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Moving from Vegas to FCP
Hi,
I’m moving a project offlined in Sony Vegas 8 to FCP 5.1. I’ll be recapturing the tapes into FCP and going from there. Need some help in getting the edit across.
Vegas isn’t playing nice:
The EDL export script fails with an “Object required” error.
So I used AAF. Going via Premiere CS3 (Win) gets me the edit with a small glitch in the audio tracks. I exported 1 track at a time to CMX3600 and brought these into FCP.
After capturing a tape I noticed some incorrect footage compared to the video reference. After investigating, some clips come through in the AAF with incorrect timecode (but correct reel number). This isn’t an TC offset problem; the TC is minutes too early or too late, seemingly random depending on the clip.
Remembering the small audio glitch in Premiere, I switch to importing into Avid Express Pro (Win), which initially just pulls the offline clips in but not the sequence (following a NOT_THAT_MANY_BYTES error). Using Vegas’ export legacy AAF to push out 1 video track at a time finally gets it into Avid. Looking at the sequence there I have the same incorrect timecode on problem clips as first noticed in FCP, so there’s no point in going across to FCP via CMX3600.
Looking at the Vegas timeline, I see that many (haven’t checked them all) of the TC problem clips occur from Vegas subclips. The offline editor captured tapes to big .AVI chunks and then split them up using subclips.
I’m wondering if there’re any export ideas I’ve missed?
I haven’t used Vegas til now, but it *seems* to be coy about clip and especially subclip TC when media is offline, so I’m not able to completely confirm that the TC isn’t messed from within Vegas. I doubt this is the case, however, as I’ve used multiple .VEG project files from the offline editor and he’s exported a reference video from the very same timeline.
The Vegas project is 3 video and 3 audio tracks, with video crossfades and speed-ups, all of which came through fine on the first Vegas -> Premiere -> FCP attempt, just the TC is messed.
Is there anything else to do, short of getting the offline editor (with media still linked) to write out an Excel EDL? Anything to do with Vegas’ Media Manager that can force all subclips to become clips perhaps?
Thanks for your time,
Stephen Abbott
sa*****@***il.com -
3 Replies
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Hello again,
Success! I moved from Vegas to FCP like so:
Set the “edit list” window to display all events, then copy all the data to Excel. Clean and format in Excel, then export to .EDL/.CSV and make the necessary changes to turn this into a CMX3600 .EDL.
Sub-clip timecode then comes through just fine!
Best,
Stephen Abbott -
Stephen
Can you explain the steps you took in greater detail please? I work side-by-side with another editor who works in Vegas (I use FCP) and the issues between the two are incredibly irritating. He often cuts and I grade.
It would be a GREAT help if we learned what you did.
Cinematographer / Editor
Synn Studios Inc. -
Hi Nicholas,
Sheesh, it’s been quite a while! I haven’t used Vegas in maybe 2 years, but here’s what I remember.
(Also, newer versions/new applications may have fixed my problem)
Vegas will surrender clip/timecode/(and probably reel? can’t remember) information from the Edit List window to the clipboard. I pasted this info into Excel, then reformatted everything to be the same as CMX3600 EDL.
To get this CMX3600 specs, search the Cow or simply export a different timeline from FCP to this EDL and open in textedit.
Once reformatted, I handed the EDL to FCP for import, and then recaptured from the original tapes.
As I recall, the TC was a bit off (a few frames) – or my equipment was! To solve this, I exported a DV MOV from Vegas and laid that on my FCP timeline. Then I slipped each recaptured clip by hand to make sure it was frame accurate (cut points were of course fine).
A neat trick: to make the comparison easier, I set the reference clip from Vegas to Composite Mode: Subtract in FCP. Then, any visual difference (ie – TC off) will show up as *not* black. Then you slip the recaptured clip around (keyboard +/- frame steps) until you only see black… voilà!
I hope this helps. The big step is getting Vegas to surrender an EDL in whatever form (EDL output plugin crashed), then reformatting to CMX3600 is just manual labour, and recapturing likewise.
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