Hello all and happy New Year! Ok down to business, I have a PC system and i use vegas 7 and intend to shoot, capture, edit and print back to tape digibeta footage. Now I doubt my pc spec is powerful enough to edit digibeta natively (see specs below) but i do keep hearing about people editing at offline resolution then creating an EDL then re-capturing the footage and then applying effects etc but I really am confused to how feasible this is.

In my head im trying to figure this out, like would u capture the digibeta via an sdi card at an offline resolution in vegas, do all your cuts and basic editing, then re-capture the digibeta at online resolution and just pick out the times from the tape from which u have in your offline edit? I'm abit new to edl's and as far as i can see vegas can do a form of edl but not sure of an 'EFFECTIVE' workflow.

Also i understand digibeta eats up alot of hardrive space but as far as i can tell my mobo only allows to internal hd's. I know satas are fast and needed for such high quality video but im wondering if I can use external drives to help? I’m thinking you cant because even if you get external satas they are still connected via firewire which is going to slowdown the transfer rate I assume but still I’m curious to know if its possible.

It all sounds a little odd to me but I really really hope someone can help me because i cant afford to go to film school, work too many hours to attend set day time courses and I'm a firm believer that the best form of learning comes from doing it yourself and seeking advice off people who actually do what you do.

Thanks in advance people.

Computer spec:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13ghz
2gb ddr ram
2 internal sata drives system drive is 300gb and media drive is 200gb (not on raid array as i dont know how to set it up)
vegas 7/after effects 7 pro/magic bullet suite

anyone?????

This is beyond me. However it may NOT be beyond others on this forum - but read on . . .

I suggest you ask this of the OFFICIAL Sony Vegas Forum. There you will find much experience in the multi-platform and media variants of which you speak.

You need to examine and research the whole "offline" editing workflow process to be assured as to what and how the various parts of hardware and software will proved a seamless editing environment and allow you an editing technique that is neither cumbersome nor "cranky" in its final delivery.

So, unless somebody here has true experience of offline editing and using digibeta, my initial invitation to you would be to ask your most excellent question on another forum.

I have never edited digibeta but i would think vegas can do so. I dont think digib would need to be edited using a EDL. Looks fiddly to me and with a powerfull pc it can surely be done online.

Digi beta has a bit rate of 90mb/s, about 4 times DV so it will use up lots of drive space but drives are huge and cheap so online would work I think, 30 mins would be about 20gig.

I would be intersted to know what adive you get from people more in the know.

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Thanks for the advice guys, i'l post over at the official vegas site and report back with what they suggest.