Questions about new system, DVCPRO-HD and Raylight

[Pesie]

Hi everybody,

I'm moving from my little workroom at home to and attic-office for my video-work. My video-work is becoming serious business ;-)

I want to do a couple of investments. I'm heading for the Panasonic HPX171 (I'm located in Europe) and want to have a proper PC, using it for editing/dvd-authoring (Vegas, DVD-Architect) only.
Here are my questions:

1. Is a Dell Workstation Precision T7400 with Intel® Xeon X5460 (3.16GHz,1333MHz,2x6MB Cache, Quad Core) with 4 GB of RAM good enough for proper editing power and render times with DVCPRO-HD footage?

2. Which kind of external harddrives should I consider? I'm thinking of external Firewire800 drives, or should I choose eSata sytems? I'm not handy with special hardware, I'm looking for something plug & play.

3. Is Windows Vista with Raylight and Vegas Pro 8 a solid combination? And should I choose the 64 bit version of Vista or not? What about drivers (Matrox) and Raylight? What combination will work and what not.

4. Is the Raylight plug-in just as easy as editing with other formats (HDV, DV) in Vegas? Or does it give you the idea of a 'nice work-around' solution if you don't want to switch of NLE when starting with DVCPRO-HD? Are there limitations, when you work with PAL footage, in 720pN (Native) format with Raylight, or are all modes of the camera supported, including PAL?

[David Jimerson]

1) Yes.

2) Faster is better, but I wouldn't worry about it too much.

3) Should be fine. I wouldn't go with 64-bit yet. Not sure what drivers you mean -- but you do need the Matrox DVCPRO 50 codec.

4) The Raylight plug-in is for Panasoinc P2 support. It doesn't matter with other formats (though you can use it to convert 1080i HDV to 24p Raylight AVI (http://www.dvfilm.com/raylight/raylightTutorial7.htm)). PAL is certainly fully supported, though there was a codec issue with some PAL. I think that's been resolved.

[Pesie]

Thanks al lot, David.
Yes, I meant the DVCPRO Matrox codec. I read that it works with Vista, although it's not officially supported for Vista by Matrox.

Thinking about the 4:2:2 colorspace of DVCPRO50/DVCPRO-HD: when you render your project to MPEG2 for a SD DVD, the colorspace becomes 4:2:0. is there still any benefit in the workflow having filmed the source material in 4:2:2 that you can see that back on the DVD (4:2:0) footage?

[David Jimerson]

The benefit will be clear any time you work with the color, including in color correction and any chroma keying. Plus, a higher color resolution can give you a higher apparent resolution.

[Pesie]

Okay, that's clear. Thanks again, David!

[christianfilmmaker]

Can you use Raylight and Vista 64 bit. I just bought Raylight and thought you could use it. I'm not being very successful right now. I just loaded it though. I just saw this forum entry and thought I'd better ask. If Vista 64 bit does work can anyone tell me if there are additional patches, or codecs that I need to make it work together. Thank you.

Larry

[Efexone]

I'd go with a 64 bit OS and add more RAM - another two 2GB sticks, depending on what config is currently in there. should cost around $200, but its worth it if you want to do heavier tasks such as work with 4k .r3d files or do heavy aftereffects work, or if your a heavy multi tasker like me and want to be able to run 2-4 instances of vegas at a time.

[PerroneFord]

I agree on the 64bit OS. I have it on my laptop and my primary editing machine, and it's quite a bit better. No stability issues either, but I am using XP64 and not Vista.

I also agree about more RAM. I am upgrading my primary editing machine in a couple months, and will probably go to 16GB of RAM. When trying to view smooth previews on Vegas, sometimes the only way is with a dynamic ram preview so the more RAM the better.