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Edit Review — Sony Vegas 5.0

Aug 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Steve Mullen

Capable NLE supports a streamlined HDV editing workflow.

In the spring of 2003 when folks began trying to edit HDV, someone made a great discovery. If they used the i.LINK capture application bundled with the JVC HDV camcorder to input MPEG-2 TS (Transport Stream) files, the files could be edited in Vegas 4. The trick was to change the .m2t extension to an .mpg extension. Now the captured clips could be imported into Vegas. Next, by setting the Project to 1280×720 MPEG-2, clips could be trimmed and inserted into a timeline to create an HD movie.

Back then, this seemed like a miracle. The bundled KDDI MPEG Edit Studio Pro LE application could do the same, but it was extremely feature-shy. All other options — Aspect HD, XtractorHDV, and my own HDpartner — employ a more complex process. Either during or after capture, the MPEG-2 TS is converted to intermediate media in order to be edited. Because the KDDI and Vegas solutions don't require a media conversion and instead directly use MPEG-2 TS files, they are considered “native” NLEs.

At NAB 2004 Sony announced that Vegas 5.0 was shipping. For Vegas 4.0 owners (see the Vegas+DVD review in the June 2003 Video Systems), the new release provides many new features alongside its increased capability as an HDV editor. Version 5 introduces an overhaul to the Track Motion tools that enable 3D motion. Now, in addition to moving the Track Motion position box left and right (X axis) and up and down (Y axis), you can also move it toward and away from you (Z axis). The Track Motion window now also distinguishes between camera space (the video Preview window) and object space.

In previous versions of Vegas, one established parent/child relationships between video tracks to implement masking techniques. With Vegas 5, you can control the movement of entire groups of tracks (children) in one operation on a parent track.

Vegas 5 also offers new audio tools. Envelope automation recording enables you to make on-the-fly adjustments to certain settings while you play your project. Vegas records those adjustments and will reproduce them when you play the project.

There's a new 5.1 surround panning mode. By choosing Film mode, the panning method closely emulates the speaker arrangement in a movie theater, thereby giving you a tool with which to create surround sound for video that will be shown in a theater.

Vegas 5 also features improved MPEG-2 encoding. Enhancements include two-pass variable bit rate (VBR) encoding, 4:2:2 High Profile @ Main Level, and Transport Stream support. You are now able to choose between Program and Transport Stream MPEG-2 encoding. As we'll see later, this new capability is the gateway to moving edited HDV productions to a JVC camcorder.

Vegas 5.0 also incorporates another capability that makes it a more complete native HDV editor. You no longer need to change the captured clips' extensions to import them into the editor. However, because no MPEG-2 capture function has been included within Vegas 5, you still need to use an external application. While it's not fancy, the free JVC utility works fine.

After installing the necessary XP drivers, you can capture HD1 (720p30) MPEG-2 Transport Stream files from the camcorder via IEEE 1394 using the KDDI I/O utility. Click the Import button, select an i.LINK device, click Browse and enter the filename. Watch your camcorder's LCD and locate where you want to start the capture. Now click the Start button. During capture, you can neither see nor hear the MPEG-2 media on your PC's monitor. Nor is any timecode captured from tape. When all your clips have been captured, close the I/O utility and open Vegas 5.

If you are a Vegas user, you'll find working with HDV not much different from working with any other media. For those who work with other NLEs, the desire to have a native HDV editing solution has led many to consider moving to Vegas.

How hard will it be for non-Vegas users to edit HDV? My experience says it will be very easy — up to a point. In one work session I easily figured out how to import and trim clips, create a short video in a timeline, and export it to HDV. In a second session, I created a short video with 5.1 surround sound and burned an AC-3 DVD using Sony's DVD Architect 2.0. I also encoded the timeline to a six-channel, high-definition Windows Media 9 file.

Since I could do all this without looking at any documentation, why do I hesitate to claim that Vegas 5 is truly easy to use? The answer has to do with the way Vegas implements audio editing. Most of you know Vegas was developed by Sonic Foundry, the company that developed several very sophisticated audio editing applications. You might expect that with such a strong pedigree in audio editing, the last type of problems I would encounter with Vegas would be audio-editing problems. Unfortunately, it's precisely the application's history that can make audio editing difficult in Vegas 5.0.

