Sony HDV Camcorder (editing software)? Help?

[kurin]

Anyone help, I have a Sony HDV camcorder and want a reliable HDV editing suit (simple to use) I have a Sony Viao with Click to DVD which captures HD but does not allow editing? I then purchased Pinnacle but this is really sticky any not the best (or does it take along time to transfer HD to the HDD?)
I considered buying a apple mac to edit? then Sony released their new viao with blueray writer (trouble is it's the same spec as what I've got but has a blueray drive>>>>TOO ADD>>>> will not play blueray movies and does not have HDCP)
I can see me spending a small fortune on top of the large fortune I've already spent.

Upstairs Sony bravia 32" SKY HD Denon DVD 1920 Yamaha DSP1000 Xbox 360
Downstairs Pioneer 506 SKY HD Pioneer DVD DV-989AVi Harman/Kardon DPR2005 Monitor Audio in wall Gold Speakers.

[fcat]

Sony Vegas 6, hands down, its the dogs nads
regards
si

[senu]

Sony Vegas Movie Studio +DVD (Platinum) : £80

It may only be Vegas 6s' kid brother but it is hard to beat as a starter software.

However Mark (Redsox Mark) and a few others on the Forums have found Vegas 6 very capable and only being a fledging user myself Im not sure how much Movie Studio is unable to do compared to the full version especially in HDV editing
Both products recommend using an intermediate file to ease work on HDV files so though desirable, a "state of the art PC" is not essential
Avid Liquid 7.1 ( which Im rather more adept with than the Vegas Family), is certainly worth considering if you have a machine with a bit of ooomph: for detailed work but for simple editing a p4 2.8, 1G ram is ok)
I do have all 3 programs (and the now less often used Pinnacle studio10) on various machines but time constraints mean Im by no means an expert in any

[bis96gw]

Ulead Videostudio 10+ is definitely worth a look - you can try it before you buy with a trial from their site....

Apple iMovie HD is very easy to use - BUT it takes an age to import HD video, on my wife's ibook G4, it does it in 1/4 time, so 4 times longer than the real time import I can do with videostudio! I believe it is the way imovie converts to an intermediate codec.... If I am working only in DV though, I will use iMovie as preference, as it is very quick to knock out a nice looking production.

[emocean]

What ever software you use make sure that your hardware is up to spec. HD editing takes a massive amount of computing power, minimum system requirements are 2GB of RAM and P4 3.4ghz processor.
I have always found that Pinnacle has a very simple user interface but a complicated update options list and you need all the right updates to get it to run reliably. However it often takes them 2 or 3 months to debug issues on the program. Adobe Premier Pro 2 gets my vote.

[hot-fuzz]

Originally Posted by emocean

What ever software you use make sure that your hardware is up to spec. HD editing takes a massive amount of computing power, minimum system requirements are 2GB of RAM and P4 3.4ghz processor.
I have always found that Pinnacle has a very simple user interface but a complicated update options list and you need all the right updates to get it to run reliably. However it often takes them 2 or 3 months to debug issues on the program. Adobe Premier Pro 2 gets my vote.

I dont believe thats true.

I only have P4 3.2ghz, 1GB RAM and i can encode 20GB of HD material in 1 go with no problems at all.
I am using Ulead VideoStudio 10+ and havent even used the instruction manual yet and am getting cracking results.

There is no right and wrong with software as they all pretty much do the same thing, but there is a diffence in how they do it. The Adobe program is a bit more complicated to use, but can produce professional results, whereas the Ulead is easy to use, but more designed for the home editor.

I am in the latter, and therefore use Ulead VideoStudio 10+ (£53 from Amazon) and have found it excellent.

[spinaltap]

kurin,

If you're considering the Macintosh route I can thoroughly recommend Apple's 'Final Cut Express HD'. This is far more feature rich than iMovie HD.

I use Final Cut Express HD on my Mac Mini - but you'll need a separate large capacity hard drive to make up for the small hard drive on the Mac Mini - but you could consider buying an iMac that has on-board 250Gb hard drive instead.

Don't forget that if you move from the Windows to Macintosh platform the latest Intel processors means that you can run Windows natively on your Macintosh via Apple's free 'Bootcamp' software - so you won't be sacrificing your existing Windows software.

The latest version of Final Cut Express HD is v3.5 and can be typically sourced for £175 (list price is £199).

[redsox_mark]

minimum system requirements are 2GB of RAM and P4 3.4ghz processor.

I agree this isn’t true. What is true, especially with the processor, is faster is better (of course), and a faster PC opens up more options and speeds up render times. But the minimum depends on the software you are using and your workflow. With Sony Vegas, they recommend a 2.8 ghz processor and 512K RAM for HDV. With Vegas at least there is no real advantage of more memory than that; Vegas just doesn’t need/use it.

I use a 1.6 ghz Pentium M laptop with 1 GB of memory.

If you use a DV proxy as your method of editing, then any PC which can edit DV can actually edit HDV.

Comparing Vegas® Movie Studio+DVD Platinum with the full version; you can see the differences here.
http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/pro...FeatureID=8357

Vegas® Movie Studio+DVD Platinum (VMS-P) gives you a large percentage of the full function; and many of the differences in the full version are things most people won’t use. Some of the more common/useful features only in the full version are:

1. Unlimited audio and video tracks (vs. 4 or each on VMS-P)
2. Surround Sound editing
3. ac3 audio encoding

The lack of ac3 is probably the one with the biggest impact for most people… as it means you need to use uncompressed audio, which takes more space. This is only an issue if you are tying to fit a lot on a single DVD (for anything under 1 hour it’s not an issue at all).

