Too Many HD Clips for Vegas?

Jim H wrote on 6/9/2006, 9:05 AM
I remember reading in this forum about a magic number where if you exceed the number of HD clips in a project all hell breaks loose. Well perhaps my latest project has reached that limit.

I'm up to 299 short little M2t clips set to song by Still Motion. I still need 25 more clips to finish the song. At around 280 or so I noticed that Vegas would suddenly crash and disappear. Recovery files would get me back to almost where I left off and I would be able to add a few more cliips before it crashed again.

I'm able to get Still Motion to arrange the clips on the timeline as desired, but in my experiments to render a wmv the program just hangs. Render times of 5 and 3 hours produce a 7% and 15% completion, but when I get back to the PC I see no evidence that it's still rendering. And the "Approximate time left" counder is still at zero while the elapsed time ticks on.

Have I exceeded the magic number?

Is there any way to save all the work I've done gathering clips and move over to a proxy using GearShift? (I have not broke down to buy it yet). Even if I go the Gearshift route, once you go back to the full HD fles are you not still faced with the magic number problem?

I'm not fond of the idea of having to render all of the raw m2t files, else I might try just substituting the raw files with widescreen DV or something... because I've probably got at least 150 raw files from which the clips were taken.

Or is Vegas still rendering and should I be patient?

I need to decide as my deadline is this Monday and I've two more short films to go with this.

Help wanted...thanks.

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/9/2006, 11:04 AM
> Even if I go the Gearshift route, once you go back to the full HD fles are you not still faced with the magic number problem?

If you use GearShift to create CineForm intermediaries, you don’t have to swap back because they are full quality so there are no “magic number” worries. Just render the final project directly from the CineForm files. GearShift can batch render all the files in one pass.

What GearShift won’t do is swap the M2T’s for the CineForm (because technically CineForm is not a proxy so you never need to swap it). You could trick GearShift into swapping them by adding the prefix “GSProxy-“ to the beginning of all of the CineForm files and place them in the same directory with the M2T files. Then GearShift will swap them for the M2T’s thinking they are proxies. Any good batch rename program should be able to handle the renaming easily. I highly recommend Bulk Rename Utility. This little freeware program has saved my butt a few times. Don't forget to donate to the author if you find it useful.

~jr
riredale wrote on 6/9/2006, 12:28 PM
Jim:

I would think the fastest thing you can do, given a short deadline, is stick with what you have and render out the first half, then delete them from the timeline and name the second half as a new vegfile. When you're completely finished with the second half, render it out too and then create a new timeline with the two large rendered portions.

My PC would crash when I got up to about 80 m2t clips. At this point, I don't ever put the m2t clips on the timeline at all--I create a DV proxy and a CF intermediate at the outset, and then Gearshift between the two.
Laurence wrote on 6/9/2006, 12:30 PM
With ConnectHD 3, you might not need the proxies anymore. It is way more efficient.
teaktart wrote on 6/9/2006, 8:48 PM
HI,
This is my naive question:
If I use the Cineform clips on the timeline and do my editing how would I "print to tape" an archive that is full resolution (M2Ts?)

Is there an efficient method to "replace" all the CF clips on the timeline with the M2Ts or am I way off base on how to get my material back onto tape? I would also want to render for DVDs....

Thanks for your help,
Teaktart

p.s. I just upgraded to the CFHD 3
epirb wrote on 6/9/2006, 9:00 PM
If you have the CFDI's on the timeline , you can do it two ways.
the entire timeline in vegas- select tools just as you have print to tape you also have print to HDV, this will render the t/l to m2t format then record back to your cam jst as you do DV.
If you have already rendered the t/l line to an m2t file you can use the export tab in HD Link.
Keep in mind the CFDI's you are using are excelent you would be hard pressed to see the difference if there is any ,in quality between a render of the original m2t back to tape and the CFDI back to tape.
And for multiple generation renders you are better off withthe CFDI
teaktart wrote on 6/9/2006, 9:14 PM
Thanks Epirb,

So I can "uprender" from the CFHD clips on timeline to M2T? That would be great.

I thought I had to capture both the M2Ts and CFHDs conversions to have the option to print to tape which would surely use up a lot of hard drive space.
If I understand this right, I really don't need the M2Ts at all?

Any opinions or preference for using either HD Link or V6 for printing back to tape?

Teaktart
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/9/2006, 10:17 PM
> So I can "uprender" from the CFHD clips on timeline to M2T? That would be great.

