[Dave Haynie]

I have seen that message myself, and have some other observations about running in Vegas and Windows 7 with a multichannel audio card.

First one is simple: make sure Windows itself is doing NOTHING with the Presonus. In fact, I wouldn’t disable the on-board sound, simply because I want generic Windows to have some place to send its sound. Either way, ensure Windows never selects the Presonus as the system sound card.

The reason for that is simple.. you’ll be fighting for access to that sound card. Windows wants to set it up at some default sample rate, and then convert anything sent to the Windows sound mapper to that format. You pretty much want Windows’ only knowledge of that card being in the Device Manager.

Now, in fact, when I saw that message, it was kind of a Vegas issue, or maybe a Vegas/Windows interaction. Or, who knows, maybe an interaction with the Tascam driver. But basically, until I had my audio interface up and running in Windows, Vegas didn’t understand it properly. So if I start Windows before the Tascam is initialized, Vegas sees a 2-channel device, and one that doesn’t support 24/96k recording. Thus, the error message. When I plug the audio device in first, turn it on, etc… then Vegas is happy, and I get all of the features of the driver (sample rates all work, inputs and outputs show as both mono and stereo, etc). Weird, but definitely something to look out for.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Ditto… though I had relatively few VHS tapes.

Over the last year, I did actually import all of my analog 8mm tapes, now on my RAID as DV files. I still have some years of Digital8 and DV tapes to import and archive.. all personal stuff, of course (anything shot for other people was long ago dealt with).

The impetus here is the gear… I have one Digital 8 camcorder that’s semi-functional. When that fails, I have to spend money to get to that older stuff. I actually have two HDV cameras left, but I do intend to sell off the HVR-A1 when I get a round tuit. The Canon HV10, slightly damaged, remains as a deck until I have nothing left that’s not online or on a disc somewhere.

As for those LP records… I have a stack of my Mom’s old disc, including 78s and a couple one-offs she cut back in the 50s and 60s, which I do intend to bring into the digital world sometime before Mother’s Day. I don’t actually have a turntable that does 78rpm, so this should be fun.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

The easy thing would be to get the ProRes guy to install the Avid DNxHD plug-in. Takes a minute, and from then on, you can exchange full quality video files, on … well… maybe some kind of hard drive. Do Macs read NTFS these days? I know they don’t usually have BD-ROM drives, much less BDXL. Ok, I don’t have BDXL either… yet.

But as John says, if you have a client base that demands this, you probably have to comply. If it’s just a rare occasional thing, there’s always some alternative. And it sounds like you did the one I would have. Despite their world of odd, proprietary formats, FCP editors do ultimately have to import video from their cameras. Other than the rare workflow that shoots directly in ProRes, this means that your original files (or an edit in the same format) are something they can deal with.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

You do have to have MacOS and FCP to get this going. But if your only reason is creating FCP files, there are some possible shortcuts.

First of all, the Mac. Going the totally legit route, you can run FCP on a Mac Mini. Or buy an older Mac on eBay. Obviously, if you have other uses, you’re not going to get great mileage out of the more CPU intensive modules that come with, but if you only need to transcode video (and FCP is fairly low overhead, in the same class as Cineform or Avid DNxHD.. and in fact, if you export to DNxHD, you can read this directly in Quicktime on any Mac with the Avid plug-in installed), why pay for more juice.

If it were me, I’d by a copy of MacOS and see if I couldn’t get it running on an old PC as a “Hackintosh”, or better still, in a VirtualBox VM. There are suggestions on how to do this easily found online. This is against the Apple shrink wrap license, though, so if you believe those are legal, you may want to take a different approach.

As for FCP, I’d look around for an older copy still in stock somewhere. This is how I first got Photoshop… in the days of Photoshop 4, I found a copy of Photoshop 3 for $60 at a computer fair. Totally legal, and once registered, I qualified for a low cost upgrade to PS4. And of course, the older version of FCP may produce perfectly acceptable ProRes output. ProRes was apparently introduced in Final Cut Studio 2. I’ve seen this on eBay, new, for about $450… and you can bet it’s around for less. You can find educational versions for less yet, but these are not licensed for commercial application, such as converting video for client delivery.

