Sony Vegas 5.0d - great support for HDV!!!

[Mark Kubat]

Woooow!

5.0d is great - nifty HDV templates including HD-1080 24p export setting - not to mention all the 720/25p templates too... this is just too good to be true!

Oh yeah, just want to say something else - Magic Bullet Editors for Sony Vegas also works with native 1080 m2t files right in the timeline!

Yes, sports fans, you can drop your m2t FX1 capture right in the timeline, colour-correct with Magic Bullet, then render out back as m2t 24p...

Does it get any better than this?

Cineform no doubt will allow for smoother real-time type playback of files on lesser systems as well as creating an avi that right now can more easily go into something like After Effects or Combustion for some further post work - but this latest release of Vegas 5d is a godsend - on my crappy 2 GHz pentium IV 1 gig RAM I can sorta play m2t now in vegas timeline in real-time in "draft" mode... much better performance than 5.0b... No doubt about it!

woo-hooo!!!!!

I've got to test out the 24p export and compare cadence to DVX - maybe this is Sony's way of trying to make up for cineframe 24 debacle...

Wow!!!!

[Mark Kubat]

Okay - rendered out some 1080 24p from 1080/60i original...

then took that and created NTSC 24p mpeg2 for DVD... did this to mimic approach I previously used to create such DVD via 720/25p m2t derived from 1080/60i source...

What can I say?

Definitely: 1080 24p then to SD 24p DVD like totally captures the cadence of DVX-style 24p - I'd say even smoother, like you see on 24p Varicam... Vegas 5.0d is Sony's way of saying "well, we screwed up on cineframe 24 - but here's what you can do about it" - like, TOTALLY!!!! This rocks. Whatever algorithm is being used to go from 1080/60i to 1080/24p (deinterlace - but how? blend? interpolated? which pulldown scheme?), it WORKS.

Definitely: 1080 24p to SD 24p DVD gives sharper DVD than 720/25p to SD progressive DVD - now more than before I am in disagreement to suggestions sparked by Barry Green's thread that for SD DVD it doesn't matter where you start at - it's starting to look like it is in fact more along the lines of "if you start with 35mm and make a DVD, that looks better than if you shoot mini-dv and make a DVD" type thinking - higher resolution starting point producing a high-quality 2-pass mpeg2 for SD DVD translates into "seeing more" on the screen. Hey, no doubt there will be some here who don't agree. So be it.

Definitely: Magic Bullet type color-correction in Vegas gives such latitude and nice gamma etc. to FX1 1080/60i footage - wow - much like DVX, FX1 deserves to be treated in post to do it true justice - except there's waaay more resolution now...

Definitely: render times for all this stuff is nothing to sneeze at - start saving for a new system that's up to snuff for HDV stuff!

Take home message: Progressive 24p DVD's produced from HD 1080 24p intermediary in Vegas 5d is a great way to take native 1080/60i NTSC FX1 source and give it a filmic look, akin to DVX/24p look...

I see now at www.hdforindies.com that there seems to be consensus that 1080/50i ("PAL" HDV) definitely offers resolution advantage over "NTSC" - it will be interesting to try out different schemes using Z1 and various HDV templates in Vegas 5d to see what results can be obtained...

Really nice surprise that Magic Bullet looks work at HDV resoultion without having to upgrade to "HD" version of Magic Bullet. Wow.

Cheers!

May I be so bold?

Anybody wanting to take a shot at trying their first feature to be screened theatrically or do the "straight-to-video" indie film market thing need look no further than the FX1/Z1... It won't be long before the indie scene figures this out and mini-dv breakthrough films like 28 Days Later and November are eclipsed by something shot in Sony HDV...

[Frank Aalbers]

Does Magic Bullit come with 5.0d ?

[Frank Aalbers]

<<<-- Originally posted by Mark Kubat : Definitely: Magic Bullet type color-correction in Vegas gives such latitude and nice gamma etc. to FX1 1080/60i footage - wow - much like DVX, FX1 deserves to be treated in post to do it true justice - except there's waaay more resolution now...
-->>>

IS that Magic Type Color correcting in 5.0d and does it work with resolutions bigger then 1024 ?

Frank

[Frank Aalbers]

Hi Mark !

I think the "good" downconvert from 60i to 24p of HDV footage you see is simply the blend interpolation and retiming Vegas does on the footage to go to 24p. I can hardly call it good though .

It's smooth yes ... but the individual frames look really bad.

Frank

[Mark Kubat]

Hi folks... am back from assignment.

Re: magic bullet color correcting - yes, 100% Magic Bullet Looks ie. Magic Bullet Editors for Sony Vegas (www.redgiantsoftware.com) supports HDV resolution. You don't need Magic Bullet HD standalone version...

More later...

[Hayden Rivers]

Mark, are we ever going to see some of this stuff? I saw that the previous thread where I posted requesting to see your work was deleted for some reason.

