Because that's all Vegas will do!

But Bigsole, I don't see why you are focussed on the 8 bit issue, even HDCAM / CineAlta is only 8 bit!
Maybe you're a tad confused, I think your issue isn't 8/10bit but 4.1.1 versus 4.2.2 and Vegas can certainly handle 4.2.2. Just to set the record straight 8bit 4.2.2 is full broadcast quality. I as yet haven't tried printing that to tape (DigiBetacam in my case) but I can see no reason why you cannot do it.
Bob.

Bigsole, care to drop me an email, I might be able to help, contact details are on this forum.
Bob.

maybe because what i can do is strictly in vegas and after effects. i priced out a 20k system including software, and got 30k worth instead. with that money, maybe i shouldv'e went with discreet.

then maybe i am confused. i'll edit the post to eliminate confusion from beginners... (hmmm... maybe i'm one...)

as far as editing goes, i rock (not trying to be conceited). i got a lot more learning to do when it comes to system configuration.

farss, u r definitly a great help.

Answer 465 in the Sony Knowledge Base:

Vegas and Movie Studio do not limit you to using only the DV format, but the emphasis of our design is on the DV user. We do not support capturing analog video with the Video Capture program, only DV. The software itself supports a wide range of formats, so if you can get the video onto your computer you can most likely open and edit it within Vegas or Movie Studio.

I wish I read that from the begining.

Well that's a statement that so silly it's absurd. The ONLY way to truly edit analogue video is in a linear or online system and they've pretty much gone the way of the dodo. I guess you could do it if there was a viable analogue computer around but....
Strangely enough I;ve just been editing VHS and that's analogue, sure I had to convert it to DV25 first but that's hardly going to do it any harm, particulalry compared to the loss in doing a deck to deck edit.
I'm reading between the lines here as I still don't really have a clue as to just what you're trying to edit. I'm assuming you're trying to ingest Betacam SP, right?
If that's the case then there's a good reason to use a 10 (or even more) bit analogue to digital conversion, keep it 10 bit through the edit process and output 10 bit to the DACs to go back to analogue.
Every time you go from A to D there's an error and same when you go back the other way. Even just doing a straight dub, there'll be a loss, even at 10 bit.
Remarkably enough one of the few video systems that avoids that loss is lowly DV25, you can capture, render and PTT and recapture that tape 100 time through Vegas and if you applied no FXs you'd still have no loss, still pixel perfect video. Now BetaSP might be higher quality to start with but do the same process over 10 generations and I think you'd see very significant image degradation on the very best systems we can build. That's one reason why SP has faded away down here, add to that things like dropouts and it's a pretty horrible system all around.
So how does all this help you. Well I guess if you're stuck having to edit SP not a whole lot other than that you can capture SP at 10 bit, you'll be stuck rendering it out to 8 bit though BUT rendering it out to the Sony YUV codec and then PTT again through a BMD card I very much doubt you'll see any difference at 1 generation.
What you don't want to do is keep doing that, going down generations because the losses are cumulative, even at 10 bits or more, you just cannot avoid that, you can reduce the losses by having more bit depth but you cannot eliminate them like you can by staying in the digital domain the whole way through.
Even Digital Betacam does suffer some loss going down SDI, internally the deck converts from one digital compression system to analogue and back to a different digitial compression system, I think using 12 bit D->A->D and then spits it out as 8 bit, it's very close to lossless but not perfect like DV25.

Hope this explains something for you, in my humble opinion your biggest issue is SP and not Vegas! You could ask the boss to spring for a DVW 500 deck or two, or maybe not.
Bob.

"I'm assuming you're trying to ingest Betacam SP, right?"
yep

"So how does all this help you"
very much. it's dealing with my workplace's opinion on the quality of beta analog capture and ptt.

"PTT again through a BMD card "
this is very useful. can you direct me to some sites that sell BMD cards. honestly, i don't know what it is.

"You could ask the boss to spring for a DVW 500 deck or two"
we got a couple of DSR 1800's. this is definitly worth the look into.

btw, how do you get email info off of the forums? (how do you respond without giving vital info... hmmmm.) if you can find my email from the forums, then email yours. i'd greatly appreciate it.

thanks Bob,
Ed

Woah... just saw the DVW 500. wow. $40G's easy! that's some serious mula. i know my boss was talking about digibeta, but said that we have no use for it here, since we're mostly betaSP, especially in playback (for broadcast). i don't think we're going that route.

Even Digital Betacam does suffer some loss going down SDI, internally the deck converts from one digital compression system to analogue and back to a different digitial compression system, I think using 12 bit D->A->D and then spits it out as 8 bit, it's very close to lossless but not perfect like DV25.

If you use component connections you get the lossy D->A->D conversions.

If you use SDI throughout though, there is no loss. It is just a clean 10-bit video signal that stays clean, like DV25 over Firewire.

This is NOT true, Digital Betacam uses I think a 1 or 2 frame GOP mpeg-2 compression system and that is not what the decks send down SDI, if you can get a deck with a SDTI connection then you'll get a lossles capture but then you're in a whole new world of grief.

Just look at Sony's J3/J30 decks. They'll play out DB, SP, IMX and SX all of which use a different encoding scheme. Yet the deck sends exactly the same data stream down SDI, how do you think that's done in the deck? I've not tested this myself but I'm reliably told by the engineers with some pretty expensive test gear that what comes out of a DB deck down SDI is only 8 bit.

Same goes for HDCAM btw, only HDCAM SR offers lossless capture and PTT.

I could be wrong as I'm only going on what I've been told by people who've done extensive testing rather than just reading spec sheets, certainly to some extent what I'm saying is backed up by people like Adam Wilt in his rather extensive article on video quality.

Bob.