Now of course, for a business that needs this often enough, you may just go in head first and pay the price — too much mucking around during business hours, and you’re better off just buying the Mac setup at your local Apple store.

But I’m very much against proprietary formats like ProRes being any kind of acceptable standard, much less a required one. Particularly when better companies are working to deliver open standards… like Avid’s DNxHD (which is officially standardized as SMPTE VC-3). So I wouldn’t personally feel good about either paying $400 per conversion or paying Apple top dollar for an otherwise useless, very overpriced PC. Ok, sure, you could run Windows on the Mac when not converting FCP. But a creative solution is so much more fun.

Not that I did this for Vegas … in fact, my first copy of Vegas was a freebie; I had helped out one of the Sonic Foundry engineers and he surprised me with gratis copies of Vegas and Acid. But they’ve seen my cash ever since, and I’ve spread the gospel — very good marketing on their part).

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

He’s probably trying to make the disc look as close as possible to a commercially manufactured, glass mastered disc. You and I recognize the BD-R aspect, and well, I have mixed feelings about Verbatim (they’re usually of decent quality, but they don’t actually make all their own discs, and at least, used to switch vendors with the same product designation), but they do seem to make the actual Blu-ray discs they ship, so at least there’s a likely consistency there. But I digress.

I think for a “commercial quality” look you’d want hub printable BDs, rather than anything with a clear hub that may or may not be printed. That’s what I generally use for a finished product these days. There might be some microprinting embossed/cut into the rim, but nothing anyone would notice with specifically looking for it.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Well, once you get Vegas on it, you’ll probably want other video/media related tools.

As for that system… sure, that’s the low-end desktop i7-9xx, but it’ll be a perfectly acceptable machine. As mentioned, the i7-9xx is where Intel really starts to beat AMD, at least in a big part due to the triple rather than double memory bus (three 64-bit channels to AMD’s 2 channels). There’s a review of the AMDx6 1090T versus the i7-920 here:
https://www.techreaction.net/2010/05/06/amd-phenom-ii-six-core-1090t1095t-thuban-review/

Curious thing… one of the AMD’s best results is rendering H.264 via the MainConcept CODEC (apparently their stand-alone, not the Vegas plug-in). This is seen largely as a CPU clock speed win; when both are overclocks to 4.2GHz, the i7 wins.

You aren’t going to find a superior price at Best Buy, though. In fact, you can find a dozen or so faster i7 machines for less cash here: https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006736%20600014723&IsNodeId=1&name=Intel%20Core%20i7

Of course, buying a whole system mail order, you do need to know what you’re doing. Not that “the Geek Squad” are a bunch of wizards, either (I have helped out several victims of “the Geek Squad”, folks who were charged $100+ and never had their problems fixed… usually pretty basic problems, too).

Another good practice for buying a PC is to customize a name brand. Folks like HP, Dell, etc (not sure about Acer) can’t really charge less for the online price than the in-store price as a rule, otherwise they cannibalize their retailers. But they have a bunch of loopholes. I did this when I bought my PC. I found the basic model, and also an online coupon for 30% off any laptop bought online. Then, I went through the options, and found that many of them were free of very low cost upgrades… for example, I got a camera + fingerprint reader for the same price as no camera. I got two smaller HDDs for the price of one larger one, the total being significantly more. I saved $50 order Vista (at the time) Home rather than Professional.. overall, a much better deal than anything you could find at a retailer. Obviously, the coupon was a big part of this, and you may have to wait. Check out a place like tech bargains.

And if you really need the tech support, buy from a real computer store (if you can find one). You may be lucky and shop at a big box store that actually has good computer people, but it’s just as likely the guy selling that PC was selling TVs or DVDs last week. Of course, if you know what you’re doing, you don’t need the support… so online is pretty safe.

