Charles. Thank God you are still on this forum. I've been very satisfied with my "meat and potatoes" way of using Vegas and haven't needed to do much more than record in and crossfade (How could anyone be without automatic crossfades??)

I have looked towards other programs - maybe going over to the Mac and using Digital Performer 3. It has just implemented surround sound. But the simple editing is not simple. I need simple and fast.

I could stay on the PC platform and mix surround in Nuendo, I guess. I don't suppose you are mixing in surround, are you? I wish SF would implement it. It would make sense as they really seem to be embracing the multimedia market.

This is my first attempt at posting for indie films, so I don't know all the questions to ask. But here are a few (Please bare with me)

DV card: It seems like every program has it's hangups. I simply have no idea of which one to chose on PC. Mac already has the firewire so I never had to worry about that.

Analog card: Don't I need an analog card to do ADR? (again, I'm new to post) My guess is that when doing ADR, I need to send an analog video signal to the monitor in the vocal booth. I'm still in the weeds about what the physical hook-ups are for ADR.

And shouldn't I really have the analog card for simple processing power of the AVI file so the video won't be sluggish?

Can Vegas handle the day to day of doing this. Are there any syncing issues? Especially when you are going for fifty tracks while running video.

You know, Charles, I realize that I could go on. Sorry for the long post but I need to know if I can trust this software on a professional level. Indie filmmakers work harder than any group I've seen and I don't want to look like a fool because I have not done my homework. I can't afford PT (everyone's fav). So it's got to be Vegas, Nuendo - probably a combination of both because of surround.

Thanks, Thomas

Hey Thomas -
I understand your concerns and I'll do my best to give you a thorough and honest answer. I've been working with Vegas since the beginning and I feel pretty confident I've seen just about every wrinkle there is. First of all: setup.
Vegas is optimized for DV video. You can use an analog capture card with it like the dc30+ or something (I have one) but I don't think that's optimal. First, in order to feed to external monitor on those cards, you need to make the sure the video properties and compression are the same as the cards hardware - usually MJPEG, so you wouldn't be able to output a DV file through your analog card.(Correct me if I'm wrong, someone). So, what you really need to do what you are describing is: a firewire card ($60). I hear Pyro's good. I have a TI card. Then you'll also want to pick up the Sony DVMC-DA20 box ($300) which converts analog to Firewire and vice-versa. I use this box everyday. Basically, you tell Vegas to view video on External Monitor, feed the firewire into the sony box and take the video out of the sony box and feed that to your monitors (one in the studio, one in the booth). This is how I've been doing post for the last year. The audio continues to come out of your sound card (if you don't have one, get a good sound card - I use the Delta 1010, I hear the Hammerfall cards are really good) and through your external mixer. You then use the Sync Frame offset feature in the External Monitor prefs page of Vegas to make sure your sync is still good (there is latency between the audio coming straight through the system and the video going through the Firewire). Now, hear's the thing: I haven't done a lot of recording while there's video there. I've done some, but sync has never been of tremendoud concern because it's always ben foley stuff and you can just slide things around in Vegas to sync to video after they're recorded. But I haven't done any "lip-sync" stuff. And when you talk about 50 tracks plus video I'd say for playback, no problem (my project is 4 video tracks, 3 assignable effects, and 30+ audio tracks), but for recording I'd have to say I just don't know, unfortunately. If I had more time I'd do some tests but I'm so busy testing other stuff (and trying to do actual billable work!!).

So, for ANY audio and video post where you don't need to record (I'm not saying this doesn't work well, I just can't vouch for it - maybe Dave Hill can address this? Have you tested this extensively?), Vegas is unbeatable in my opinion. The editing capabilities, the WYSIWYG nature of the timeline, the speed, flexibility are all there. It's shockingly easy and intuitive. The film maker I'm working with used Final Cut Pro to edit the movie and when he saw Vegas and watched me use it he said there was no way in hell he could have gotten 1/100th of what we got done in Vegas if he had tried to do it in Final Cut. And, having seen Final Cut, I have to agree. How do people do any audio post in these programs?? They SUCK!. It took me 15 minutes to even figure out how to do a volume change. Ugh. don't get me started.

and even for Video Editing, he said he had never seen a program that made that so easy.

