Little Help Please?

Socalt

Socalt

New member
I apologize for the lengthy post. I also want to Thank those of you in advance who’ve taken the time to help me on this. I’m new to HD video and all aspects involved with it. I come from Still Photography and I’m quickly seeing the jump into HD video includes a steep learning curve.

Question: Can I watch my VEGAS PRO 8 EDITED HD footage on my HDTV based on my equipment and situations as listed below? And if so what is the best way to accomplish this? Here’s my gear followed by what I need the help with.

Vegas Pro 8 with DVD Architect 5
A Dell XPS420 PC with Windows Vista Premium 32 bit OS, 4 GB Ram and a 2.66 processor with a Bluray burner/player and in the 2nd optical bay sits a CD/DVD burner/player
A Canon XHA1 Hi Def Camera, I shoot HD in 60i
In the living room I have a Sharp 52” LCD HDTV in full 1080P connected to a brand new Panasonic Bluray player that says it plays just about all the formats including DVD’s and even CD’s.

After scouring the archives and gathering as much input as I can regarding my objective I am more confused than when I started. Here is where I’m at so far….,

I’ve captured and edited my HD 60i footage with Vegas, I have all of that (sorta) down so far but now I wish to make a disc (DVD or Bluray) to watch my finished projects on my HDTV using my Bluray player in as high of quality or as near as possible. Should be pretty cut and dry right? Ever see the Disney flick Fantasia where the numbers dance off the page and around the room while Mickey is perplexed and in a daze? Well I can relate. My head is spongy with so much new terminology.

Based on my gear, what are my best options to accomplish this?

I see all kinds of threads about using Regular DVD’s to burn HD video using the Bluray feature in Vegas but you need a PS3 to playback. I see threads about downgrading from HD to SD, I see where you can watch everything from your PC, I see threads that talk about many other things but none relating to my specific situation as of yet. I read a few lengthy threads with problems close to mine but with different playback methods. I See threads that say you can download all kinds of freeware to accomplish this but I wish to use what I have if possible, that being Vegas Pro 8. Can anybody point me in the right direction? What am I missing here? What do I need to do to render to disc, then view my project on my HDTV via the Bluray player I have hooked up to it.

I have not yet tried rendering to an actual Bluray media disc and have not yet bought any blank Bluray media but will if it is my only option. It seems a waste to burn a few 2 minute trial clips on a BD disc. I have tried the various combinations I have read about to render HD onto DVD’s to play using the bluray render in Vegas but they do not play on anything but my PC so far, quite possibly I did something wrong in the render but surely there must be an easier way to accomplish this with the equipment I have?

I can play my footage from the camera via one of the many HDMI inputs the TV has but it is not my edited footage. It looks incredible but again, it isn’t my edited stuff. What about printing my edited project back to tape? This defeats the purpose of Bluray in my eyes. I could sure use some help.

Long story short, all I want to do is watch my edited footage on my 52” HDTV using the gear I have.

Thanks,

Tim
 
Well, you have a couple of options. One would be to go out and buy a BD-RW (Rewritable BluRay disc) that you can use multiple times just for previewing purposes (this is probably the best way to go). Or you could render out the video using the BluRay AVC 8mbps template and then burn that to a standard DVD (in BluRay format, though). Either way, you'll be going through DVD Architect 5 to make the BluRay (it's basically exactly the same as making a regular DVD, you just point to the HD output files instead of SD and set the project settings to BluRay).

If you do decide to go with a BD-RW, you have a couple of options. Vegas comes with templates for either High-Bitrate MPEG-2 or Medium-Bitrate AVC. MPEG-2 will render faster, but will take up more overall space and take longer to burn to a disc. AVC will take longer on the render side, but will have a smaller file. The way the bitrates work out I would think that the quality would be about the same (maybe with AVC having slightly less artifacting). I would stay away from the Burn To BluRay option from Vegas itself as that was mainly designed as a feature for before DVD Architect could author BluRay discs.
 
So that's it huh? Looks like I need to get some media more suited to my needs.
Thanks for the help.
 
Buy a PS3

Buy a PS3

My solution was to buy a PS3. We make feature films, and in my dealings with post-production houses I've seen quite a few do the same thing. With the PS3, you can render to quite a few different formats including WMV, Divx, MP4, all in HD up to 1080p and get perfect playback from external hard drives, flash thumb drives and data DVD-Rs.

Or perhaps your Blu-Ray player can play back some of these. What's the model #? Have you tried pulling up the specs based on the model #?
 
It just seems with all this technology available, watching your edited footage shouldn't be such a hassle.
Socalt
 
Get a re-writable Blu-ray disc. That is the simplest solution for what you want to do with the equipment you have.
 
Vegas has a feature to record back to camera. You should be able to edit and render out to your Canon xha1 and use that as a display device.

Best,
Andy
 
Socalt said:
It just seems with all this technology available, watching your edited footage shouldn't be such a hassle.
Socalt
Click to expand...

I think it's just the opposite; all this competing technology is resulting in such a tsunami of differing technologies, all with a vested financial interest, and none with an interest of coming up with standard, compatible technologies that will make things easier for all content creators and consumers. It's the same thing with many areas of technology, from electronic technologies to music distribution to MP3 players, etc. I have hope that it will shake out somewhat over the next 10 years. That is one thing recessions are good at; it winnows the field.
 
Thanks everybody....

Thanks everybody....

Thanks for the input, has anyone heard of the Western Digital WDTV Player? Supposedly you can hook it to your HDTV via an HDMI cable, then it connects to any usb storage device you have on which you render your vegas projects, this is supposed to enable HD playback in 1080 from what I am told. Just curious as if anyone in my situation is using this. Sounds good for $100 if it does what it says it does.
Thanks Again
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top