For example, if you try to EQ a clip you'll find you can do this only by adding a non-realtime filter. To apply a filter, you must render it. Now assume at some later time you want to make a slight adjustment to the equalization. You'll find the audio clip has no memory of the applied filter. You must delete the rendered file — to recover the original sound — and then re-apply EQ, reset parameters based upon your memory of the original settings, and then re-render.

With Vegas, the preferred way of applying EQ is to use Track FX. Audio editors seem to feel more comfortable with computer editing that closely mimics their multi-track mixers. So when you want to learn how to use the track-based audio editing capabilities offered by Vegas, you'll find you need to understand a mixing console. Unfortunately, the prose of the PDF-based documentation supplied by Sony makes this step difficult. Little effort is made to explain either a function's purpose or the hardware metaphor on which it is based. Concepts like “sends” are used, with their definitions postponed. Looking for a comprehensive overview, I found only a full-page schematic — with no text — of the audio mixer model implemented within Vegas.

At a minimum, to use Vegas, you'll need learn a new editing vocabulary. Clips are “events”; changing an audio (or video) level means creating an “envelope.” Because I expect that many who come to Vegas 5.0 will not want to climb this steep learning curve in order to edit HDV, I'll provide an overview of the editing process.

Begin by creating a new Project. Choose “HD 720-30p (1280×720, 29.970fps)” using the Video tab. Via the Audio tab, select a “Stereo” rather than a “5.1 Surround” project. (Set the number of stereo busses to zero.) Now arrange the editing GUI so all these tool windows are open: Explorer, Trimmer, Media Pool, Video FX, and Media Generators. Add the audio Mixer-VU window to the arrangement. Next, add a few video and audio stereo tracks to your project.

Import your HDV clips (whoops, “events”) by using the Vegas Explorer to find the folder containing the captured files. Enable single-click preview by enabling Auto Preview. Now each time you click on a file, the contents will be previewed automatically.

In the Options > Preferences menu, make these settings: enable “Double-click on media file loads into Trimmer” and “Automatically save Trimmer marks and regions with media files.” Optionally enable the “Draw waveforms” function.

To trim media, simply double-click a file and it will appear in the Trimmer window. You can play/pause media, as well as use the Shuttle slider. The ability of Vegas to mimic an analog tape recorder's variable-speed playback is nothing short of amazing. (The Shuttle also works for the timeline.) You can mark in and out points by pressing I and O, respectively. Because of a bug, to define a “region,” the out point must be set when media is not playing. (Unfortunately, no Mark In or Mark Out buttons are available in the Trimmer window.) When trimming to sound, you can drag in a waveform to define a region. (Right-click on the Trimmer window to select an Audio-only or a Video-only region.)

To move a media region to the timeline, you can drag the region to its location in the timeline. Alternately, click in the track where you want to place the event. Now click the Add from Cursor button to move the media.

Within a timeline you can edge-drag any event and see the trim point change in the Preview window. You can also alter the cut point between two events by dragging the cut point while holding down CTRL+ALT.

Creating a J- or L-cut is awkward with Vegas. Begin by click-enabling Ignore Event Grouping to unlock audio from video; drag the audio cut point while holding down CTRL+ALT; lastly, click-disable Ignore Event Grouping. Why not a simple modifier keypress while dragging an audio cut point?

You can also drag events within or between tracks. If you drag any event over another, an “auto-envelope” will be created. I love this function for two reasons. First, when one has precisely trimmed events to reflect their starting and ending frames, overlaying clips — either within a track or within A/B tracks — is the most logical way of adding a transition. One never has to fear generating an error when one later applies a transition. One such error is when a clip's tail is unrolled within an effect and something you intentionally trimmed away is unexpectedly revealed. Another all too common error — the frustrating “Not enough media to make the transition” warning message.

Right-clicking on the transition envelope leads to two interesting options. First, you can easily choose one of 20 outgoing and incoming dissolve shapes. Second, you can bring up a list of over 20 other transitions. Once selected, enter transition parameters and, optionally, set keyframes.

You will love Vegas if, like me, you prefer making transitions through differential-rate fade-ins and fade-outs. Event edges have a tiny tab that you can drag to create an instant video or audio fade. Right-click on the created envelope and you can select one of five fade shapes.

