Vegas Movie Studio or Scenealyzer for DV capture?

Dubinvero wrote on 2/9/2005, 1:25 PM

I am new to video editing. I have mini dv tapes that I want to transfer from my Canon Camcorder to my PC where I have a trial version of Vegas Movie Studio for editing. My question is, would the end result of this transfer be any different or easier if I was to use ScenealyzerLive which I already own?

Derek

Comments

gogiants wrote on 2/9/2005, 2:08 PM

My personal opinion is that once you have your .avi files there is no advantage to having done the capture in Movie Studio versus some other program. An .avi file is an .avi file; there is no special connection between the capture in Movie Studio and the editing in Movie Studio that I'm aware of.

One thing that REALLY caught my eye with the latest version of Scenealyzer was the ability to create indexes of your various tapes such that you wind up with what amounts to a searchable database of scenes. From what they say, you could then pop in a tape months later, specify the scene you want to go to, and it will ffwd/rewind it's way to the scene you want and do the capture. This sounds SO MUCH BETTER than trying to keep notes on what scenes are on what tape, having to manually find the place on the tape using the buttons on the camcorder, etc.

So, I guess what I'm saying is in my personal opinion if you're going to be doing captures from a largish number of DV tapes, then Scenalyzer may be the way to go.

gogiants wrote on 2/9/2005, 2:11 PM

I just looked at the Scenalyzer site and realized that the "tape index" feature I talked about is part of their version 4.0 Beta release. It says it is free to registered users.

For specific info: http://www.scenalyzer.com/beta.html

Dubinvero wrote on 2/9/2005, 5:55 PM

Gogiants, thanks for your input. I will use ScenealyzerLive.

Derek

PhilBiker wrote on 2/11/2005, 11:39 AM

I had to buy Scenalyzer because Pinnacle Studio 8 wouldn't work on my PC for capturing, it dropped frames left and right. With Scenalyzer there were no dropped frames. Now that I've cast aside Studio for MS I still use Scenalyzer, it's just a great little program IMO.

PaulS wrote on 2/12/2005, 1:43 PM

I would also highly recommend Scenalyzer if you are capturing video from an analog camcorder via a pass through or capture card. The optical scene detection will save you an immense amount of time splitting scenes at just the right places and will make it very easy to cut out junk frames due to the way the clips are shown in the user interface.

The main thing I don't like about Scenalyzer is the lack of a traditional searchable help function, but all the other features make it well worth using.

davdee wrote on 2/13/2005, 10:27 PM

I have Vegas MS, and have done captures in it from a Firewire attached Camcorder. I make sure I turn OFF the video preview.
I do get some dropped frames at time, so I use DVIO Capture/Playback v1.32 that just does capture to AVI from firewire. I turn off all extraneous stuff in Windows and leave my WinXP machine alone during capture. I can watch the display on the camcorders LCD to verify I have the right stuff. Once the footage is in AVI, I call it into Vegas MS and do whatever editing/cutting needed then.
So, I stay away from Vegas MS capture; it works but the best way is to use a bare bones package. I will look at Scenealyser in case it is better for capture.

Dave E.
Sydney, Australia

PhilBiker wrote on 2/14/2005, 8:34 AM

With scenalyzer I can run browsers and stuff while I'm capturing and not get dropped frames. It's fantastic.