And if you’re an expert like me, you can integrate your own PC. There was a time when you could save a bundle buying all the pieces separately, but I don’t think that’s very significant these days. But you can be sure you’re not paying for something you don’t want (also quite possible if you customize online).

Anyway, for the money, I’ve seen comparable-performance AMDx6 1090T systems for as low as $799, or higher spec i7 systems for the same or less.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

I would definitely upgrade to the AMD 1090T “Black Edition”… these only cost $199 or so, stand-alone, so it shouldn’t be that much more of a premium over the 1045T. The “Black Edition” designation means that the chip can be legally overclocked (eg, no evil hacks necessary).

I don’t usually advocate overclocking, but it’s an absolute truth that every 1090T can be run at 3.3GHz, thus saving yourself $40 over the 1100T. And this is a fast chip, and while you might pick a different processor for gaming, this is very nicely suited to video work.

If you do wind up doing things that are inherently single-tasking, both the AMDs and at least the Intel i7s do a clock-boost thing.. they’ll basically put some cores to sleep, and overclock the remaining cores on demand. This is, for example, why the i7/720 used in laptops is actually a fast chip, even at a rating of 1.6GHz… it will automatically boost the clock speed to 2.8GHz or thereabouts, depending on the demand. You don’t notice power use as much on the desktop, but similar things are happening with all modern chips… they either go slower when not being pushed, or faster when there’s work to do, depending on the point of view.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

I’m very happily using an AMDx6 and a nVidia graphics card — works just dandy. Unless there were some disagreements on PCIe implementation, this should be the case… the software issues were resolved over a decade ago (eg, compatibility between AMD, Intel, and perhaps other x86 ISA processors). Problems pretty much just don’t occur any more.

However, if you like AMD and nVidia, and really want the full nVidia experience, why not get an nForce-based board. That’s nVidia’s own system board chipset, which has been among the best of the various system architectures around. They’re a bit more expensive than a basic AMD or Intel chipset.

Also, currently, Sony software has only a very, very slight nVidia bias. Vegas 10’s Sony AVC plug-in uses nVidia’s GPU acceleration, to deliver about a 5-6% rendering speed improvement, depending on your GPU. Sony currently does nothing with the GPU at runtime.

If you want the absolute best rendering or runtime performance, buy a six core i7. That’s it, end of discussion, the fastest x86 processor you can get for a single socket motherboard. The higher end i7s benefit from a three channel on-chip memory interface, which helps keep a busy multi-core chip well fed. The very latest Intel CPU core is a bit more powerful than the AMD, but this is also very dependent on the code you’re running and the clock speeds involved. And in most of the benchmarks, you’ll find the Intel pulls ahead on some gaming benchmarks, but they’re closer when it comes to video work.

In short, the AMD is a good value if you’re not looking at the very top of the line. I did my upgrade last fall, when my Intel Core2 Quad 2.83MHz 9550 motherboard when to that great rendering farm in the sky… this is fairly comparable to the better i5s or lower i7s, again, very dependent on what you’re doing.

The replacement AMDx6 1090T (top of the line AMD, CPU for under $200) renders between 1.5x and 2x faster, depending on what I’m doing. Runtime is also much smoother.

Honestly, had my motherboard upgrade been my choice, I probably would have gone for the x6 Intel… I definitely would have waited for the next generation higher-end Intels and the AMD Bulldozer chips, neither out yet. But given the price and performance issues, I’m very happy with the AMDx6.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

[joann payne] ” appreciate the help. Can I pose this senario to you?. If I capture footage from the camera using 1 external microphone on the camera & I turned the other one off, then downloaded it to vegas. I would expect have 1 Video track and 1 Audio track (with 2 waveforms).

