Uncompressed video seems to big

[jriker1]

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but couldn't find a better category.

I have a 3 hour video in DV format. Made with the Capture program in Sony Vegas 8.0. Video is 40GB in size in DV format. I want to run some plugins on it to do some cleanup. If I do it with Lagarith it ends up about 98 GB. Not sure Lagarith is better or worse than Uncompressed, however when I do this with uncompressed it takes an unexpected amount of space. Let's just say I have a 1.5TB RAID setup with nothing on it and a smal percentage of the way thru the video the drive is down to 300GB. Any clue what is going on? The source video is 720x480x24 and Sony Vegas says something like 720x480x128 for the output format but I can not configure that. Any idea what's going on? People have suggested Vegas temp space usage, but that's an obscene amount of space for this.

Thanks.

JR

[Dark Shikari]

Welcome to the world of uncompressed video. There's a reason people use video compression ;)

[Inventive Software]

Stick with Lagarith. You're much better off, honest.

Your uncompressed video will use approximately 20+ MB per second (at RGB24). Vegas seems to want to sample it up again, so it's therefore no wonder you're eating HD space. Lossless compression exists to make editing more user-friendly than uncompressed video.

Not sure Lagarith is better or worse than Uncompressed

Lagarith is lossless, so there is no quality loss. It's faster to decode than uncompressed video and takes up far less space.

[JohnnyMalaria]

The source video is 720x480x24 and Sony Vegas says something like 720x480x128 for the output format but I can not configure that. Any idea what's going on? People have suggested Vegas temp space usage, but that's an obscene amount of space for this.

Thanks.

JR

Go to Project Properties and verify pixel format is 8-bit (not 32-bit floating point).

This will reduce your uncompressed files by a factor of four.

BTW, frankly I don't see the point of using Lagarith or any other lossless codec when your original material is DV. Lagarith typically compresses uncompressed material to ~30%. DV compresses to about the same. You aren't gaining any benefit. (Obviously, for truly uncompressed material, there are benefits).

[Dark Shikari]

BTW, frankly I don't see the point of using Lagarith or any other lossless codec when your original material is DV. Lagarith typically compresses uncompressed material to ~30%. DV compresses to about the same. You aren't gaining any benefit. (Obviously, for truly uncompressed material, there are benefits).But if you're editing, that means you might be recompressing into DV repeatedly--and every time you do that, you lose quality.

[jriker1]

Go to Project Properties and verify pixel format is 8-bit (not 32-bit floating point).

This will reduce your uncompressed files by a factor of four.

BTW, frankly I don't see the point of using Lagarith or any other lossless codec when your original material is DV. Lagarith typically compresses uncompressed material to ~30%. DV compresses to about the same. You aren't gaining any benefit. (Obviously, for truly uncompressed material, there are benefits).

Thanks for the reply. Didn't even think about the 32-bit floating point I set. Most probably the issue. Can't agree with you on the second part of your message though, as DV is a lossy codec and Lagarith is lossless so why wouldn't you use it.

JR

[Blue_MiSfit]

Well, the multi-generational DV compression issue doesn't apply to most people - to be perfectly honest.

The only time you have to re-encode DV (while editing) is when you apply transitions or filters like color correction. DV is pretty darn good for one or even two compression cycles. Beyond that it starts to get ugly...

But, all that most people do is make simple cuts, with maybe some dissolves. Not that big of a deal :)

Still - if I was doing something on a pro scale, I would always use a lossless codec - or at least full quality MJPEG. This especially applies to HD - since most consumer / prosumer HD would be in HDV, which does suffer from multi-generational compression. Hence Cineform / DNxHD / ProRes.

If you think those uncompressed files you're capturing are big, try 10 bit 1080i60 over HD-SDI. That's a lot of freaking data!!!

~MiSfit

[JohnnyMalaria]

Can't agree with you on the second part of your message though, as DV is a lossy codec and Lagarith is lossless so why wouldn't you use it.

JR

Because the material you are using it with has already been compressed. It doesn't save you any space compared to keeping the original format.

If you are going to do multi-generation edits on it then it does make sense to use a lossless format for intermediates. For purely storage purposes, it doesn't make sense especially because moving from the DV original destroys all the "meta" data in the file such as timecode etc and you have to actually recompress the DV to a different format.

[Blue_MiSfit]

That's another extremely good point. Timecode can be very important :)

~MiSfit

[jriker1]

Thanks for all your advice. I switched to 8-bit color and now for a 3 hour and 11 minute video ended up with 467.4GB size. Is this still unusual or more what would be expected?

Also any idea why when I play the original DV in WMP it is full screen and when I play using a lossless codec for the second cut of edits there are bars on the top and bottom both using Lagarith or uncompressed. Don't think it is actually that way, however WMP shows it like that and for both it shows -- for the codec. As far as I know in Vegas I'm not resizing the video from original. Both the DV and Uncompressed and Lagarith show 720x480 for the size however I guess some could be black bars added. Just not something I did.

JR

[JohnnyMalaria]

WMP is savvy enough to dig deeper into the file (AVI, I assume) and determine the true aspect ratio of the DV video. It can then display it full screen correctly.

[jriker1]

WMP is savvy enough to dig deeper into the file (AVI, I assume) and determine the true aspect ratio of the DV video. It can then display it full screen correctly.

So you are saying it shows the DV content right, however the Lagarith and uncompressed videos it doesn't know what to do? I would think with the Lagarith encoded AVI I would see the Lagarith codec in WMP when I look at the properties for video but no.

JR