Low Res Copies for Mobile Editing

MHampton wrote on 5/24/2005, 10:47 AM
I'm working on my niece's wedding and was thinkging it would be great if I could fit it all on my laptop to work on when I'm not at home. I was wondering if there was an easy way to create low resolution copies of the source videos that I could put on my laptop and then move the veg file between my laptop and main pc. My laptop has plenty of power, but only has 80gig of hd space, and with 4 cameras worth of video and all the "extra" footage shot there is just no way it will all fit.

I got this idea while working with the SonicFire music software. You can create a "draft" copy of your video to drop into SonicFire and then sync your soundtrack up there. Then later you import the soundtrack into your main video editor.

It would be great if there was an option in Vegas to "Create Mobile Editing Version" which would create a new subdir with draft copies of all your media that takes only a fraction of the space.

So, am I crazy?

Michael

Comments

Liam_Vegas wrote on 5/24/2005, 11:05 AM
Gearshift from VASST?
Frenchy wrote on 5/24/2005, 11:17 AM
I remember Chienworks posting about this earlier, but don;t remember the details...

It seems as if, in his technique, you need to re-render (on your desktop) your original source video as a low-res, low framerate dv-avi with a new name (this should render fairly quickly?). Move those files to your laptop. Edit away on the laptop. When you return home, move the veggie back to the desktop, and point Vegas to the original videos, render to your final format/destination.

At least I think that's how I remember it...

Phil

on edit, I found the original post here:

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=212894

I almost had it right, so take a look...

Phil
Chienworks wrote on 5/24/2005, 11:30 AM
Pretty close Phil. I'm impressed that you remembered!

You can't use DV for the smaller files because this is fixed at 225MB/minute. What i did was render to 160x120 15fps AVI using the cinepak codec. Yeah, they looked pretty bad, but they were good enough for editing and probably only 1/50th the size of the original DV files. Best of all, i could use exactly the same file names with the same .avi extension so that Vegas simply loaded them without question when moving the .veg file from the PC to the laptop and back.
Frenchy wrote on 5/24/2005, 11:32 AM
I guess as I was searching, you posted a reply!

I remember the concepts, just lose the details sometimes - lost a few brain cells over the years...

That was the original post, was it not?

Phil
filmy wrote on 5/24/2005, 11:34 AM
>>>So, am I crazy?<<<

Not at all. THis was the norm several yearas ago - to work with an offline rez file and than go online with the EDL. Vegas however has never been th enorm so while you can work with offline rez files you can't recapture later on, nor can you use vegas for an online session. Also as an added curve here in my tests Vegas ignores TC info on any low rez files so you really would be shooting yourself in the foot if you were going to simply recapture later.

*BUT* not all is lost. You could capture all full rez files and than recompress to a lower rez and just edit with the low rez files and when you are finished simply replace your low rez files with the full rez ones. Keep in mind the low rez files need to be exactly the same as the full rez ones or this won't work.
Chienworks wrote on 5/24/2005, 11:36 AM
I had actually forgotten about that one, but that one works nicely too. Using uncompressed 8 bit will result in clear images with no motion artifacts, but possibly icky color. Using Cinepack compression will give good color, but will probably induce some blurring and motion artifacts. Wouldn't hurt to try a file or two both ways to see which you like better.
Coursedesign wrote on 5/24/2005, 11:48 AM
Just a reminder that there are two other ways to solve this problem, without resorting to offline editing:

1) Get one of the large laptop hard disks that have recently become available. Still some work to transfer old HD, but at least it's a one-time deal.

or

2) Use an external firewire drive in a small case. Inexpensive, high capacity, higher performance (at least 7200rpm instead of 4200rpm typ.), highly portable, quick to install.