Best editing Software for XH A1 Camcorder

[John B. Nelson]

I have tried them all.. even got the upgrade to Adobe CS3. The things I don't like about CS3 is one: the video quality in the final render is not very good. Premeire Elements renders better than CS3 I think... and two: the video quality of Adobe Encore's output to SD is poor no matter what I try to do to make it better.

On the other hand, I think the Vegas Suite out performs CS3 in both those areas. Vegas also has some nice filters that CS3 doesn't have.

The bad news though: the latest version of Vegas works horribly on Vista. GRRRRR!

-John

[William Boehm]

Thanks...i think i have narrowed it down to Vegas 8, but will not upgrade to Vista and stay with XP. What sort of video card etc do you used then with Vegas 8? Any other input?

WBoehm
Bothell, WA

[Dennis Murphy]

After buying my camera, I was totally out of money and could just use the trial versions of NLE's until they ran out.
In a state of desperation, I tried the following for my editing options:

I should put a tutorial together really.

[Mike Teutsch]

Dennis,

Transitions must be a bitch! Can you angle cut for a dissolve?!?!?!?! :)

Mike

[John B. Nelson]

Sorry for the post, but that was just too funny. I'm still laughing....

[Stephen Eastwood]

Originally Posted by Chris Smith

I have Vegas 8 and for over a month have been told by Sony that they don't have a fix to allow Version 8 to capture 24f even though Version 7 did. My most recent explanation has been that Sony can't afford to buy a XH-A1 to work out the problem. I myself am looking at Adobe very soon even though I just bought Vegas for the upgrade price. By the way, they recommended that I use HDV Split to capture. I told them that I found it ridiculous to go out of the high priced supposedly all-inclusive software to a free-ware program to perform a function that already worked in a previous version. Go figure. Everyone needs to write Sony and let them know we XH-A1/G1 owners aren't happy.

So can't you just capture in vegas 7 and than open the files in vegas 8? I have both and 6 as well, so isn't that possible?

[Sam Ren]

Originally Posted by Stephen Eastwood

So can't you just capture in vegas 7 and than open the files in vegas 8? I have both and 6 as well, so isn't that possible?

Yea you can... all it does is take the digital data off the tape on to your harddrive.. i use vegas 7 to capture all the time and then import it into premiere pro or avid from there...

[William Boehm]

I still havent heard from anyone concerning the usability of Vegas 8 vs Avid Liquid 7, although i think i have narrowed it down to Vegas 8. I will not upgrade to Vista and stay with XP. Any other input? What sort of video card etc do you used then with Vegas 8?

WBoehm
Bothell, WA

[Stephen Eastwood]

I have vegas 6 7 and 8 and run everything from ati 512 cards and nvidia 8800 and 8600 cards, all systems have two cards running two 24"lcd monitors and one 1992x1080 lcd hdtv. The slowest system is a dual dual core amd 5000, the fastest are dual quad core 6600's all have at least 4 gigs on the vista machines and 8 gigs on the xp64 machines. The dual quad running vista with 4 gigs and nvidia is fast the extra ram on a simlar machine running xp64 makes no difference. The nvidia is much faster than ati on the smae machines so in general I would look at nvidia.

[Shiv Kumar]

Stephen,

That's a great explanation. I have a machine similar to your vista machine and editing HDV on that machine with PPro CS3 is quite fun. I've composited up to 8 HD video layers and can edit/scrub in real time.

Ralph,
Your hard drives are as important as your the rest of your hardware for editing HD video. Ideally you need a RAID configuration that will double (or quadruple) your disk IO. At the end of the day, this is the bottle neck and things will go really slow in most editing software if your disk IO is not fast enough.