rendering as uncompressed in Vegas 3

[Byungsoo]

I knew that vegas can render as uncompressed format(different from NTSC DV) today and that produces very huge size.

I have known that captured dv is 5:1 compressed format and it's size is 13G per hour.
So I cannot understand why that size(over 100G per hour) is bigger than original captured clip size.
What does "uncompressed" in Vegas mean ?
And is the quality of that better than avi rendered as NTSC DV ?

I'm getting confused now...

Please help me.

[ulfschack]

It's bigger because it's uncompressed simply. DV CODECs divide frames in makroblocks and use some smart algos plus a Huffman in the end, but do this very leniantly so that quality is hardly affected, while downsizing a ratio of five.

Just as you can take a JPEG and save it as BMP (uncompressed) you can do the same with a video stream. It's the only way of converting to another format without loosing any quality in the process, but it will certainly not improve, by definition. However, when Vegas exports to DV format it does direct stream copy of the parts in the stream that has not been touched by editing (which is to say most of the movie). If you've f. i. just added a sound track the video will be identical while only the sound will be mixed and reencoded (but the sound is usually wav and virtually uncompressed allready, so no matter).

The only times you'll see an improvement in quality between uncompressed and DV-compressed video is where you have made some visual effects like transitions and fade-outs/ins. Actually ... you'll prolly not be able to see it, but it's there :)

So keep exporting to DV unless the bulk of your movie contains visual additions.

cheers