Well I'm just getting back to hdv. So can I just drop it on the timeline like dv and edit to my heart's content? My system is windows 7 64bit, Vegas 11, i5 quad core with 16 gigs of ram and geforce gtx 550 Ti 1 gig video ram.

Go for it!

I'm a lowly Canon HV-30 user and have no problems editing HDV. I had an SD camera when I started using Vegas 6 and got my Canon when I went to Vegas 8 32-bit -- now I'm on Win7 64-bit with Vegas 10.

Interesting topic.
A couple of days ago now using V9 I captured a tape from a Z5 with scene detection enabled. I don't normally enable scene detection as I don't need it for events but this tape had lots of vox pops on it so having it already broken down into shots would have been handy.

So, dropped all the clips onto the V9 T/L and instant crash, had a couple of tries but still crash, crash, crash. Went back and captured the tape again without scene detection and got on with it.

Question, can one capture a HDV tape with V10 or V11 with scene detection On and have a smooth editing experience?

Yes, I know about HDV Split. I expect any so called "Pro" software to actually work without 3rd party tools and work arounds.

Bob.

With HDV, there used to be a maximum of something like a hundred clips that Vegas could handle at once before bogging down and crashing. I am pretty sure that this was because with it being long GOP, there wasn't enough memory set aside in Vegas to buffer the beginnings and endings of that many clips. Supposedly this was fixed but it has always seemed to me that the fix was to just set aside more memory and that the maximum number of clips was just raised. Even before it crashes, Vegas will slow down to a crawl with large numbers of HDV clips on a single timeline. Add even more HDV clips and Vegas will crash. The behavior is the same as it was before the fix except that the number of HDV clips that Vegas can handle at once is a lot bigger.

One thing you can do is smart render your HDV into 25Mbps .mxf XDCAM with the same video mpg2 compression but uncompressed audio. I do this with HDV footage because in addition the better stability, the audio doesn't degrade with successive smart-renders (which are not smart-renders audio-wise). XDCAM .mp4 also works. Be aware that Vegas only smart-renders footage flagged as interlaced though.

I usually capture with HDVsplit set to split the clips. Then I put the clips from each tape on a timeline, run a "put markers at events" script, the render each full tape back to a single clip, but one with markers at each clip. This render is a smart-render to an XDCAM format so that the audio isn't degraded like it would be if I smart-rendered to .m2t. I do this because the large XDCAM clips handle like butter in Vegas with almost no overhead at all, and the markers at the splits are even more convenient than separate clips.

Before I hade the i7, I converted AVCHD footage to .mxf too. .mxf looks absolutely wonderfully and is incredibly easy for Vegas to handle. Want to idiot on a two core laptop withan inexpensive USB hard drive? With large .mxf chunks this is no problem.

"With HDV, there used to be a maximum of something like a hundred clips that Vegas could handle at once before bogging down and crashing. I am pretty sure that this was because with it being long GOP, there wasn't enough memory set aside in Vegas to buffer the beginnings and endings of that many clips. Supposedly this was fixed but it has always seemed to me that the fix was to just set aside more memory and that the maximum number of clips was just raised. Even before it crashes, Vegas will slow down to a crawl with large numbers of HDV clips on a single timeline. Add even more HDV clips and Vegas will crash. The behavior is the same as it was before the fix except that the number of HDV clips that Vegas can handle at once is a lot bigger."

Well in my case it sure wasn't hundreds of clips, less than twenty.
I've had many hours of HDV on the T/L with no problem, even intercut with MXF from my EX1, only problem is dropping frames at the cut but new 3930K will fix that.

One thing with this particular tape was it seems the shooter had rewound the tape almost to the beginning of the tape a number of times so there was a number of very short clips. That might have been what confuzzed Vegas. The crash was very simple, put all clips onto T/L, hit play, goodnight and goodbye. Conversely capture same tape with Split Off, no problems.

Bob.

Another + for HDV split. Why HDV scene detection was never fixed in Vegas is a sore point. @ Farss; Are you using the latest version of V9? I had the same problems when using early versions. Only got better with 'd' then 'e' versions.

"@ Farss; Are you using the latest version of V9?"

Oh yes, indeed.

Bob..

Bob,
I have never made it a practice to use scene detect in native Sony capture on my VegasPro9.0e - since in fact I found it did not accurately detect the breaks in time code. However the very same system with Cineform HDLink does capture scene detect quite accurately. My conclusion is that the Sony capture application in and of itself is not designed well for scene detect HDV -20 clips or 100.

Just as I have found that Sony capture does not read back the native HDV timecode pushed to display -while I can use third party tools applied over the same scene to display native metadata in the file.

Well, I have been working on my first real project in Vegas 11, and it is all FX1 clips that are actually being captured just fine in my partner's Vegas 7 setup! He as loaded well over 100 hours for this and two other projects on this barebones setup

We have many, many clips on the timeline (ninety minute documentary) and there is very little "clogging" until we start adding lots of plugins to both audio and video.

