best vegas for slow laptop, hv20 hdv

[Gerald Hocutt]

i got a camera, hv20 and a laptop, 1.94 ghz, 1.5 ram, radeon express 200m card, amd sempron processer, 70gb hard drive, and a dvd writer, firewire also, windows xp.
i downloaded the free trial of vegas 8 and architect 4.5 and have it up and running.

i can find stuff on the computer but as far as file names and stuff like that i'm lost. i downloaded a pee-wee football game from hv20 to laptop via the firewire. no problem. now, do i open architect or vegas to look at it? i just want to watch it and be able to burn it to dvd. i played with architec yesterday and moved some clips around, basically bumbling my way thru. i did get a still image of my daughter and put it on the menu section as a back drop during scene selection. anyway, the video turned out ok, some ditalization went on a few times on the dvd when played in the seperate dvd player, happened twice. other than that it was fine. it took my computer 25 mins to burn 9 minutes of dvd footage. i'm hoping it was in high definition but i cain't tell. i have a toshiba hddvd player but no hd tv hooked to it. when i was watching it on my laptop, the whole thing was very choppy, looked like that girl in the spook movies when they move will fast, except mine was actually missing a few scenes in between. it was un watchable, the audio was fine just the video.

my question is, is there a older version or consumer version of vegas that will run smoother on my computer and be easier for me to learn on?

[Robert Wheeler]

Hi Gerald,

Vegas is for editing and rendering videos. So if you want to make a change to the stuff you shot, like cut down the length of the video by removing stuff, or changing the colours etc, then you need to use Vegas to prepare your video.

Vegas can prepare video you intend to play on DVD's, but can not actually make a DVD itself.

DVD Architect is purely for authoring DVDs and has very limited/no editing capability. As far as I know DVD Architect does not support making HD-DVD's at present.

However slightly confusingly, I gather that it is possible to make a Blu-ray disc direct from Vegas. Either way, you would need the correct type of drive in your computer along with the right software in order to actually create a Blu-ray disc.

The technical word for the "digitalization" you describe is "artifacts". If you can describe them in a little more detail or provide us with screen shots, we may able to give you some more advice on resolving the issue.

In regards to the performance issue, I think the consensus would be that Vegas 8 is the faster version of the software available. Unlike a lot of software, Vegas seems to get progressively faster with every release, especially as it gradually adds support for multi-processors and 64 bit processing. I'm just to move up to Version 8 from version 6, but I found the performance increase from 5 very noticeable, and again when I added half a gig to take the machine up to 1 gig of ram.

Even on a high spec machine you would not expect to get realtime performance with HD footage. The only other thing I can think of is to check whether you are operating in the 8 bit or 32 bit colour environment. If you are working 32bit switching to 8 bit should increase performance, but may impact on any effect plugins you have in place, particularly colour effect. Glenn Chan has also pointed out that HDV mode is handled differently in 32bit colour mode to 8bit colour mode...

I hope this helps!

[Mike Kujbida]

In addition to Robert's suggestion, mine is to add an external drive (USB or firewire). They're cheap these days so go as big as you can afford to.
You don't want to be cluttering up your OS drive with video files as it will have a negative impact on your performance.

[Gerald Hocutt]

thanks for the replys mike and robert. i was sick yesterday and just now getting back on the laptop.

i guess you were referring to the new vegas studio 8 and not the new pro 8. i downloaded the pro 8 and it is way more than i need or can figure out.

seriously considering the new vegas studio 8 +dvd premier set. according to sony's web site it will do hd.

if i download a 20 min football game from the hv20 to my laptop and how long should it take to burn that footage to dvd, in high definition.

gerald

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Gerald Hocutt

thanks for the replys mike and robert. i was sick yesterday and just now getting back on the laptop.

i guess you were referring to the new vegas studio 8 and not the new pro 8. i downloaded the pro 8 and it is way more than i need or can figure out.

seriously considering the new vegas studio 8 +dvd premier set. according to sony's web site it will do hd.

if i download a 20 min football game from the hv20 to my laptop and how long should it take to burn that footage to dvd, in high definition.

gerald

You won't be doing HD to DVD, unless you have Blue Ray burner, or HD burners. There is a process to burn HD material to standard DVDs, to play on HD DVD players, but it does not sound like that is your intention. If you are just storing a rendered file, that a different story though. So, best way to go with lap top situation, assuming Standard def, is to turn on camera coversion from HD to DV on and capture, edit in DV and render as DV, then to DVD.

[Gerald Hocutt]

i want hd dvd, i just thought the vegas pro 8 and architec 4.5 would write to hd from my dvd burner. i have a hd dvd player but not a hd television. i'm looking at vegas studios 8 +dvd platnium since sony says they will handle hd video.

what is the process to put hd on regular dvd"s? i'll do a search and see what i can find.

how can you tell if you have a hd dvd?

[Robert Wheeler]

To burn a true HD-DVD you would need a HD-DVD burner and HD-DVD media to burn to. Then to view it in HD, you would need a HD-DVD player and a television capable of HD-DVD playback, or a PC with a monitor and graphics card that supports HD resolutions.

There is a workaround which you could use to burn HD footage to a lower bitrate HD footage to a DVD for playback on a PC or an Xbox 360 with up to date firmware.

1) Make sure you transfer all your footage as HDV and work in a HD project. I am afraid I am not sure how to set that up in Vegas Studio 8.

2) When you come to render, select "Windows Media Player 9" and chose a preset for one of the HD formats.

3) Burn that file as a file on a normal file based DVD disc, rather than a DVD video disc.

4) Play the file on a PC or an XBox 360 (via the media player menu).

However, if you don't have a a HD capable display then you will not get HD output whatever you do.

[Gerald Hocutt]

cain't get anything to burn now in archited 4.5. when i select burn dvd and go to next pop up screen thats gives you 3 options, something, then burn, then master copy. i select burn and go to select the folder, i open the folder and theres 300 clips. how do i get those clips to my dvd burning board that has the menu written under it. when i click and drop each one over and try to burn i get "an exception has accured" and it shuts down around 3 % when burning. is there a better way to get the media to the menu baord. all i'm trying to do is import hd video from my hv20 and burn it to dvd. i'm using a trial of the vegas pro 8 and arctitec 4.5 both have the new update. thanks,gerald