Re: Am I really the first to use Vegas to edit a documentary?

Background:
We had hired a great editor - and paid him for work he supposedly did - but he became ill - incapacitated - and to make a long story short we eventually started editing ourselves. (I have previously edited several short videos, with some sophistication.)

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Why use intermediate files?

Using a trial version of Adobe Premiere Pro, I read about "intermediate" files in Premiere's help file and on-line guide.

That launched me down a trail where I searched the internet for information regarding intermediate files, and found lots of information, but none telling me that they are not necessary for decent computers editing SD video.

I now see that Vegas' help file only talks about intermediate files in the context of HD video.

My experience:

I experienced that full resolution files take longer to load.

I did not experience Vegas running more slowly with full res files,
but
I thought by the time I'm working with all my video files, I would experience problems,
and
that my colleague would definitely experience problems on her 3-year-old computer. (I know we could upgrade her RAM and CPU, or buy a new computer, but I thought using intermediate files would be simpler!)

A Secondary Reason:
My colleague's computer had ample room for our 60 videos in low res, but no room for the videos in full res. Of course, we could have bought a second 1 TB external hard drive for her to have a copy of the DV files.
If I had known intermediate files gave more pain than gain, I would of course have spent that $150, especially considering the number of hours I (and forum readers) have spent on this.

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Our New Plan of Action (Thank you):
- buy another 1 TB external hard drive
- replace the associated video in the .veg files from the low res files to the uncompressed SD DV files.
- *** instead of using subclips, batch render the regions we have already saved in the project file we ended up creating for each tape ***
- work with rendered clips, probably using Sony Media Manager, and thus not need the full-length source files in our project.

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Project Settings
I assume you are working in a DV project so you may actually be stressing Vegas MORE because you're asking it to uprez these lowrez proxies to work with them at DV resolution
Since I was using subclips instead of rendering, I reasoned that I could use low res project settings and then switch to high res when I wanted to render, so no, I wasn't forcing Vegas to uprez lowrez proxies. I did, however, just find that I had the Pixel Aspect Ratio as Square 1.0 whereas the low res files are .909. Thanks for making me check. (I checked if that correction solved the "Project 'full'?" problem. It did not.)

What codec are you using?
I tried mov, thinking that would be most compatible with FCP, if the person we originally hired (and paid) to be our editor ever recovers from his illness, but the audio was always crunched 10% short at the end. (I converted using another friend's Adobe Media Encoder CS4.)
I tried xvid-avi, but my colleague's computer could not open it. I'm sure all I needed to do was get her to install xvid, but she's not technically inclined, and lives a fair distance from me. I probably could have guided her to download the k-lite codec pack or just xvid over the phone, or by remote controlling her computer, but I had found her computer could play mp4s, so:
I used mp4 (360x240, 29.97 fps, .909 pixel aspect ratio, 48000 kHz, 80 kpbs audio, ?500 kbps? video) - ~350 MB per hour.

How fast is your computer?
Yesterday morning I added details to my signature, but failed to include my signature with my posts. Here it is:

- 4 GB RAM
- Intel duo core processor, 2.16 gHz EACH, 4.3 gHz total
- Vista 64-bit (32-bit able)
- Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
- Sound Card: RealTek High Definition Audio, 6.0.1.5384
- Camera: Sony DSR-PD170. Also: Kodak m1033 digital.
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Jilligan