[Richard Bartlett]

Neither does DVD-Architect 4 but many – myself included, didn’t expect it to. If you can afford the burners and the media and have a thriving customer base for burned BD-ROM then you’ll probably stump up for the $50k authoring tool/s.

[Richard Bartlett]

In the past, registered owners of Vegas or Vegas+DVD have had additional discounts made available. Usually a few hours or so after launch.

Seems odd that you can buy a full pro Vegas6 packaged for $99 from discount store (or B&H) and upgrade it to Vegas7+DVDA4 for the same price as someone who has Vegas6+DVD or VV3. Then again, you’d expect the pricing to be simple and within the reach of a professional’s pocket. So fairness probably doesn’t come into it.

I’ll watch for the further early-bird discounts whilst I’m evaluating the benefits for me. I have a suspicion that this is going to go Star Trek on me. ie Like the Star Trek films, only the even numbers may be fantastic for my particular tastes. 😉 [a good friend of mine recently drew that comparison, so I’m trying to coin in on it!}

[Richard Bartlett]

In times past I’ve worked in a bunker on a shift pattern. The best way I found was to exercise the eyes whilst on the job. Adopt the use or regular eye exercises – perhaps whenever you are contemplating something – so you can use that time productively. Look away from the screen (if your room is small, imagine a spot behind the wall and attempt to focus on that imaginary spot in space). Otherwise crank open the blinds or curtains and have a good old gander outside your building – assuming you can do this. It needn’t take 10 seconds, I feel the frequency is more important than the time spent doing such a workout.

I think everyone gets a headache (at least once in a while) from prolonged work of almost any type. We are all different physiologically and as something approaching necrosis starts to make it’s mark. So an adjustment or the use of glasses for what was once called “VDU” purposes could suit you. If they are tinted – you’ll have to recalibrate your brain for color grading purposes! 😉

[Richard Bartlett]

You could use your video as a backdrop, one per menu page. I think the DVD-Video standards force a 0.99GB limit in total (this maybe per title set if you don’t mind extracting the VTS from the VMG elsewhere – perhaps in DVDLab/Pro).

Scripting and end actions might also help – but you might then hit the chapter limit per title set. In this case the still would be a piece of media rather then a menu asset.

Lastly – Pausing forever may upset those with burn-in considerations on their tellies.

[Richard Bartlett]

A file copy from hard disk to hard disk is (using the regular Windows / GUI interface) essentially a mathematical or scientific process. ie Lossless once the process is complete and there is enough space by the time it is about to complete!

Artistic and creative tasks we do in the tools given an in-road to causing loss. However you shouldn’t be seeing them as a result of using Vegas. It is quite possible that you are if you have got something set wrong. The quick answer is to recommend some training books, DVDs or a course. If you don’t disrupt formal training, I’m sure you’ll find folks who will explain why the Avid way isn’t the only or best way.

Which Avid product are we talking about BTW? Otherwise this is like comparing Ford with Chevrolet or GM.

Video editing has never been as straightforward and as easily kitted up for than it is today. However you do need some computer knowledge, perhaps slightly less with a Mac FCP outfit.

If you could spare a moment to explain your acquisition, treatment/edit and delivery format workflow for both your Avid and Sony MediaSoftware – that might help us understand why your moving piccies look better with Avid?

[Richard Bartlett]

The main thing to consider between different vendors, IMHO, is that you are buying into a workflow.
You’d be hard pushed to see a generation loss in any modern semipro or pro editor without doing something wrong. So you should adopt a suitable workflow and test your effort against your own values.

In fact, when folks were moving away from linear (and analogue I/O) editing systems towards NLEs it was taken for granted that digital meant lossless. This isn’t the truth but, again with the caveat I brought in initially, it is near as true as to make no odds.

File formats have virtues beyond the container itself. Nodoby wants to be locked into something proprietary but pretty well all these “freedom” formats have the same limitations as AVI and MOV, often worse.

If you work on your own, then really what matters is your productivity and artistic ability. Unfortunately folks stick with a product with almost the same loyalty as they give a religion. Many of the non-linear editors expect you to work in a linear fashion, playing – stopping – trimming – cutting – splicing – playing. That doesn’t always benefit the fundamental intention of most videos – which is to tell a story.

Fortunately you can trial many vendor products or they have a low cost or free option that can be upgraded to the full pro suite when you are ready (or the full product has a resale value).

Good luck with your choices. The props, shout-outs and problems you see in the forums are good guidance for you when choosing. However there is nothing like giving them (the NLEs) a whirl for yourself.

[Richard Bartlett]

“Realtime capable” and “realtime all of the time” – are attributes of an NLE that are also worth appreciating to a fair depth before you make your choices.

My experience of Vegas with DV and HD is that it can be smooth, it is generally serving for my type of adjustments. However the moment I start chaining FX, resizing and scaling, unless it is DV (so if it is uncompressed D1 4:2:2 AVI, RGB uncompressed AVI, or MJPEG/JPEG2000/wavelet HD) – then at good/best you’ve had it. Frame rates suffer, RAM prerendering starts to enter your workflow. Frankly, I’m impatient and where I’m made to be patient I can find myself making the odd short cut or being lazy. So I adapt my creative ideas around the tools that I can afford. I set my expectations lower than the marketing spiel of the vendor.

Thanks to faster memory and better CPU designs – the bleeding edge of computing makes all of the above more tolerable. However, when comparing editor to editor, do consider that even where there is CPU-offload (GPU, dedicated cards etc) – you almost never see realtime all of the time. (good/best downscaled – fullscale – whatever). Where a system is “always realtime” you have some creative constraints made upon you by that technology. E.g. “just one transitional effect active at one time” , “effect or overlay, not both”, “6 DV tracks or 4 uncompressed tracks on the very latest computers only”, “scaling is coarse and not supersampled”. So you choose what you need.

