What can i do with sony vegas m2t files?
 

Other than edit them in Vegas. Are these as good as uncompressed avi files and can I use them as best quality minidv backups?

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I am not a Sony Vegas user, but m2t files are the mpeg-2 compression format that HDV videocameras record to mini-DV tapes. So if you can back those unedited m2t files up to mini-DV tapes or hard drives, those will be the original quality as recorded to camera tapes.

If you did edit and export to m2t though there will be a slight (practically imperceptible the first time) generation loss though which will accumulate with each generation.

Is mpeg-2 compression almost as good as an uncompressed avi file? Do I really need the avi file for future dvd editing etc or is the m2t good enough?

If Vegas works like Premiere Pro then you can always re-convert the m2t into an AVI if you want to re-edit the project for example. So you can ditch the AVIs and keep the m2ts. The m2t files are how an hdv videocamera records to the mini-DV tape- so you can't get any better than that. It's analogous to the DV AVI format that a standard digital video camera records to a mini-DV tape. AVI is just a wrapper though, not an actual codec.

Cineform makes a plugin for editing programs Adobe Premiere Pro and Sony Vegas that auto-converts (or not depending on the settings) the m2t files on the mini-DV tape into a proprietary codec in the AVI format to enable faster editing. These avis are much bigger in file size than the m2t files, but they edit faster than the native m2t files due to the fact that the m2t files are extremely compressed with a special algorithm.

Thanks Jim, you have been extremely helpful. I will start using Vegas to capture minidv's and keep the m2t files as the official backup. One last question though, probably the most important . The average m2t file for a 60 min tape is about 10gb, I heard that uncompressed avi captures are about 1gb per minute (60gb). I am not going to keep my miniDV tapes, I am recording over them after I capture to m2t. Would I ever need the miniDV tape or uncompressed avi file (60gb) to do something extreme with the footage such as dvd's, etc? Or would the m2t be good enough and not have a noticable quality difference. If there is a difference, how noticable would it be? Thank you in advance for your help!

You should *always* keep the mini-DV tapes as your original backup of the raw footage in case you ever want to re-capture and re-edit the footage. Never, ever re-record over a used mini-Dv tape. The tapes are only approx. $4.00 here in the US at least, so why be cheap about it. Hard drives are not suitable for long term storage or archiving of valuable raw footage.

Also keep the small project file(s) on a hard drive or dvd-r which contains the editing instructions so you don't have to start from scratch to re-edit for making a dvd movie for example. When you recapture the mini-Dv tapes you will again have the option of capturing as m2t to edit natively in Vegas or to capture and convert to an AVI again for easier editing purposes if Vegas works like Premiere Pro, which I believe it does.

Certain circumstances prevente me from keeping the minidv tapes, and it's not the cost. Would holding onto the original unedited m2t or mpeg-2 file be that bad? Could the data on the harddrive eventually get corrupted? Wouldn't having it backed up on a second harddrive solve this or is it inevitable? I am just thinking since all I will be doing with the MiniDV tapes is capturing them to mpeg-2 or m2t files, that the minidv's wouldn't be necessary unless the harddrive crashed and I had no backup.

Make sure you backup the mt2 or mpeg-2 files in at least two places, since hard drives can fail as you know. I prefer to keep my mini-DV tapes, and this solution seems backwards. Not to mention you will start filling up hard drives pretty quickly if you film a lot. But it will work fine.