ProRes and Vegas?

M

Metrolens

Well-known member
How wise would it be to edit and finish with ProRes within Vegas 7?

Project details:
-Short film shot on Canon XH-A1, 1080i HDV 24f.
-Used a Brevis Adapter, so all the footage is upside down
-Captured using FCP to ProRes 422 Quicktimes.
-Will edit in Vegas 7d.

We captured in FCP, and then changed editors (to me), and will now be using Vegas 7. I received all the ProRes footage, and was shocked and amazed to find that Vegas imported the ProRes HDV Quicktimes, and seems to play it fine. Looks fine, edits well in the timeline. (I am truly amazed with the versatility of Vegas).

BUT - are there any problems caused by using ProRes 422 within Vegas? I'm afraid that this weird workflow will cause problems later on, for output, etc. Would it be better to recapture using Neo HDV (this time flipping the footage during capture)? I'm trying to avoid recapturing, as there is a lot of footage, so it'd be time consuming, and furthermore I don't want to subject the tapes (or my heads) to another full run-through.
 
It's not Vegas that's amazing in this case, it's Quicktime. Version 7.5.5 of Quicktime released in August included ProRes support for the first time on Windows. And Vegas uses Quicktime in addition to VfW and its own codeds.

As for problems, if it works fine now, you should be ok. One thing you should check though is the gamma. Footage exported by some Mac codecs have different gamma that look really bad on a PC. So you should capture a small part with NeoHDV and see if the gamma is the same as in ProRes.
 
Thank you Eugenia. What would the gamma difference be, if there is one? Quicktime possibly darker?

Is ProRes theoretically better than NeoHDV, or are they pretty much the same?
 
I'd say they are similar. Just make a test as to which one edits faster and previews faster on vegas.
The quicktime problem with h.264 gamma is the QT created file looking dull and brighter. Not sure if prores has the same problem, you will have to test it.
 
ProRes low fps playback, HDV Quicktimes no video?

ProRes low fps playback, HDV Quicktimes no video?

Hm, two suddenly pressing issues and questions:

1. I can only play the ProRes clips at full 24fps in Vegas by using "Draft" mode, Half size. This is annoying as it blurs the image quite a bit. Using "Preview" or "Good" settings drops the frame rate to around 10-15 fps, "Best" to around 5 fps. I recall being able to play regular HDV cleanly at a higher frame rates on my system, so is ProRes actually bogging Vegas down this much? Remember that Vegas is currently flipping the image using Track Motion - could this be contributing to the problem?

2. Originally my footage was captured as regular Quicktime HDV files in FCP, which was I believe then transcoded to this set of ProRes files. Problem is, there's no visible VIDEO on any of these original QT HDV clips, no matter what I do. WHERE DID THE VIDEO GO? It's like it was disconnected or lost somewhere in copying the files to my PC? But I still have the Mac Firewire drive with all the QT HDV files, and these apparently don't have video either. I tried rewrapping these using the Neo HDV trial, and that didn't work either. Please help!
 
Might want to try using MacDrive, loaded on the PC , to see your files.

Your frame rates on playback sound about right, even without the flip. Of course flipping only compounds the problem. If you can get 10 - 15 fps in Good use that.
 
Thanks - I'm using MacDrive 7 already, it worked perfectly to transfer the files.

So, I did a test capture with Cineform. Good news, the files do play a little better in Vegas - I can get 23.976 fps using "Preview." Probably related to the fact that the files are already flipped, so there's no Track Motion bogging it down.

But, I haven't yet been able to do a good Gamma comparison between the ProRes and the Cineform file. Eugenia, you mentioned that the QT might be "dull and brighter." Would it be an obvious difference, or something very subtle? I'm previewing on my computer monitor so any help would be appreciated. So far the ProRes looks fine.

And, the ProRes footage looks markedly better in the Quicktime Player than in the Vegas preview window, even at "Best" and Full. Is this normal?
 
A gamma shift from Mac to PC would be BLATANTLY obvious. Night and day difference. And yes, ProRes is a LOT more data than HDV. It will bog Vegas down a lot depending on your CPU and available memory.