Vegas scales with a new computer. We may soon see if it also scales with the upgrade to Vista. Only time, or a beta would tell ;). Graphics cards and CPUs do improve at different rates. So I’m actually not that worried if Vegas7 is CPU dependent still. I would hope that it is more efficient, again – time will tell.

Sorry, this is rather a politician’s reply. Hardware for Vegas (such as Decklink) is really about interfacing/enhancement rather than speed. These cards and their Sony/BD drivers are ~unlikely~ to free up the software any more than using VGAoutput on a secondary monitor (or the further compression step to send a render or bitcopy out to DV). YMMV

These days, compared to a lot of the other overheads in running a video centric business – the choice of NLE is far easier to correct than a lot of the other expenditures. Despite that, you can buy Vegas – use or sell it on, or try another. Buy a Mac, try FCP or bootcamp it to run XP and go back to Vegas. The world is your oyster. Do remember about the downsides in the quest to achieve realtime scrub/playback all of the time at max resolution/quality in preview. Vegas used to be one of the best at this on the x86 PC. Perhaps with Vegas7 it will be ahead of all the rest again. Not that I think it is a slouch for the primary/popular prosumer formats….

[Richard Bartlett]

Sorry I wasn’t aware of the forced re-link option. That will be a “stay within the editor” menu/project-reload function. Creating the media in the separate folders (a bit like bins but everyone knows what they are!) will be upto you in your earlier part of the workflow (in Vegas or otherwise).

Vegas does do a good job of conversion to an output format with a different dynamic range, pedestal or DC reference. DV/D1-tapes are 4:2:2 YUV/YUY2 and it sits those pixels nicely into an 8bit RGB space pipeline and back out to 4:4:4:4 BGRA32 if you wish.

However, 10bit RGB or YUV output, or an HDR output would be stretching it’s abilities. There are some hooks for taking an edit from cheap Vegas workstations and doing an abbreviation of what the project might have originally done in Xpri, but I almost nothing about it than that. I’m not sure what that workflow would offer other than added cost to try to escape compromise.

There is always the chance that your production people wouldn’t notice that your work had become 8bit RGB if you convert the final Vegas render using an dynamic range expanding converter into 10bit. The same argument for how Vegas manages DV/D1 for itself given the different pixel container it has to migrate into.

So where are you right now? Are you experienced Vegas editors that want to add this special job using the tools you already know, or are you out shopping for an NLE?

[Richard Bartlett]

Yes mostly. There isn’t an option to “proxy me up” in the menu or the native capture module.

For HD/HDV work tools such as GearShift can be used for those who like to sit at 1000ft whilst the work goes on below.

Otherwise, if you know how to convert the files already, and have both sets available. Windows explorer can do the walking for you. Keep the names the same, and ideally the file extensions and the codec can vary wildly. I suppose this would also be true for stills if the compression ratio/strength was changed drastically between main and proxy.

Anyway, the feature is there at any res supported. Vegas supports 2K 8bit RGBA natively on the pipeline.
You can scale upto 8K 80Mbps (from my recollection) via the provided MPEG-2 codec, fwiw.

[Richard Bartlett]

They lag badly as the long GOP (temporal compression) frames are farmed/piped out for calculation by the codec and then drawn back through this software conduit onto your display or rendered file as if they were natively uncompressed RGBA 8bit sources. This approach uses something approaching or is actually a windows
based resource to achieve this – not sure which of these statements is the most accurate.

I’ve found HDV sources (720p .TRP / .M2T) that I’ve downloaded from early JVC HDV camcorders to play reasonably well on Vegas4 onwards. Scrubbing has been poor, cross hairs on the timecode you want has been delayed, but I’ve found them sufferable. My DI format has been PICVideo MJPEG because I am a cheap-skate and already own a license for it (~$20) that then allows scrubbing and fairly humble or modest CPU/RAM/HardDisk-I/O performance. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to substitute the .M2T files at the end of the work (in proxy fashion) for the final render, if you feel you don’t want the extra generation loss.

It seems that Vegas7 is going to be hand tuned to decode/preview on the fly, perhaps using the same codec but with different optimized interfacing to it. Anyway, the project render times maybe no better, but scrubbing and NLE fluidity is said to be enhanced to the same level you have elsewhere (e.g. Mac FCP).

Whether Vegas7 will be native for MPEG-2 like 6 is for DV and uncompressed – and by that I mean, whether like FCP it has the approach of passing through HDV untouched unless you tough it – who can say?

One day an NLE will allow a macroblock as the smallest unit to assess as to whether it can pass untouched, if it is effectively (within a tolerance %) untouched. It seems an utter shame do have generation loss in digital formats when you have no intention of applying such recompression processing. I suppose it makes the programmers life easier to decomp/recomp everything and a decomp is a given when you want a preview, but my values still stand. Digital editing shouldn’t cause a generation loss unless you are adding something that simply has to apply a recomp.

SmartGOP handling was a copyrighted technology by way of patents held by Pinnacle (now Avid) – however unless the wording of their copyright was different to the DC2000/DC2000DV implementation – it was regarded as little more than a marketing spin and was poor in it’s execution. However, it is possible that some thought has been given to these patents when we have been made to wait to be able to edit anything much more than I-frame-only formats. I’m sure the algorithm in the patent could be avoided by coming at the problem from a different angle. There are numerous ways to skin cats.

All this will come out in the wash when Vegas7 arrives.