Saving Vegas File vs. Rendering

dfred wrote on 3/15/2008, 10:13 AM

For those of you who have been following my posts about the project I've been working on - a graduation video - the project is as complete as it can be for now. That leads to my question.

I have loaded all of my video from DVD onto an external hard drive. The DVDs are all home movies, nothing copyrighted. I know that in order to import media and/or add to media bins that the source video must be on the hard drive. Otherwise, once you remove the DVD, the video disappears. I've also learned that if I unplug the external hard drive, my media becomes "offline."

So...the clips are in place, crossfades set. This is going to be a continuous movie, no chapters or menus, and once other clips are added in the spring, should be less than 40 minutes.

The project is saved in Vegas. The other info I found in the forums indicates it's best to render when everything is added so not to lose quality so here goes with two questions:

Should I save this on my computer's hard drive (it's about 7GB) and add additional footage to it before rendering? Or, would it make more sense to render it now, then add more footage in a couple of months? From what I have read, it seems the general consensus is to render when the entire project is complete.

What I'd like to do is save this in a format that will allow me to bring it off of my internal hard drive and eliminate the need to have the external drive (where all the source media is located) connected.

Thanks!

PS - I notice some of you use italics or bold and insert web links. How is this done? I don't see any settings in the "post new topic" window I'm in right now.

Comments

Eugenia wrote on 3/15/2008, 11:56 AM

I would suggest you wait until you have all the footage you want, and then export/burn. However, if that's not what you want to do, I suggest you keep around all 7 GBs of project files, and when the time is right, you open the same project and you add the new footage. You don't open the rendered file to add new stuff. You re-open the project file instead. So you got to keep all GBs around.

Chienworks wrote on 3/15/2008, 11:01 PM

You can render now if you want to in order to see what the project so far looks like. You are going to render again when it's done and that render will replace the one you may or may not do now.

Every time you start editing you should be opening up the .veg file and working from there, so what renders you may or may not do now have no bearing on further editing work. Think of it the same way as writing a story in a word processor. You could print the whole story out on paper every time you finish a chapter if you wanted to, just to see what it looks like. But the next time you sit down to keep writing you're going to open the word processor file and work on that, not add to the paper copies.

What you render is an output file, not part of your continuing editing work.

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 3/16/2008, 1:56 AM

Another option would be to choose 'save as' and tick off 'copy and trim media with project' in VMSPlat 8. Choose any appropriate destination folder. This will save the project and the used media only, leaving out the unused media and video. No need to render until you are really ready.

Himanshu wrote on 3/16/2008, 9:27 AM

dfred,

Experimentation is key to "getting it right." Render it. Burn it (use an RW disc to avoid wasteage). Play it in your DVD player. See how it all looks. Get someone else's opinion. Make notes. Come back to your project and make changes as necessary.

There's no reason to wait until the end of the project. You can render as many times as you want anyway, so who cares if you do it twice or sixteen times?

My opinion is that by making a test DVD now you will also learn the ropes of DVDA if you haven't done so.

PS: For markup information click on the FAQ link in the forums.

MSmart wrote on 3/17/2008, 12:26 AM

PS - I notice some of you use italics or bold and insert web links. How is this done?

Read the third sticky tread at the top of this forum, LINKY

dfred wrote on 3/17/2008, 6:11 PM

Thank you all for the prompt and informative responses. I hadn't thought about rendering using the "copy and trim media with project" option - which would keep the source video on the hard drive, correct? I have all the DVDs saved on one external hard drive so my biggest concern is that if the drive fails before I finish the project I'd have to start all over again! I only have about 8 weeks to go but perhaps this "copy and trim media" option would be the best way to go about saving it for now.

I like the input about rendering and re-rendering and watching it on TV. I have looked at it on the computer and it looks good thus far. And someone else has looked at it, too, so I think I'm on the right track. In the next week or two I'll take some time to make a test DVD and watch it on the TV and go from there.

Thanks again.

Chienworks wrote on 3/17/2008, 7:25 PM

There is no "render using copy and trim media with project". There is render, and there is "save with copy and trim media". They are two separate functions. Is it possible you're confusing "save" and "render"? Save means to store your project as a .vf file that contains all the work you've done on the screen, moving clips around, trimming, cutting, making crossfades, titles, etc. The saved .vf file doesn't contain *any* video or audio at all. The reason you save is so that you can close Vegas and restart later (or if your computer crashes) and continue editing from where you left off without having to start all over again. Render means to create an finished output file from your project that can be played in media player or burned to a disc to use in a DVD player.

Note that if you open a rendered file in Vegas you'll end up with a single clip on the timeline with all the edits, cuts, crossfades, titles, etc. all mixed together as if they were already in the original file. You can't change any of your editing like you could originally while you were editing your project. If you want to keep working with your editing then you must open the .vf project file, not the rendered output file.

Rendering is not part of the editing process. It can be used as a tool while editing to help you monitor progress, but you can and will keep on editing just the same whether you render every 5 minutes, or never render at all until you're done.

Save with trimmed media won't trim your files. It only trims DV and uncompressed AVI files. I also don't like the way it renames the files and splits the audio out into separate files.

In your case if you want a backup, you'd probably be better off just copying the files yourself.

dfred wrote on 3/18/2008, 1:00 PM

I think you're right and I think I've got it! I think I was confusing the save and render. I had played around with a very short clip - not my currenct project - and did notice rendering makes it as a final movie with no crossfades, edits, etc.

So based on the feedback, here's what I've done. I have the project, the .vf file, saved on both the internal and external hard drive. I also have a rendered copy saved on each drive. The source video is all on the external hard drive. So, if that drive crashes, I can load the rendered file, which I understand will be a single slip, yet I can load that into Vegas and add to it.

As long as my hard drive doesn't crash between now and May when I need to add to it, I should open the .vf file and add additional video, save and render to obtain the final project.

So as not to complicate anything, I thik I'll leave my files as they are and not worry about save with trimmed media. If for some reason all my source files disappear I do have that rendered clip I can work from - it's basically finished except for whatever I would add to the very end of it. I might include a title at the beginning but that would be easy enough to add.

Yeah, I'm a worry wart when it comes to hard drives - had a couple crash and more than one laptop go belly up and need a reformat so I've learned to keep back ups. But this project has a lot of video and I'm only going to invest in one external hard drive for this one. If worst came to worst, I can reload the video from the DVDs.

Thanks for all the help.