Al Bergstein
Forum Replies Created
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As far as low light goes with AVCHD, Panasonic has a new camera the AG-AF100 that is more like a real video camera and like a Canon 5. It might be a good choice to look at.
But I shoot with both T2i and HMC150, and can say that *depending* on the light conditions the 150 can be just fine. Take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXa7et-VoL0 and the rest of my concert footage at 8stringthing on Youtube. All of it is shot with the 150. Plenty of lower light there.
But if you encounter locations with gain boost needed, the Canon seems to do better. Some have debated this, but it’s my opinion based on real world shooting. I’ll be posting some examples soon. They are dramatic. You also might try the Panasonic still cameras, which would give you the run length of AVCHD and sensors of the still cameras. But if you are used to camera controls, you’ll hate the DSLR’s. They really suck, especially their audio controls. You’ll likely rely on a field mixer.
AVCHD has it’s own aggravations, especially in naming conventions for clips. I hate using the Panasonic software tools to rename clips, but you can run into problems with Vegas if you don’t. For example, I dump my PRIVATE folders into folders with the project name. BUT it appears Vegas gets “confused” if you have multiple files named 00001.mts deep within differently named folders. (If I’m wrong here please give me a way out of this), so I routinely have to rename my individual clips, a time consuming bit of agravation.
But other than that, AVCHD on Panasonic seems to work fine. And I’ve compared clips a friend does on her Sony HDV to mine and mine are noticeably better. Her’s tends to be less contrasty out of the tape. My is rich and vivid. So you may need to do some tuning for your color grading I guess is the point. I have a hard time mixing her B cam stuff in to mine…
Alf
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Cameron, John is right. You seem to be confusing the recording formats to the CODECs to play these formats and with the ability to edit them. AVCHD, HDV and XDCAM are not consumer playback codecs. I needed to spend time reading up on these various *formats* and what they are meant to do a while back and I think you should too. It’s all there on Wikipedia.
I use both FCP and Vegas due to my needs. Perhaps Cameron, you would be better off picking the camera to match the requirements of your editor. If you love FCP then go buy a camera that shoots MOV only, (JVC also does this on their mid range HM700UXT cameras for example). It’s why a good friend of mine chose JVC. I chose the lower cost but very useable Panasonic HMC150 shooting in AVCHD.
If you like Vegas then create a workflow around it. That’s what I do. It has been handling my AVCHD content, which is not great for editing, just fine, and sometimes when it’s important I transcode. When I edit with FCP, I *always* have to transcode. I have also had to buy numerous multiterrabyte hard drives for this stupid reason. Neoscene gives you a great and easy way to transcode in Vegas, in batch, and I do it often. It’s much easier and faster than transcoding in FCP. But there are reasons for doing it that way in FCP, especially if you are working in teams or in a production studio on a big ticket production where you are tracking a vast amount of data.
There are problems with all editors. I hate doing something simple like a simple cross dissolve in FCP. It’s brain dead simple with Vegas. *it saves me a lot of time and agravation as I am not a patient person(G)*
So look at your choices and your needs. If you want to do really complex graphics oriented work, it seems like the mobs are going to Adobe. If you need to work in teams with editors that are anywhere and everywhere, it seems that FCP has the largest installed base. If you just want to get things done fast and easy, shoot documentaries, and other “simple” stuff on lower cost computers and cameras from a vast array of manufacturors, then it seems like Vegas is the choice. But don’t go choose the wrong format and then blame the editor.
Good luck and good shooting!
Alf
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Well, yes, I knew that. I’ve already tried a few programs that claim to recover cards. I just loaded up a trial version of Kernal and it did not work at all in even finding files to fix. At least the others I’ve tried restored some piece of the videos to unuseable JPEG files…So I would not recommend Kernal at all given my experience with it.
Alf
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29.9 worked fine for me, can’t imagine why 23.97 would be a problem. Here’s a simple memorial I did this summer with Vegas, PNGs of stills, montage magic, etc…nothing fancy.. MM seemed to be a good inexpensive automation solution to some simple problems of many transitions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot9DfZFzvXM
Alf
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Doyal, just get the newest version of QT from Apple. It doesn’t cost you anything. Free download. Just do it. We all did.
Alf
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You might also convert to AVI, even though it creates huge files. It seems more stable.
Alf
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If you are doing HD then the 64 bit versions seem to be much more stable. Having been in software development at one point, I can tell you that what you don’t see is likely the cleanup and advancement of 64 bit code within the product. We are now two versions deep in 64 bit Vegas, I think, and also a much improved 64 bit version of Windows and .NET (which I think is used in Vegas. All in all, stability ought to be much improved, and it seems to be for me. It still occasionally crashes, (happened yesterday for instance and I didn’t lose anywork) but I can go a long time without it happening. So I usually upgrade rather rapidly, letting a few months go by to see about whether their are issues that surface, doing some homework on plug ins, then jumping in. I’ll likely upgrade in December or January.
And yes, hard drives can fail out of box. Always back up the system.
Alf
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xcellent.. well worth the watch.
Alf
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I’ve also had no problems (yet) with Vegas 9.0e on Win7 64 bit. I would also agree that it is likely a problem with your configuration, though it’s distressing that a competing product has no problems (have you stressed it as much as Vegas yet?)
I also wonder about the ‘legacy’ projects you are trying to deal with, or did I read that right? Could it be something with projects built under and older version?
Also I would try to isolate whether the plug in is causing this. Can you run it fine without the plug in installed?
Have you tried Vegas’ tech support?
Best of luck.
Alf
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On top of the overheating, I discovered that one of my two SD cards were unreadable…hmmm. This may not be the best way to go for video production…Glad I had my other camera on and running!
Alf