VEGAS PRO 8 Edited Show on HDNET this SUN 3/30

LongTallTexan wrote on 3/28/2008, 6:52 AM
Well if any of you remember I have been working on a concert to be broadcast on HDNET. The Fabulous Thunderbirds. The show was first edited by them on a Final Cut Pro machine using a DVCPROHD codec downconverted from HDCAM. The end result was unaceptable by us and the band so we thought we would give it a go with VEGAS Pro. With much help from Dave and the folks from SCS we took the master HDCAM tapes captured them to an XDCAM HD deck and then ingested them into VEGAS Pro as MXF HD files. Then started a month long tedious edit. 6 cameras over 2 hours, but finally we had an edit far superior to the Final Cut stuff they gave us in the begining. The band was very pleased. After spending some time on the phone with the HDNET tech folks I got them to accept the MXF HD version as an exceptable HD format and we put the whole thing back on HDCAM. Long story short it will air it's premier on HDNET this Sun 3/30 at 5:30pm Central time or 6:30pm Eastern. I feel that this is a breakthrough for VEGAS over Final Cut and this is at least the first project edited using VEGAS to air on HDNET and im not sure if other projects have been broadcast HD from a Vegas project but I have to assume not many. The process was a bit tedious but the end result, I hope you agree is stellar. Please take the time to watch if you are free and can get HDNET and offer up some feedback, praise or sugestions. HDNET has a very strenuous policy on their submissions and we passed with flying colors. Hats off to Sony and Dave for all of your hard work for making this Vegas we all love a tool that puts us all on a level and allows us to compete with the big boys.

L.T.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 3/28/2008, 8:17 AM
Very cool, glad it finally worked out for you. Sounds like I'll be busting out the TIVO.
HDNET is one of the most difficult submissions there is, next to national PBS.
[r]Evolution wrote on 3/28/2008, 11:37 AM
- I feel that this is a breakthrough for VEGAS over Final Cut...
Does this really have to do w/ the tools or does it have to do with Vision, Creativity, and Knowledge of the team?

- and this is at least the first project edited using VEGAS to air on HDNET...
This is cool. Now they know the power of Vegas is equal to that of other NLE's.
(They probably already knew this but their editors just happened to be FCP guys)

Congratulations on the show!
MUTTLEY wrote on 3/28/2008, 3:10 PM
Wow, huge congrats. Being in Austin and knowing it was done in Vegas I got two reasons to love it. =)

I'll set my DVR as soon as I get near my cable box.

- Ray
Some of my stuff on Vimeo
www.undergroundplanet.com
busterkeaton wrote on 3/28/2008, 4:31 PM
Congrats.

Did you color correct using Vegas?
LongTallTexan wrote on 3/28/2008, 6:20 PM
Yeah, I actually used a bit of color correction. I also had to correct two cameras that had dead pixels with the cookie cutter as well as some pan and zooms. The dead pixels was the real bugger. I had to use numorous cookie cutters and overlay that over the original shots but moved over a hair to sub in surounding color. Tedious but very effective. The Final Cut edit couldn't pull this off so they were forcd to go with different shots.

L.T.
Laurence wrote on 3/28/2008, 7:57 PM
Cookie cutter: now there's a very practical advantage of Vegas over FCP. What were some of the others?
GlennChan wrote on 3/28/2008, 10:41 PM
FCP has a filter very similar to the cookie cutter. It would've been possible in FCP.

Anyways, back on topic... congratulations! Unfortunately I don't receive HDNET. :(
LongTallTexan wrote on 3/29/2008, 7:02 AM
Well I used the color correction and did a slight offset to make the images pop out and even added a little saturation over all to increse the color. The overall result was a nice crisp colorful image. I was worried about the effects of the plugins but HDNET didn't even notice they were added and commented on vibrant the picture was. I am very pleased overall with the outcome.

