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  1. This may sound like a very dumb (and very long) question but---------

    I can capture directly from my high end Sony Hi8's through a Viewcast Osprey 210 video capture card (using virtualDUB) to avi or I can use my Canon xi through the Osprey to avi.

    My question is this, which capture is cleaner or goes through fewer "conversions" (easier to edit?) by the time it is stored on the hard drive?

    I'm asking because, given if both were equal quality (analog Vs digital) which would be easier to edit or give me more latitude in editing capabilities prior to converting to mpeg-2 (TMPGEnc Plus!)?

    Here's my situation, I have 3 high end Sony Hi8 camera's tied together using a single LANC controller and a comon monitor to allow me to do a 3 camera shoot by myself (we are shooting in a very confined area, a puppet stage), works like a charm!

    Or, I can do a single camera shoot, head-on using the Canon xi, a dof adapter, or any combination of all the above.

    I long story but I guess I want to know which will give me the most latitude for editing, does it make any difference and will anyone be able to tell the difference if I use all 4 cameras after editing in Sony Vegas Pro 8 since the end product will be an educational dvd for children viewed on home TV's?

    Regards,
    Jay F.
    Wisconsin
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  2. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    I would question why you would capture through an SD analogue card from a HD digital camera, when you can do a straight digital transfer and preserve the quality through the editing process.
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  3. Yeah, thought about that one after I posted it ! DUH!!!!

    I guess what I am looking for is which process creates the least number of "conversions" during the capture, which captured video will be the easiest to edit and, will any of it matter in the grand scheme of things?

    Just one of those dumb nagging questions that wakes me up at 2am (and makes my wife ready to kill me when she hears the PC boot up down the hall in my "office" !

    Regards,
    Jay F.
    Wisconsin
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  4. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    Personal view : All the major consumer/pro-sumer editors (Premiere, Vegas etc) are designed to work best with DV. HD is getting there, but the miriad of formats makes it hard to make a call, and in most cases you still have to convert to an intermediate format to get the best performance from your chosen editor.

    If your analogue card can do DV encoding on the fly as it saves to your PC, all the better. If not, look to use a lossless compression codec such as Huffyuv or Lagarith when capturing. Keep all digital source digital all the way through the process for maximum quality.

    The only issues with lossless compression is the space it requires - 30GB/hour or more - and possibly processing power, although any recent PC (less than 2 years old) should be able to handle it.
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