Noob Question Transcoding

[Hal2]

In reference to this topic http://videomaker.com/community/forums/topic/dvd-cam-editing I am in a similar situation where I am trying to work with mini-DVD and I see the recommendation is to transcode it to DV/DVCPro NTSC. My dumb quesiton is how do you transcode it? I use Vegas Pro 9

Sorry for the dumb Q I believe I understand what it means to transcode just not how 🙁

[Grinner Hester]

Why are wanting to transcode it? What is it you are trying to do?

[Anonymous]

in regards to the previous discussion, you don’t need to transcode anything. Import the footage using the import from dvd option and edit away. You will only have to re-encode the footage if you add effects or other items in the veg. Quality loss should be minimal.

[Cville]

You can try this free converter from Squared 5 (link below) if you want to transcode into DV which is much more edit friendly.

http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-win.html

[Hal2]

I am adding some effects to it, and doing some pan/cropping and notice that it is somewhat degraded. The footage comes in as 720x480x32 NTSC widescreen

[Hal2]

Actually to elaborate, I am using footage from 3 different cameras – don’t have the specs on all of them as I’m at work – but I wonder if some of my issues are due to this fact? I know two are interlaced and one is progressive. Should I just convert all the footage to DV? will that program allow for resoulution changes so I can match them up and if so should I match them all to DVD quality?

Again sorry for all the noob questions

[SteveMann]

You already have the best transcoding tool you need – Vegas Pro. But, you don’t need to transcode when using Vegas Pro, just put the files on the timeline and edit away. Just make sure that your project profile is set for the target format. (Whomever wrote that article is probably using FCP or Premiere which do not allow you to mix media types on the timeline, but Vegas doesn’t care)

[Cville]

I tried editing video from a mini-DVD camera with vegas pro 8. You can easily import the mini dvd files which are already highly compressed with no trouble. But I found that when I edited the files and re-encoded for a DVD that the video did not look very good. It was suggested to me to transcode it to DV for editing although I have not tried that process.

[Hal2]

Thanks for the info Steve, that really helped 🙂

[Anonymous]

If you’re working in Vegas, you shouldn’t have to worry if the footage is not all the same standard. Just go to File-Import-DVD Camcorder Disc, and then do your editing.

Jeremy

[Author]

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