Vegas 7 HDV capture

bruceo wrote on 9/15/2006, 11:22 AM
I am doing a 6 camera HDV concert and I have about 15 tapes captured ans now synched on the timeline. I noticed that each stream by iteslf will playback at 29.9, but 4 or 5 of the captured tapes/streams will only play back at 1-5 frames or so and really bog the system down.

When I look at properties of the affected streams compared to ones that playback at full frame rate the only difference that I see is the bad streams have alpha channel as none and the good streams have alpha channel as premultiplied. If I change the bad ones to premultiplied they still play at the low framerate.... Any ideas? I plan to recapture those tapes right now.

I also notice that if all 6 layers are on at 100% with no filters that the playback drops to 5fps. and if I mute all of the lower video layers the top layer plays at 29.9. If the top layer is 100% then there is no compositing going on so shouldn't it play at 29.9 without muting the lower video tracks?

Comments

Jay-Hancock wrote on 9/15/2006, 11:31 AM
I would think the alpha channel media settings should be irrelevant, espcecially if the clips are spread out across only one track.
bruceo wrote on 9/15/2006, 11:43 AM
Same here, but that was the only thing different from a good stream and was common between all the bad ones.
Jay-Hancock wrote on 9/15/2006, 12:01 PM
After your edit to the original post, I think I understand better... I would say all your clips should have an alpha channel of none. By itself a .m2t is not transparent at all. If you use pan/crop and/or track motion for PIP effects, the empty areas will fall through. You could create a video wall for simultaneous viewing of all 6 cams (if that's what you want to do).

If on the other hand you just want to do switching, you can do that with some of the available scripting packages (Vasst products or Excalibur). Or you could do it by hand. You can solo tracks to see them, or you could use automation/muting, or adjust composite level envelopes.

Lots of possibilities. But the alpha channel isn't one of them. Set it to none for all clips.
bruceo wrote on 9/15/2006, 12:39 PM
I use ultimate S and infiniti cam for switching and I wonder if it is even possible with 6 HDV streams. I split the 6 into 3 on individual drives. All the ones that play at full frame were at premultiplied by default only the bad ones had it at none. I would expect changing this setting wouldn't make a playback difference if the stream was played by itself. But I would also expect the good ones to play by themselves 29.9 as long as they were the top track at 100% opacity on track and event with no filters or effects even if the layers under them were muted or unmuted. But if the lower layers are unmuted playback will drop to a crawl
Spot|DSE wrote on 9/15/2006, 12:46 PM
Very possible, Bruce. I'm editing 4 cams/HDV now. Just be sure you're starting with an HDV project to start with so the aspect properties are correct.
bruceo wrote on 9/15/2006, 1:35 PM
I have done quite a few cineform 3&4 cam Ultimate S with success although at about 10FPS when all streams are on. This is off of one USB2 drive. For this 6 cam shoot would it help if I put 3 streams on 1 USB2 drive and 3 on another USB2 drive? I would think so.

In this case I recaptured one of the 57 min continuous roll problem streams. This time (scene detection off) it split into 7 separate m2t files. I am going to increase the buffer in the capture settings and try again.
Spot|DSE wrote on 9/15/2006, 1:44 PM
Bruce,
It might help to split to two USB2 drives; I can't get USB 2 drives to work as well as Firewire, so I don't use them except in extreme circumstances...Give er' a go, I'd appreciate hearing the results!
bruceo wrote on 9/15/2006, 3:19 PM
well I recaptured a 57 minute clip with no scene detection and buffer to 50%. It seemed to go smooth and then near the end it broke off a 2 minute and then a 1 minute clip. This cam was continuous roll and these spit points seem to be random as I have recaptured this tape at least 3 times with as many as 4 splits.

Of the 3 current files from the one piece the largest clip 54 mins has the alpha channel set to none and it plays at 5fps the remaining 2 clips that were split both play at full speed and the only difference shown in the properties is alpha channel is set at premultiplied. If I switch the bad one to premult nothing changes.
Jay-Hancock wrote on 9/15/2006, 3:52 PM
I wonder how and why any of them got different alpha channed settings than the others? Is there any reason at all to set them to something other than none? I would try putting all of them at none (unless there is a reason to do otherwise).

But this may be completely irrelevant. Those USB drives (and trying to pull so many streams off them) seem more likely to be an issue. If there is any way you can copy the source media to a local non-system hard drive, that may help.
bruceo wrote on 9/15/2006, 4:03 PM
If 16 tapes are captured at default and Vegas assigns them premultiplied automatically and they all play perfectly fine I would prefer not to go through and change them all if they play fine. If only 3 of them are exhibiting playback problems and the only difference noticeable and common in properites is that all of them are Alpha/none then I would consider it something happening at capture. I think HD/SDI capture utility is not handling something correctly and therefore vegas' timeline is not handling it.

I am capturing the same tape a 4th time to see if I can figure it out with rudimentary troubleshooting.
bruceo wrote on 9/15/2006, 6:06 PM
6 streams over 2 USB2 with 3 on each drive. Inifiti cam w/9 windows gives 4.5fps mute 3 tracks and goes to 11-12fps which is doable. I syched the directors track so I'll prob solo on direction and look at 3 at a time when I need to choose a replacement shot.

This is on a Pentium D 3.0 w/4gb ram and Vegas in default with project at HDV1080i w/ simulate aspect ratio on. The video card is my weak link on this system Radeon 300 PCIx stock card. Would a better video card help with preview?? I also have SATA raid 0 and gigabit ether with 2 1TB raid 5, but the difference in FPS is negligible when you consider the benefit of project protability of externals and writing to raid 5 is freakin slow as hell.
bruceo wrote on 9/15/2006, 7:10 PM
I will say that I am jacked about the m2t performance improvement. When I make my 6 cam edits and collapse to 1 track and start tightening up the edits the performance is light years better even over cineform. Consistent 29.9 even with heavy movement and right through dissolves. The improved window with simulate aspect on is ultra clear where it would have been blocky in V6