Vegas and DVCPRO HD

Its a damn shame, because Vegas used to be the one NLE you could pretty much rely on to ingest anything.

Even if they just allowed HVX MXF's to be dragged onto the timeline it would be something. I don't think that would take much to program. The only other issue is DVCpro. Is there a license involved? If so I could see why Sony wouldn't want to pay that.

Eventually one or two tapeless formats will be standard. Whether that is Red, P2, Infinity etc or some as yet undisclosed format somewhere, there is no telling. But once certain formats reach a certain amount of popularity they will be left with no choice but to support it. There comes a point when sales of the NLE will suffer if they don't.
 
Simon Wyndham said:
Its a damn shame, because Vegas used to be the one NLE you could pretty much rely on to ingest anything.
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Preachin' to the choir!

Even if they just allowed HVX MXF's to be dragged onto the timeline it would be something.
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That's what we've been asking for. I'm also asking for it from Apple, but they haven't deemed fit to do it yet either. EDIUS and Avid and Liquid all have (though Liquid does so for SD only).

I don't think that would take much to program.
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The MXF wrapper, probably not. The codec, maybe, but there are lots of sources for that. And there's precedent -- for example, you can't edit DVCPRO50 natively on Vegas unless you've installed the Matrox codec, but once you install the Matrox codec it's no problem. So why not support the same thing with Vegas/DVCPRO-HD. If I have the Serious Magic or Avid codec installed, why not make the MXF file able to see it?

The only other issue is DVCpro. Is there a license involved? If so I could see why Sony wouldn't want to pay that.
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Yes there is. But nobody pays it. You only pay the license fee if you want to use Panasonic's software development tools, near as I can tell. I think everyone pretty much develops their own compatible codec; I know that's what Raylight did, and I believe that's what Canopus did (because they don't even call theirs DVCPRO-HD, they call it "Canopus HD"). I don't know if Avid paid a fee, I doubt Serious Magic did, I'm sure they just developed their own too. And I sincerely extremely doubt that CineForm paid 'em anything, I'm sure they just developed their own codec (or partnered with someone else who had already made their own.) Then there's MainConcept, they offer their own SDK so I doubt they paid Panasonic for theirs, only to offer a comparable product -- that would make no sense. And then there's Apple... did Apple write their own or partner with Panasonic? I suspect if anyone paid the fee it's probably Apple and Avid, but who knows (other than Panasonic, Apple, and Avid?)

Eventually one or two tapeless formats will be standard. Whether that is Red, P2, Infinity etc or some as yet undisclosed format somewhere, there is no telling. But once certain formats reach a certain amount of popularity they will be left with no choice but to support it. There comes a point when sales of the NLE will suffer if they don't.
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Agreed. The thing is, tapeless will come into its own when people stop trying to patch it into an inherently tape-based workflow. Right now only EDIUS is doing it "the right way", and the way they do it is night-and-day different from how everyone else does it. Only Avid comes close. Somebody on the Vegas forum was saying XDCAM-HD had some appeal, and once someone truly "gets the vision" for how tapeless should be done, they'll see why XDCAM-HD is completely the wrong approach, and all these "unwrap/rewrap" tools are the totally wrong approach. When shooting to an "archival" media (like tape or XDCAM discs), the very first step you have to take is to "restore your footage from archive", and with XDCAM-HD that means real time, 1:1. It'll never be faster because the media is limited to the 36mbps transfer speed.

There's a certain mentality at work here that sooner or later is going to be overcome, and that mentality is the same thinking that's been grounded in tape. A lot of shooters who are looking at these tapeless systems are tantalized by the XDCAM concept because it's not a big logical leap for them -- they can see that the XDCAM disc is a direct replacement for the tape, so they "get it". The problem is, they don't "get" the advantages of what true tapeless can be, specifically because they constrain themselves to that same disc! What they get is a baby-step towards true tapeless, but without all the power and flexibility that it could really mean.

Not that all is hunky-dory in the P2 world right now. Because of the limited card size and the tunnel-vision of the NLE developers, we're currently constrained by the need to "transfer" footage. A lot of people aren't seeing that as too much of a limitation because, again, they don't "get" the way things could be, they're instead looking at what they have and seeing that they can make it work as-is (which, hey, kudos to them for that! I'm just saying, keep an eye on the bigger picture!)