Preview windows are all scaled. It's not surprising at all it looks better in the quicktime window.
 
Thanks Perrone. And actually you may be able to answer my other question #2:

Regarding those HDV Quicktimes which have no Video but have sound, is it safe to say they were captured with the AIC codec? And hence, will be utterly useless to me for editing in Vegas? (I tried to use gSpot, which couldn't identify the codec used, other than "hdv6.")
 
No, not safe to say. I don't know WHAT they were captured in. But if they were captured in AIC, then they will indeed be useless.
 
Would gSpot identify AIC, if that were the codec?

And, is there some other solution I should try to get these HDV Quicktimes to show their video?

Thing is, even if these HDV files are somehow playable, they're still upside down, which is really annoying. And sadly NeoHDV doesn't have a "flip during conversion" option, only during capture.
 
And now... Vegas 7d Crashing on Media Import

And now... Vegas 7d Crashing on Media Import

Ok, so now I'm trying to bring my ProRes files into Vegas, and the application keeps crashing on import. Horribly unstable.

I have a total of 554 ProRes files, which are 460 GB in total. Is Vegas 7d not up to the task? I've tried limiting the imports to 5-10 files at once, so as not to overload the program, but crashes still happen. I've tried using "Import" as well as dragging and dropping the media from its folder directly into Vegas.

Am I doing something wrong? Please don't tell me I have to add literally one file at a time.

So far, this is the biggest flaw I've encountered in Vegas.
 
If you wrote a book in Wordperfect on Linux, and then tried to bring it into MS word on intel, and it crashed, would you blame the PC?

ProRes has been Apple only since it's inception. Only for the last couple of months has Apple opened the door to let it play on a PC, and then only through Quicktime. You're using an 2 year old version of Vegas and faulting it for not understanding your ProRes files which were not even available when the program was written.
 
Don't get me wrong - I know it's a tall order, and as I said before I was impressed that Vegas would do anything with these ProRes files in the first place.

So are you saying that if I had an equivalent number and size of Cineform files, I wouldn't be seeing these crashes? That would actually be great news for me; it would condense the conversation to simply "get Cineform and recapture."

But now my confidence in Vegas has been shaken, and I'm just hoping it's a ProRes problem and not just inherent to stuffing 460 GB into Vegas!
 
Metrolens said:
But now my confidence in Vegas has been shaken, and I'm just hoping it's a ProRes problem and not just inherent to stuffing 460 GB into Vegas!
Click to expand...


Well to be honest with you, I've never put 480GB into Vegas. I've never put 480GB into anything. But I'd take the chance with Cineform before I'd take it with anything else.

Consider that Vegas SHIPS with Cineform as a built in. That should tell you something of it's integration with it.
 
Good point about Vegas + Cineform.

For that matter it could even be a problem with Windows XP (SP3). Some of the ProRes files I'm dealing with are 11 GB. Most are significantly over a gig.

But the Vegas project file now seems to have become unstable, even when not importing footage. I've successfully added say 20-30 1 GB ProRes files to the project, and now it's hanging on launch occasionally.
 
I'm no expert, but I would like to offer a bit of caution when using Quicktime in Vegas, particularly with certain intense codecs. It's not something I can personally recommend jumping into all at once with a big project.

I was doing a music video with a ton of footage and tried using Avid DNxHD which works only in a Quicktime wrapper. It worked great at first, but at a certain point, Vegas started crashing like crazy. The whole project was sitting right in front of me but I couldn't render it.

As stated above, it was a pretty tall order.
 
Also Vegas will not use/read the 10bit codec properly in Quicktime at this time. AFAIK, only After Effects on with Windows platform will read/edit > 8bit color in Quicktime. Same for Cineform for the short term (no 10bit support in Vegas). It's a long standing issue with Vegas users wanting to move beyond vfw based codecs. The only 10bit support Vegas offers is AVI files based on
FOURCC v210, like those from AJA.

There are some changes coming about all this, but Madison is keeping it typically close to the vest.
 
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