Please Critique my Workflow

[SDub]

Hey guys!

Long time lurker, first time poster. I recently did an interview of one of my friends on his drumming hobby and I found myself tripping over the workflow a bit. I'd like to lay mine out for the chopping block, and see what you guys think.

1. Imported .mov (Canon t2i) files to secondary storage drive via SD card reader.
2. Import footage into Vegas Pro 12 as full clips, replace scratch tracks w/recorded audio.
*NOTE: I did not transcode these files. My PC has no problem playing this back at full resolution on a video player and in the editor. I also believe that Vegas works/edits in a 4:2:2 color space, so no transcoding needed (right?).
3. Cut and place video files in Vegas where I want them to be for the final video.
4. Export the footage as an EDL .txt file to After Effects.
5. Color grade/composite in AE.
6. Render losslessly in AE.
*This is the part I want help with. This 2.5 minute video took FOREVER to render out. Partially because there were a ton of tracks and partially because of all the added effects. I need help especially here!
7. Render to a compressed supported youtube/vimeo format in Vegas.

This seemed a bit tedious. Any suggestions? Thanks!

 

[M. Gilden]

Hey guys!

Long time lurker, first time poster. I recently did an interview of one of my friends on his drumming hobby and I found myself tripping over the workflow a bit. I'd like to lay mine out for the chopping block, and see what you guys think.

1. Imported .mov (Canon t2i) files to secondary storage drive via SD card reader.
2. Import footage into Vegas Pro 12 as full clips, replace scratch tracks w/recorded audio.
*NOTE: I did not transcode these files. My PC has no problem playing this back at full resolution on a video player and in the editor. I also believe that Vegas works/edits in a 4:2:2 color space, so no transcoding needed (right?).
3. Cut and place video files in Vegas where I want them to be for the final video.
4. Export the footage as an EDL .txt file to After Effects.
5. Color grade/composite in AE.
6. Render losslessly in AE.
*This is the part I want help with. This 2.5 minute video took FOREVER to render out. Partially because there were a ton of tracks and partially because of all the added effects. I need help especially here!
7. Render to a compressed supported youtube/vimeo format in Vegas.

This seemed a bit tedious. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Yes, this is a bit tedious. Here's a few things to take into consideration:
You are correct that Vegas works fine with the footage straight out of the camera- other editors don't like working with native footage, and sometimes even introduce poor color resampling that will crush the extremes before you get to edit. But since you are only using Vegas to export an EDL, why does that matter? You are taking those same source clips and loading them into AE, so it's Adobe's software that you need to worry about transcoding for!

That being said, assuming you are using a modern version of AE, it should handle the footage fine. I have personally found that when chroma keying footage, a transcode from DSLR footage using 5DtoRGB makes the edges a bit cleaner in AE, so there may still be some color resampling that could be improved- but in general the difference is so minuscule that I don't bother unless I'm having a problem. Native footage, except in extreme cases, should really be ok in AE 5.5 and newer.

Now, as I understand it, you are rendering your finished comp out of AE, and then using vegas as a transcoder at the end of the pipeline. Why? Why not use Adobe's export to mp4 instead of Sony's? In my experience, Adobe has a much more robust encoder than the one in Vegas, but to be fair I haven't used Vegas 12. If you don't like Adobe's encoder, there are better ones out there (handbrake, virtualdub, etc), but Vegas wouldn't have been my suggestion honestly.

So really, if you want to edit in Vegas and color in AE, I'd at least change it to:
1. Import footage into Vegas Pro 12 as full clips, replace scratch tracks w/recorded audio.
2. Cut and place video files in Vegas where I want them to be for the final video.
3. Export the footage as an EDL .txt file to After Effects.
4. Color grade/composite in AE.
5. Render to Youtube/Vimeo compatible format in AE
6. Play minecraft with all that extra time you've earned.

But, honestly, I'm not much of a colorist. When I've worked with people who are, we've done the whole thing dynamic link style, where I'd edit in Premiere, he'd color in AE, and it would dynamically update back within my Premiere timeline automagically when he was done. That seems like the most efficient way, but then you're not using Vegas. And honestly, I like Vegas for speed edits. It's fast and efficient, and really has some decent tools built in that Premiere doesn't.
Between you and me, I've heard some people say that Premiere isn't a complete package without AE, and that since Adobe has AE available in their suite they don't bother putting in tools that are as powerful directly in the editor. Since Vegas doesn't have a tool like AE to compliment it, they have to include more tools under the same roof. In other words, while AE is more powerful than Vegas' capabilities, you don't *NEED* After Effects as much as you would when working strictly with Premiere.

