SD-Connect and Uncompressed

zcus wrote on 3/14/2005, 2:59 AM
I'm looking to move up to uncompressed editing and woundering what is needed. So far SD-Connect and Vegas seems to be the only solution?

I have a fairly decent Dual Athlon based system (might be upgrading my computer as well), so is all I need to manage uncompressed is a fast Disk Drive Array?

What type of Raid setup specs might I need?

Will I get full frame rate playback of at least 1 uncompressed track?

Will I be able to preview to monitor at all and before rendering?

Is it better to go with a Decklink card?

Any help appreciated,
Thanks!

Comments

farss wrote on 3/14/2005, 4:12 AM
There's pretty well no such things as uncompressed editing. There's also nothing that shoots video without some form of compression either.
Vegas as it stands ingests, edits and renders DV25 using the same compression system that the camera that shot the video used.
If you want to go to LESS compression than DV25 be prepared for a HUGE hike in the cost of cameras, then add on the cost of lenses to make all that worth while. I've had footage shot at 10bit 4:2:2, stuff looks stunning, in fact downconverted to DV25 (yes lots of data gets lost and there's more compression) it still blows anything I've seen taken on ANY DV25 camera out of the water. But the camera is at LEAST 10 times the price of any prosummer DV25 camera and cameramen that know how to use them aren't that cheap either.
If you really want to handle DV uncompressed (this CAN be done) you do need pretty serious hardware, data rates are very high. For 10 bit 4:2:2 SATA RAID 0 off a hardware controller is adequate.
At the moment the Declink cards are the only way to ingest the footage. SD Connect at this stage doesn't provide for capture without compression to 8 bit 4:2:0 / 4:1:1 (DV25). It should be able to do this soon.
Once you have the footage into Vegas though Vegas will only render out to 8 bit 4:2:2 at best, this may change, we live in hope.

If you want to try any of this out for yourself you can, just render out to uncompressed and see how big a file you get for say 1 minutes of video. Divide the answer by 60, thats how much data you need to be able to pull off a disk system in 1 second to print to tape or to preview. Now that's an absolute minimum for one track.
Of course I only mentioned cameras, VCRs for the next step up from DV25 are another huge step up in cost, I can only quote figures in local dollars but you can buy a very good DV/DVCAM deck for $3000, to get a DigiBetacam deck like a 500 will set you back say $80,000, bit more if you add some option cards.
Hope all this helps.
Bob.
MH_Stevens wrote on 3/14/2005, 6:46 AM
I think he means native HDV editing rather than using an .avi conversion codex. I found editing native HDV quite possible with my old 2.6P4 IF you needs are simple - one track etc. The main problem is poor monitoring and you never quite know what you have until you render but the results were great. With his dual system he should try it. Capture with CapDVHS or whatever.
JohnSchell wrote on 3/14/2005, 7:14 AM
Hi zcus,
Currently, there is no solution that will work natively with Vegas and uncompressed video/audio. Right now, you must use another method to import the video onto your computer and then use Vegas to do the editing, then use the other method to export back to tape. The Vegas SDK must be finished before we can incorporate native uncompressed video/audio into Vegas.
Convergent Design plans on releasing a program that will capture/playback uncompressed video/audio that runs separately from Vegas. This will be an interim solution until Sony finishes the SDK. We are currently working on Premiere uncompressed support, which should be released this week. After this is complete, we will finish the standalone application for uncompressed capture/playback that will allow you to import the video into Vegas for editing.
When you are ready to move to uncompressed, we recommend a RAID system to handle the video I/O. 10 bit uncompressed video and audio is about 30 MB/sec. We use two SATA drives in a RAID configuration and get about 100 MB/sec read/write which would allow multiple streams of video/audio. You should get full frame rate playback of more than 1 uncompressed track, but you may want to upgrade your computer to maximize this.
Uncompressed video rendering is faster than DV rendering (assuming a fast disk array). This is due to the need of the computer to uncompress each frame, render, then recompress each frame in DV, while in uncompressed there is no need to do this.
We are currently offering a 15 day free evaluation of the SD-Connect.
Regards,
John Schell
Convergent Design Inc.
zcus wrote on 3/14/2005, 7:38 AM
Thanks very much John!