Any JVC100/HDV people using Vegas?

[John Vincent]

I've heard that Vegas does a better job dealing with HDV than does Premeire Pro 2. Is this true?

I can't get the hang of Pro 2 - it's actually driving me mad. Is Vegas any easier to use?

Overall ease of use and power? And lastly, would you recomend Vegas as a HDV editing app, or should I just go back to Macs (and final cut pro)?

Thanks for all your help -
john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

[Bill Ravens]

I'm using an HD110 with Vegas7 and Cineform ConnectHD. In 4 months of having this rig, I've never experienced a single problem. ConnectHD will upconvert to 1080i or keep things in native 720p. Vegas will edit in native m2t or in CFHDV, no problem. I will note that vegas' approach to editting m2t does NOT do frame accurate cuts. For that, I use womble's MPEG Video Wizard.

From all accounts on this forum, FCP and the JVC HD100/110 is very problemattic, especially with a tapeless recording system like firestore. I use an FS-4HD and have absolutely no problems, no dropouts, no data loss.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

I'm sure Bill Ravens will pop in, he's using Vegas and a JVC HD100.
As far as Vegas managing HDV better than Premiere? Natively, yes. Vegas 7 is sweet in this regard. The rest of your question is pretty subjective, but I think in this forum, you'll find that folks prefer Vegas over other NLE's. But, asking the same question in the FCP or Premiere forum, of course, will net you a very different answer.
We've done perhaps 40 commercial projects in HDV, using Vegas, and are working on a full-length feature now. Mostly Vegas.

[John Vincent]

Originally Posted by Bill Ravens

II will note that vegas' approach to editting m2t does NOT do frame accurate cuts. For that, I use womble's MPEG Video Wizard.

I'm not sure what this means - does it mean if I import a dialouge driven scene with well recorded sound that I'll have to manually sync up the sound track with the video track (which is of course how it always had to be done in the old days), or something else?

Bill - what exactly is cineform connect HD and womble's vid wizard? Are they expensive (and/or worth the loot)?

Douglas - do you edit in m2t or do you convert it? My primary use is editing for features, with some commercial work.

Would you guys briefly discribe your workflow?

Thanks a million -
john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

[Bill Ravens]

John...

the conventional wisdom is-edit in m2t if you're doing "cuts only" editting. If you want effects, color correction then edit in an intermediate format like cineform. As I said, vegas really isn't good at cuts only editting of m2t files. In order to understand what this means, you need to understand the fundamentals of mpeg compression/encoding. There are Groups of Frames, (or GOP's), with the first frame in a group being self defining, while the successive frames are dependent on the first frame when they are encoded/decoded. When you make a random cut in Vegas, it doesn't look for the nearest independent frame, but, rather, cuts where you put the cursor, even if it's in the middle of a GOP. The result is GOP fragments that may or may not play well with the other GOP's. Sometimes, there's an audio sync issue, but, mostly, it's glitches in the video stream. Frame accurate editting avoids this problem by allowing cuts only at the interface between GOP's.

For cost info, I suggest you go to www.womble.com. For most of my workflow, I convert to cineform's intermediate codec. Cineform claims very little quality loss with their codec, altho' some loss is to be expected....but, they say i's better than DV, so I allow between 5-10 renders-rerenders before it becomes noticeable.

You don't need to spend anything on the cineform codec because it's bundled with your vegas 7 purchase. Buying the Cineform ConnectHD package adds some speed and convenience, but, the Vegas bundle does everything to the same quality.

[John Vincent]

[QUOTE=Bill Ravens]For cost info, I suggest you go to www.womble.com. For most of my workflow, I convert to cineform's intermediate codec.

Thanks Bill. Went to the womble site - everything there is pretty cheap (under $100) so that's a big plus...

So Bill, if I understood your posts, if I wanted to upload my 24p HDV/JVC100 footage into Vegas, then edit it, this is what I'd do:

A) Import as m2t file;
B) Convert that into cineform's intermediate codec;
C) Then edit using womble in a womble timeline (?);
D) Color correct/finale mix-down in Vegas;
E) Export from Vegas to HD-DVD/DVD.

Please let me know if I have this right and thanks to you and Douglas for the advice.
Never knew that Vegas was the "Tank" of nle's... This too is very impotant to me.

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

[Bill Ravens]

John...

you dont need womble if you edit in the cineform intermediate. Other than that, you're workflow looks good.