L.T.
LongTallTexan wrote on 3/30/2008, 8:12 AM
repost
LongTallTexan wrote on 3/31/2008, 12:41 PM
Anyone able to chck it out??

L.T.
MUTTLEY wrote on 3/31/2008, 1:24 PM

Sure did, me and Nadia (who sometimes shoots for you) watched it Sunday. Looked great man, possibly a little dark at times but overall looked awesome. Ya did us proud!

- Ray
Some of my stuff on Vimeo
www.undergroundplanet.com
CorTed wrote on 3/31/2008, 1:30 PM
I saw it! Looked really nice.
Noticed the credit to SCS at the end.

Nice job

Ted
LongTallTexan wrote on 3/31/2008, 1:33 PM
Seemd like some of the cuts were tweeking out the transmission. Someone at HDNET told me they shy away from doing cut edits in HD Broadcast because it messes with the the transmission, sounded like BS but I did notice a few rough cuts here and there. Yeah SCS really stepped up to help make this happen, wish I could have thrown a commercial spot in there as well. Thanks for watching.


L.T.
LongTallTexan wrote on 3/31/2008, 1:35 PM
So do you work with Nads, she is a doll and one of my best camera ops. I thought it looked a little dark as well. My wife said I was geeking out over it.

L.T.
GlennChan wrote on 3/31/2008, 1:35 PM
Aren't dissolves harder to compress?
LongTallTexan wrote on 3/31/2008, 1:36 PM
I would think so, but the desolves were great only on the cuts did I notice it.

L.T.
MUTTLEY wrote on 3/31/2008, 1:53 PM
Yea, Nad has been a good friend for years, she's worked camera on quite a few of my vids and is a great shooter (and editor for that matter). When your in Austin give a shout and we'll do coffee at my place. If ya saw my "Pasquini" vid ya know we take our coffee seriously! =)

As for it being dark, that can always be tricky and I don't know that ya could have done much better. The drummer's shirt was black but you could still see it against the black background in the close ups of him so it definitely wasn't unacceptable by any stretch.

- Ray
Some of my stuff on Vimeo
www.undergroundplanet.com

farss wrote on 3/31/2008, 2:31 PM
If Vegas is having a problem with cuts when it renders out add a marker on the cuts and force I frames at markers. The only problem with this is you will change the length of the GOP. Seems to work really well for SD DVDs. Tape based mpeg would be a problem.

Bob.
LongTallTexan wrote on 3/31/2008, 2:39 PM
No Vegas doesn't have any problems of the sort. The way it was explained to me was, Cuts in rapid succession (is that how you speel that?) cause problems with HD transmission. Nothing with the source tape but with the broadcast. I worked in Broadcast for more then 5 years and have never heard of that. When I watched the master in HD they were not there but in the broadcast I saw some real rough cuts that were not on the master. Almost like a synch problem from one sorce to the next accept only intermittent and very minor.

L.T.
farss wrote on 3/31/2008, 3:02 PM
Probably their RT encoders couldn't cope. Even with SD DVB transmission I've noticed this. Probably encoding it prior to transmission would help i.e. have it in a format ready to sent straight into the transmitter bypassing the encoder.

Bob.
LongTallTexan wrote on 3/31/2008, 3:14 PM
Yeah well way out of my expertise. We gave them a clean copy our job is done. Intresting fact though. I wonder if this means that on all future HD edits I should have at least a slight disolve.

L.T.
farss wrote on 3/31/2008, 3:38 PM
Well as Glenn said normally dissolves are harder to encode however they might mask the problem, On the other hand a quick sequence of cuts where the frames are totally different would really stress the encoder. I have no idea what the specs are for the broadcast system and worse they vary.
Where I've seen it really badly is red carpet events when 1,000s of flash guns go off in rapid succession, you get a brief segment of major macroblocking. A sequence of fast cuts would be the same if not worse.

Bob.
LongTallTexan wrote on 3/31/2008, 4:15 PM
All intresting info. Im going to check in on it.

L.T.