To add a video filter to an event, simply open the Video FX window and drag the desired filter to an event. (Alternately, right-click on a clip, select Video Event FX, and choose a filter.) Immediately a parameter window opens in which you can add additional filters, reorder the chain of applied filters, adjust filter parameters, and place keyframes. Each video event has a cross symbol that you click to reopen the filter chain. (A box symbol on each video event allows immediate access to the Motion Control functions.)

You can add realtime titles easily by using the appropriate Media Generator. Then, drag the beginning and end of the title event to apply super-in/out effects.

To alter audio gain and video opacity, place your cursor at the upper edge of a track and drag downward. Unfortunately, you cannot directly set nodes, so the adjustment is for the entire clip. To place nodes, so that you can rubberband video or audio: click the track's red Track Animation symbol, check Show Animation Controls, and select Automation Write. Place the cursor at the time at which you want a node, and slide the track's video Level or audio Volume slider down to set a node at the desired level. Repeat to set more nodes — or drag the slider while the timeline plays. Alternately, right-click on a rubberband to set/delete nodes. Sony should implement the far quicker-to-use rubberband functions implemented in Premiere 6.5.

To EQ a track in realtime: drag in the timeline to set a region, enable Loop Playback, start playback, and then click the green cross (Track FX) on an audio track. As the loop plays, make adjustments as needed.

Using a Dell 9100 notebook with a 3.2GHz Pentium 4, 1GB of RAM, and a 7200rpm drive, I was able to play 1280×720 MPEG-2 very smoothly at 29.97fps. Adding a color correction filter caused a very slight decrease in playback speed. Placing a 3-second dissolve caused playback speed to briefly dip to about 8fps at the middle of the effect. So while single-stream HDV playback is realtime, a change to dual-stream video prevents realtime playback. If you need perfect multi-stream playback, you'll need to render — either via requesting a region render or by requesting a Preview from RAM.

To export an HDV file, issue File > Render As and select MainConcept MPEG-2 for the format. Choose the HD 720-30p template and click the Custom button. Change the template name to “HDV 720p.” Next click the Video tab, set a Constant Bit Rate, and enter 15000000. Now click the Audio tab and set the bit rate to 384. Last, click the System tab and change Stream type to “Transport.” For System bit rate, uncheck Auto-Calculate and enter 19400000. Immediately click the Save Template button to save your new template. Now enter a filename and click OK.

The exported file can be sent, using IEEE 1394, to an HDV camcorder. Open the KDDI I/O utility, click the Export button, select an i.LINK device, and click the Browse button. Choose to see All Files and select the HDV file. Now locate where you want to start recording and click the Start button.

I created a 4.5-minute sampler video with a few simple transitions. The export process took 10 minutes. I created a very similar HDV segment in MPEG Edit Studio Pro LE and found exporting an MPEG-2 TS file took only about 3 minutes. If both NLEs are native, why such a drastic difference in export time?

The simple explanation is that Vegas re-renders every frame from six-frame GOP HDV to 15-frame GOP HDV. Decoding HD-resolution MPEG-2 and recoding it requires a powerful computer. And, even with a 3.2GHz processor, it requires a lot of time. The fact that Vegas forces a recode for every frame means that even a cuts-only timeline involves an export penalty.

Adding HD-resolution video filters adds even more computing time. I added a filter to every clip and then re-exported. The time required jumped to over 16 minutes. If one could apply video filters using MPEG Edit Studio Pro LE, I expect export would jump to that required by Vegas. Simply put, long-duration video filters require long export times.

Vegas 5.0 is a wonderful, low-cost (MSRP of $699.95) solution for native editing of HDV. It would be an even better solution if Sony added support for the application of realtime filters to audio events using the same mechanism as is now used for adding filters to video clips. This improvement, a few enhancements to simplify trimming and rubberbanding, plus the ability to burn a no-menu, AC-3-encoded widescreen DVD directly from a timeline without needing Sony's DVD Architect — all would likely make me a convert.

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BOTTOM LINE

Company: Sony Pictures Digital
Madison, Wis.; (608) 256-3133
www.sony.com/mediasoftware

Product: Vegas 5.0

Assets: Simple workflow for editing HDV; Track Motion enhancements enable 3D motion; new 5.1 surround panning mode.

Caveats: Non-standard terminology, inadequate documentation, and conventions borrowed from audio editing contribute to learning curve.

Demographic: Those who want to edit HDV natively.

Price: $699.95

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.