As for transferring, transfer rate depends on several factors, not the least of which is which format you shot in, and how you're transferring (today's laptops seem to average about 1gb/minute). If you shot DV, your transfer is 4x faster than realtime. If you shot 720/24pN, your transfer is about 2.5x faster than realtime. In 1080, it's about realtime. But then again it depends on what you're transferring from and to; the transfer is limited by the hard disk speed. The cards are capable of 80 megabyte per second transfers, but the hard drives are typically limited to no more than about 30 megabytes per second. In an ideal world if you were to transfer directly to an 80mB/sec SATA RAID, you could transfer 1080 at 6x faster than realtime, 720/24pN at 15x faster than realtime, and DV at 24x faster than realtime. When you're transferring at 24x faster than realtime, or 15x faster than realtime, or even 6x faster than realtime, you start to see the advantages of the tapeless workflow. Transferring an hour of footage in 10 minutes... well, now you're seeing a real boon to your workflow and something you can start making some money with. Transferring an hour of footage in three minutes (as might be possible with DV)? Okay, now you're talking!

But even so, that's still a baby step. It's still not TAPELESS.

Because it ignores the main point which may come out with larger cards, which is: you don't *have* to transfer at all, in a properly-integrated tapeless system. Why transfer? Just edit directly from the card. So far only EDIUS and Avid support that though. With EDIUS it's really simple, plug the card in, drag the files to the timeline and edit.

It's great that people are coming up with patches to try to make things work in today's editors, but I think they're all missing the boat. FCP's implementation is better than nothing, but it's not "there" yet, it's still a transfer and rewrap. Raylight and SM's decoder and CineForm are all nice intermediary steps, but they're not "there" yet. Avid is close but it's still a "patch", it doesn't support the files the way they should be. Only EDIUS has the tapeless thing really figured out. Shoot to the card -- plug the card in -- drag to the timeline -- edit -- render out to the card. Never touch a "hard disk", never "transfer footage", never "capture". No logging, no timecode, no in/out, no batch capture, none of that, it's all done away with; instead just immediately edit the footage from the card. Of course this is a limited workflow with today's tiny cards but once we get 32gb or 64gb or 128gb cards, all those intermediary steps can just disappear. And this is the kind of workflow that could never happen from a system like XDCAM-HD. With a slow disc-based system like XDCAM, you can't do anything with your footage until you first transfer it to your system, and the transfer is going to happen at realtime. An hour will take an hour. With P2, someday you won't be transferring AT ALL. Not even at the 6x realtime rate, it'll be instant.

THAT'S when tapeless will be fully realized.

You can do it today to a small degree with EDIUS, but not for larger projects. With EDIUS you can get six streams of HD playing realtime off of a single card, but that card only holds up to 20 minutes so you're limited to what size of project you can do. And while you can go to a five-slot reader and get (theoretically) 100 minutes on-line at once, then you're limited by USB2 speeds. When Panasonic gets their FW800 slot reader implemented, then we'll really have something that can be worked with.

DV Rack 2.0 gets close there with the direct-to-disk capturing, for those who don't mind being cabled (and on any studio-style production, when aren't you cabled to at least a monitor and to the audio equipment anyway, so what's one more cable?) With DV Rack 2.0 you capture to disk, drop on the timeline, edit. No transferring, no transcoding, no hassles. And FCP can sort of get there too because it can do direct capture; it just doesn't have live scopes and good monitoring while capturing (but maybe 5.1.2 will fix that?) FireStore FS-100 sort of gets us there; you can shoot to the drive and then plug the drive in and edit from it, but it's a hard disk limited by a firewire connection so you can only do maybe one stream at a time from it. Solid State recording (memory card recording) is brilliant because there's no moving parts, no read/write heads, no seeking, so you can read data off it just as fast as the interface allows.

I have no doubt that the future of tapeless is going to be solid-state media, not disc. Whether it'll be P2 or SD or CF or REDRAM or something like that, that all remains to be seen, but it's going to be solid state, and NLE programs will have to adapt.
 