I’m not sure what you mean by "uprender" but the CineForm files are the same resolution as the original M2T files. So you are loosing nothing. In fact, Vegas is not smart enough to “smart-render” the M2T files on the timeline so it “re-renders” them in their entirety. What you get on tape is a second generation file unlike DV which is just a file copy and maintains it’s first generation quality for unprocessed footage. Printing CFDI’s to tape is a smart option especially if you have Connect HD 3.0 and use the smart-render option when you capture.

> If I understand this right, I really don't need the M2Ts at all?

That’s correct. The CFDI’s are a 1-to-1 equivalent of the M2T files.

~jr
teaktart wrote on 6/10/2006, 12:30 AM
Thank You!
You have really helped demystify this format stuff.

I haven't had the time to try out the latest CF 3.0 yet ,but is the "smart render option" an obvious menu choice I should look for?

This also saves me another hard drive not needing to have the M2Ts available for a final render, muchos gracias!

BTW....what are the words for CFDI ? I've been using "CFHD "like the file extensions on my clips, is this the same format?

Teaktart
riredale wrote on 6/10/2006, 10:38 AM
I would guess "CineForm Digital Intermediate" but it's just a guess.

I don't bother keeping the m2t originals around, once i've converted them to DV proxy and CF (okay, "CFDI"). I use the DV proxies because I like to work also with my laptop, which is plenty fast for DV but not fast enough for CF. I guess once all my hardware is fast enough I can dispense with the DV proxy altogether.

Note: GearShift can shift happily between DVproxy and CF.
Jim H wrote on 6/10/2006, 6:14 PM
riredale, I went with your approach. I saved off three different veg's each with the full song but with one third the events. Rendered each one separately and imported all three rendered videos into one veg and aligned them on the time line. Worked fine and the extra render is not noticable given the HD format. Thanks for the tip.
teaktart wrote on 6/10/2006, 6:36 PM
Re:JohnnyRoy's response...

"the CineForm files are the same resolution as the original M2T files. So you are loosing nothing. In fact, Vegas is not smart enough to “smart-render” the M2T files on the timeline so it “re-renders” them in their entirety. "

I just tried to use ConnectHD 3.0 to "export" to tape but it seems I have to render to M2T format (from the timeline) first...can't just use the CFDI's on the timeline to "print to HDV tape" ..... is that right?

You mentioned the ability to "smart render" but that must be checked prior to the original capture from the camera using Connect HD?

Right now I am using Vegas6d to render the CFDI's on the timeline to "print to tape" and my very simple edited (just a couple of crossfades) project of less than 30 min is taking over 4 hrs to render prior to printing. I have a new fast AMD dual core machine and am amazed it could take this long. Is there any other work flow I could use or is this the nature of HDV and how long it takes to process?
If I had used the "smart render" with the capture would I have saved a whole lot of render time?


Thanks again,
Teaktart

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riredale wrote on 6/10/2006, 8:55 PM
Teaktart:

If I can jump in for a second--In my own limited tests, I've discovered that no matter what HD format you have on the timeline, Vegas will still need to render to one whopper m2t file in order to be able to feed the camera tape deck when printing to tape. I've found that Vegas renders to that large m2t file faster using CF as a source than when using m2t clips as the source.

Goes against common sense, but that's my impression. I assume it must be because Vegas has to open up every single GOP in those m2t clips (which takes a lot of time) as opposed to dealing with stand-alone CF frames.

EDIT:

One more thing: Vegas offers so many knobs to turn and buttons to push, I wonder if some people get super-long render times just because they either intentionally or inadvertently selected "best" for every possible setting? In other words, maybe someone here can jump in and mention that some other settings can get nearly the same quality but at 3x the speed...
teaktart wrote on 6/10/2006, 11:18 PM
Wow,
Thanks for your input riredale...and all the others too !

This is such a huge time difference from standard DV ....
Even with my new machine I rarely get full frame previews and only get close with a smaller window and reduced resolution to "preview". I was really hoping for more than that with my investment here, BUT...
I do have to admit that when I hook the Sony A1 camera to the new HDTV my eyeballs are dazzled with the image quality... so this must be one of those scenarios where you "got to put up and shut up" if you want the goodies in the end!

I am encouraged by your comment about the CF source clips rendering quicker than the m2ts on the timeline....for printing to tape.

I look forward to answers to your last question too.
I noticed that on the Cineform website they suggest a medium encoding file sizeand discourage large size except for extra-ordinary circumstances.

Sooooo....
Next capture I should check the "smart render" box in HD Link preferences window before hitting the Start button.
Encode at Medium file size.
Any other suggestions to streamline that part of the capturing process you might have?

Forever Learning here....
Teaktart