So this is what I do personally, as someone who prefers Vegas:
1. Import footage into Vegas and edit
2. CC using Vegas plugins
3. Any clips that need cleaning up, coloring that is outside of Vegas' capability or effects like Chroma Key, etc, are imported into AE and done individually
4. Export special clips from AE as Cineform codec (more manageable than uncompressed), or animation+alpha when creating overlays to composite
5. Replace clips in Vegas media pool with corrected ones from AE
6. Render out of Vegas

Another interesting workflow suggestion is to learn about Debugmode Frameserve to go from AE to Vegas without rendering in between... but honestly, I've never delved into it enough to figure out how to use it efficiently.

Hope this helps!

 

[Thomas Theron Cooper]

M. Gilden, I'm not the original poster but your post is very informative! Could you clarify a couple of points. I read that transcoding H.264 footage from a Canon DSLR to ProRes 422 makes it more manageable. I have had no trouble taking H.264 directly to Sony Vegas Pro and editing it there. I'm talking about smaller clips 10-12 minutes. I recently came across some plugins which make it possible to transcode to ProRes 422 on Windows too. Do you think this would improve the final result? Would you recommend it? I'm not planning any special effects. There may be some basic titling, however. Would it save time or improve the final result or both?

Also, can you recommend some good book on color grading/correction in AE.

Thanks!

 

[M. Gilden]

M. Gilden, I'm not the original poster but your post is very informative! Could you clarify a couple of points. I read that transcoding H.264 footage from a Canon DSLR to ProRes 422 makes it more manageable. I have had no trouble taking H.264 directly to Sony Vegas Pro and editing it there. I'm talking about smaller clips 10-12 minutes. I recently came across some plugins which make it possible to transcode to ProRes 422 on Windows too. Do you think this would improve the final result? Would you recommend it? I'm not planning any special effects. There may be some basic titling, however. Would it save time or improve the final result or both?

Nope, just a waste of time! There are a few reasons folks used to recommend transcoding first. The largest reason is because Mac users with Final Cut Pro couldn't really edit footage straight out of the camera. It had to be transcoded into something native to them first, and Apple's quicktime decoder used to hurt the color (which is why 5DtoRGB became a useful tool for them to run the footage through first). The other reason is that H.264 is not designed to be an editing friendly codec, but rather an efficient way to store frames in a small amount of space. It accomplishes with some brilliant algorithms, which as I understand it relies on data stored in surrounding frames. I'm not entirely sure about this, so don't quote me, but I was told once that H.264 footage is much more CPU intensive than other formats because it needs to take into consideration information in preceding frames to draw the current one correctly. That's fine if you are just playing the file back, but imagine how much extra work is required when you jump around a timeline- the software has to decode the current frame by first decoding all this other extra information first. This made cuts slow to preview and the general editing feel slow and tedious. Converting it first to an easier-to-manage codec like ProRes, Cineform or DNxHD made editing previews cut like butter in comparison.

But that was a long time ago. Recent versions of Vegas Pro and Premiere have included special support for DSLR encoded footage to make this process more efficient. Premiere calls it the Mercury Runtime Engine, but I think Sony just called it DSLR Support in their new versions. This took a lot of the grunt work of decoding individual frame out of the equation (Again, unclear as to how but I think it involves some background processing instead of waiting for the frame to be called up, and in the case of Mercury Engine, offloading some of that work to the GPU), and made cutting DSLR footage natively more simple. Combine that with computers being a lot faster than they were a few years ago, and one could easily argue that transcoding to another format for the ease of editing is a just a major waste of time. Any time saved by doing this would be negated by the amount of time it takes to transcode, anyway. So just edit away!

Also, can you recommend some good book on color grading/correction in AE.

Thanks!

Not off the top of my head, no. Plenty of resources out there!

 

[Thomas Theron Cooper]

...Combine that with computers being a lot faster than they were a few years ago, and one could easily argue that transcoding to another format for the ease of editing is a just a major waste of time. Any time saved by doing this would be negated by the amount of time it takes to transcode, anyway. So just edit away!

Very helpful. Thanks!