HDV editing with Vegas?

MRe wrote on 9/14/2006, 4:29 AM
Could someone pls. explain me s-l-o-w-l-y and clearly the basics of HDV editing workflow with Vegas.

I'm editing videos only as a hobby, not as a profession.

Now, what confuses me is this discussion of proxies, intermediates and natives. Basically I understand the principle behind those but I'm still unsure which method should I use.

Basically what I like (and intend) to do is to transfer the HDV-material from camera to disk; edit the material; transfer the edited HDV-material back to tape (as HDV) and compile & burn a SD DVD for watching the video from my TV-set. In the future will lay the possibility to have this full HD(V).

Not doing this commercially I do not know beforehand whether I will do "heavy compositing" (don't know if I even have skills to do it, since I'm not aware what is ranked as "heavy"). Transitions, color correction all the time, others when seem appropriate.

So, should I use Cineform or not? If I run HDV mpeg-stream through Cineform, will it keep the quality 100% (i.e. no generation loss, no resolution loss). If I print non-edited material back to tape, will Cineform again be 100% transparent? In this case will I benefit from Cineform or should I do better without (i.e. is Cineform 100% transparent also on this sense so that I do not see it anywhere or lose any standard Vegas functionality).

Or should I just forget Cineform, save $200 and work what comes with Vegas? To my understanding there is "limited" version of CineformHD included, which will require separate rendering after the capture.

Or should I forget everything and work directly with native m2t -stream as V7 now supports it better than V6.

Or should I ditch my A1E and go back to my good old TRV33? Or find another hobby, like taming tigers or riding stingrays...

Comments

mbryant wrote on 9/14/2006, 4:59 AM

It seems you understand the options pretty well. The choice depends on 2 main factors: the speed of your PC, and the complexity of your edits. And the version of Vegas.. ok 3 main factors.

With V6, editing HDV directly was pretty sluggish even on fairly powerful machines. With V7 this is supposed to be better (I haven’t tried it yet). If your edits aren’t too complex this is the easiest way to go. You can try it this way, and if you find it to be sluggish you can consider the other options. As long as you are only doing a single generation render then there are no quality problems. (If you need to do multiple generations than using the Cineform intermediate is the way to go).

Proxy editing is the least demanding on the PC.. so if you have a low powered (e.g. 1 Ghz) machine it is the way to go.

The Cineform intermediates are easier to support complex edits than native HDV, and yes it is “virtually lossless”. But they are more demanding on a PC than using a Proxy. Need something like a 2.4 Ghz machine to run well. If it is just a hobby then even if you go this route the codec in Vegas is probably enough for your needs. Connect HD really shines if speed of workflow is important… for a hobby this may not be so critical.
mbryant wrote on 9/14/2006, 5:41 AM
Just tried editing native HDV in V7 - much faster than V6. (see my post in another thread).