Upgrading to X2 - last question

[leocat]

Hi again, last question

When I am using Video Studio 9 I follow the "reccomended procedure" religiously that was posted to this forum a couple of years ago. This worked great for all of my needs.

When I upgrade to X2 is there a similar "reccomended procedure" for Hi Def downloading, editing and DVD burning or should the instructions included in the manual suffice?

Thanks again, sorry for all the questions. I feel technologically overwhelmed and don't want to make the wrong purchase decisions.

[Ken Berry]

The instructions for burning a DVD will remain largely the same as you will still need DVD-compatible mpeg-2 for this. So whatever you capture is going eventually to need to be converted to this.

However, depending on your high def camera, there may be some differences in the capture method -- though still largely using techniques that were required by the variety of standard def cameras available at the time of VS9.

Thus, if you have a HDV camera using mini DV tapes, you still use Firewire for capture, but the incoming high def signal is high def mpeg-2 Upper Field First, instead of Lower Field First DV. There are, however, some HDV cameras (and combined HDV/AVCHD cameras) using hard disks, and these use USB for capture.

With AVCHD high def cameras, some use cards like SD but some also use hard disks. With these, you don't actually 'capture' as such, but merely transfer the high def mpeg-4 files to your computer using either VS or the program provided with the camera.

But if you have not purchased the camera, then you need to be aware that AVCHD is the most incredibly demanding format and you absolutely must have a powerful computer to deal with it, or even play it smoothly -- at least a decent Core 2 Duo, or a Quad. And even then, there are difficulties and one or two authentic bugs.

[leocat]

Thank you Ken. much appreciated. Did you see my prior post regarding computer specs? I'm upgrading the computer too.

Judging from your reply, I should be okay creating HiDef projects with a new Duo Core or Quad Core computer as long as I stick with the mini-dv format correct?

I cut and pasted the specifications of a computer I was interested in, in my prior post regarding the computer upgrade.

[stix100]

Still hardly any more extras in the new X2. Thought they'd give us a few more new frames, backgrounds at least

[Ron P.]

Still hardly any more extras in the new X2. Thought they'd give us a few more new frames, backgrounds at least

You can use any image as a background, use screenshots from your video clips, use other video clips, SWF animations, ect.. That narrows it down to only a few hundred million possibilities for backgrounds.
If you have an image editing program, like PhotoImpact, PaintShop Pro, CorelDraw, or even MS Paint, you can create Frames and Masks, or mask frames.

Now the downside is that to create or edit menus, you are limited to only being able to do so with PhotoImpact. The DVD menus use a the proprietary UFO format, that only PI is capable of editing or creating.