Simple Vegas 7 Workflow?

[pastorsoh]

I have the slightest idea on how to do this thing.
I don't want to do anything fancy but just to import the clips, edit them little bit, and export it to DVD.

Here's what I did...

1) Use HDV import to get the scenes...

Then... I am sure why but all the clips were choppy. I looked at the 'dropped frame' when importing and none were dropped. Yet the resulting files were non-usable.

Q1. Is it just because I was looking at a preview?
Q2. Was it because my computer was too weak to process images? (I have 2.4 GHz with 1.5 Gb memory, plenty of HD)
Q3. Is there a specific format that I need to import the tape in? (NTSC format, High Definition)

Q4. Is there a simple workflow laid out somewhere in this forum? I tried to find one but couldn't.

Thank you very much.

[DigiDis]

What you could do is sign up for Lynda.com for a month and go through the Vegas 6 tutorial. It helped me a good bit to get my bearings with Vegas. There are also instructional DVDs from Vasst But I havn't tried them personally. All in all it is a simple program when compare to the other editors like Premiere Pro which I currently use.

[veg]

Which preview setting are you using?.
Should be 'Preview auto'. (Top of preview window)

[veg]

DigiDis?.

"There are also instructional DVDs from Vasst But I havn't tried them personally."

....then may I ask?...... how you came to the conclusion that...

"All in all it is a simple program?."

[24Peter]

Well for starters, for smooth playback, you want your "project properties" to match your imported video (although Vegas allows you to mix all kind of video on the same timeline.) If you're capturing HDV from your HV20 go to File>Properties select "HDV 1080-60i". Then as was mentioned, play with the preview settings. Go to your preview window and along the top edge there is a drop down arrow for different preview quality. Try some of those ("draft-auto" should give you the smoothest playback albeit at a low resolution). If you're still having problems, check the Sony Vegas forum for tips on improving playback/previews.

[DigiDis]

DigiDis?.

"There are also instructional DVDs from Vasst But I havn't tried them personally."

....then may I ask?...... how you came to the conclusion that...

"All in all it is a simple program?."

I learned video editing with Premiere Pro 2 and I must admit I have almost 10 years of experience with audio editing on timelines. Premiere Pro is a great program but it is not so easy to just drop in some files and whip up an edited piece. Again, I had to do the training at Lynda.com to get my bearings and still had a learning curve to overcome.

When I got my first HV20 my current Athlon 3200+ machine was struggling big time with HDV inside of Premiere. Reading all the comments on this forum about how everyone prefers Vegas and it is much more user friendly and hardware friendly, I recently decided to download the Vegas 7 trial and give it a whirl.

Coming from Premiere I immediately noticed that Vegas was more intuitive for basic editing like doing crossfades and such. I then followed the Vegas 6 training at Lynda.com and right after I was able to do everything I did in Premiere but the workflow just seemed more streamlined and logical. And vegas is more "forgiving" and flexible for slower computers with HDV.

As an aside, I gave up and ordered a new computer based on the Intel 6600 which should be fine for HDV editing with Premiere, but my experience with Vegas 7 was so good that I will probably buy V8 as soon as I can. There is nothing I can't do in Premiere, and I fell in love with the pan/crop tool for its ability to zoom in and pan around HDV without any quality loss on an SD timeline.

So, after a couple of hours of training I was able to crossover to Vegas from Premiere. In that regard I consider Vegas more "simple" to come to grips with than other editors such as Premiere. So, all NLEs are complex pieces of software, but I find that with a little initial help Vegas seems to be the easiest to get up and running with. YMMV.

The main point of my initial response was that for someone who has no experience at all, there are excellent online training resources that cost very little and I stand sure that anyone who does the Lynda.com Vegas 6 training will have no trouble getting going with Vegas 7 or Movie Studio 8 from Sony. There is also TotalTraining.com which is another great online resource. I bought their After Effects 7 training series and they were awesome.

[DigiDis]

DigiDis?.

"There are also instructional DVDs from Vasst But I havn't tried them personally."

....then may I ask?...... how you came to the conclusion that...

"All in all it is a simple program?."

By the way, I think you misunderstood my response due to a typo. I did not try the Vasst DVDs although I read in another forum that they were very useful. I have some experience with Vegas 7 from a trial that just expired and I was able to get everything I normally do in Premiere done with Vegas in less time and less frustration. The learning curve didn't seem as near deep as the Premiere curve. YMMV.

[Jake Ironshirt]

As an aside, I gave up and ordered a new computer based on the Intel 6600 which should be fine for HDV editing with Premiere, but my experience with Vegas 7 was so good that I will probably buy V8 as soon as I can.

I would be very interested in how your Q6600machine works with HDV and Vegas software.

[irrbloss]

Sorry if I'm hijacking this thread, but what export-settings do you recommend in Vegas? I want to render 1080i as 720p and get good quality but not huge file sizes. I guess h264 is the way to go, but what bitrate and other settings works best? Which fileformat works best? Quicktime, AVI or WMV? I want to be able to share my HV20-videos over the net and get a good balance between retaining as much image quality possible and keeping down the filesizes.