my physical layout (on the right track?)

derksen12 wrote on 3/14/2003, 2:05 PM
I've outlined my system below. I'm new to the whole DV editing thing, so PLEASE don't flame away if I ask something truely basic, K? My goal is to put my VHS-C footage (lots of it) onto DVD for archive purposes and to make a few assembled movies in the process. Let me know if I've got things screwed up. I've read alot of the past posts, but can't seem to find something specific to me. SO, here goes.
Camcorder is the new Canon ZR70 MC. Mini DV format. Built in DA convertor, so analog capture goes through the camera and is captured the same way as my MiniDV tapes. I use Vegas capture in full DV format (is this the same as .avi?).
My computer is:
Athalon 1.4 GHz, 512 MB of DDR RAM, ATI 7200 64MB VIVO AGP card, Operating system and ALL program files are on an ATA-100, 60GB drive ("C:"). I capture and render to my "D:" drive which is two 120GB ATA-100 drives on a Fasttrak Promise RAID-0 (striping) setup. WinXP sees it as a single 240GB drive. My DVD burner is the new Sony 4x model that burns in both formats for R and RW disks.
So, the questions:
1) format to capture in
2) render to the same drive as I captured to? (the 240 GB RAID?)
3) keep the project file (.sfk?) that vegas creates on C: or D:?
4) more RAM?
Just double checking that I've done all I can for the best chance of a quality product.
Lastly, I render to MPEG-2 for a DVD, and MPEG-1 if I'm making a VCD, but is that any different than doing PTT? do I render BEFORE I PTT? If so, what's the advantage? Why would I want a tape copy of something that I could have as a file that I can put on DVD? Or is the process of making the DVD inherently more degrading than a PTT operation.
Lots of questions here, so bear with me please,
TIA
Michael

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 3/14/2003, 2:30 PM
Looks like you're very much on the right track already.

1) Since you're capturing a DV stream through firewire, this question is meaningless. The only option you have is to capture as a DV .avi file, which is probably the best format to use for this purpose anyway. By the way, DV is a slightly compressed (5:1) .avi file which needs about 225MB/minute.

2) Rendering to your D: drive is fine. Rendering is not a time-critical operation so you don't need to worry about it too much. The goal is to keep media files off of the system/program drive, which is what you're doing.

3) The .sfk files aren't the project. They're a graphical file created to show the audio waveforms on the timeline. Consider them to be sort of like a "thumnail image" of the audio. You may delete them if you wish. If you open up the associated .avi file again then the .sfk files will be recreated automatically.

3b) The project file is the .veg file you get when you Save your project in Vegas. This is a good file to keep around if you think you'll be doing any more editing of the project.

4) 512MB should be plenty for what you're doing. I have only half that and don't use it all.

5) Printing to tape is useful for ... well .. printing your video back to tape. If you don't want a tape copy of the final edited video then you don't need to use this. If you do print to tape, then Vegas will render what needs to be rendered for you automatically before it starts sending the video back to tape. Rendering to MPEG for your VCDs and DVDs is a completely separate operation that may be done before or after printing to tape or without even printing to tape at all. Keep in mind though that MPEG files are much more compressed than DV so there will be more of a quality loss. If you want to keep the best quality copy of your video possible then you should print them to MiniDV tapes. My guess though is that a DVD will probably be as good as your original VHS-C footage was anyway so don't worry about it too much.