Daisy chaining two or more external drives for HDV

[Jerry Waters]

About Connect HD, there are many “pros” and no known “cons.” The lowest rung on the HDV ladder, as I understand it, is proxies. There you edit the proxy, then switch files to render. If you have to make changes, you keep going back and forth. You don’t do that with Connect. It works as a standalone program, captures m2t files and converts those to CineForm Intermediates, avi files, with a better codec (2.5) than the one they licensed to Sony to include in Vegas – (2.1).

This codec is designed to be edited and acts on the timeline pretty much like a regular DV file captured in Vegas. It plays pretty much in realtime. You won’t notice a difference in editing and there is no loss to speak of if files are rerendered several time.

The interesting thing is the capture and convert process. If your machine is real fast it will do all that in one step. If there is any pixelating, just do it in two steps – capture the m2t files and then convert them in a second step. It is in the convert process in either form that Connect will scene detect and break down the clips. (Vegas will not scene detect HDV.)

So, you can start capturing a whole tape, do something else if you need to, and then convert and leave it again. Your clips come out ready to edit. If you want to monitor things you can stop and change the file names of the files. Those are set up under Connect’s preferences.

If you have any more questions, write. I’ve captured at least 700GB of Connect files, edited them and reedited them. Sorry to respond late. I just happened to see your post. My response notification wasn’t on.

JerryW

[Charles Avanti]

Thanks very much Jerry, this helps alot. When you preview HD clips from the timeline to a HD TV, does it come out as HD on the monitor? Do you use firewire from CPU—>TO CAMERA–>an S-video output from your HD camera to monitor, or what type?

Thanks.

Charlie

[Jerry Waters]

I just got a 24″ Dell for a monitor and I am running it directly from Vegas as preview. The adjustment comes from the Vegas setup – preview quality, full, auto. Running full quality sometimes slows things but it gets much sharper. I got a deal on the monitor on Ebay – $514 instead of $700 plus – and it has more resolution than the 1440 X 1080 files. I also bought this because it has picture-in-picture and I can take it on a shoot and match and monitor 2 cameras with it. (I haven’t done that yet.)

I also picked up Ulead Movie Studio 10 because it is cheap ($60) and will create an HD DVD now – something DVDA will not do. MS10 also has a “deshaker” function built in so it will make shaky shots look a lot better. I just got this also and have had little time to work with it. (My movie is in the final stages of the rough cut and I’m very busy doing polishing work.) Those are the approaches I’m taking. I do not have a Decklink card (and recent postings make me doubt getting one).

Following a storm that caused my ceiling to crater, I recently installed a Panasonic 16 X 9 HD projector on a shelf that drops from my ceiling and a pull down screen that is BIG — 16 X 9 and 92″ wide. The resolution is 1280 X 720 (off top of my head). The Vegas widescreen template makes a DVD that looks great on this. (The player tries to do an “uprez” of standard DVD to an HD look.) I have not yet rendered a HD DVD with the Ulead program but stay in touch and I’ll let you know how it goes. But I’m looking forward to football season and “life sized” players. Panasonic has a $400 rebate on the 900 and at a net price of $1400 it worked out to be less than many HD TVs. The screen ran $500. I also got one to carry around and show stuff for $100.

You can also print an m2t back to the camera and play it into your camera and that out to a HD monitor.

Hope this helps. It is just my current approach but shooting and editing this thing in HDV has been a real experience. (I went to your website and sent this message email so you can contact me directly. We are only about 200 miles apart. If you get to Dallas, give me a call and we’ll have coffee.)

JerryW