So, I'm all for it. Vegas 3 is even better and the external monitor thing is better too, and will continue to get better. All I'd say is download the demo and try out the recording with external monitor and see how it performs. I'll try to myself and give you a report.

Good Luck.

p.s. did I answer all your questions?

"You can use an analog capture card with it like the dc30+ or something (I have one) but I don't think that's optimal."

Do you have a link for that card? That's one of the only one's compatible with Nuendo (if I'm gathering the info correctly. I don't know it's I/O's. I need to stay compatible with Nuendo because of surround.


"First, in order to feed to external monitor on those cards, you need to make the sure the video properties and compression are the same as the cards hardware - usually MJPEG, so you wouldn't be able to output a DV file through your analog card."

I don't understand the idea of the match compression (unless it is similar to digital and clocking. From my ignorant view, I thought this was the path:

1)Out of DV camera via firewire into Vegas Video. Vegas Video splits the incoming video from audio and places them into their respective video and audio tracks. I guess this records in as an AVI file (can you record it as Quicktime or MPEG?)

2)Import AVI file and WAV files into Vegas Audio. (Does the video automatically have timecode upon the above conversion?)

3)So, now I have the AVI to reference while I begin to add foley, ADR, background music and other enviromental noises.

Am I correct so far?


"So, what you really need to do what you are describing is: a firewire card. Then you'll also want to pick up the Sony DVMC-DA20 box ($300) which converts analog to Firewire and vice-versa. I use this box everyday. Basically, you tell Vegas to view video on External Monitor...."

Does this mean I can have the option to always have the feed go to monitor? Does it have to be either or? I should be able to see the timeline on the screen and see the external monitor as well, right?


"....feed the firewire into the sony box and take the video out of the sony box and feed that to your monitors (one in the studio, one in the booth). This is how I've been doing post for the last year."

And finally, someone explains this in english. Thanks. Does the Sony box have multiple outs to go to the two different monitors?


"Now, hear's the thing: I haven't done a lot of recording while there's video there."

Charles, do you mean like recording live instruments? I guess recording foley to the picture would be the same as ADR. As far as ADR, you do record with the picture there, right? Am I interpreting you statements wrong.


"I've done some, but sync has never been of tremendoud concern because it's always ben foley stuff and you can just slide things around in Vegas to sync to video after they're recorded. But I haven't done any "lip-sync" stuff."

So you have not tried ADR with you above example? If you haven't what do you use the external monitors for?
Excuse my confusion, Charles. I'm trying to keep up.

Thomas

Thomas -
Sorry for all the confusion and for all the typos! Yuck! I hate it when I see that I wrote "Hear's the thing". ANYWAY...

You capture through firewire into an app like VidCap and it gets saved as an AVI Type 2 file (doesn't need to build an audio proxy - saves time and resources). You have to capture as .avi in VidCap.

Drop this into a Vegas project and add any other media to the project as well. As for timecode, it will contain the timecode of the original tape, I think. Or you can view frame #'s.

External Monitor negates the use of internal preview. It's one or the other. You can still see the thumbnails, though.

p.s. I'd be happy to sell you my DC30+. I don't use it.

the sony box only has one composite video out, but I just tested it with a simply y-cable which splits the signal just fine.

and to answer your question about why I use external monitor if I don't record to video... It's just a better way to work. You can see the movie the way others will and it's a lot easier to sync things up - sfx, etc. It's also a better way to deal with levels in a mix. You get a totally different sense of the mix watching with a tiny video preview as opposed to a normal NTSC monitor.

I just did a test with respect to recording with video there. The video ouput loses sync almost immediately with the audio that's in the project which I guess makes that feature kind of useless. The audio recorded IS in sync with the audio you hear while recording, and with the video, it's just the Video can't keep up during recording so you can accurately ADR, etc. I've alerted them to this and asked them how to do this. I tried with one video clip and one armed track (i.e. 1 video track and 2 audio tracks) and it didn't work. Not so good.

For everything else, though. Fantastic.

Feel free to call me about any of this, Thomas.
212-904-1870 I'm in the office today and probably tomorrow.