Vegas 8 Professional

[Judy]

Greetings,

Well, as you know, I now have my HV20 new camcorder and have been playing around trying to figure out the best software to use for editing footage from it. Adobe PE3 doesn't recognize it when it's hooked up to the computer for capture. On the HV20.com website, people seem to tout the ease of capture and editing of Vegas 8 Professional. What do you think? Have you ever used it? It's not mentioned here at all...

Thanks.

Judy

[Steve Grisetti]

Vegas (both the professional and Studio version) is one of the most stable editors I've ever used. In fact, if it had the features Premiere Elements has, I'd still be using it.

If you like the way the interface functions, you'll definitely be pleased with its performance.

[Chuck Engels]

I capture with the HV20, no problem. How do you have it set up in Device Control?

[Ken Jarstad]

I absolutely love my HV20. The menu system takes awhile to get used to and is somewhat bewildering in complexity. I never go anywhere without the printed manual. Sometimes at home I'll open the .pdf version in order to search by key word. "DV-locked" will get you DV from your HDV tapes.

After my first project I fiddled around for nearly a week trying to edit in HDV format but gave up, for now, and downloaded in DV to PrEl v2. The project looked like it was shot by a pro camcorder - the detail was impressive. And viewing the DVD on an LCD panel via an upconverting DVD player connected by HDMI, the project automatically displayed full-screen and looked better than any std-def home made DVD I had ever seen.

Elements v2 supports HDV editing if you get the MainConcept plugin. I downloaded it but it would not install correctly on my system. MainConcept has not been very helpful. Elements v3 and v4 support editing HDV. There have been a number of topics about that posted here.

[Paul LS]

I use Vegas Pro 8 for all my HDV work. I also still use Premiere Elements for a lot of the content that I transfer to Vegas for final production.

I am not sure if I agree with Steve on his comment on the functionlity of Vegas, there are a lot of features that make it a much "fuller" editor than PE. It has quite deep animation features more akin to After Effects, the 3D and 2D work spaces are quite powerfull. And there are a lot of features that you do not realise are there until you dig deep. However it has a totally different work flow to PE. If you are used to PE it will be difficult to change to the Vegas workflow. I have been stuggling with it for weeks now. But the deeper I dig the more features I discover.

The thing that finally sold me on Vegas was the smart rendering for long GOP MPEGs... so HDV files do not need to be rendered and so maintain their quality.

[Steve Grisetti]

You're right, Paul. Comparing Vegas to Premiere Elements is apples to oranges.

I was thinking of Vegas MovieStudio, the consumer version of Vegas and much more comparable to Premiere Elements.

[Judy]

'The thing that finally sold me on Vegas was the smart rendering for long GOP MPEGs... so HDV files do not need to be rendered and so maintain their quality."

OK, so now you're getting to the part that I am most confused about. I now have this HD camcorder, and I would like to be able to maintain the highest reasonable quality of the captured and edited video. What software is the most reliable in capturing this high quality video, and also in editing it? I understand that using the Program functions on the HV20 can improve results over the straight "auto," but I am so mixed up about 24p and what that means in terms of capture and editing I can't even express my confusion!

Any thoughts to help me out here?

I need to sort out what settings to use on the camera BEFORE we leave for our Culinary Tour of India on January 11th.

I appreciate your suggestions.

Judy

[Paul LS]

24p mode is intended to mimic that mythical beast.... the "film look". However at just 24 frames per second your filming becomes more sensitive to movement and you need to be fairly skilled to get good results. Someone summed it up in another forum... "It was only 24 because that was the cheapest amount of film to run through the projector and still get decent fluid movement"

Regarding quality and editing. It really comes down to how you will present the finished video. If you intend to display as high definition how will you deliver it? If you will initally burn a standard DVD and then in the future when the technology is more mature deliver in high definition then one work flow is to shoot NTSC 29.97fps in HDV. Then downconvert in the camcorder, capture and edit in DV-AVI in Premiere Elements. Then in the future you can re-edit in HDV. However you will be editing twice... once for SD and once for HD.

Alternatively shoot HDV, edit HDV and export as standard definition for now. However Premiere Elements is not very good at doing the downconversion... so the standard definition video will not be as good as if you downconverted in the camcorder.

Thirdly, if you intend to view in high definition now, as i do, then I would recommend an editing software with smart rendering... for example, Sony Vegas for "in depth" editing or Ulead VideoStudio 11+ for some light editing.

[Rockdoc]

After reading this thread, I have a question (which may have already been answered elsewhere - if so, I apologize)...

How does Premiere Pro stack up on the HDV editing?

[Paul LS]

Similar to DV-AVI... Premiere Pro and Elements handle HDV the same way. I have heard a few comments that the latest Pro CS3 version does a better job than the older Pro 2 in downconverting to standard definition. And neither Pro or Elements have smart rendering, so an exported HDV MPEG2 (CBR 25MB/s) would look the same when exported from either. Not that it is bad... one generation of re-rendering from Pro or Elements looks good... but not as good as when using smart rendering.

[Judy]

It is sounding to me that I would be wise to invest in Vegas 8 Professional, now that I have the HV20.

Will you guys be able to give me a little hand-holding when I get around to editing the upcoming India trip?

Judy

[Paul LS]

Before you buy it I would download the trial version and see how you get on with it. As I say it is very different from Premiere Elements. If you are used to the Premiere Elements workflow you will need to invest some time in getting to grips with Vegas.
No problem with the hand holding though...

[Judy]

That sounds like a good idea. I won't be ready to edit for a few months...heck, I'm not even going on the trip until January 11th.

I am going to post a question in the camcorder section about the best settings for this camcorder for the trip. I'm somewhat confused about whether to put it on AUTO or on Program with the AE setting.

Judy

[Paul LS]

Ken discussed some settings for the HV20 in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=505&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=30