Ok, so the other day me and my favorite editor loaded the new Sony Vegas 7a on a Vaio laptop to see how timecode would work with the Canon XL-H1 @ all framerates. We were specifically looking for scene detection and timecode support.
GOOD NEWS for people who were looking for Scene Detection. Sony Vegas accurately splits every scene into clips and appends the clip number accordingly. It does this in 24F, 30F & 60i modes without a problem. It does this in ALL timecode modes too (RecRun, RecRun.PS, FreeRun). This means it will work fine for owners of Sony HDV cameras too (FX1, Z1U, etc...)
The days of super long 1-hour single clips are over. Now with HDV scene detection in Vegas, you can trash the uneeded clips after capture is done thus saving you tons of hard drive space. *smile*
GOOD NEWS for people who hated the little 'preview monitor/screen' built into Sony Vegas. Your image looks DRAMATICALLY better then it ever did before and now more closely resembles the actual footage. I dare to say it is good enough for accurate color correction now.
GOOD NEWS for people who shoot multi-cam projects and wish to utilize FREERUN or RECRUN.PS timecode in 30F (29.97 progressive) & 60i (29.97 interlaced) framerates. Sony Vegas 7a accurately logs the START time and END time and calculates the duration of each and every clip it creates in High Definition mode. This means timecode will work excellently for owners of Sony HDV cameras (FX1, Z1U, etc...) in all modes (cf24, cf30, 60i)
MORE GOOD NEWS for 30f & 60i users....Editing these framerates in Vegas 7a is nearly as easy as editing DV on an old 2.8ghz P4 laptop with only 512 megs of ram. It was quite amazing to see.
BAD NEWS for people who shoot multi-cam projects and wish to utilize FREERUN or RECRUN.PS timecode in the 24F (23.976 progressive) framerate. :-( While scene detection works fine, the timecode support is not there yet. Each and every HDV 24F clip still starts @ 00:00:00;00. This is the mode I persoanlly needed the most. Oh well at least the reality shooters and TV people are in good hands.
MORE BAD NEWS for 24F users....While the visual quality of the preview monitor has been dramatically improved, the playback still sucks for HDV 24F footage. 30f & 60i is almost as smooth as DV on this slow and old laptop, but 24f is about the same as it always have been.
It seems Sony didn't make 24F and the progressive nature of the 23.976 framerate a priority this time around. And to think, they were AAAAaaaaaalmost there. *smile* At least all the Sony HDV owners are in good hands now. Us 24F users must still do without firewire timecode for the time being.
WHAT I DON'T KNOW is after you transcode your timecode accurate HDV footage to another codec if will it retain timecode? Say for instance you capture some 30F footage that was FREERUN and the clip starts at 06:24:45;27 and you want to make it a CineForm .AVI intermediate file. If you put that clip on the timeline and render it to Cineform, I wonder if it will retain the timecode? That's a test for someone else to perform. *smile*
Anyhow, I thought this may help those out there with timecode concerns for their upcoming projects.
GOOD NEWS for people who were looking for Scene Detection. Sony Vegas accurately splits every scene into clips and appends the clip number accordingly. It does this in 24F, 30F & 60i modes without a problem. It does this in ALL timecode modes too (RecRun, RecRun.PS, FreeRun). This means it will work fine for owners of Sony HDV cameras too (FX1, Z1U, etc...)
The days of super long 1-hour single clips are over. Now with HDV scene detection in Vegas, you can trash the uneeded clips after capture is done thus saving you tons of hard drive space. *smile*
GOOD NEWS for people who hated the little 'preview monitor/screen' built into Sony Vegas. Your image looks DRAMATICALLY better then it ever did before and now more closely resembles the actual footage. I dare to say it is good enough for accurate color correction now.
GOOD NEWS for people who shoot multi-cam projects and wish to utilize FREERUN or RECRUN.PS timecode in 30F (29.97 progressive) & 60i (29.97 interlaced) framerates. Sony Vegas 7a accurately logs the START time and END time and calculates the duration of each and every clip it creates in High Definition mode. This means timecode will work excellently for owners of Sony HDV cameras (FX1, Z1U, etc...) in all modes (cf24, cf30, 60i)
MORE GOOD NEWS for 30f & 60i users....Editing these framerates in Vegas 7a is nearly as easy as editing DV on an old 2.8ghz P4 laptop with only 512 megs of ram. It was quite amazing to see.
BAD NEWS for people who shoot multi-cam projects and wish to utilize FREERUN or RECRUN.PS timecode in the 24F (23.976 progressive) framerate. :-( While scene detection works fine, the timecode support is not there yet. Each and every HDV 24F clip still starts @ 00:00:00;00. This is the mode I persoanlly needed the most. Oh well at least the reality shooters and TV people are in good hands.
MORE BAD NEWS for 24F users....While the visual quality of the preview monitor has been dramatically improved, the playback still sucks for HDV 24F footage. 30f & 60i is almost as smooth as DV on this slow and old laptop, but 24f is about the same as it always have been.
It seems Sony didn't make 24F and the progressive nature of the 23.976 framerate a priority this time around. And to think, they were AAAAaaaaaalmost there. *smile* At least all the Sony HDV owners are in good hands now. Us 24F users must still do without firewire timecode for the time being.
WHAT I DON'T KNOW is after you transcode your timecode accurate HDV footage to another codec if will it retain timecode? Say for instance you capture some 30F footage that was FREERUN and the clip starts at 06:24:45;27 and you want to make it a CineForm .AVI intermediate file. If you put that clip on the timeline and render it to Cineform, I wonder if it will retain the timecode? That's a test for someone else to perform. *smile*
Anyhow, I thought this may help those out there with timecode concerns for their upcoming projects.