When should I edit

[ROBO1964]

OK, I am familiar with editing video clips and I use Vegas Video 3.0 which is a professional editing program.

My question is this.

Should I capture the video in avi and then edit and then encode to mpeg.

OR

Should I encode to mpeg and then edit.

Which way would give me the best results? From my understanding of the software is that it would only need to encode the transitions and edited parts and is suppose to have their own codec for doing that to maintain high quality.

[BJ_M]

mpeg is a lossy format .. since vegas video re-renders your final output you would want to start with a non compressed or less compressed format than mpeg ... vegas does a good job of handling mpeg2 but you would get better results w/ starting from either uncompressed avi or a lossless compressed avi (like huffyuv) .. vegas 3.0 encodes to mpeg2 w/ main concept encoder - - i would render your final movie to avi and use tmpgenc or CCE to do the encoded work but comparing between the two would be interisting ...

vegas video 2 used go-ligos technology and codecs for both handling mpeg2 and encoding to mpeg and vegas 3.0 uses Main Concept ... i wonder if anyone notices which is better? i understand they switched because of cost more than anything but the Main Concept technology is in a lot of lower cost editing programs.

[BJ_M]

...................From my understanding of the software is that it would only need to encode the transitions and edited parts and is suppose to have their own codec for doing that to maintain high quality.

no --- vegas re-renders the whole thing regardless of the sources -- one of the reasons you can mix the type of sources (have divx, uncompressed avi , mpeg2, mpeg 1, interlaced, non interlaced, etc) on the timeline ...

[ROBO1964]

How is Vegas Video 3 at encoding an mpeg when compared to TMPGenc?

[BJ_M]

i dont own 3 -- but i do own 2 .... tmpgenc does a better job ..

you can get a free demo of 3 .. but it doesnt come with the mpeg2 addon which you must get seperate .. so i can not tell

[Mirror_Image]

Should I capture the video in avi and then edit and then encode to mpeg?

Yes.

[Deisel Weisel]

A quote from a VV3 review in Computer Video (UK mag)..

"The quality of DVD output is good even compared to the TMPGEnc stand-alone encoder we have regularly recommended to readers. However, the MainConcept codec doesn't do as good a job for MPEG-1 output as TMPGEnc - though it is faster"

Talking of loss-less capture, many here talk of the huffy-thingy codec, but as I (as newbie) understand it, DV format is loss-less too, and perhaps the best suited format for editing??

[BJ_M]

dv is only lossless when its kept in the digital domain .. but yes DV editors are very popular now .. To realize the full quality potential offered by DV, your editing system must share a common bitstream with your DV camera and VTR. Ideally, you record DV in your camera, then digitally transfer your DV material via a 1394 interface to your editing system in the materials native format. This way, you avoid recompression passes that degrade the quality of your video when you convert to an analog source.

my beef w/ DV, more than anything, that i dont like thats its 4:1:1 but other that that its great ..

it is also very fast editing. but vegas is not set up for true DV editing in the digital domain (at least dont think so - maybe 3 is)

[BJ_M]

http://www.mverse.com/immagini/dvstormtech.pdf

[ROBO1964]

vegas Video 2 got wishy washy reviews. but Vegas Video 3 got glowing reviews as it seems they read the reviews of 2 and fixed all the beefs with it.

They are generally saying its as easy to learn as Premier but has the power and advatages of Medias Studio Pro. I must admit from using various carppy products its very sweet. Its easy to use but at the same time you can do anything you want if you know how. Plus you can link sound forge to it as the sound editor if you want. I know VV3 does do DV now as I saw that in the menu of saving options.

One thing I saw to day which made me wonder. Pinnacle DV Studio 7 (not sure if thats the exact name) claim on the box I was reading today that they can save 1 hour of DV video in 384MB where most programs need 14GB. I know 14GB is accurate so how are they getting it so small?

[BJ_M]

well i like 2 well enough .. maybe i'll spring for 3 ... its a good program for sure ... i use speedrazor 2000x w/ my reeltime nitro system but vegas is great for mixing stuff up and very fast at audio sync'ng .. though of course non real time rendering like on the speedrazor system seems real slow .. but vegas is pretty quick ... takes about 1 1/2 hour render to avi huffyuv for a 10 minute clip with 6 timelines of audio and 4 timelines of video at all highest settings and plenty of transitions .. with a source mix of compressed and non compressed clips of all sorts .. includes several filters also -- that is not bad speed ...

i am NOT a fan of adobe premiere -- but i hear 6.5 is supposed to be great ..

in-sync blade is also a great program (on paper) ... i just got a demo of it and it seems excellent looking at the specs (i havnt tried it yet) .. rather like vegas

[ROBO1964]

Well the thing that made me spring for Vegas Video 3 is spending an hour trying to trim a video because of the most un-user friendly interface I have ever seen in another program. So I did searches and looked at reviews and didn't really consider it but its name kept comming up so I decided to look and see what the fuss was about.

It is very nice, I managed to edit the previous clip the exact way I wanted to in about 5 minutes. The thing I like is all the editing is non destructive as some programs have deleted files on me making me go and get another copy.