Best way to edit EX3/Vegas9 ?

VEGAS Pro

Best way to edit EX3/Vegas9 ?

Posted by Dave Felder on May 3, 2010 at 6:22 pm

I’m going out of town to shoot a job. I’ve hired a crew with an EX3. Back home, I have Vegas 9 (and FCP Studio 4.5)

My plan is to bring a hard drive with me, have the cameraman copy his camera files to the hard drive, and bring them back to my studio for editing. The video is going to be about 4 minutes long – although I could see an hour of raw footage. Would that hour of Raw fit onto a thumb drive? (I’m just thinking a solid state thumb drive is less likely to die than a mechanical hard drive)

I think from what I’ve read here, I want to bring back Sony “XDCAM EX” files from a BPAV folder, that I assume the cameraman will find for me. Then I just drag those “EX Files” into Vegas, which will recognize them and soon I’ll be editing like I’ve been editing for the past 20 years.

Does this all sound right, or am I going to be spending 48 hours on Creative Cow crying the blues and trying to figure out what I’m missing?

Remember – I don’t have an EX3 camera, so any utility software Sony sells with the camera cannot be counted on to help me out once I get home.

Also – what exactly are “Sony EDCAM EX files?” According to the Sony site, they are MPEG-2. I can’t imagine that means I won’t be able to edit to the frame due to I/P/B frame compression?

Finally, I want to end up with the best 16 x 9 best picture I can. The final program will be shown to a large audience on a pair of 50″ plasmas on a stage. Once again, I assume I want 1080 23.97 progressive – does that sound right?

I know there’s a lot of questions here. I’m still working in SD land and am just trying to avoid problems as I try something new. I’m very appreciative for any advice that is offered on any of my questions.

Thanks so much for your suggestions. . .

Dave

Enrique Orozco replied 16 years, 4 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
3 Replies

Douglas Spotted eagle
May 3, 2010 at 10:02 pm

you merely need the EX drivers, and VEgas will natively edit the mp4 files found in the BPAV folders, and on any reasonably fast ‘puter, they’ll edit like a hot knife on warm butter.

https://www.sony.com/xdcam will get you to the driver site. you don’t need the viewer, just the drivers.

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST

Certified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor
Dave Felder
May 3, 2010 at 10:36 pm

Thanks, Douglas. I’m a little confused.

First of all, if Vegas natively supports the file format, what is the driver for? I will be bringing the files home from the job on a hard disk or SD card and won’t have any Sony hardware on hand when I do the editing.

Assuming that “natively supports file format,” really means “you need additional software to make it work,” none of the choices on the Sony website make sense to me.

I guess I’m confused as to the software descriptions, because the only description that says “driver” also says “optical,” making me wonder if it’s for the optical disk based XDCAMs.

PDZ-1 Proxy Browsing Software Version 2.70 and Optical XDCAM FAM driver version 2.30 (combined)

PDZ-VX10 Sony XDCAM Viewer Version 2.30

PDZK-P1 XDCAM Transfer Software version 2.12

The other two choices are described as “Viewer” and “Transfer,” once again making me wonder if I’m on the right site. The site I’m looking at is https://tinyurl.com/3pwotr

Thanks for taking the time to respond, I really appreciate your help.
Enrique Orozco
May 4, 2010 at 1:55 pm

.. Vegas pro9 reads the EX files from the BPAV folders the camera generates … full native support… I use it every day… no need for drivers … in windows explorer just “filter” all the mp4 files inside the BPAV folder and drag them to your timeline… very fast and effective….

good luck

Enrique Orozco R.
iDEA DigitalVideoStudio

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