[Brian Luce]

I use Vegas 6d with my hd100.

Vegas is by far the easiest NLE to use IMHOP.

Also comes with the cineform codec FREE! but wait there's more!

Most people agree no other NLE is as advanced in terms of audio features.

[John Vincent]

Thanks for all the help guys....

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

[Brian Luce]

The reason you need Cineform which is generically known as an intermediate codec, is that HDV doesn't record complete frames. It's uses a fancy schmancy method of sampling which takes a complete frame and then for succeeding frames only records the changes-- what's new and what's no longer there. This is how all that juicy HD info gets put on the puny little mini dv tape. So cineform takes the sampled hdv info and makes complete, individual frames for your clips. This effectively blows up the clip into a much bigger file size so you might need a bit more hard drive space but it's very easy to work with--both my 3ghz p4 and 1.4 ghz AMD machines breeze through it. Cineform is the best thing since canned orange juice.

[PJ Gallagher]

Hmmm... I think I may have been making my life more difficult than it needed to be.

I'm new to Vegas, making the transition from Premiere when I bought my JVC HD101 a couple of months back.

Just finished my first HDV project with Vegas, and really liking the workflow. But the age of my machine meant that it worked best for getting full frame rate preview if I used the CF intermediate.

Now, for some reason I was under the impression that after editting with the intermediate, just before the final render, I should do a "replace clip" on all the clips used, replacing the intermediates with the original m2t.

Is this step actually neccesary? Or will I get just as decent an end product if I render to HDV with the intermediate clips on the timeline?

Cheers
Pat

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

How HDV Works video.
This short vid will give you a little bit of perspective of how HDV works, what is GOP, and how GOP and frames work.
CineForm does more than just offer the ability to improve editing efficiency; it preserves frame quality throughout the multi-generational renders.

[Werner Wesp]

I work with JVC's ProHD and Sony Vegas too. Works rather fine. Mostly Cineform though, not for the quality, but for the performance of my editing system...

An intermediate codec or not is quite a long story. There's actually more to it then just saying: if you need to do CC you need a lossless intermediate.

The foremost thing to consider is: is there 'multigeneration rendering', I mean do you render out pieces en use those rendered clips again in a next edit? If you do: lossless intermediate. If you never do, there might be not a lot of need for an intermediate. Even CC might pose no problem, depending on how the NLE handles things.

Also worth a consideration: How do you plan to export your high definition. If you're going to keep it on a harddrive until HD-DVD, BluRay or something else is widely available, you might want to consider making the final render in an intermediate codec, so you have the best possible edit to go to any format you might choose in the future...

[John Vincent]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

How HDV Works video.
This short vid will give you a little bit of perspective of how HDV works, what is GOP, and how GOP and frames work.
CineForm does more than just offer the ability to improve editing efficiency; it preserves frame quality throughout the multi-generational renders.

WOW. Amazing stuff Douglas. I learned more in 7 minutes watching that vid than in reading 2 months worth of threads. Great stuff.

So cineform and other products like it essentially fill in the gaps left by a GOP recording format (4 times a second for 720p and 13 times a second for 1050i if I did my math right).

For the first time I understand why you need to have something like cineform. But let me ask this - what if you are planning a film-out? Can/should you still use something like cineform, or struggle through with the naitive files? My guess is that exporting/printing to tape or film has got to be easier once you've gone through the intermediate "gap filler" - ie - cineform.

And again, awesome video DSE.

john
evilgeniusentertainment.com

[Phil Stone]

Originally Posted by Werner Wesp

Also worth a consideration: How do you plan to export your high definition. If you're going to keep it on a harddrive until HD-DVD, BluRay or something else is widely available, you might want to consider making the final render in an intermediate codec, so you have the best possible edit to go to any format you might choose in the future...

I'm new to this sticky slow HDV hell & I'm still back on Vegas 5, looking at the ciniform codec to just be able to play the HDV footage in vegas. I normally film with strange Mjpeg based 4:3 HD cameras so Im used to real time fast editing at 1280x1024.

I normally keep all my raw video on separate external hard drives & then simply save the small Vegas project file with any images, other clips etc in the same folder on that drive. If you plan to keep with Vegas then you do not need to render to a lossless file. But its nice to have that option!

I mostly do not render anything more then once, is the ciniform connect HD codec still worth having for the speed increase? Or should I just upgrade to Vegas 7?