I’ve used Vegas for years, and really like it… but for new HDV users I also suggest looking at Ulead VideoStudio 10+. The main advantage of the Ulead solution is it does smart rendering of the native HDV, so the workflow is easier/quicker. With Vegas you can edit native HDV, but it is not recommended, will not smart render, and will be sluggish on even a high spec PC. With Vegas it is best to use the provided Cineform intermediate codec and/or use a DV proxy.

Once you get the hang of it I believe Vegas gives you more power (in terms of features), but the Ulead solution is much easier. A downside is that it doesn’t allow you to output back to HDV tape.

The HDV capturing feature of Vegas isn’t very good though – it doesn’t do scene detection (based on timecode; i.e. create a new clip each time recording is started/stopped), nor does it tell you about dropped frames (until the end!). For that reason I use the free HDV split to capture
http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.htm

Mark

[emocean]

I stand corrected on the system requirements for HD editing. I got those specs from a magazine and it was one of the things putting me off going over to HD as I really did not want to buy a new laptop and camera!
I know it is possible to output from HD cameras in SD and therefore avoid the problem but if it is shot in HD, I want to edit and play it in HD.
I have checked Pinnacles system requirements and it states 1gb ram minimum for HD editing but I want to hear from any one who has actually used it and what their system specs are. The same goes for Premier Pro 2.0 if any one has any first hand experience.
Cheers,
Matt

[senu]

By Pinnacle , I take it you mean Studio 10 +
I do have it ( in addition to the Vegas (TM) Family and Avid 7.1) on 3 systems
1) P4 3.0 Ig ram shuttle 256m graphic agp radeon
2) P4 3.2 1g ram midi tower 128m agp nvidea fx 6600
2) AMD 64 bit 3.8 2G ram pci exp radeon x800
TBH I seldom use Studio now but due to familiarity (and lots of HDD space ) it remains on the systems
I havent noticed a great difference in any of the systems performances but I feel that if benchmarked despite the apparent differences the machines are a much of muchness. Obviously a dual core machine or dual processor would probably offer better comparison
I have no (Personal) knowledge of Adobe Premiere Pro 2 besides seeing it demonstrated recently by Adobe on a top spec machine

[redsox_mark]

Matt,

No problem… magazines often give a simple answer which doesn’t tell the whole story…

Just wanted to make one thing clear – when I said

“If you use a DV proxy as your method of editing, then any PC which can edit DV can actually edit HDV. “

I was talking about editing HDV, not downconverting in the camera.

There are 3 basic ways to edit HDV:

1. Native editing
2. Use an HD Intermediate
3. Proxy Editing

Native editing is editing the MPEG2 HDV directly. Because of the resolution as well as the inter-frame compression and GOP structure of MPEG2, this is hard on a PC… and needs a fast PC. You can do Native editing in Vegas but it isn’t recommended. You can do native editing in VideoStudio, and for that they recommend:

Non-Proxy HDV editing requires
· Intel® Pentium® 4 3.0 GHz or higher with Hyper-Threading technology · Microsoft® Windows® XP (Service Pack2 for HDV camcorder support recommended) · 1 GB of RAM (2GB or more recommended) · 16X PCI Express™ display adapter
(I’m sure it would work on a slightly slower machine, just not be quite as responsive).

Editing with a HD Intermediate (like the Cineform codec supplied with Vegas) involves an additional step to render to this format, which uses intra-frame compression only. You can think of this as a format which is “DV like”, but with the full HD resolution. This is much easier to edit. For this something like a 2.4 ghz P4 processor is enough….. less if you don’t mind the preview not being at full framerate (My 1.6 Pentium M is about the same as a 2.4 ghz P4, and just about copes).

The 3rd option is a DV proxy. Here you render to plain old SD DV and edit that… but then you swap out the DV media for the original HDV media before you render… so you never render from that DV file, it is just there to allow fast editing. In this mode any PC which can edit DV can edit HDV. You can output back to HDV tape and play that (or make a HD DVD if you have a HD DVD player).

If you want to play HDV from a PC, then it depends on what codec you use… but you will need a reasonably fast PC for that (something like a P4 3.0 Ghz).

Mark

[senu]

Mark ,
as usual the answers are never far off

I understand the concept of DV proxy but have never used it: Does it involve 3rd party software if so which and is there as much a space penalty as with cineform? I seem to have heard Gearshift is that it?
The cineform that comes with Movie studio is the same as comes with Vegas: I seem to recall you use a "faster" paid for version??
Many thanx as usual
Senu

[redsox_mark]

I use a 3rd party plug-in for Vegas called “Gearshift” which makes proxy editing easier, but you can do it manually as well. To do it manually in Vegas you right click the clip in the Project Media tab and chose “replace”. That’s fine if you only have one clip… if you have loads of them that’s a pain, and you could get confused which version you have loaded. Gearshift makes all that easy.

A DV proxy will be more or less the same size as the original m2t file… but you need to keep the original as well.. so it doubles the space taken.

The same version of the Cineform codec comes with Vegas and Vegas Movie Studio (Platinum). There is also “Connect HD” which you can buy, but I don’t have that. Connect HD allows you to capture directly to Cineform (the capture program does the conversion), so this saves time.

Mark

[kurin]

Thanks to everyone who replied it has been really useful. Situation to date, I took the plunge a brought me a Sony AR11 S (Blue Ray) first impresions are good and I'll try out the software installed as this should be OK (even if a little complicated). Need to buy some blank blue ray disks now. £2k for a laptop arghhhh its like starting out again with laptops, oh well it's only money and you can't take it with you.

[bis96gw]

Will be very interested to hear what you think of the blueray software/burner....