Problems capturing HDV Tapes as .avi files in Sony Vegas on PC

[Mike Kujbida]

You can’t do what you want.
m2t is the format that HDV is captured as.
If you want it in AVI format, you’ll have to convert it after you do the initial capture.

[Rowan Brooks]

Can you do .m2t to .avi transfer in Vegas Pro? If so do you know how to do it with good results?

My co-director is European using Vegas 8 on a PC – I am Using FCP on a Mac.

I initially captured the footage in Final Cut creating .mov files, when I converted to .avi to give to him the results were horrible.

He needs high quality .avi files from the HDV tapes, so far all efforts have been useless. Any guidance appreciated.

[David Rocchio]

set the z1 to convert it , then capture as dv in vegas

[Rowan Brooks]

How do you set the z1 to convert it?

[David Rocchio]

depends on what you want, if you want plain dv widescreen just set the cam, not sitting here with a z1 so just look in the menu, says something on the order of downconvert… if want something else ..like uncompressed avi the same video size as the HDV then render in vegas.. you gotta find out what they mean by high quality avi
good luck

[Mark Maltby]

As far as I can remember, (I am no great authority on this!) you set the iLink conv. to ‘ON’ (in the AV menu on the Z1) and at the top of the same menu select DV instead of HDV. You’ll know if it’s worked as the light by the firewire port should change from HDV to DV.

Thats if it’s the same as the HVR – Z1N that is!

Hope that helps!

[John Rofrano]

Buy a copy of Cineform Neo Scene ($99 USD) and it will capture from your Z1 as Cineform HD AVI files. The other editor will need the Cineform codec to read them (so by two copies of Cineform). 😉

What it actually does is capture and convert in one step but it’s very high quality HD.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Mike Kujbida]

Guys, in the second reply, Rowan said I initially captured the footage in Final Cut creating .mov files.
Because of this, AFAIK, none of the above suggestions will work.

Rowan, have you tried sending your co-director the original .mov files?
Even if you used ProRes, all he needs is the latest version of QuickTime to be able to open them.

[Rowan Brooks]

My Co-director can open the files in QT but he cannot work with them in Vegas 8 because .mov is not recognized by Vegas.

Our predicament is that we need to capture the HDV tapes to .avi for Vegas OR convert my Final Cut generated .mov files to .avi.

I can’t do either, unless I take the suggestion to go down to dv instead of HDV which I assume gives us standard def.

Why doesn’t a Sony App (Vegas) support output from a Sony Camera (Z1U)? Both definitely exist/ed on the market at the same time??

Note: We used 2 cameras for this film – the Sony EX1 was the 2nd Camera:

All the EX1 .mov files that I converted to .avi in Final Cut look great when opened in Vegas but for some reason the .mov’s I converted to .avi from the Z1U look awful.

I even tried Compression “None” as a conversion option, and “Cinepak”. Nothing worked.

[John Rofrano]

> My Co-director can open the files in QT but he cannot work with them in Vegas 8 because .mov is not recognized by Vegas.

MOV is just a container which can hold many codecs. MOV files are recognised by Vegas if they use a codec that is available in Quicktime on the PC. You probably used a codec that is only available on the Mac (like the Apple Intermediate Codec). So the mov files are not your problem. Your problem is using a Quicktime HD codec that exists on both PC and Mac.

Thanks to Mike for pointing out that I missed the fact that you are using FCP so Neo Scene is not a solution for you. 🙁

> Our predicament is that we need to capture the HDV tapes to .avi for Vegas OR convert my Final Cut generated .mov files to .avi.

Just to be clear, AVI and MOV are not video formats. They are containers that hold video formats. You do not need AVI for Vegas. You need an HD codec that is available on both the PC and Mac. It doesn’t matter if the file is AVI or MOV. Vegas will read Apple ProRes 422 in a Quicktime mov file.

> I can’t do either, unless I take the suggestion to go down to dv instead of HDV which I assume gives us standard def.

You could use the Apple ProRes 422 codec. This can be read on a PC but not written on a PC. That will at least get the media to him in and HD format that he can read.

> Why doesn’t a Sony App (Vegas) support output from a Sony Camera (Z1U)? Both definitely exist/ed on the market at the same time??

It absolutely does!!! The Sony Z1 shoots MPEG2 Transport Stream which are .m2t files. Sony Vegas copies the m2t file from the camera tape with no loss. It is a bit-for-bit copy of exactly what’s on the tape.

The question you should be asking is why can’t FCP work with the native format of the Sony Z1 like Vegas does??? It is FCP that has the problem and wants to convert everything to it’s proprietary Mac format. Let’s be very clear about this… FCP is NOT capturing what’s on the Z1. It is transcoding what is on the tape and converting it to it’s own Mac format (probably the Apple Intermediate Codec). This is why Vegas can’t read it.

> All the EX1 .mov files that I converted to .avi in Final Cut look great when opened in Vegas but for some reason the .mov’s I converted to .avi from the Z1U look awful.

The EX1 is not HDV so it uses a different codec (XDCam HD). What you might want to do is render the HDV footage that you capture in FCP to the EX1 format that FCP produces. This would solve your problem and probably give you good quality (although FCP would have converted the file twice instead of Vegas which would not have converted the file at all)

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com