I will say that I would like to have better previewing (all dissolves stutter slightly and all pan/crop motion on stills stutter dreadfully....in preview) and dread getting back to the point where we have a zillion stills, text and effects everywhere, but the basic editing works just fine......even high density plugins work fine, but just don't preview well sometimes, especially when there are lots of very high CPU/RAM usage third party audio plugs involved.

Am I hearing that converting all files to MXF would make the preview work better and eliminate some of the eventual slowdown at the point where we are adding audio and video plugs in excess? Is this an "interim" process for you guys, or are you producing the final from these MXFs?.......I produced a BluRay project a few years ago that was edited on FCP, and the editor had all files delivered on MXF, so I know this works.....

Curious about your thoughts.

To mudsmith: MXF is a container not a codec, just like mov and avi.
So be careful about what you are trying to do. You can use the .mxf container/codec provided with SCS product line to export to a Blu-ray project for burning in DVDAPro. The quality may suffer a little bit (maybe not noticeable to your eyes) because this particular codec combo is slightly lossy. Maybe not anymore so than the conventional video streams pushed from VegasPro.

Where the Sony MXF really shines is in the use of composite intermediates on the VegasPro timeline. It renders well and fast for its output quality and handles well in longer projects.

What you will notice that suffers most on the timeline performance is the pile-up of plug-ins - stack em hi and you will get poorer and poorer timeline responsiveness per longer timelines.

To Bob: I have yet to successfully capture a full HDV tape from my JVC GY-HD110 in either 10 or 11 with scene detection on or off. Always crashes within a few minutes. Capturing in 9 with scene detection on or off, then bringing the clips into a 10 or 11 timeline has worked fine for me. Since I don't use my HDV camera much anymore, I only have a MB Firewire input, not a dedicated card in my Win7 system, so that may be part of my troubles with capturing in 10 or 11.
Larry

It would be nice if some very knowledgeable person would present a current technological state of the art paper of HDV, AVCHD, MFX, and whatever else is in existance at this time so I know how far behind the times my stuff is. I"m pretty sure tape is dead. Maybe hard drives too. SCSI?. RAID? Firewire? "A" drive"? I still have a "B" drive.
JJK

I've been using HDV since I got my HDV camera in early 2008. I use the specs I have listed in my profile. The only issue I've had is I run out of memory sooner but that's VERY easy to predict so I break things down in to smaller projects if I'm doing a lot of editing/FX.

i convert the HDV files to Canopus HQ in vegas, using a script to automate the process (convert each scene to a different file)

its fast to convert, no problems whatsoever.

I"m pretty sure tape is dead.

I know, just like DVD and that old fashioned CD thing. :D

"that old fashioned CD thing"

My old faithful CD/DVD burner (Pioneer DVR-110D) has finally given up the ghost. I loved it because CDs burnt with it were more likely to play in other people's (possibly old) CD players. If I popped one into my old CD player, it sprang into life 2 secs after the drawer closed. CDs burnt with newer burners may take up to 20 secs or even never to start.

No reviewer seems to test recent burners for CD burn quality these days. I am gradually assembling a collection of burners in the hope of finding a good CD burner again.

Note that if I test a CD burnt with new burners using my LiteON drive and either KProbe2 or Nero DiscSpeed, the C1 errors are low and comparable to the errors from my old DVR-110D (when it was working). So there is apparently an incompatibility problem between burners and players (and possible CD brands) to contend with.

Sorry for digressing.

I've always just burned at a slower speed and that seems to solve compatibility issues.

With everyone using solid state devices though I can understand why CD burning aspects aren't tested. I just use them in the car and in the kitchen.

Come to think about it, I don't listen to music any where else. :)

I shoot HDV exclusively.

The equipment is Sony and pretty much bulletproof. I have never imported using Vegas, always HDV Split, and that wonderful free utility works great, always getting the splits perfect and naming them according to date and time so they are very easy to sort and track. I also make heavy use of DeShaker. For really complicated stuff I can proxy using GearShift and work in the DV space, which is ridiculously easy for a PC to handle. Then just GearShift back to HDV originals for the final render.

HDV is 1440x1080 (sampled out to 1920 on playback), so it's not quite as crisp as AVCHD, but it is MUCH easier for any PC to handle. And since 100% of my work goes to DVD as the final output (720x480), an HDV source delivers as good an image as AVCHD.

I like the fact that tapes are self-archiving. Flash memory is dropping in price, but most folks still probably prefer to transfer to hard drive for archiving. Tape does have several drawbacks, though--the transfer to PC is real-time, and there is always the possibility of dropouts, which for HDV results in a freeze-frame of one second. But since I usually shoot with two cameras, I have an alternate shot if necessary. And for one-camera shoots, I always shoot extra footage (audience at attention, whatever) that I can use in an emergency. Audio is always recorded separately.

As for tape being a "dying format," well, to each his own. For me, using Vegas (any version!), HDVSplit, Gearshift, DeShaker, and DVD output, I can deliver professional results that people seem to like.

I've noticed that when Sony HDV capture would drop a frame, HDVSplit doesn't skip recording and you get glitches in the video.

Just something to keep an eye out for, it snuck up on my a couple times.