Sony Vegas - Timecode - DVCAM - HELP NEEDED
 

I've been editing full DVD's lately and my cousin has been authoring them. So far everything has been going smooth as hell. I don't even have to render my footage anymore. I just edit and send him the Vegas .VEG file and he can render and then encode using Scenarist.

A new problem just popped up though, I now need to create DVCAM tapes for cable rights and every other person the distributors are selling the rights to.

In the past, Vegas made this process very easy. You just basically hit play on the sceen and your deck would automatically record. I think it even has timecode options in previous versions.

Now in Vegas Pro 8 the HD print to tape options are virtually non-existent. I'm using a Sony HVR-M15U HD deck for the DVCAMs. Now then, I'm using Sony Software and sending it to Sony Hardware on Sony Media.

You'd THINK all this shit would work harmoniously. It doesn't.

In Vegas I HAVE to... I don't get a choice, I HAVE TO render out my HD footage as HDV 1080 60i even though the footage IS HDV 1080 60p. The Software WILL NOT WRITE an AVI to an HD DECK, it HAS to be M2T files. There's no other options.

Now then, in the vegas options for Print to Tape, I can either choose to render my timeline and dump to tape OR select a pre made .M2t file and print that. Either way there is no way to create a new Timecode for the new (or pre rendered) M2T file.

Because of that reason the Timecode prints to tape all fucked up. It's beyond fucked up. It's SUPER FUCKED UP. I'll watch it go from an hour and 45 minutes during one scene and then jump down to 1 hour in the next scene. The timecode is not only broken, it loses time.

Can anyone offer any advice for properly starting a timecode using the same setup as I am using? Sony Vegas, with a Sony HD deck.


AND YES!!!! I'm finally getting AVID, I just need to finish these out with Vegas.

trader:(







j/k:)

LOL.

Trust me man. I WANT THIS SHIT to work. I've invested soooo much time in Vegas. I can make it do almost ANYTHING I want. I play with Vegas, like Charles Ingles plays a fiddle. The downside is, it has soooooo many limitations, and I feel like I reach its limits daily. This is just another one of those limits.

Printing to tape to make masters from HDV footage is a little bit different and probably has eccentricities in all of the different editing suites. I use Premiere Pro CS3 and the Cineform Aspect HD plugin for a few years now and the way that one prints to tape directly from the timeline or the HD Link utility has changed somewhat over the last few versions. I am happy that it's working well enough now to consistently make masters with my tape deck, the same Sony HVR-M15U you use. I can't help you with Vegas since I am not very familiar with it, but if I was you Redshoe, I would post this in one of teh Vegas forums and see if any other Vegas power users have any advice for you.

Thanks Jim,

I did post there, but GFY is soooo much faster with the replies. :)

Still waiting to hear on the Vegas forum. I'll post here when I know more. I just did a test, so we'll see how it goes.

I think I'm gonna switch over to Premiere Pro. I love plugins - especially in Photoshop. It lets me get from A-to-Z quickly and efficiently. There are some amazing plugins out there for video editing apps but I've discovered that Sony Vegas is not supported with many of those plugins. I've seen several beautiful plugins only to find out that they are not offered for Vegas...which makes me sad.

When I switched to HD, I switched to Vegas because Premier didn't support HD. Does it now?

And sorry Redshoe, this is far too advanced for my limited (2 years) editing experience.

maybe I read wrong but im a little lost as to why you are putting HDV on a dvcam? 2 different formats 2 different ways of recording the data on the film... I think dvcam uses audio on top and bottom and hdv is just the bottom... I could be wrong... let me do some research...

HDV and dvcam are 2 different formats and ways written on the tape.... that could by why your dropping and time code errors..

from wiki

Because of wider track DVCAM has the ability to do a frame accurate insert tape edit. DV will vary by a few frames on each edit compared to the preview. Another feature of DVCAM is locked audio. If several generations of copies are made on DV, the audio sync may drift. On DVCam this does not happen.[6]

HDV is the format some of the directors shoot in. When I get it, I digitize it, then edit it. Then I run them out to DVCAM tapes to send to the distributor. From there they go to the DVD author, (In this case my cousin is the BluRay author so he usually just takes my .VEG file) and they get sent to cable companies, and are duped for over seas sales as well as hotels from what I hear.

All those other companies all use hardware that they simply drop the tape into, and punch in the TRT, and their equipment records to that exact time code. Well... somewhere along the line my setup either A) isn't creating a proper time code, or B) is dropping it on printing to the tape.

From what I can tell, when Vegas renders out a new video it uses the time code that was on the original footage. So in a since there is no solid time code, it's all broken up.

It appears that on the deck you can have that time code re-written, but I could have sworn when I did that on the first few DVCAMS I created that the time code did not get rewritten, if it detected a time code from the source. Since the time code is ALWAYS on the source, the new time code was not overriding the old one.

Anyway, to answer your question, it's not like I have a choice. I wish I did, but I don't. It's not like I can just take 20 years of broadcasting standards and send the distributor an HDV master that won't work for all their clients that licensed the rights. DVCAM 184's are what I was told to use, it's what I've been using since 2001. And it's worked fine up until I had to put HD onto a DVCAM using the M15U with Vegas Pro 8. :Oh crap

I know what you mean... broadcast companies are so picky.. we sent shit out to discovery channel and got rejected because of over 15% hdv at the time...

I am thinking the hdv to dvcam has something to do with it... because hdv is a very shitty compression for broadcast.. great for compression, do you have the ability to print to HDCAM rather than dvcam? I Think the m1u5 only does hdv right?

sometimes it's a motherfucker people think editing is the hard part.. it's getting that edit where you want it to with the same quiality you edited it in thats the hard part....

im at a loss let me think about it...

for some reason I htink it has to do with hdv to dvcam... hdv is is nothing more than mpeg2 when dv is different...

Bump for answers.

Just tell them to forget broadcast. ;-)

I fucking LOVE avid... hands down there's nothing better, I just find it overkill for porn :)

You just signed your own death warrant. I'm gonna bug you to death about AVID! LOL :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Avid SUCKS! thank God all my old clients went from AVID to Edit + combustion or Adobe in time. In a year or so we need to figure out whats next

Get Matrox RT.X2 LE or Matrox RT.X2 and Premier, then you can start Realtime native editing :thumbsup

Vegas edits realtime.

My bad - I thought they only did that on XDCAM formats. It's been a few years since I have tried a Sony setup.

Actually maybe you should I was trained on avid and I think I still have a ton of workbook and notes on using avid for the classes I could copy and send you. Drop me an email.

Blasphemy!

If I'm understanding correctly, you could try HDVSplit. It's free.

Premiere Pro supports HD natively since version 1.51 or 2.0.

I also film in HDV format on mini-DV tapes and I print my edited movies to Sony PDV 124-ME (or 184) minute DVCam tapes in my Sony M15U deck for my movie masters. It works fine. But I can sympathize with your frustration, since I noticed that the prompts and screen that pop up when you go through the print to tape procedures have changed slightly over successive point (.x) versions of both Premiere Pro and updates of the Aspect HD plugin. Some of the behaviors have changed such as whether there is a pre-roll prompt and other functions. I actually have two slightly different behaviors going on two different Windows XP computers that supposedly have the exact same versions of Premiere Pro and Aspect HD, which is inexplicable to me at the moment, but luckily it works either way.

Looks like I can override the timecode at the deck. Using the internal TC, however, that still doesn't answer why the first timecodes were broken in vegas, and it still doesn't allow me to set the TC to START at 00:59.40:00. They want me to start there so I can roll bars and tones for 20 seconds and then at exactly HOUR ONE they can start recording.