We do a few SDE's each season and Vegas rocks for this. Definitely test your renders w/ Magic Bullet; I would use something else myself, such as vasst film looks which should make for faster renders.

One other tip you might want to consider is to print to tape and playback from the camera instead of burning a dvd.

I've done a total of 0 SDE's and very few weddings (that weren't me directing live cameras, and even still just a handful of those), so take this with a grain of salt.

1) Unless you're using the GPU accelerated version of Magic Bullet, don't use it.

2) I worked at WEVA last year and I spoke to a guy who talked about how he uses Vegas and does SDE's a lot ( blows everyone away to ). He takes a camera and records things for the SDE and then captures half the tape, starts cutting that first half of the tape, and then starts capturing the other half of the tape so when he's done with the first half, the other half is ready to start on. And in about an hour he has his SDE. (not sure if he uses a separate camera for the SDE stuff, or if he's just cutting the ceremony or what). He would just take a solid stream of footage ( no detected scenes ) and toss it in the trimmer, then start the next capture section going, and start selecting and tossing clips from the trimmer of the first half up on the timeline. After that, he'd arrange them as necessary (and I assume you'll have music etc... already laid out for it). and it might not hurt to even pre-marker the music on the beats so you can just plug and play (so to speak).

I hope this helps ( not sure if it will work well with your workflow, but it's a very efficient means of making the video quickly and getting it ready to go ).

Dave

Pardon my ignorance but what does "SDE" stand for?

Same Day Edit

Sorry, i shoudl have been clear. Im using MB2 with an Nvidia card which is pushing 3x realtime (with MB2 using GPU), irrespective of the filter settings

Another thing i noticed, was that when i aplied my filter chains, it wasnt THAT significant of a change.
with a 3 minute test clip, MB2 took 9 minutes, without it, it took 7minutes
Source materail was on C drive and rendering out to USB powered HDD

thx for the feedback guys... much appreciated...

1) Unless you're using the GPU accelerated version of Magic Bullet,
don't use it.

((Its MB2 and testing with progressive DV, it took 3x realtime. I did notice it in the past that redndering FROM a USB drive to the system drive was signifacantly quicker. Im yet to test this))


2) I worked at WEVA last year and I spoke to a guy who talked about how he uses Vegas and does SDE's a lot ( blows everyone away to ). He takes a camera and records things for the SDE and then captures half the tape, starts cutting that first half of the tape, and then starts capturing the other half of the tape so when he's done with the first half, the other half is ready to start on. And in about an hour he has his SDE. (not sure if he uses a separate camera for the SDE stuff, or if he's just cutting the ceremony or what). He would just take a solid stream of footage ( no detected scenes ) and toss it in the trimmer, then start the next capture section going, and start selecting and tossing clips from the trimmer of the first half up on the timeline. After that, he'd arrange them as necessary (and I assume you'll have music etc... already laid out for it). and it might not hurt to even pre-marker the music on the beats so you can just plug and play (so to speak).

((Sounds like a plan.. I do however plan on cpaturing the morning events during the ceremony while myself and 2 others film the ceremony directly.
From there, ill try to capture the ceremony elements while i edit, however i do not know how the streaming will cope with this.. as soon as i notice a dropped frame, im outta there. I dont want to waste time on testing theories so i'l also be experimenting with capture and edit.
What i DID plan on doing was to render and edit at the same time. As MB2 only uses 1 CPU thread, it shoudl adversely affect render times or editing playback frame rate

I guess mroe testing is needed.. but i do know this.. im stil using V7...

Print to tape sounds like a plan... the render to MPG2 howeever is 5x realtime using MConcept MPG encoder, so i dont knwo how significant that will be considering we're also sttching the preshoot and slideshow in front of the SDE itself..

Thanks DSE, funny...I've actually used Vegas for more than a few SDE's but not the quick turn around you guys are talking about.

I did my first two SDE's with Vegas on a budget laptop. Worked out pretty well, but I didn't apply any filters. Heck, if I used any MB filters, the only audience would be the guy vacuuming the floor at the reception.

Maybe you could render one video file without any effects, so you can throw to if the MB render takes too long.