With FCP they typically or almost in a native sense use DVCPRO-HD with fast raids and it all works. As for HDCAM in FCP I don’t know of anyone that uses that format there – can it handle it? I’m not sure. Either HDCAM or DVCPRO – HD would cover HD fine for the client. They won’t buy an upper end system like Sony’s Xpri but will get a desktop system like FCP with Raid 0 and HD deck.
I would like to have Vegas hat tossed into the ring and get HDCAM to work as an option.

I know of no reason why you cannot edit HDCAM in Vegas. Using GearShift to edit DV proxies it should be quite a pleasant experience too, you can switch between the proxy files and the real source for things like CC as well. You could do this on a quite lowly speced PC. Also on the PC/Vegas/PP side you've got the excellent Cineform codec to get things moving much more easily.



Where the crunch comes is capture and PTT, for that you need huge bandwidth (more for HDCAM than DVCPRO HD) and lots of disk space (again more for HDCAM than DVCPRO HD). PCs are probably in a better position to handle this than Macs at the moment thanks to PCI-E having more throughput than PCI-X, check out BMD site, they have a very nice unit that'll connect to a PCI-E slot!

What they really need to decide is what they're going to shoot on, if it's HDCAM then from what I know forget FCP, if it's DVCPRO HD then probably FCP is the better path (don't know about PP).

All said and done, the biggest costs are cameras, decks, disk arrays and capture cards. The edit system is a minor part of the thing, even an Xpri suite is probably small change compared to all the other things if they plan on buying the gear.

No matter which path you go down you are talking very serious money, the good news is most of the kit works on both PCs and Macs, well at least the really expensive bits like disk arrays and most of the interface cards.

I don't know what is close by to where this project is being done but I have heard of rental companies offering a womb to tomb kind of deal, they'll supply cameras and a suite with decks etc. This mightn't be a bad option even if only for the first project before commiting major sums of capital. Probably by the time the first project is finished something new will have come along anyway.

Thanks Bob – as for the camera gear that will be rented – so either HD format would be an option. A complete FCP HD system runs about 13k-20k. Just add or rent a HD deck with 1394 maybe a AJA card and good to go. So I wonder if with Vegas add a HD I/O card + raid 0 + a deck then all would work assuming the PC CPU can handle it.
The GearShift sounds like a great way to edit HD/SD

Well the Sony JH3 will let you capture from HDCAM into Vegas but all you're getting is a DV res copy. You can capture HDCAM via SDI from the deck but I have a suspicion it's not the full HDCAM signal. Same would go for the FCP system BTW.

As I said with either a Mac or a PC the editing and rendering isn't really an issue, Vegas will stutter along even with uncompressed HiDef (about 13 GB/min) so you'd get there in the end. It's being able to handle the transfer to/from a VCR where things get very sticky.

One very cheap solution is to use the JH3 to capture from HDCAM as DV, edit in Vegas, and then export a XML file and load everything into an Xpri and do the final finishing there. Depending on the nature of the project that can save you big time. If it's a longform drama I'd be looking at that kind of work flow. I think even with a FCP system that's not a bad workflow either. Another alternative is the Avid lineup.

To work with HDCAM you do need SCSI RAID, SATA RAID 0 is OK for 4:2:2 SD but not enough speed for HDCAM, it might be OK for DVCPRO HD as it's a more compressed format at slightly lower pixel count.

No matter which way you go I'd be asking a lot of difficult questions, particularly going down the FCP path, I see what looks to me like a lot of smoke and mirrors stuff going on there. Look for a systems supplier whose supplied working systems to clients that you can talk to, I've been lucky to deal with one down here who'se pretty upfront and does systems all the way upto 4K DI systems so they don't talk about what things 'can' do but rather what real world working systems need. Once you get into any of the high end systems what might seem like a small step up can be a very expensive step. This applies accross the board with either Macs or PCs.
Bob.

The Decklink website has some info on what's needed to capture HD:
http://www.blackmagic-design.net/support/detail.asp?techID=62

They mention that a particular SATA RAID solution does work.
"Another solution from DigiStor in Australia that's been tested as compatible is the SANman 16 bay RAID array high performance FC to SATA Disk array. Capacities range from 1.28TB to 4TB and this unit is dual 2Gb Fibre Channel using an ATTO FC card. These units are also fully redundant. (sales @digistor.com.au)"

That article seems to be entirely Mac-oriented though. On the PC side, you have more choices because there's more hardware available with winXP drivers.

