I hope you don't mind my taking the liberty to ask you this out of the blue so to speak.

I'm getting ready to do some digital video restoration (something which should be a natural extension of my photo retouch work in Photoshop--hopefully) and I was wanting some advice.

I am using a machine with Win XP Pro which I will finally upgrade to Service Pack 3 this weekend. It has an AMD 3 GB quad core processor, 2gb soon to be 6GB memory, and two video cards running in tandem. I will be doing my editing in Vegas Pro 9 and I was wondering how much HD do you recommend for storage space whilst files are rendering and what are some of the typical times for rendering video? Also are there any other support forums that are good for mining Vegas Pro information besides Videohelp.com.?

Any and all advice appreciated.

Kind regards,
Mark (mjl1297)

Editing in Vegas Pro 9, recommended storage space, typical times for rendering video?
 

I'll chop this up a bit to answer:

No pun intended. :p

Indeed, yes, it will be.

If nothing else, you won't be asking a stupid question like "Where's the restore check box?" From your time in Photoshop, you've surely learned that you'll be using many different filters. Some are in-software, some are third-party plugins. Beyond that, you've probably run into tasks that Photoshop could not do, even with plugins. Hence, you've been forced to use other software. Video is the same.

Your knowledge of stills will assist a bit.

I was restoring photos and audio at least 5 years before I was doing any video restoration. And to me, it felt like a natural extension. It was hard, and requied much learning, but still an extension.

Why? I use SP1 and SP2 for myself. Nothing was broken, no reason for SP3. Indeed, in my years, upgrading service packs often just loused things up. Good luck.

Nice and fast. Most programs can only use 1-2 cores, however. So it may not be quite as fast as you'd hoped.

Unless you're using a 64-bit version of Windows, you won't get to use more than about 3GB to 3.75GB, depending on the exact motherboard. Only 64-bit OS can use more than 4GB of RAM.

Dual monitors, I'm guessing? I've done this, but it mostly just got in the way of work. I'm much happier just using a larger single monitor -- a 22" or 24" LCD.

It really depends on how much video you plan to edit at any given time. My main system has more about 7TB of space. My satellite systems all have at least 500GB of space, and those are small systems, no more than 1-2 projects (just 2-3 videos each, max) at any given time. Even my laptops are working towards 1TB.

That depends on the output formats. For MPEG-2 DVD, maybe 2 minutes for every 1 minute of video. It largely depends on the hardware (drive types, connections), the filters, the source codecs/resolution, and the output codecs/resolution. It's like asking "How long does it take to eat a cookie?" You could end up with a million different answers.

Vegas is pro software. You won't really find too many users at videohelp, as it attracts mostly amateurs. (Not a knock at VH, I'm quite fond of that site, long-time user myself.) This site has some pro users, but most of us have gone the Adobe Premiere route. While I'd like to say "HERE! HERE!" it's really not true right now.

I don't really like the DMN forums, but that's one option: http://www.dmnforums.com/cgi-bin/dis...=0&openclose=1
It's a slow site, and I swear they designed their forums in 1995. It's awful to browser.

Creative Cow has some software-specific forums: http://forums.creativecow.net/
But they also use an ancient forum style that's hard to browse quickly. You'd think with the 3 zillion ads whored out on both side of the screen, not to mention the daily emails, that they could afford to migrate to something coded in this century.

The Sony forums surely have info on Vegas: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/default.asp
Again with bad navigation, however. Only 10 threads per page. Good grief. Ridiculous.

Videoforums.co.uk has a Vegas forum too, but they are mostly unanswered questions. Why? Well, VF has this asinine idea that nobody should post links as answers to threads. They want you to re-type an answer for the person. F- that. I would suggest many people agree with me.

Videomaker has tiny bit of Vegas info: http://www.videomaker.com/community/forums/


I might also mention that Vegas isn't really a tool for restoring video. It has some filters, yes, but many of them can be inferior to even filters found in VirtualDub or TMPGEnc Plus. Vegas is a great editor, of course. Good NLE.


Hope that helps! :cool:

This question was asked in a private message. Rather than hide our tech advice in private conversations, Site Staff will often answer PMs (from any site) here in the digitalFAQ.com forum, so that others may read and benefit from our expertise. Please continue the conversation here. Either login or join as a Free Member, and we can continue troubleshooting your video, photo or web related issue. Thanks for understanding our tech Q&A policies.

I liked the "out of the blue" remark. I must confess that wasn't intentional on my part. Shame really...I was being witty and didn't have the sense to realise it!! :)

Thanks for all the helpful advice. As for the upgrade to SP3 I got tired of Windows pestering me to update. So far all seems to be well.

The two vidcards in tandem is a hold over from my gamer days! The 6 gbs of memory is for a future upgrade to 64 bit Win 7.

Is there a software that you prefer to Vegas for video restoration?

Thanks again!

There is no one tool that does everything. What specific errors are you trying to address?

Principally colour correction (which I know Vegas does) and removing static interference patterns that frequently bedevil old VHS tapes. Those will likely be the major ones and based upon what I've read Vegas seems fairly versatile and the most "Photoshop-like" program I've come across but I freely confess to being a neophyte in the field of video restoration. I'm just ready to pull the trigger on the software acquisition front and I want to be certain that it is as comprehensive a package as possible.