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Just a quick note about Sony's "business decision."

How smart is it to make a business decision to discourage customers from upgrading their old Vegas licenses because new versions don't have features (like DVCPro and Pana MXF support) for which they would gladly pay?

How smart is it to make a business decision that keeps a product from being seen as professional? Vegas was making some inroads in production houses. A few people in the industry were starting to see it as a professional alternative to things like high end Avid systems and certainly an alternative to FCP. Look how it was taking off with some great shooters here on DVXUser. However, Sony has decided to have Vegas seen, at best, as a prosumer tool that might be OK for event videography. Even if you have a Sony workflow at a production house, are you going to want to use Vegas if the industry doesn't accept it as a professional tool? How can anyone believe Sony wants it to be a true professional tool if Vegas doesn't support important industry standards?

How smart is it to make a business decision to dump a large segment of your user base? The same people who jumped in with the DVX100 flocked to Vegas because of its excellent support for the DVX100 and other formats. These people are now starting to shoot with the HVX or other DVCPro cameras. As you can obviously see on these boards, this segment of Vegas users has moved to other tools after Sony dumped them. (I'm sure being dumped really made them all want to go out and buy Sony cameras, don't you think?)

I work with a small production company that has several Vegas 5 licenses that haven't been updated (because everyone was waiting for MXF support). People there now see Vegas as lacking professional capabilities (because everyone expected Vegas to continue to make inroads in professional circles, like FCP). They now have HVX cameras and, to be honest, the Raylight workflow is a pain and has caused problems. The once darling Vegas is now seen as a bad decision.

I know I'm preaching to the choir. The sad thing is that there are probably some very smart people at Sony who know, like most people on these boards, that there are very dumb people at Sony making these "business decisions."
 
Well, using Barry's "old girlfriend" analogy . . .

An ex of mine married a guy no one liked and then alienated most of her friends. No one particularly liked it, but what can you do? No sense in dwelling.
 
David Jimerson said:
Well, using Barry's "old girlfriend" analogy . . .

An ex of mine married a guy no one liked and then alienated most of her friends. No one particularly liked it, but what can you do? No sense in dwelling.
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i think we all made that mistake once in our life.
 
What I find a bit presumptuous though is that people are assuming that Sony have made this decision just as a way of not having to support Panasonic products.

To my knowledge the guys at Madison have never come forward with an official explanation. For all we know it might be Panasonic being awkward with Sony rather than the other way around. Perhaps Panasonic don't want their camera supported by a Sony product, and this is their way of getting one up?
 
Well, it doesn't really matter why; it only matters that it's not happening.

But I find it kind of hard to swallow that Panasonic wouldn't want its camera supported by as many NLEs as possible -- and it didn't seem to mind that Vegas was the NLE best-integrated with the DVX.
 
Simon Wyndham said:
For all we know it might be Panasonic being awkward with Sony rather than the other way around. Perhaps Panasonic don't want their camera supported by a Sony product, and this is their way of getting one up?
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Doesn't work though. Follow the money. Panasonic doesn't make editing software that competes with Sony, so how do they lose by having Vegas support them? They don't, they only win.

Sony, on the other hand, does make competing cameras. How does Sony lose if they support Panasonic's camera? Well, that "enables" people to buy the Panasonic camera (or, in other words, it makes it easier for the Vegas customer base to go the Panasonic camera route).

Now, about licensing: it's true that Panasonic charges a licensing fee for their software development kit. So? Nobody pays it. There's a FREE CODEC installed on every PC that installs the P2 Viewer. In fact, there's two free codecs you can use; you can also download the Avid Quicktime codec.

In order to support the HVX natively, they really only need to do two things: they need to implement MXF Op-Atom, and they need to just point to the free P2 Viewer codec. But they don't support Op-Atom (even though it's a SMPTE standard used by Avid, Thomson, Panasonic, Pinnacle, and basically everyone else). They instead use their own proprietary Sony-only version of MXF.