Caveats about drive speed:
In real world performance, you will get a lot lower than benchmark speeds.
Performance highly depends on the hard drive controllers and RAID controller(s) (may be software RAID, 'fake' hardware RAID, hardware RAID).
PC probably has different configuration issues than Mac.

Probably the best thing to do is to try to find people with working setups. There are theoretical setups that may not work in practice due to miscalculations (i.e. differences between real speeds and benchmark or theoretical speeds), or weird issues due to a bad driver or chipset or conflict or whatever.

If you want to be adventurous though, 8 or more 10k SATA drives (software RAID 0) would give you the best price/capacity compared to other solutions. There are landmines to watch out for though (cooling, power, case/enclosure for those drives, do the drivers work, actual performance of SATA controller card and software RAID, configuration issues, does the drive array get slower as it fills up, etc.) and without trying it, it may be difficult to determine if it'll work.

However, there's a cheap way you can test. Get a ebay or new (some retailers have 15% restocking fee) 8-drive SATA controller card, and 8 SATA drives from a store with a FULL refund (best buy online?). Software RAID is free. You still new the motherboard and enough power, cooling, and space. You should be able to jury rig a setup where the case is open, the drives would be cooled by a table fan, and a second power supply gives power to the drives. Watch out for static discharge, and put the drives on a non-conductive surface (i.e. paper).

Not sure if this helps:
If you just want to test the system without a hard drive array, you can use a RAM disk software program (that lets you use RAM as a hard drive) to test the configuration.


Also check out
http://www.blackmagic-design.net/support/detail.asp?techID=47
Those are the system requirements for Decklink HD. You may need a new motherboard that supports PCI-X (Decklink cards may not work in pciE slots?).
Which implies a new computer.

Does anyone have experience editing HD in Vegas?

I downloaded the Black Magic codecs to play with and it seems that Vegas with Black Magic codecs are not ready for prime-time. There seems to be color shifting when you render any BM codec footage with effects. Also, there seems to be bizarre rendering behavior.

Just a thought on the color shifting, HD is 709 and DV is 601, could that be the issue? I think Vegas takes care of that for HDV, don't know about BM codecs though.
Bob.

The new BMD Multibridge works directly into a PCI-Express slot via a very simple header. To run it on a G5 you need what looks like a rather expensive interface card.
Bob.

Just a thought on the color shifting, HD is 709 and DV is 601, could that be the issue? I think Vegas takes care of that for HDV, don't know about BM codecs though.
Ok I think I did a false alarm here. Vegas 6 seems to handle things properly, whereas Vegas 5 doesn't.

Thanks for all the input – I was hoping for a simple yes Vegas will do that. HD on a desktop system is more complex then I first thought.

Now what if I capture HDCAM in Vegas – edit – render – then transfer to hard drives – send to a HD post house for transfer to HDCAM tape? Maybe that would be workable.

Strategic:
There are two general options you could take:
Offline/online
Edit in Vegas at low resolution/quality (i.e. capture DV), and take your project to a Final Cut, Avid, etc. system to finish off the edit at full quality.
In this case you need to check which effects transfer over or stick to cuts and dissolve and timecode support in Vegas.

You could finish the audio is Vegas if you want (which is the only big advantage over Final Cut I see).

Or, do everything in Vegas.
You'll need to get a HD system (drive array, capture card that works, cooling, power, space) as well as figuring out how to get the deck (rent?) as well as HD monitoring (LCD with calibration from a device like the Colorvision Spyder?). Expenses would be something like:
HD deck rental (this can be the most expensive part?)
Black Magic capture card
8 drive SATA array + SATA controller card - ~$3000
Computer stuff - motherboard with PCI-X slots (may be able to adapt PCI-E to PCI-X?), case with great cooling and 9+ drive bays ($200?), power supply (<$100), may need new RAM, new processor A dual Xeon system might run you like $2000
Monitoring - LCD $500-$1300?
Colorvision Spyder (may not need) - another few hundred
time/risk spent figuring this stuff out
vectorscope?

Vegas still renders in 8-bit, which I don't think would hurt if you work around it. You might even get "better" quality than Avid/Final Cut because those systems can capture with compression to save money.


A variation on doing everything in Vegas would be to edit at HDCAM quality in Vegas, and output data which you take to an online suite. This way you avoid the extra deck rental cost, as well as HD monitoring which you can finish off in an online suite. That sounds like what you're proposing?