Vegas Option for ProRes 422 (HD)

[Steve Hancock]

Sorry for the multiple posts. Had an issue with posting.

[Aaron Star]

If you rendered to xdcam422, it is most likely a problem with the Apple software reading the file. XDCAM422 is a pro codec that has 8 discrete audio channels. Channels 1 and 2 are normally the stereo recording. Final Cut, with the Sony extensions would most likely understand the file format properly.

FFMPEG supports renders to Prores and HQ.

[John Rofrano]

[Steve Hancock] “Continued with this topic – We were able to render as prores, but the distributor is saying that they can’t accept it because it is coming through as dual mono instead of stereo. “

Did you read my posts? You can’t render “real” ProRes on a PC. Apple has not licensed ProRes for the PC. Any hacks are just that… “hacks”. The distributor can tell it’s not real ProRes because… it’s not.

If you need to render to ProRes you need to buy a Mac.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

[Aaron Star] “it is most likely a problem with the Apple software reading the file. “

More than likely it’s a problem with the “hacked” PC software that created the file because you cannot “legally” encode ProRes on a PC.

~jr

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

[Steve Hancock]

We didn’t render the Prores on a PC.

We now have access to a Mac Laptop and we got Apple compressor 4.1.
We rendered the files as .mxf in Sony Vegas and then ran that through Compressor on the Mac laptop to get the prores render.

It all seemed to work fine, but the distributer is saying we have an audio issue. The audio needs to be Stereo, but they’re receiving the prores file as dual mono.

Is there something we would need to do when using Apple Compressor to make sure the audio comes out stereo when doing ProRes?

[John Rofrano]

[Steve Hancock] “Is there something we would need to do when using Apple Compressor to make sure the audio comes out stereo when doing ProRes?”

What are the Audio settings on the ProRes template? The default is “Copy audio tracks from source”. The other option is to uncheck that and manually select Channel layout: Stereo (L R). That should guarantee stereo output.

~jr

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

[Aaron Star]

Calm down John Rofrano. No one said he rendered Prores on the PC. He said he rendered XDCAM on the PC, then took that file to the Mac and was having issue.

Apple has its share of bugs just like every company on the planet. The only reason the distributor can tell the encoder is because the meta in the file header. FFMPEG is not going to allow that to be changed for legal reasons. Prores is not Apple magic, it just a codec that has apple labeling, and they protect it with a whole bunch of lawyers. I was only trying to say that the XDCAM format may not be that compatible with such low end software. Upgrading to Final Cut with the Sony file extensions may solve the problem.

I was not belittling your people.

[Norman Black]

[John Rofrano] “You can’t render “real” ProRes on a PC. Apple has not licensed ProRes for the PC. Any hacks are just that… “hacks”. The distributor can tell it’s not real ProRes because… it’s not.
“

By that logic x264 does not generate proper AVC/H.264 since it is not x264 licensed by the MPEG group. Same can be said of the LAME MP3 encoder. Are files encoded by these “real”.

Prores is a trivial codec. It is simple DCT based I-frame encoding. This is very much like JPEG images are DCT based. Same general principles. Just a more modern specification. The same thing can be said of DNxHD and Prores is kinda a mirror of much DNxHD.

The video stream cannot be identified as non Apple but the encoder metadata can.

[John Rofrano]

Sorry, I thought he had created the ProRes file on the PC. I have him suggestions on what Compressor settings try on the Mac.

~jr

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

[John Rofrano]

[Norman Black] “By that logic x264 does not generate proper AVC/H.264 since it is not x264 licensed by the MPEG group. Same can be said of the LAME MP3 encoder. Are files encoded by these “real”.”

Yes, this is exactly why x264 has problems with Sony Vegas. That’s great example. Vegas has no problems with proper AVC/H.264 but codecs like DivX, Xvid, x264, etc, cause problems. Why is that? They must not be “the same” as AVC/H.264.

[Norman Black] “The video stream cannot be identified as non Apple but the encoder metadata can.”

Actually it can be identified because ProRes files created on a PC perform extremely poorly in FCP. It’s pretty obvious when someone gives you one of these so however trivial you think it might be, they haven’t gotten it quiet right yet.

~jr

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