So here's the big test: will they ever support Op-Atom? That is the key. The codec is not an issue, it's already there and free. It's not about licensing fees. It's about whether they'll embrace the universal standard of MXF rather than their own proprietary "like.no.other" version.
 
"it's a SMPTE standard used by Avid, Thomson, Panasonic, Pinnacle, and basically everyone else"

are you SURE about that ?? based on above
perhaps you can tell me how to view Avid MXF files ?
i downloaded Avids free codec's (MFX codec is included ). downloaded P2 viewer ... i have combustion 4 , AE 6.5 vegas 7, premiere P 1.5 ..
and nothing can see avids mfx files ??
these clips were captured on Avid Adrenline from digibeta to 10bit avid MFX .. the avid has no problems playing the clips ..
so if Avid follows SMPTE spec's then it seems they should play in one of my programs ??

this DVCproHD & Vegas is getting old .. we're all repeating the same ole same old
bottom line is they don't support "native DVCproHD " ( PERIOD)
if you use Vegas you either use the work arounds or move to another NLE that does support it natively ... that's all OLD news

next up ...
more important on my list is 10 bit support !!!
... which NLE's have full 10 bit support ?
and who's going to be supporting RAW files ?
 
I know this topic has been beaten to death so my apologies, but I was just curious - if vegas can support op1a but not the standard opatom then if you converted opatom to op1a with something like Mog Solution's theScribePro would you be able to drop it in to vegas, provided you had a dvcprohd codec installed?
 
I've tried to use The Scribe to do just that with no luck. It's a great app but not if you have more then 10 files to convert as you need to do them one at a time.
 
Perhaps old news, but I just read the following info on the Raylight/DVFilm website:

"15-Dec-2006 Coming soon - a plugin for Sony Vegas that will allow you to bring MXF files directly into the timeline."

Is this what Vegas-HVX200 users have been waiting for?
 
blckhawk542 said:
HURRAY!!! :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
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It's online now (release 2.02) but the website documents are
not caught up yet. It has a few limitations since it's really still
in development. This is from the readme file:

Vegas users can enjoy the direct import of MXF files into the timeline. In Vegas
use File->Open or File->Import->Media Files. Select an MXF file and click Open.
Or drag the MXF file directly into the timeline or media bin. The sound tracks
will automatically be imported if they are located in an adjacent AUDIO folder
or the same folder as the video MXF file.

The plugin will recognize native frame size and set aspect ratio correctly if the
"Use Native Frame Size" option is chosen in the Raylight Configuration Screen.
If not it will use full frame size with square pixels which is the default.

Limitations of the plug-in

1. The plugin will presently not remove pulldown or redundant frames, so it
works well only with native frame rates like 720/24PN, 720/25PN, 720/30PN,
1080i60/30P, 1080i50/25P, etc.

2. You presently cannot export an MXF file or author a P2 card directly from
the timeline. Export a Raylight AVI instead and use P2 Maker.

3. Vegas will always recompress when exporting a Raylight AVI from MXF files.
Non-recompressed editing requires Raylight AVI in the timeline.

4. Raylight Red (the low-res proxy mode) does not work with MXF files in the
timeline unless you prerender video.

5. Audio MXF files cannot be imported separately. If you need access to tracks
3&4, convert them to WAV files with RayMaker.

I should also mention it only works with DVCPROHD not DVCPRO50 or DV.
 
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mvb said:
2. You presently cannot export an MXF file or author a P2 card directly from
the timeline. Export a Raylight AVI instead and use P2 Maker.
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I like the "presently" here -- does that mean it's coming? :thumbsup:
 
David Jimerson said:
I like the "presently" here -- does that mean it's coming? :thumbsup:
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Yep, I have all the parts to do it, it's just a matter of a few day's work
to put it together, basically to put the P2 Maker options dialog into the
Vegas render templates.

Here is an update on the Vegas 7.0 support. The Raylight plug-in will
work with Vegas 7, but to make it work, the Sony's MXF file reader
has to be disabled.

So the release on line now has a new Setup.exe that will do that for you.

http://dvfilm.com/raylight
 
When some of you folks have the chance to use it, I would be very interested to know what type of real-time capabilities you are getting.

Thanks,

Jason
 
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