HDV Video/display card

wintermute wrote on 8/14/2005, 3:48 AM

Hello, I've just started using Vegas to work with some HDV footage. However, playback performance is very very slow. My machine spec is ok, so the only thing I can think of is that my video card, which is pretty old, is not up to the task. Can anyone recommend a decent card to use. I would prefer to stick with Nvidia, or maybe matrox.

Comments

VOGuy wrote on 8/14/2005, 4:21 AM

Hi Wintermute.

Welcome to HDV/Vegas (I think you'll love it, but there's a learning curve.)

Most of the folks here have found that the choice of video card has little impact on HDV playback performance. On a 3gHz HT machine, you CAN get CLOSE to realtime playback while editing in Vegas, so long as you're working with HDV "intermediate" .avi files. If you're trying to play the m2t files, it ain't gonna' happen -- Your machine needs to decode the .m2t files while playing, and that's too much work for almost any machine to keep up.

Cineform, the company who developed the "Intermediate" files claims minimal degredation if you use them. If you feel the need to use the .m2t files, many people here have been quite happy using "Gearshift" from VASST.com, which allows you to work with proxy files, then render directly from the original .m2t files.

Good luck.

-Travis

MH_Stevens wrote on 8/14/2005, 10:54 AM

Wintermute:

Over the last year I have been through exactly the learning cure you ask about and to which Voice Over Guy (that's so you as a newbie know what VOGuy means) refers too. What VOGuy says is spot on (Also for a newbie I better change that to 100% right as Spot is also a person and the most knowledgable person here - probably one of the formost HDV experts in the world as he has been in from the begginig). Simply, you CAN edit native HDV (often refered to as m2t transport stream) but it will have a slow frame rate. To easily edit and see a real-time preview you just convert the HDV to a SD type format, edit then switch back to HDV

Here are four steps you might want to do to get started:
First get a monitor that can display HD. Sony has some expensive ones but the best value is the Dell 2405. You must get at leasy 1920x1080 resolution.

Second, as I have been told a million times, get a video card that can handle 1920x1080 but there is no need to pay more than is necessary. What you MUST get on the Video card is DUAL outputs so you can have one monitor for the timeline and one for the Dell2405 - and get at least one DVI out for the Dell. Two is better.

Third read the MANY posts here relating to Cineform and GearShift and the various formats to which HDV can be rendered - like Windows Media Video 9 or the Nero equvalent. Understand that if your final delivery output is to DVD you will not have HD quality.

Fourth Get Spot's book "HDV - What You Need to Know" from a company called VASST.

Now have fun.

Mike Stevens

Wolfgang S. wrote on 8/14/2005, 12:13 PM

<playback performance is very very slow. My machine spec is ok, so <the only thing I can think of is that my video card, which is pretty old, <is not up to the task. Can anyone recommend a decent card to use. I <would prefer to stick with Nvidia, or maybe matrox.

Playback performance is a function of processor power in Vegas only, for m2t footage it is not higher then 7-12 fps, even on good preview quality only.

Since Vegas generates a preview picture, higher grafic card performance will not improve your situation at all! That is not true for all NLEs, Edius for example requires 128 MB in the grafic card (what is not required for Vegas).

wintermute wrote on 8/15/2005, 2:54 AM

thanks for all your responses. I was not aware that the m2t format causes so many headaches. I'm used to working with both DV on a laptop, or HD on a Smoke system, both of which have great performance, I was expecting HDV to be between the two. My gut feeling at this point is that I should use the Z1U's firewire downconversion feature to generate DV copies of the footage, and then edit with that. Once I've done an offline, I'll conform the HDV version back in, at which point playback is not so important.
As a follow-up question though, is Vegas able to play HDV back through the firewire for recording ok? This is something I neglected to do in my tests.

PeterWright wrote on 8/15/2005, 3:29 AM

Yes, that's how I've been working. It takes a while to render to widescreen, but with Gearshift you can set it and go to bed. It makes editing very smooth and easy though, and at any time you can click a single button to swap the proxies back to HDV.

And when you're finished Vegas will put HDV out back to tape via firewire.

Spot|DSE wrote on 8/15/2005, 5:56 AM

Wintermute,
you won't be able to capture DV, and later recapture the HDV with frame accuracy to do an online. This is why GearShift exists, is that you'll capture the m2t, convert to either CineForm codec or DV proxy (or both) for the rough areas you wish to keep, edit with the DV or CineForm, and then swap those out for the HDV for print back to tape or encode to DVD, keeping you in the 4:2:0 space all the time.
the latest version of GearShift allows you to extract regions and render them to the new file format for editing. Then when you're done, rather than any re-capture, you'll simply press the "Shift Gears" button and it exchanges all files for the "real" files.

farss wrote on 8/15/2005, 6:07 AM

If you've got access to a Smoke you could dub your HDV tapes to HDCAM and use the Smoke. Convergent Design have (or will shortly) a box that'll go from HDV on firewire to HD SDI. From that you can go into a HDCAM deck, job done.
You might also be able to offline 16:9 DV proxies in Vegas and then export an EDL to the Smoke, dub your HDV tapes to HDCAM, certain you get the idea.
Except now I'm jealous :)
Bob.

wintermute wrote on 8/17/2005, 1:49 AM

Well, I looked into this some more, and I was disappointed to see that Vegas does not seem to support importing/conforming of EDLs. I'll look into using gearshift though.