Questions for capturing and rendering in Vegas 8

[Brett Daly]

I recently purchased a Canon XH-A1, and I'm also completely new to using Vegas 8, but would like to edit something fairly quick and basic and hope that I can get some simple advice.
I shot my material in HD 1080/60i, and all I want to do is give it a basic editing job with a few titles and fades, which I know how to do, but I'm having a difficult time figuring out which settings to use to properly capture, edit, and then render it to DVD in standard definition, so that it will play back properly in 16:9 on a compatible TV, or in letterbox if a person is using a standard 4:3 TV.

I've read that some people choose a progressive render so they don't have to worry about de-interlacing, but then I've read otherwise. All I'm asking is if there are simple steps to get what I shot in HD 1080/60i onto a DVD in SD looking as good as can be?

Thanks for any help.

[Perrone Ford]

Hey Brett. Nice cam you got there! :)

Capturing your footage should be a piece of cake. Connect the camera, open the capture utility, capture footage. Place it on the timeline.

Do your basic edits.

If you are going to SD DVD, there's really no need to deinterlace. SD is usually interlaced, and your source is interlaced.

When you get ready to render, just choose Mainconcept mpeg2 Widescreen, and that will make the mpeg2 file. Choose Mainconcept AAC or whatever to make the audio. Then open DVD Architect and put them on the timeline. If you name them the same thing and put them in the same folder, DVD Architect will grab them together. Easy as pie.

[Brett Daly]

Thanks for the help Perrone. I've come to realize though that my computer isn't up to snuff to capture and edit in HD, as it keeps crashing and operating way too slowly. But I can't figure out how to down convert the HD signal to SD while capturing in Vegas, so I just posted a question to find out how to down convert from the camcorder using firewire, as the option gets blacked out. It's probably just me, but all of this seems to be overly complicated, instead of keeping things simple and straightforward.

[Perrone Ford]

Brett, I hate to say this, but HDV is moving at the same rate as SD. My primary editing computer is a bit slow as well. So if I had to deliver projects at 1080, I will first make a small reference file that is 640x360. Same proportions, just a LOT easier to work on. I do all my edits, coloring, etc., with that small file. Just before I render, I do a media replace which substitutes the small file with the original, and then I just render.

This was more a problem before I went to Cineform files, but it worked GREAT, and let my computer work faster than if I had SD on the timeline.

[Brett Daly]

I captured my HD footage shot at 1080/60i, changed the properties to DV NTSC format 720x480, and put the preview screen on preview auto so I could watch the footage play without chunking along, as I'm using a P4 2.8 with 1GB Ram and a middle of the road video card. I did some basic edits, added a title at the beginning, and the total length of my video was 16 minutes. Before rendering, I put the preview setting back to Best auto, and chose mpeg2 with the DVD NTSC template, no de-interlacing. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, probably a number of things, because I'm only half way through the render at this point (2 hours), and it's still showing an hour and 43 minutes to go. Approximately 4 hours to render 16 minutes of edited footage???

I will admit that I haven't studied the Vegas manual in-depth (can you tell?), but I just wanted to take my footage, do a basic edit, and render it into a format that I can convert to DVD while retaining as much of the quality as possible.

Yes I'm confused with all of this. :(

[Perrone Ford]

Just because you "changed the properties" from 1080i to DV NTSC didn't change the files. You're still working with full size HD. The same thing you see us complaining about render times even though we're using computers with dual processors or dual cores or both.

For every singe frame in your video, your computer is doing a complete recalculation on the fly from 1920x1080 to 720x480, and because you are going to mpeg2, it's having to calculate difference frames on the fly as well.

If you are going to keep shooting 1080 footage, you're going to need a faster machine, or you need to start rendering overnight.

[Brett Daly]

Thanks again for the information Perrone. I guess my computer is basically "out of date" for this HD stuff, so I guess shooting in SD for the time being is what I'll have to do until I upgrade. Hopefully the rendering time will be a bit quicker when working with SD.

[Perrone Ford]

You aren't the only one facing the problem. You can shoot in HD, just understand that it's going to be slow going. You can also do "proxy files". Here is the basic idea.

Shoot HD and capture it to your computer.
Put it on the timeline, and setup an overnight render to a 640x360 AVI file.
In the morning (or next evening) close the HD file off the timeline and put the new 640x360 file on the timeline and edit normally. Do EVERYTHING you want to do with that small fiile. It's smaller than even SD so things will move pretty quickly.

When you've done all you want to do with the file, and everything is all ready to go, go to the Project Media window, right click on the small file, and click "Replace Media". It will prompt you for the file you want to replace it with. Select the HD file you captured. When you do this, it will replace the small file you edited with, with the HD version. All cuts, color changes, fades, etc. will all be there. Then render overnight again into your final format.

My editing machine is just a bit slow working with 1080p files so this is usually how I work. I can do 720p on the edit machine without going this route. And if I am mastering to a Cineform AVI, I just do that conversion in the beginnnig, and work directly with the 1080p file because Cineform is so efficient it makes editing it on my PC tolerable.

There are options if you want to work with HD, you just have to have a bit of patience and use the tools you have wisely. Believe me, even the folks pushing around BIG work (like 4k) are working with proxy files because editing 4k directly takes a BEAST of a machine. It would take 3 of my 20" widescreen montiors just to do a full size preview window showing the width. I'd never get the full height.

Your choice, shoot SD, or shoot HD and edit proxy files. If you chose the latter you can ALWAYS move your HD files to your new PC when you get one. If you shoot SD, you'll never get that footage back.

[Brett Daly]

Great information Perrone, thank you.