Uncompressed Capture with Vegas 9.0?

[Chris Young]

Yes, in both SD and HD with either the AJA XENA cards or the Blackmagic Decklink cards. Look under Options/Preferences/Preview device in Vegas and you will see the AJA card as a selection. For XENA, check out:

https://www.aja.com/products/xena/

Another possible option that that should work with Vegas is the new MXO2 Mini. Would be much more space efficient on storage than uncompressed but still give you good quality in SD or HD. It uses the Matrox I-Frame MPEG2 codec with up to 50mbit in SD and 300mbit in HD. It can also do uncompressed. For Matrox MXO2 Mini, check out:

https://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mxo2_mini/

Familiar with the AJA workflow, it’s good, but I think the new Matrox offering is going to offer good $$$ value as well.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Norman Willis]

Hi Chris.

Thank you very much. It is 2AM here and I am bleary eyed, but I will try to check this out come daylight.

Are you familiar with Henry Olonga’s work? He is doing some amazing Indie stuff, capturing uncompressed from cheap camcorders. I just sold both my cameras, and am trying to follow his lead (but with a desktop).

https://vimeo.com/4083139

Norman

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

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[Norman Willis]

Hi Chris.

I checked out the AJA Xena line. That is a full-on broadcast quality card, >$1200.00. It also uses SDI connections. I would love to own an EX1, but I am not there yet….

I need to connect either via HDMI, or Component. Is it possible to successfully connect a Canon HF S10 to the DeckLink via Component?

Henry Olonga and others on DVInfo are connecting with Intensity Pro cards, but apparently one needs to install an older driver, or something. I am tracking that down as well.

https://vimeo.com/4083139

I would be very interested to hear if anyone has successfully connected to Vegas with an MX.O2 Mini.

Norman

[Chris Young]

Hi Norman ~

I to would be interested to hear about MX02 Mini. Especially when you see its specs up against Intensity Pro, MX02 is well ahead!

https://www.matrox.com/video/media/pdf/products/mxo2_mini/en_mini_vs_intensity.pdf

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Norman Willis]

I have been checking around, and they say that the MX.O2 Mini will not be compatible with Vegas.
Does anyone know of workarounds?
And what’s up with Vegas, that nothing is compatible with it?

[Chris Young]

Yes Norman. I have since discovered the MX O2 Mini will only work with Adobe. Matrox and Adobe have a fairly tight development agreement and have had for quite some time.

The new Decklink Studio

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/decklink/

May well work with Vegas with the new v9 drivers as It’s designed to work under DirectShow. You wouldn’t get any of the accelerated effects that you get with Premiere but if the capture / output and monitoring work this would be a good uncompressed capture board. The Sony Vegas distributor here in Australia is having a look at this option to see if it can co-exist with Vegas.

Why Sony don’t get their finger out and sit down with people like Blackmagic to make sure Sony users have more than the AJA devices for output and monitoring I don’t know. Both Sony and Blackmagic are missing out on sales. For Vegas to be accepted in the wider professional market it must develop more hardware interfacing.

From Sony’s point if they wish to promote an even wider acceptance of the XDCam file based work flow and help sales of XDCam hardware the more complete Vegas becomes Sony can only benefit. To help towards that end uncompressed support of SD and HD is important. We shoot almost exclusively with XDCam and edit native MXF, have done so now for the last two years. Yet for network delivery we still have to deliver on Digi-Beta for SD and HDCam for HD. This requires SDI / HDSDI uncompressed I/O.

I look with a certain amount of envy towards Premiere and FCP with their wider range of hardware interfacing. Sad when you stop to think that Vegas is as good and in many ways far better than either of those as a craft editor. Without further hardware interfacing Vegas as good as it is will float around on the edge of the Pro market and sadly will never quite fulfil its true potential.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Norman Willis]

From Sony’s point if they wish to promote an even wider acceptance of the XDCam file based work flow and help sales of XDCam hardware the more complete Vegas becomes Sony can only benefit. To help towards that end uncompressed support of SD and HD is important. We shoot almost exclusively with XDCam and edit native MXF, have done so now for the last two years. Yet for network delivery we still have to deliver on Digi-Beta for SD and HDCam for HD. This requires SDI / HDSDI uncompressed I/O.

