There is no coded involved in doing a straight DV capture; your camera has already done the DV encoding when the material was recorded. When rendering any video that has crossfades or effects then Vegas will use the Sonic Foundry codec, which is pretty much acknowledged as the best one available.

Vegas does all it's internal processing in RGB. There is no way to change this (well, unless you pay Sonic Foundry to rewrite the software, i suppose). RGB is the truest representation of color though, so any processing done in RGB space will preserve the color information better than in any other format.

With regards your DVD question

With commercial burners & software you use DVD-5 4.7Gb (Single sided -single layer) "General discs". Hollywood use DVD-9 8.5Gb (single sided - dual layer) discs. Commercial software can't use these. Achieving dual layers is a very complex task & it is unlikely that burners for these will ever make it into mainstream production (particularly with "Blue Ray" becoming the next standard supporting about 30Gb discs in the distant future).

Hollywood are able to get so much on their discs for a number of reasons. The picture quality is relative to the bitrate available, higher bitrate = higher quality. The max bitrate for audio & video on DVD is 9.8Mbs. They use highly compressed Dolby Audio (this frees up Mbs for higher video bitrate & more video on disc) Add to this that the average bitrate they use to attain fantastic quality is only about 4 to 5 Mbs. How can they achieve this ?
They have great quality source footage, They spend time & money preping it for encoding. They spend time and money using expensive encoders often encoding the film in small sections (or by frame) in order to achieve best result for lowest possible bitrate & then they have the larger capacity disc to fit it on.

If you are going to burn DVD general discs you should get good result without about 6Mbs bitrate on average. If your project size allows go higher

If you need to workout what bitrate you can use to fit your project on a disc I find the following formula does the trick, just adapt it to whether you can use compressed (Dolby or MPEG) audio or have to use uncompressed (PCM) audio

The safe, useable size for Video and Audio is 3.6 gigs. As shown below in the formula. This will give you some headroom for menus, background audio & navigation data.

DVD: 36096 Mbits of safe useable space
Space for AC3 audio (at 192 Kbit/s)= (number of seconds in your video*192)/1024
e.g. audio for 2 hours, (7200*192)/1024 = 1350 Mbits
Remaining space can be allocated for video, 36096-1350 = 34746 Mbits
For 2 hour project: video data rate = remaining space/number of seconds in your video
e.g. 34746/7200 = 4.825 Mbit/s
If using PCM audio, substitute 1600 in place of 192 in the audio calculation.

Since it’s easier to calculate the minutes, rather than the seconds, here’s the formula:

For AC3 audio:

(36096-(((Length of Video in Minutes*60)*192)/1024))/(Length of Video in Minutes*60)

For PCM audio:

(36096-(((Length of Video in Minutes*60)*1600)/1024))/(Length of Video in Minutes*60)

DV -

In response to your question: Another Question: How does Hollywood achieve in putting in 3hrs of DVD movie onto a single DVD disc (more than 6GB sometimes) when the consumer DVD burners (Pioneer DVR-A04) has a max capacity of 4.7GB?

There are numerous different DVD discs specs available (at least to the Major DVD duplication houses, ala the Hollywood studios). They include:
Single Sided Single Layer - this is what the DVD-R and DVD-RW/DVD+RW discs available to the consumer are. (A number of different reasons for this currently, including cost, amount of errors allowed, compatibility issues and a few other "political" - read: copy protection issues.
Single Sided Dual Layer (the one most commonly used on most movies today - and that's how a three hour movie, or movie & content, is put on one disc).
Double Sided Single Layer (a lot of the discs that offer Widescreen on one side and Pan & Scan on the other - though most studios now are utilizing the Dual Layer single sided disc for this feature as well).
Double Sided Dual Layer discs (I believe Stephen King's The Stand complete miniseries was released on this type of disc - massive amounts of storage capabilities on this disc).
Actually there are several other hybrid types of discs as well - some are specified in the DVD standards and others - like TDK's new mega storage disc - are really variations of different materials and/or us of laser technology (like the "blue laser" ideas which is supposed to increase the "capacity" of all disc types)
For more information about the different discs types, storage capacity and the availability of these discs in the future of the "recordable" DVD market (which is still undergoing some "finalizing" itself) there are a number of web sites that deal with the DVD spec's...

Also keep in mind that the compression level of the MPEG2 file also is a major factor in the amount of "time" a disc can hold - beyond the physical GB storage capacity. MPEG2 Compression is an art unto itself and the Hollywood studios are starting with the highest quality (noise free) video masters and utilizing dedicated video encoders (hardware based) - not to mention the fact that some videos (at least for the most complex scenes) are encoded a single frame at a time utilizing the greatest level of color correction, noise reduction (when needed) and other high tech tricks... While the commonly available MPEG2 encoders out there for the consumer can produce very good results (albeit software encoders working at the mercy of the particular processor's limitations) to expect a DV format video shot on even the nicest Prosumer level camcorders to always (if at all) reach the same level of clarity as a Hollywood title is really not too realistic - at least at this current stage of the software encoder developments....
Still it is quite fun, and rewarding, to shoot some really nice video, edit it all nicely (using VV3.0 of course) and render it to a DVD compliant MPEG2 file then produce your own DVD from your own home computer is leaps and bounds what was available even just a few years ago...


Thanks,

Chris
CAP'N Digital Productions

There's also the upcoming Fluorescent Multi-layer Disc (FMD) technology. It reports to be able to hold 20 - 100 Gigabytes of pre-recorded data on 12 - 30 data layers, and may be able to store over a Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) of data! According to its makers, early applications for this exciting new product include digital cinema and HDTV players, internet content streaming and data warehousing. As consumer storage needs grow, so too will the market for FMD discs and drives. The technology's robust nature and low manufacturing cost make it ideally suited for broad market acceptance.

