Best importing/encoding practice for MiniDV footage?

[daveyb]

Hey all, in a bit of a quandary here - I'll try and keep it as simple as possible. I film skateboarding with a Canon XM1 MiniDV camera, capture the tape through another camera using firewire and Scenalyzer to .avi files. With the nature of what I'm filming, I have to sort the footage into separate clips and that's where I run into issues on the best way to handle it. Currently, using Sony Vegas I will select the region I want as a single clip, export it as a lossless AVI and then encode it using Handbrake to an .mp4. I use Handbrake to deinterlace the footage, and then put it on a 720p timeline without changing the dimensions of the footage so I can somewhat upscale it for YouTube.

Is this the best way to go about it? The info of using Handbrake before getting to the editing phase was passed onto me by a guy who also shoots SD footage, and his results are great, however I'm open to any advice or suggestions for the best way to handle it, deinterlacing, etc. Thanks.

[smrpix]

There is no single right way to do this, but based on your description here's what I would do differently.

When you make your marks in Vegas, save your marked segments as subclips -- no encoding required.
Edit your sublclips into your desired sequence. Only reason to go 720p rather than keeping it 480 is if you are adding graphics that you want at the higher resolution. If you do use 720p, use it at double the frame rate of your DV footage (i.e. 59.94 or 50) this will effectively take care of your deinterlacing.
Then export to YouTube.

You've saved the disk space of a lossless AVI and the quality loss of the .mp4 and simplified your process.

[DB83]

Two things I do not understand prior to the editing stage.


1. Why are you transferring the footage 'through another camera'. Surely you can use the first camera.
2. Why don't you transfer the footage in sc-live as clips ie every time the camera starts rather than, if I read you correctly, as on a full tape basis. Would that not make your selection process even easier ?


Agree with the above. I see no purpose in exporting to lossless since you are doing no editing at that stage and handbrake re-encode from that in the .mp4. And there will be yet another encode when you import back into Vegas given that you are upscaling.

[daveyb]

Thankyou for the responses. I was told that Handbrake would offer better deinterlacing options over what's currently available in Vegas, so my idea was I could do the lossless exports for single clips as I couldn't figure out a better way to extract certain segments from clips. For some context, some of the footage wasn't captured by me so I have some hour long avi files, and the ones I have captured myself through sc-live are separate clips. In hindsight I think I'm going to recapture those tapes properly, as evidently my process is considerably convoluted for what I'm actually trying to achieve. I had no idea about subclips in Vegas either, so thankyou for that.

I use a secondary minidv camera to capture all the tapes which is a pretty common practice in the skateboarding world, mostly to save wear on the filming camera's heads - basically a cheaper alternative to a tape deck. Whether or not this makes a significant difference to head lifespan I don't know, however as strange as it sounds we have an odd fascination with older cameras (sony vx1000 specifically, but there's a few other revered cameras in the mix), so keeping them in good condition for as long as possible is always a plus.

Again, thankyou for the input.

[smrpix]

I have some hour long avi files, and the ones I have captured myself through sc-live are separate clips. In hindsight I think I'm going to recapture those tapes properly, as evidently my process is considerably convoluted for what I'm actually trying to achieve. I had no idea about subclips in Vegas either, so thankyou for that.

There are a number of ways to use subclips to break down and organize your longer files into useable chunks. As long as there were no technical issues with the original capture there is no need to recapture. DV is DV.

Best of luck.

[dellsam34]

720p is a wrong choice, No panels left that can do 720p natively anymore, Your HD TV will upscale it again to 1080p resulting in a double upscale. Either leave it at 480i (576i) or upscale it to 1440x1080.