Adobe Premiere is probably more "Photoshop-like" because Adobe makes both of them. This is very true of certain controls, and how they're named. I use Premiere CS3 a good bit, and Levels and Hue/Saturation work pretty much identical to Photoshop.

That said, however, I prefer to use ColorMill inside of VirtualDub. It's better. Both of those are free. When it comes time to edit the video, I export the corrected-in-VirtualDub video as an uncompressed AVI (or HuffYUV AVI). Then I do editing in Premiere with already-fixed video. Premiere is purely used for editing. Vegas is Sony's competition to Adobe Premiere, although I think it's sort of dumbed-down in the GUI/interface. Sony gave it a "candy coating" whereas Adobe products are still fairly utilitarian in the pro versions. (The "Elements" versions are all candy-coated now; they kiddy-fied the GUI.)

Now, just to clarify...

1. Are you looking at getting the professional ~$750 versions of these programs? Or were you looking at the sub-$100 consumer versions?

2. Are you still interested in Sony Vegas, or does Adobe Premiere sound like a more tempting product?

3. Are you a student or educational employee, or were you planning to have a student or educational employee buy a copy for you, using a student discount?

4. Did you have any specific store in mind? Were you looking to buy download versions, or would you be willing to wait several days for a boxes version bought online?

I want to be sure you get the best item at the best price.

For example, this is what (and from where) I would buy: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...3167/KBID/4166

1. Are you looking at getting the professional ~$750 versions of these programs? Or were you looking at the sub-$100 consumer versions?

The professional version--hey, I don't mess around! :D

2. Are you still interested in Sony Vegas, or does Adobe Premiere sound like a more tempting product?

I actually thought about Premiere and I'm certainly accustomed to working with Adobe products. I'm willing to go with either but Vegas was a little cheaper and that was the reason I was leaning in that direction. By my troth, it's the Scotsman in me.

3. Are you a student or educational employee, or were you planning to have a student or educational employee buy a copy for you, using a student discount?

No to this one I'm afraid. I guess I could troll a few college campuses and make some friends for purely mercenary reasons! :)

4. Did you have any specific store in mind? Were you looking to buy download versions, or would you be willing to wait several days for a boxes version bought online?

I'll probably go with download versions. I have so many boxes cluttering the office as it is.

Personally don't like Vegas the videos seems to encode poorly and turn out really bad.

I use movie edit 15 and it has smart render so when I edit the mpeg2 files they turn out really well. Movie edit 16 is only $49.99 when I saw it in the store....

When I used to design textures and graphic design work hated the Adobe program it was a pain to use. Corel Paint Shop Pro for me was so much better and easier to use.....Adobe Premiere? $750 is a lot for software....Don't know maybe you need all the special effects...Neat Video to me is the best thing in the world for cleaning video..Oh my goodness.....

Back to Movie Edit:
You have to get used to some of the quirks in the program but once u do it is really easy to use. For example your audio + video are out of sync you create a new frame table...If the program crashes it save backs ups so u normally don't lose that much work.

I am so in to details that I find things wrong all the time, basically kind of figured out this program and know what settings to use, it took time, but the program itself can do a lot....It is just a tool...

It is great for mixing sound, cutting clips, don't filter anything in the program but u can load in all the virtual dub filters....

deter what version of Vegas were you using? It would seem to me that Vegas would do a better job of encoding than a $50.00 program. I'm not doubting you but that astonishes me.

I went with Vegas Pro 9 myself. I didn't go the Adobe route because Premiere CS5 would have required an immediate upgrade to WIN 7 64 something I'm not ready to do yet. My version of Vegas comes with both the 32 and 64 bit flavours so I can just re-install later when I do upgrade the OS. I haven't had a chance to fool much with the software but I've found quite a few resources to utilise when I get the opportunity--hopefully soon! I will definitely be getting the Neat Video plugin--the Good Lord willing! [8]

@LS

Greetings!
I thought I would bring you current with my situation and ask for a little more advice.

In order to avoid an immediate upgrade to Win 7 64 and the additional expense that would entail, I went ahead and purchased Vegas Pro 9. I haven't had the time to really do much with it yet due to my work schedule but I hope to sit down with it a bit this weekend. As for instructional material, the program itself is rife with tutorials and there are a lot of videos on youtube so I should be covered there...at least for the most part and for the time being.

I haven't gotten the Neat Video plug-in yet but I plan to. I'm rather alarmed though concerning the lengthy render times I've been reading about in the forums. I understand there is a lot of number crunching going on but 20:1 and 30:1 render times shocked me somewhat.
With the render times I'm hearing about I definitely want the end product, when I finally get it, to be top drawer material.

Your thoughts on all of this would be much appreciated.
Kind regards

No problem. I get emails when threads I've participated in have responses. So I generally go back and see what's new in the conversation. I did not, however, see anything unanswered here from my last email. Maybe I missed something?

It's good software. It's going to take a while to learn, as would be required with any professional program, but you'll surely find it's worth it in the long-term.

It really depends on:

• the speed of your computer (number of cores used, if multi-core),
• speed or hard drives,
• if data for read is one different drive from where it's writing,
• amount of editing being done,
• whether the source files are lossy compressed, uncompressed or lossless compressed,
• number of effects and filters applied,
• length of video

Maybe a few more I'm forgetting.

With a heavy filter like NeatVideo or Deshaker, it's not uncommon for a computer to report "35 hours remaining" for a 1-2 hour video. Indeed, it's a lot of processing going on there.