Backing up my captured files

E

engnorway

Member
Hey all, new here and to Vegas but I'm up and running and making tons of progress.

However, I have a total of about 21-22 hours of footage I need to capture and my hard drvie won't hold it all. I can't afford another HD or an external at this time. To clear space I know I can dump all the unused media but I'd like to have it available without having to recapture if I don't need to.

So I was wondering if burning the .avi files to CD or DVD was a smart option. I'd like to have some sort of back up of everything anyway, just because you never know what could happen to the originals. But if I made one CD or DVD for each of my original tapes can I then pop in the CD or DVD to load files into Vegas later so I can save HD space?
 
Re: Backing up my captured files

You can only get about 20 minutes of a full DV-quality .avi onto a standard 4.7GB DVD, and probably not even 3 minutes on a CD. You could do it, but it would take a lot of discs, and I don’t think it would end up being very helpful to you.

You don’t have to capture at full-quality, though. You can capture at a preview quality, which will take less space on your hard drive. Then, when you go to render, you can capture only the footage you need from the tapes. That will save you some space. (Now, I have never done this with Vegas, because I’ve always had plenty of drive space – but I’ve done it with other apps. It’s called using a “proxy.”)

What you don’t want to do is burn a video DVD and try to use it for editing later. Video DVDs are MPEG-2, not DV, and not only is a lot of information lost in the transcode to MPEG-2, it’s also much more difficult to do frame-accurate editing of an MPEG file.
 
Re: Backing up my captured files

Well, you COULD copy avi to DVDs, but a 4.3 GIG DVD only hollds about 20 minutes of DV. Tape is still the most convienient and cost effective way to store your footage.

Gary
 
Re: Backing up my captured files

So I should in fact just pull off any captured footage I know I'm not going to use?

My project is a feature and I prefer to just capture a full tape rather than seek out each scene and capture it.

Thanks guys.
 
Re: Backing up my captured files

Well, with limited space, your best option IS to log your shots and capture only what you need.
 
Re: Backing up my captured files

Ah. I was on the fence about whether Sony Capture could do that (like I said, I've never needed to), and I didn't have it in front of me, so I took the chance and posted.

HOWEVER, you don't HAVE to use Sony Capture; pretty much any other capture program will do, and if that capture software has a low-res option, you can capture low-res proxies using that. Then just re-capture full-res later.

There are several stand-alone capture applications out there, and some are even free; however, at this second, I don't have the names of any. Anyone?
 
Re: Backing up my captured files

I don't really mind dumping stuff after I've captured it, if I know I'm not using it. I just like to have all the takes there so when I'm editing I can play with them and parts of them to find the best cut. I don't really make up my mind about which takes I'm going to use until I've finished editing the scene.

So are there any negative issues with me just capturing a whole tape, editing it and then deleting any media that I'm not using? And when using that feature (delete unused media) does it only dump the clips that don't have pieces being used or does it dump everything not actually on the timeline?

I've got a 200 Gig HD so having maybe 10 hours worth of un edited footage plus my edited pieces isn't a big deal. I just know I won't be able to capture all 22 +/- hours of footage. My first next purchase is an additional HD though.

Thanks for your input guys.
 
Re: Backing up my captured files

You will not be able to delete sections of the captured media without first creating a new file will just that section. That is going to require adequate HD space as yu will need room for both versions, at least temporarily.

Gary
 
Re: Backing up my captured files

Cool. I actually don't want to delete part of a used file as I may go back and need to add or trim stuff. But if it is a full clip that I know I'm not using that's fine.
 
Re: Backing up my captured files

If you enable subclip creation when you're capturing, you should alleviate a lot of the problem. I guess it depends on if you stopped the camera between takes or not as to how well it work for you.
 
Re: Backing up my captured files

Just to avoid confusion, what David means to say is 'scene detection'. Subclips are a different discussion.

Gary
 
Re: Backing up my captured files

The scene recognition is working fine. It breaks all of my takes the way it should, so I'm just going to go through and delete any clips I know I'm not using and just mark them on my log as deleted.
 
Re: Backing up my captured files

Yes, correct. Other apps call it "subclips." Just force of habit. Vegas has different terminology for a lot of things.
 
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