HD shot on MiniDv into Vegas 7

[John Rofrano]

Do you have an HD camera? If not, the short answer is No. There is no way to capture HD to SD with an SD camera. If you do have an HD camera, you had better hope it’s the same manufacturer of camera that shot the tape. Most of the time you can’t even capture HD to HD unless you have the original camera or a compatible camera from the same manufacturer.

I would find out what camera was used to shoot the tape and then look for someone with that camera or a compatible HDV camera. Otherwise, the tape is useless to you. Request whoever gave it to you to give you the files on a hard drive.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Dave Petteruto]

Thanks for your quick response. If I can get the camera that shot the video, can I capture the video into Vegas 7 in the SD format?

Thanks
Dave P.

[John Rofrano]

Yes. SD downconvert is an in-camera function, and I believe that all HDV cameras support this. What you do is tell the camera that you want to output SD/DV via firewire. You also want to use the DV capture utility in Vegas 7 and not the HDV capture utility.

The camera will also have an option for handling the fact that SD is 4:3 and HD is 16:9. On my Sony HVR-Z1U I have the option to squeeze the video, crop the video, or letterbox the video. I recommend that you squeeze the video. This will give you DV widescreen footage. You can then crop it to 4:3 in Vegas 7 after you capture. If you crop the video in-camera and the shooter wasn’t using 4:3 guides, you may crop an important part of the image so it’s best to crop in post.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Dave Petteruto]

John, thanks so much for the info. If I can get the camera (and the manual) hopefully I can pull this off!

Have a great weekend.

Thanks
Dave P.