Sony DCR-SR47(Canadian) in PAL land

diverG wrote on 11/28/2010, 3:49 AM

Briefly a friend bought this as a replacement after failure of SD cam whilst on holiday. I'm now trying to edit files from this camcorder.

The files from the HDD are MPEG2-PS and I have tried both NTSC DV Widescreen(720x480)29.970 and HD 1080-60i(1920x1080,29.97) media properties
and find both appear to work. However; I can only pull about 10 minutes(30 clips) of video down to the timeline before my computer grinds to halt.or the preview screen turns red.
My initial thought was that my computers are not man enough but if I switch back to Avid 7.2 and select NTSC 16:9 timeline properties I can pull in 200 clips (40 Minutes) and editing feels slick.
Now Avid is an old programme so what am I doing wrong in either Vegas 9.0e or 100a (which I bought as a replacement for Avid.?

Comments

ushere wrote on 11/28/2010, 6:15 AM

try setting project props to match input footage - at least that way you'll know for sure what you've got......

diverG wrote on 11/28/2010, 9:07 AM

Had tried cheching 'Adjust source media.........' but to no avail.
Even opening the explorer window yields a low media message.
Reading the camcorder manual suggests that the video format makes for easy transfer to DVD. I would have expected Vegas to work well with such a format.

All my work to date with Vegas has been withHDV & .m2t files. This is the first real problem I've encountered with Vegas.
The actual files from the camcorder reveal that the sound cuts off before the video stream, so each clip needs trimming. I guess I'm lucky that Avid is available to me via a reboot into XP. Must be gratefull I've avoided AVCHD to date.

Just opened an old Avid project with 30min of HDV on the timeline together with Vegas with 40min of HDV on the timeline. I can switch between either programme and edit without receiving a low memory message. To say the least I'm puzzled.

ritsmer wrote on 11/29/2010, 12:32 AM

Do not be afraid of AVCHD+Vegas - have been doing it for nearly a year now - Full HD 1080-i 25 Mbps etc. and without problems.

From the specifications it seems that the SR47 can only do 720x480 MPEG-2.
So 1) Open Vegas, 2)Goto File Properties and click Match Media Settings - and select one of the clips. As a control the size in the lower left corner of the preview window should change to 720x480.
Now Vegas is tuned to these clips and must not convert-on-the-fly.
Then 3) start to add clips to the timeline. Use this sequence.

If you still get the red preview then a quick solution could be to use i.e. the Proxy script (search under scripts) to convert your friends clips to something more editable. Or just put 20 clips at a time to the timeline and render them and use the output for editing. Close and restart Vegas each time.

Ah- and your Options, Preferences, Video, Dynamic RAM Preview should be low - like 50 MB or so.

PS: As you are running only 32 bit systems, however, this makes you vulnerable for memory problems - this has been discussed here for a long time. Search for something like "CFF explorer" or "2 GB hack" to learn how to assign more RAM.

diverG wrote on 11/29/2010, 2:34 AM

Found 'Blinks@ notes on CFF Explorer. Looks like this problem arose under V8. Not all the files listed are in V10 but we know 10 was a major programming update.
My Dynamic RAM was set to 350MB, now 50MB
I'll give it a shot. and report back.

I had noticed things were a little better on my laptop which is an i5 running W7 64

Thanks for your help it's much appreciated.

ritsmer wrote on 11/29/2010, 6:32 AM

Right - and if you install Vegas 10.0a 64 bit on your laptop (free when you have the 32 bit version) - it should be much better.

diverG wrote on 11/29/2010, 8:12 AM

My laptop started with V10(64) and V10(32) installed later.

Main PC
Dropping the pre-view RAM down to 50MB has more effect than allowing Vegas.exe to exceed 2Gb limit.
Project properties: Have matched .mpg to create a custum template 720X480,29.970 which looks identical to NTSC DV Widescreen.

Also working about 40 clips per session. 1000 more to go each with a finger partially obscuring the lens. I've pointed his wife in the direction of a lens hood for Christmas in order to restrain said finger.

Once again thanks. Great forum
Geoff

diverG wrote on 12/2/2010, 10:00 AM

After sending 50 crash reports to Sony I finally replaced my XP System Drive, clean installed Windows 7 and loaded Vegas 10 & DVDA and tried again. Dynamic RAM=10Mb. No other applications loaded. My machine is now dual booted W7 old and W7 new.
Can confirm there is no real improvement and only about 50 clips or 10/12 minutes of timeline can be edited on this clean installation.
Handling the native files from a Sony DCR-SR47 Vegas is not fit for purpose. Lesson learned.
However, no complaints whatsoever regarding Vegas and the files from my A1E camcorder.
The good news is that Avid7v2 can handle the SR47 files and produce both avi or mpg files compatible with DVDA.