegas of HDV. I guess I don't know or care how it's done - GPU, hardware, octo-core processor system - I just would love to get my hands on it. I also agree with some kind of benchmark system, and by this I mean some kind of hardware etc benchmark for full res/full framerate preview of HDV. I'm not as concerned about rendering times as I am about preview.

Ben,

I think you mean "Core Duo," not Core Duo 2." Unless you have somehow gotten your hands on a pre-production Conroe or Merom chip and it will run in your laptop without a bios update, Core Duo 2 is not set to release until July 23, and the mobile part (Merom) some time after that.

While Core Duo, aka "Yonah" is a great part Merom should show a significant boost in performance.

- Mark