Hello All,

I've using Sony Vegas 7 (and previous versions) for about 7 months, for low budget DV and HDV editing. I wish to make the next step, in order to provide higher quality end results, but I got a few questions related to Sony Vegas, HDV format, and related hardware. Hopefully I finally find my answers here (been searching a while). Please excuse my English.


SONY VEGAS HARDWARE RELATED QUESTIONS

Planning a major hardware upgrade.

WHAT DO I NEED IT FOR:
1. Capture DV and HDV footage from Sony Z1E (http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...p=141&id=78439) and JVC GY HD200E (http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/s...&feature_id=03) (mostly PAL)
2. Footage is to simulate real movements, so recorded at 50P, 25P or 50i
3. Edit in Sony Vegas 7
3.1 1-4 video tracks, sometimes mixing HDV and DV
3.2 Using Vasst plugins, display 4 HDV tracks simultaneously
3.3 No 3D or special effects, besides color corrections, titling and transitions
3.4 Preview on secondary display, and / or TV
4. Final videos to be in either High Definition WMV, DV AVI, DVD (MPEG2), or back to DV / HDV tape in superior quality

WHAT I PLAN TO GET:
1. MSI s775 P965 Platinum
2. Intel Core 2 DUO E6600
3. 2 Gig of RAM 800Mhz
4. appropriate Video card (read below)
5. 2 Western Digital SATA2 7200/16 MB harddrives

QUESTIONS:
1. Video Card: I understand that Sony doesn't care about the Video cards, since it doesn't take advantage of any hardware acceleration.
1.1 Is this true?
1.2 Is it worth considering to get Nvidia cards that have Purevideo HD or Vivid technologies?
1.2.1 Is there a difference between Purevideo HD and Vivid?
1.3 Should I really be considering 512MB video cards, or 256 is sufficient?
2. Capture
2.1 Both the above mentioned cameras have Firewire outputs.
2.1.1 Does capturing through Firewire differs from the other camera outputs (component or s-video) in terms of quality?
2.1.2 If components or s-video is better, which video capture card should I be considering?
3. Format
3.1 Can somebody explain the difference between capturing at 50P at 1/50 and 25P at 1/50? I see no difference in the captured videos.
3.2 When capturing 50i video from the Sony camera, the resulting m2t files say 25i in Sony, yet when playing them, they are obviously displaying 50i. Any thoughts why?


SONY VEGAS SOFTWARE RELATED QUESTIONS

1. Capture
1.1 Is there anything within Sony that must be payed attention to, or changed, in order to capture HDV footage via Firewire in the best quality/original ratios?
1.2 Capturing HDV footage creates M2T files. Right now I have to convert these to Cineform Intermediate AVIs. If I use the standard version of the Cineform codec (v2.5) that comes with Sony Vegas 7, the resulting AVI has less saturated colors than the one found in the latest Cineform Connect HD (v2.7).
1.2.1 What happens when this conversion takes place? How can the results differ?
1.2.2 Does this mean that I should stay away from intermediate files and beef up the system to handle m2t files on the timeline?
1.3 When using a control monitor for the JVC camera, the displayed image is perfect in every aspect. When the footage is captured in M2T, it becomes less saturated, almost losing most of its colors. I am confused on color spaces, but this seems to related a color space conversion.
1.3.1 How can I end up with the same colors that I see both on the control monitor and on the LCD of the JVC camera, on the captured M2T file?

2. Rendering
2.1 I read somewhere that Sony never uses more than 1Gb or RAM. Is this true?
2.2 Why is the "interleave every .250 seconds" set as default?
2.2.1 What is this for? Why would I want to take out more frames from my original footage?
2.2.2 If I leave this on and render a 30 min DV AVI file, Sony always creates an error and never finishes the rendering. Does turning this result in unforeseen problems with my footages? I have never witnessed any, but want to make sure.
2.3 Quality.
2.3.1 Is it true that I can leave the quality at Good, instead of Best, and get the same results?
2.3.2 I heard that Best is used if I have static images in the final footage.
2.4 Resolution
2.4.1 If my end result is to be a WMV, should I render in 1.0 pixel aspect ratio?
2.5 HDV
2.5.1 The Cineform codec includes options: Use Video Systems RGB and Use ITU.Bt.709 colorspace
2.5.2 If I captured HDV footage, where I know the end result will be WMV or DIVX AVI, which of the above options should I leave on/off for encoding and decoding?
2.5.3 Same question if the end result is to be DVD or back to HDV tape.

3. Interlace
3.1 Does Reduce Interlace Flicker really help when taking an interlaced footage and rendering to Progressive?
3.2 When I simply have an interlaced DV footage in a DV project, and I render the project as Progressive, what's the best Deinterlace Method? I noticed that by setting this None, is actually better than setting Blend or Interpolate.



KEY QUESTIONS
- My main problem is the color of the captured/edited/exported images. I see perfect colors on cameras' LCDs and on the control monitor. I capture the M2T files and if opened in Windows Media Player or Sony, they look faded. If I render to an intermediate AVI or DV, the colors become vivid, sometimes oversaturated. Am I to understand that the problem is that the HDV footage's colorspace is ITU.Bt.709, but when displaying it on my computer LCD screen it is faded because the computer is displaying RGB? If so, what's the trick to compensate and/or make sure that the colors I see in Sony, are what I will get when I render to Uncompressed AVI and then to WMV?

- Same question for DV. When captured, the colors look a bit oversaturated. When displayed on a TV screen, they are ever worse. I usually have to decrease saturation to a point where the images look almost colorless in Sony, while looking good on a TV screen.

- Interlacing. 50i gives me a nice smooth motion. This looks good on TV. What do I have to do, to keep the same quality after deinterlacing a DV footage, so it can be displayed a little nicer on a computer monitor?


Wow. I am sorry for writing so much, but I am about to drop around 1500 dollars (lot of money in Europe) on hardware upgrades and I must end up with a solution that will yield high quality HDV end results.

Thank you everybody.