It is an evolution of current technology, and will cost about the same as the current CD disks and readers/writers. Due out some time in 2003...

The drives will be able to read standard CDs and DVDs as well.

Check out website at:
http://www.c-3d.net/product_frameset.html

Great guys...Thanks for your reply...
Specifically, to the formula suggested for DVD authoring, fantastic.

BTW, I didn't get a favorable reply for my other questions with regard to CAPTURE
and RENDER.I would appreciate if any EXPERT throws light on this in detail.

Thanks.

DV

"During CAPTURE: Does a codec really matter here? I heard that Sonic Foundry Video Codec or Canopus Software DV codec gives amazing DV AVI files even during capture.
I'm confused here. I guess Capture/Transfer is a bit by bit copy from my camcorder to my HDD thru OHCI card which doesn't involve any codec. Right? Please clarify me here."

If you capture from a DV device through an OHCI compliant IEEE-1394 DV card using the SF capture app, you will be doing a bit-for-bit file copy. The DV device has already compressed the signal to the DV format.

"If a codec really matters here, do I capture in RGB or YUY2 color space?
Also, if I use HuffYUV 2.1.1 loseless codec during capture, is the YUY2 color space is being used in building the AVI file?"

Decompressing the DV and capturing with Huffy or anything else it pointless, a step backward. Vegas is optimized for DV and you should stick with that as your primary video format whenever possible.

"During RENDER: If I add transitions (dissolves, wipes), effects and render in Vegas Video 3.0 and select Don't use third party codec, I guess its rendered using Vegas Video 3.0 codec. Is this true?"

Yes.

"If I do this, my IMPORTANT question of this whole discussion is I need to preserve the color space in YUY2. Is Vegas Video 3.0 codec using YUY2 color space or converts to RGB (which is a waste of time and loss in color because of heavy calculations) like Premiere does which is not what I want. If Vegas Video 3.0 codec does RGB conversion like what Premiere does, is there a way to overcome this and still preserve the YUY2 color space even after adding transitions and wipes?"

Vegas works in RGB color space, no way to change that. Please be aware that Vegas uses a proprietary DV codec that we developed- vastly superior to Premiere's native codec (Microsoft DV). You will be very happy with the output quality which is what really counts- give it a try.

The reply from SonicEPM seems to be a marketing hype I guess.
The moderator claims Premiere is defaulting to MS DV codec. Although thats true,
there are ways to override that (check out www.abcdv.com and look for articles
on Premiere 6.0).

Also, the moderator claims Sonic Foundry Video codec is superior to any other codec. Its been proved that Main Concept DV codec is great and does a fine job. How would the moderator prove that Sonic Foundry DV codec is the best?

Also, YUY2 is always superior to RGB (no matter what). How does Sonic Foundry DV codec shine better than the YUY2 rendering process?

Thanks.

DV

EW

Have you read all the Specs on the drive? Are you aware that they have ONLY been able to achieve Playback speed of DVD 1x & 2x.

OK, so in order to retrieve the data, you would be looking at:

1x - 1.25MB/sec 100GB- 22 hours
1,000GB- 9 days

2x - 2.5 MB/sec 100GB- 11 hrs
1,000GB - 4.5 days

This might not be bad as an alternative to tape backup. I'd hate to make a coaster.

In all fairness, It's easy to miss this fact, and I'm sure this is what they had in mind by burying it in their FAQ section.

Jeffy82

Nah, I'm holding out for a teraflop drive, around one trillion bytes per disc. Take only a couple years to burn, cost $1,000 each. Put all my videos on one disc. Hope I don't make a coaster.

The best way I know for you to get your answer here (since I agree with Sonic) and you will also consider that hype, is to touch and feel it for yourself. Download the Demo. Encode your own source and take a good hard look at it after a crossfade has been added and then you output it. Pull out the test gear. I am sure you will be pleased with it. It is not an uncompressed 4:2:2 SDI image, but you didn't start with one. Sonic's implementation of DV is about as solid as you will find. The CODEC is actually better. Chroma Keying is one place where you can see the improvement in the color handling over others.

K

> Have you read all the Specs on the drive? Are you aware that they have ONLY > been able to achieve Playback speed of DVD 1x & 2x.

This is a common misconception about DVD drives these days. DVD speed is much higher than CD speed (I don't know the exact numbers), so at DVD1X it only takes about 30 minutes to burn a disc.

Sorry, but my DVD at 2x takes nearly 45 minutes and at 1X takes over an hour.

Briand' quotation:
"This is a common misconception about DVD drives these days. DVD speed is much higher than CD speed (I don't know the exact numbers)..."

Oh, Briand,
You poor unfortunate soul. You know better than to set yourself up like that without knowing the facts. Since I'm in a generous mood, I'll spare you and let you save face and walk away quietly.

Hint: Jetdv is right on target.

Jeffy82@aol.com


"The trouble ain't that people are ignorant: it's that they know so much that ain't so."
-- Josh Billings

I think he's right. DVD drives are required to read at least 9mbps. This is probably what they're calling "DVD 1x".
///d@

I'm not discounting that DVDs are faster than CDs. However, real world fact says a DVD containing about 4.2 Gig takes over an hour to burn at "1x". It would take ages to burn 4.2 Gig onto a CD (assuming it could fit) at "1x"!