I look with a certain amount of envy towards Premiere and FCP with their wider range of hardware interfacing. Sad when you stop to think that Vegas is as good and in many ways far better than either of those as a craft editor. Without further hardware interfacing Vegas as good as it is will float around on the edge of the Pro market and sadly will never quite fulfil its true potential.

I agree with that 100%. I really like Vegas, and I think they are sitting on a winner. I just wish they would quit sitting on it, and develop it instead.

I wanted to get an AG-HPX170 (P2 card), but Sony won’t support it. The camera I want after that (AG-HPX300) is also a P2 card machine. Does Sony they think they are going to force me either to go P2, or go XD-cam? They are wrong on both counts.

I have started writing Sony directly, on their Product Suggestion line. https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/support/productsuggestion.asp
Hopefully they can figure out that when they fail to give their customers good third-party hardware and software support, they are just shooting themselves and everyone else in the foot.

[John Rofrano]

> I wanted to get an AG-HPX170 (P2 card), but Sony won’t support it. The camera I want after that (AG-HPX300) is also a P2 card machine. Does Sony they think they are going to force me either to go P2, or go XD-cam? They are wrong on both counts.

In case you are unaware, there are legal reasons why Sony and Panasonic don’t play nice together. Neither one wants to sign the necessary papers to work together because because of the potential to disclose proprietary information that neither one wants the other one to have. This is because the agreements would be at the “Sony” level not the “Sony Media Software” level and Sony has too much competing camera hardware to be able to risk signing them. This is the downside of being part of a larger company with other interests at stake.

~jr

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

[Chris Young]

John / Norman ~

Panasonic P2 MXF files are not an issue any longer in Vegas. DVFilm’s Raylight ULTRA

https://dvfilm.com/raylight/ultra/index.htm

fully supports P2 MXF SD and HD files in Vegas. Just drag ’em on the timeline and edit away.

At the moment Raylight ULTRA is supported with Vegas 8.0c and will shortly be supported with v9.0. DVFilm are also working towards full ULTRA support of P2 AVCIntra 50/100 in Vegas. Once that comes on line there won’t be much in the way of file based camera ‘footage’ that you won’t be able to handle in Vegas.

As I have been asked by quite a few as to how you do it with P2 I will be demo’ing Raylight ULTRA in Vegas 8.0c at our SMPTE Broadcast Expo show in Sydney third week of July for any of you locals who may be interested.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Norman Willis]

Hi John.

I appreciate you letting me know that. Though I have written to Sony several times, I never did get any response. In fact, you are the first person who has bothered to articulate the problem for me.

However, as I see it, it is far more than just Panasonic and the P2 cards. You yourself are suffering from lack of Boris support in V9. As you say, a lot of that particular issue may be Boris’ fault, but what about the MX.O2, Cineform, much of the AJA line, Black Magic Design, and all of the other wealth of stuff that Sony Vegas does not support?

What I do not understand is how is this NLE going to come to maturity when there is such a huge gap in between the AVCHD format cameras (starting at about $1,200.00) and the XDCam format (starting at about $6,000.00), and Sony does nothing to support it, and nothing to fill it. Why?

What does a guy do if he cannot afford an EX-1 yet (or if he really wants an AG-HPX300), but wants more quality than AVCHD supplies, and does not want to throw away $20.00 a pop on XDCam media? Even if SxS is a superior format, P2 is the only thing that fits the bill right now…and Sony does nothing to support it.

I can understand that Sony and Panasonic are vying for market dominance, but Sony has effectively shut off support for all entry-level professional cameras that use the P2 format, while providing nothing to replace them. How smart is that? How do you get to be the market leader that way?

And aside from the wide-ranging lack of support for third party hardware and software, what’s up with Sony’s ‘Memory Stick’, and all that kind of proprietary stuff? Is there some technical advantage of the ‘Memory Stick’ over SDHC that forces them to adopt a non-compatible format?

Please don’t get me wrong: I love Vegas. I am just frustrated because I got turned on to Vegas because everyone said it was “the wave of the future.” Wave of the future? Why not wave of the present? Why is it not the dominant NLE in the marketplace right now?

The only answer is that Sony does not want to provide a proper range of cameras, hardware and third party support for professionals and beginning professionals in this industry. They want it to be the dominant NLE, but they don’t want to give #1 support.

Am I wrong?