Depends on the camera and mic, actually. And sure, you’re Vegas settings. In this scenario, you’ll have one video track and either two mono tracks or one stereo track, depending on how Vegas imports the audio. If you use a mono microphone on a typical consumer camcorder, you’ll see two tracks, but they’re identical. If you use a stereo mic, then you have two slightly different tracks (depending on whether your stereo mic is actually delivering any real R/L separation).

If you’re using a pro camera, you might have one blank track and one actual waveform. Depending on the camera, you may have a bit more. For example, when I use on mic on my HMC-40, I set it up in “run & gun” mode… one track with gain turned down, one with gain up, and the mic input set to double the one mic to both tracks. So it’s mono, but effectively higher resolution than just one mono track. This is probably TMI at this point, but I do like to be complete.

[joann payne]
If I used 2 external microphones wouldn’t I have 1 Video track 2 Audio tracks (totalling 4 waveforms) or is that to simplistic. Cheers”

Again, it’s dependent on many things. First of all, the nature of the camera. Most camcorders only record two tracks. Technically, DV has the ability to record two 16-bit tracks or four 12-bit tracks, and there are a few camcorders that actually supported a four mic configuration, but that’s rare. Some AVCHD devices have the ability to record 5.1 channel AC-3, but not usually via external mics. HDV supports only the two channels. In your case, the Sony HXR-NX5 only has two audio inputs, and it will only record two audio tracks in any mode. So you would see two waveforms, either one stereo or two mono, depending on how you have Vegas set up.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

[John Rofrano] “There are different limitations for different codecs. In general, that statement can’t be true because 1080 is not evenly divisible by 16 and it is the industry standard for Blu-ray distribution. “

Of course, you know that the Blu-ray specifications came directly from the ATSC specifications, the result of the “Grand Compromise” for HDTV. Part of that compromise was the enforcement of a 16:9 picture, a compromise between the computer industry’s demand for 16:10, and the film industry’s demand for 2:1.

Anyway, simple math tells you that 1920×1080 is a perfect 16:9 picture, given square pixels. Only one problem: ATSC is based on MPEG-2, which really does demand as I said; pixels sizes divisible by 16 for progressive, and vertically by 32 for interlaced.

So the ATSC folks hacked it… the ATSC standard actually broadcasts MPEG-2 as 1080×1088, the bottom 8 pixels always filler, and never displayed by display devices. Same with Blu-Ray. In the early days, this was something you had to deal with explicitly, but these days, the encoders and decoders all deal with padding/cropping automatically. So while we logically work in 1920×1080, deep down, it’s actually 1920×1088 on the disc or over the air.

[John Rofrano] “Where divisible by 16 comes in is the MPEG2 width. I believe the width of an MPEG2 file must be in multiples of 16 because of how the encoder processes macro-blocks but the height only needs to be divisible by 2. An MPEG2 file that is 96 x 38 will render just fine because 96 is divisible by 16 and 38 is divisible by 2.
“

Nope. The MPEG-2 spec requires progressive (frame coded) video to be encoded in multiple-of-16 resolutions in both horizontal and vertical, or multiple-of-32 for interlaced (field coded) video. The issue is the basic DCT macrocell, which is always 16×16 in MPEG-2. All recent encoders automatically pad out the cell… you can, for example, render from Vegas with just about no concern for pixel size… 94×38 or 92×34 works just dandy, too. But you’re still encoding 96×48 in each case. And in fact, Vegas always rounds up… no warning, nothing, but if you did render 92×36, you’d see your video a full 96 pixels wide. And if you played the resulting video in a much older MPEG-2 player, I bet you’d see the blank lines at the bottom, too. Some encoders stuff with black pixels, some just replicate the last line, which is in theory easier to encode (the x264 does it this way, a feature added about 6 years ago. Before that, you had to always specific mod16 resolutions).

My point in all of this… if you’re encoding for relatively arbitrary internet resolutions, why not get all of the resolution you’re paying for. If I encode at 1920×818, it’ll certainly work, but I’m paying for 1920×832, in terms of bit-budget, etc. So either use that extra space, or crop to 1920×816.

-Dave