Output from FCP for editing in Sony Vegas

[Shane Ross]

if you don’t have access to the NLE being used, it is unwise to try to convert footage for use in that NLE. Most often you won’t get it right. Just give them copies if the camera originals and let them import into Vegas.

Shane

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[Paul Stacy]

Believe me, I know it’s unwise. It’s where I’m at though. The files from the camera are .mov (switched later to MP4 once I realized what they would be editing with).

I’ve got to provide them something they can edit with and get a nice output. Not the optimal situation, but if anyone has any advice to maximize the quality of my MPEG-4 (for editing, not for final consumption) I’d be forever grateful.

I guess another solution could be if someone knew of a way to import .mov files into Sony Vegas. I’m being told it can’t be done (not too familiar with Vegas, myself).

[Dave Brandt]

Hi,

You can use Prores, any flavour. Vegas with quicktime installed will handle these files quite well

[Andy Mees]

Unless you have a special reason for doing so, I’d think transcoding to MP4 wrapped H264 files as an interchange format is almost certainly the wrong choice.

Does the footage you provide absolutely have to be MP4 or H264 or both … or neither? If it has to be in an MP4 container but not necessarily H264 then you may want to use the free Sony XDCAM Transfer or XDCAM Browser app to export your footage via FCP as XDCAM EX footage (in its camera native MP4 wrapper).

Or another thing you could test (I have no idea if this would produce something usable on the Vegas end as you don’t mention anything about your source format) is to just grab the original files and open them with MPEG Streamclip, then and “Save As…” and switch the container to MP4.

Hope it helps
Andy