[Mark Kubat]

Hayden, thanks for your interest...

I have stuff ready... I'm getting it ready to send it to Chris...

I've got lots of motion - no probs... it looks good... some good low-light stuff too...

[Travis Somerville]

in regards to editing sony hd-fx1 footage, or hdv footage in general (including jvc hd1).

Vegas 5.0d does not activate your ability to edit HDV footage as is.

But, if you purchase DVD architect (no special edition needed for HDV), you get the mainconcept mpg2 codec, which does allow you to edit this stuff.

i just set up a clean dell box, 3.0 Ghz, 1 gig ram, and was baffled that i could edit hdv on my old machine, but not the new one. until i installed my copy of dvd architect (which is a great program).

speed stats / metrics:

by the way, i'm getting about 1 fps on full/best mode with a couple of really needed effects like: saturation filter, and bright/contrast filter, at a 1280x720P project size (i like to convert the 1080i to 720P so i can get clean stills and progressive look - i use the blend method in project properties).

i think it's realistic to expect to add filters to render time, as i'm always combating the 'thin video' look. maybe when my camera arrives next week, i'll find a saturation setting that saves me the time in post, but we'll see.

Film Look
------------
quick tip i just discovered about sony's HSL (hue saturation luminance) filter v. just the saturation filter... plain saturation filter (put amount about .7 and center .15, and spread .35). NOTE: this setting looks right on my LCD, if you have a real monitor, you may want to lessen the saturation amount to taste).

you can recover all the beautiful color information without blowing the saturation out by using the above settings. you may need to adjust for your particular setting/video footage, but try it. it makes video look nicer by the same magnitude progressive scan v. interlace does!

the other type HSL adjustments, will blow your reds or whatever color is prominent in the picture right off the scale. hit cntrl-alt-2 to see the vectorscope show you...

i can get about real time scrubbing with preview auto. it's workable.

i'm about to compare that with cineform's connectHD plugin... we'll see.

i also will measure how long it takes to make a divx and wm9 HD render. this is part of my overall workflow too, and i'm not quite as focused on how fast i can edit.

i thought about the edius solution, but i think my overall workflow wouldn't totally benefit from it. not sure. if anyone finds that it speeds up churning out stuff for the web, including lending the hardware boost to mpg2 compression, let me know.

good luck,
travis

[Travis Somerville]

well, let me just say that i can confidently edit in cineform, on a regular modern p4 3.0 ghz, 1 gig ram (dell dimension 4700, 128 mb videao card) machine.

in vegas, here's a realistic way to edit hdv.

"mp2" old vegas with mainconcept codec (comes with sony dvd architecht).

v.

"intermediate" which is cineform's wavelet codec.

general note: more speed can be obtained if you set your project settings to 1280x720p (60p or 30p). it looks nicer too. so all these are done with those settings. i use 'blend mode' to get my progressive.

you could always change project mode at end of editing, if you want 1080i again.

summary:

"mp2" is almost realtime on the crummiest setting, with no filters applied. draft or preview (auto) - which makes image pretty small.

at best / full, it's about 1 fps.

"intermediate" is completely realtime without filters at best/full. with bright/contrast, it can still keep up within reason.

by the time i add my saturation filter, it slows down, and i have to put it at smaller mode. but this is still faster than even the "mp2" without filters.

drawback: you have to convert the mp2 to intermediate. this did not happen in realtime like others had said. granted, it was only a 15 second clip, so maybe a 1 minute clip has better efficiency.

pros: it's probably worth the time to render to intermediate, if you're going to do any corrections, or edit more than a few segments. it will improve your ability to edit and watch it naturally.

it is night and day.

now, i've seen the posts that cinfeorm plugin works even faster in adobe. this is amazing to hear if it's true. that might mean this machine could do more layers of effects if cineform supported it. but i'm not sure if it would really cover all the stuff i need.

have fun. this stuff looks great and is a real improvement over dv stuff.

i've worked with the panasonic dvx-100, and it's a great camera. i've tried the jvd hd1, and it's not such a great camera (unless you are in full sunlight).

this sony hdr-fx1 is going to be a great camera.

one thing to add dv v. hd. a lot of people have proven that the temporal resolution of the hdv 1080i is about the same as the panasonic 24p mode, by the time we convert both to somewhere around 24p 1280x720p. well, even if that's true, i have one comment to add that people aren't taking into account...

i need to shoot 60fps for event style videos. when i've shot 24fps, people don't always like it as much. so with this hdr-fx1, i get to shoot my 60fps, for fluid movement, and still convert and capture some really nice stills/ or resolution to put up on the big screen.

also, i think the color sampling is so superior in hdv cams v. great dv cams like xl2 and dvx100. it's really apparent when i downrez the 1080i to 720p, how the jagged chroma stairsteps are minimized in hdv footage.

for that reason, i think hdv looks more 'filmic' than dv.

well, that's all for now.
-travis