[Kristian Tigersjäl]

Funny thing is, other editing works great! such as effects, adding texts etc. But I guess those things that work aren’t editing the files in the same kind of way. Well I’m still much happier now adays with video editing compared to the early days in adobe premiere 3 or was it 4… I remember one video editing session usually incorporated 4 reboots and a dozen of crashes and the harddrive sounded like a sewing machine 90% of the time. That is thank god gone with the new computers, even in HD.

[Kristian Tigersjäl]

Thanks for a very detailed answer. This really helped me in choosing my codecs for editing and understanding the differences. I’ll probably go for either HDV or MFX as long as vegas handles them nicely on my computer which it should really on the 4 cores running on 64bit.

I’m still puzzled however at why most delivery formats make vegas cry for help when used with transitions as it handles to play them back so well including effects etc. An enigma, perhaps it will work better in the future.

ps: compliments to a very good page! one hint would be not sending out posting notifications for your own posts 😉

[Kristian Tigersjäl]

While at the subject, maybe you know… The HDV files is basically a slightly improved standard MPEG2 codec as far as I understand? What about the MPEG2 compression used in MFX files? I know MFX is just a container but it’s commonly used with a MPEG2 compression that is called “MPEG2-HD”. What’s the different between HDV MPEG2 and MFX MPEG2-HD? Is the HD better in any way? I do realize both can be adjusted to different bitrates.

Kristian

[Kristian Tigersjäl]

As of now the only processing I do (both editing and mastering) is done within the same application so I guess I don’t have the need to reencode multiple times and could just stick with HDV or MFX for now.

Now I’m battling another issue: not getting good enough quality from the cam in low light conditions, always something 😉

Thanks for the answers!

[Kristian Tigersjäl]

Hi!

Thank you for the suggestions. After some thinking and research I’ve come to this conclusion aswell. Still I’m annoyed by the fact because everything BUT transitions seem to work fine in vegas with these files, so it keeps giving you the feeling that it “almost” works but I assume that it’s pretty far from that. When I start dropping multiple things on the timeline it will probably still screw up.

Neoscene isn’t free, and I’m not doing anything that renders money here so I’d prefer staying away from that. DnxHd is another option that I’ve tried and while it works it produces absolutely insanely sized files, can’t be far from raw. This works, but isn’t very practical for this very reason. One thing I did try was converting the original files to HDV instead (some kind of mpeg2-derivative). These files run smooth as silk in vegas even in transitions and they are “only” about twice the size of the original files making them more space conservative.

Now what I wonder here is if this is a bad approach, using HDV as intermediate format. I’m sure I’m loosing abit of quality still the reencoded files in HDV still looks fantastic in my eyes, before editing anyway. I’ve also tried another format called mfx which uses some yet higher level of MPEG2 compression (MPEG2-HD?) which produces, in default settings, a slightly larger file compared to HDV but has linear PCM sound and even higher video quality. These files also run smooth in vegas.

Am I doing wrong with the HDV idea here or is it an okey solution when MAX MAX quality isn’t required? Any other suggestions for intermediate codecs?

Kristian