HDV Scene detection in Movie Studio Platinum?

Remyg wrote on 12/3/2006, 4:43 PM

Hi,
It appears to me that the HDV capure in Vegas Movie Studio Platinum does not include scene detection. (I'm using the internal capture, as indicated in the help).

Vegas 7 owners apparently have setting on the capture preferences that allow them to enable scene detection. I see none on my VMSP7.

If there is something I am missing, can someone please let me know.

If my guess is true, its a shameful ommission on the software comparison page. Scene detection is a core, basic function, and not letting users know its not possible is false advertizing.

Thanks,
Remy.

Comments

rustier wrote on 12/3/2006, 10:37 PM

Personally I haven't worked with HDV yet, but if you do a search of the forums key words "HDV scene detection" you will find a lot of strings on the subject. From what I have gathered HDV is a different animal all together. Scene detection is not so cut and dried. The first thought that comes to my head as a work around is to open the video in trimmer and set your markers for each scene there.

Hopefully you have included a head and tail to your scenes - I understand this is necessary as there is not clear demarcation of audio and video together during capture - the heads and tails are clipped off during editing.

Fret not. I don't believe Sony is trying to get one over on you here.
Good luck taming the beast.

TravelJunkie wrote on 12/4/2006, 4:01 AM

Hi Remy

You're right that VMS Platinum doesn't do scene detection - and I agree with you that this is a serious ommission. (While I'm sure Rustier is correct that there are technical difficulties in implementing this, it is certainly a feature of other consumer-level editing software, including Ulead Video Studio and iMovie - not to mention Vegas 7 !!)

Your best option might be to try HDVSplit, a great piece of freeware, which captures to multiple .m2t files.

However, your problems are not over at this point, because VMS is horrendously slow and clunky, trying to edit "raw" .m2t files. Unless you have a much more powerful CPU than my 3Ghz P4, you will need to render the .m2t files to Cineform Intermediate. You can do this clip by clip (which takes ages) or back to one big file (which pretty much negates the benefit of scene detection during capture).

The best "workflow" option I have found would be to use Cineform's "Connect HD" product, which captures with scene detection and converts the clips to Cineform Intermediates "on the fly", all set for editing in VMS. Unfortunately this costs $199 - and for that money I can't help feeling it would be better value to upgrade to the "full" version of Vegas 7 and enjoy faster .m2t editing - as well as scene detection out of the box !

Remyg wrote on 12/4/2006, 12:27 PM

Thanks TravelJunkie,
I fear you are right that ConnectHD is my best bet. I tried HDVSplit, but as you said, its too raw to work with, and the prospect of converting each of the scenes to an intermediate, and later manuualy reassigning them to the raw one for rendering is too much.

Lets hope Sony can provide an updated Capture real soon. Its a shame to leave a great piece of software with such a serious handicap. (If they purposefully want me to buy Vegas 7, they should tell me upfront!).

TravelJunkie wrote on 12/5/2006, 2:51 AM

One bit of good news:-

If you are using the Cineform Intermediate codec, you DON'T need to replace the clips with the original capture files to get back to HDV. VMS Platinum does, at least, treat Cineform AVI's as proper "intermediates" (ie not proxies) and will render and "print to tape" directly from the intermediate files.

4eyes wrote on 12/8/2006, 10:36 AM

Using VMS 7.0a Platinum.
I came to this forum to find out how to STOP my HC3 from scene splitting on HDV Captures to .m2t files..
Go figure, mines splitting them.
I did download & installed the VMS 7.0a Update, maybe that's the difference.

GerryLeacock wrote on 12/9/2006, 9:08 AM

Don't know if this helps or not, but have a look at this website. This guy has a free program for scene detection in HD. It's called HDVSplit.

http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/

tjarmstrong wrote on 12/9/2006, 1:55 PM

To "4eyes"

Are you sure you have VMS not regular Vegas? I don't mean to question you but I don't see how this is possible.

Tim

Beefcake wrote on 12/15/2006, 3:46 PM

I have VMSP, and when I captured my first video the other night, it downloaded a 65min tape and split it into 8 different .m2t files. I am too new this to know if the 8 different clips were due to scene detection or the manner in which I taped the footage. I DLed the 7.0c update.

Todd

4eyes wrote on 12/15/2006, 8:57 PM

Tim,
I think your correct, I'm starting to think they are tape dropouts.
I need to start using better quality DV tapes.
Having trouble seeking to certain frames or even converting the m2t files to Cineform.avi for easier edting. Program locks when rendering when it gets to a bad frame (damn mpeg files, hate trying to edit them). Everywhere the split occurs are blank frames and 0-Decibel audio. Like it needs to pad the GOP & add some P & B Frames. I split them/delete & re-render & it works. Problem is the program can lock doing it.

It's where I'm pausing and restarting the cam. Using an HC3 unit, the fast start isn't
turned on. Maybe I need to strip the tapes first.
I hope the HC3 doesn't need a firmware update. Hope it's just the tapes I'm using.

I'll post back when I use a better tape, may take awhile.
.

4eyes wrote on 12/16/2006, 9:20 AM

Using VMS 7 Platinum 7.0a,
Previously posted scene detection working, not really.
I had tape dropouts. The mpeg2 files were corrupted.
With this new tape I paused & restarted a few times and it's not splitting where I
paused & restarted. I ran the cleaning tape for about 5 seconds an used a new tape.
I'd rather have no spliting than tape dropouts of course.