Vegas 9 imports native xdcam ex files
 

Vegas 9 will now let you import mp4 native Xdcam EX files. It was released today

great news,
was hoping for that,

I'd like to ask why is this a big deal to some people?
Am I missing something?

I don't use Vegas, I use Final Cut so maybe that makes a difference in how smoothly the workflow goes, but staying native is not something I would do even if it was an option.

When I import my clips via XDCAM Transfer the software automatically strips off the .MP4 suffix and changes it to .MOV --- PLUS it places all the files nice and neatly into one folder on my hard drive. There's no transcoding of the clip, no delay during the transfer, and no reason to want to change the process.

When somebody has the opportunity to try Vegas 9, I'd like to hear how it works in the real world - -and what they see as being the benefit to staying native.

Are all the files still scattered around in their own folders like they are when they are inside the BPAV folder? Do you still have to have the other four support files (.SMI, .PPN, .XML, .BIM) following them around? At least with FCP you leave all that clutter behind when you import.

Even with Vegas, you still have to transfer the clips from the card to your hard drive, right? You still want to gather all the clips out of their individual folders and put them into a "group" folder for easier organizing, right? So where's the benefit of keeping the file native? What difference does it make if the file is called .MP4, .MFX, ,MOV, or whatever? It's just a label. The file is unchanged.

Another reason I don't care about staying native is that .MP4 files won't play in QuickTime and they aren't compatible with Adobe Bridge. Bridge is an integral part of my editing, archiving, and previewing of clips. I don't want to give that up just to stay native.

What is different about the Vegas workflow? Why is staying native desirable and what is wrong with re-wrapping to something else? I'd love to find out from someone who is using it.

PS. I'm not bashing Vegas or saying FCP is better. I used to use Vegas before I switched to FCP and I liked it a lot. I'm sure it has only gotten better over the years.
My questions are just about the value of staying native, not which NLE (or workflow) is better than the other.

New Vegas Pro 9 features include:

New user interface for optimized color viewing and enhanced usability
Native XDCAM EX reading and import
Open and edit RED ONE™ files on the timeline
4K project support, up to 4096 x 4096
New Gradient Wipe transition
New Glint, Rays, Defocus, Starburst, Soft Contrast and Fill Light video effects
Support for Gigapixel-size images
Includes native 32- and 64-bit versions of Vegas Pro 9 software

Sony Creative Software - Vegas Pro 9 - Introduction

Doug,
yes you are missing something. XDCAM is a system and the mp4 container used in the EX variant is a vital part of that system. My understanding is that's where very usefull metadata is stored such as index marks, in/out points etc.
Previously in Vegas we also had to rewrap the data in the containers into MXF and as you say that also meant having to copy the cards. I haven't tried Vegas 9 as yet however certainly Ppro's CS3 native mp4 support means you can edit straight from the cards. I suspect we'll see much more use made of the mp4 container from Adobe if they haven't already done so.

Ok, I will try to answer as best I can, I just wrapped up a shoot and dumped it all into vegas 9. now, keep in mind, some people have had better luck with PC's and the XDCAM EX workflow then I have, so their opinions may differ.

before the native ability, I would have to (like most others) transfer the BPAV file, then rewrap in clipbrowser, I dont have an express card slot on my desktop, so using the USB out, I honestly can say, it was about 20 minutes to rewrap a 28 minute card. to me, that wasnt very fast. So, in the end, I had a folder, we will call it "project" inside that folder I had the BPAV folder, then once rewrapped, all the .mxf files as well.

NOW, I open vegas, open device explorer, select some, or all of the clips, specify a destination folder (project folder) click import, and 9 minutes later, I had all 28 minutes neatly in my project folder as .mpg4 files, and nothing else. to me thats a huge difference, one that I welcome openly.

Bob,

I can't say for sure, but I think the metadata is mostly stored in the other four files that accompany every MP4. Either way, it doesn't matter because the metadata is part of the MOV after the re-wrapping the file for FCP. Sounds like you're saying Vegas had a problem with managing the metadata and their solution was just to edit native files. I guess that's a difference with FCP.

As for editing straight from the cards, that has no appeal for me. Maybe if I shot run & gun breaking news that would be a great, but I don't.

Ian,

I played around with Vegas 8 a little during the production of my EX1 training DVD in November 07, and I didn't experience any speed problems like you describe. Importing and re-wrapping to MXF was pretty quick on a 4 year old Alienware notebook via the camera as the card reader. I can't say how fast it was, but I don't recall it being anywhere near as slow as you were having.

I'm glad the new version of Vegas solved your speed problem, but I still don't see what all the fuss is about with editing native files. I think your speed problem was unrelated to being able to edit natively. I'll bet some other bug got fixed in this release.

Aside from the import speed issue (which I think was caused by some other bug), is there really any difference if the imported files are called MP4 or MXF? That's really the root of my original question.

It takes you 9 minutes to import a 28 minute card and the files are MP4.
It take me 9 minutes to import a 28 minute card and the files are MOV.
So why should anyone care if the files are MP4, MOV, MXF, or whatever?

I dont think there is a difference, it just takes out the step of having to run through clipbrowser right? or am I missing something? I dont care what format its in, I just like that I am cutting out a whole step.

I do shoot news, so for me its awesome to edit right from the card too, but as you mentioned, thats not for everyone.

you are a lot better at taking these things apart and doing a write up on them though, so I am probably not doing any justice to vegas, but I just know, for me, and what I do, I really enjoy the latest release.

Bob,

Like some people here, I don't see any special advantage to native mp4 being recognized by Vegas - at least not with how it's implemented.

On my editing PC, I have one of those Synchrotec PCIe ExpressCard readers. When I mount an SxS card in it, Vegas cannot "import" the clips from it to a chosen destination on my HDD; it sees it as a regular hard disk and only recognizes the .mp4 files inside their own clpr folders. It won't copy them to the local HDD, but simply put into the project's Media Bin. So yes, you can edit straight from the card - but with a serious project, would you tie up your SxS card for that, rather than copying its contents onto your local HDD?

And with ClipBrowser, exporting (i.e. rewrapping to mxf) doesn't take much longer than copying. So, what's the big deal? I can't see any - the more so that no metadata seems to get conveyed to Vegas 9 when using native mp4's...

Disclaimer: I have yet to test Vegas 9 on my Vaio laptop; perhaps the "Import from memory recording unit" will be operational there, with the ExpressCard reader being indeed seen as a "memory card storage", rather than as a regular hard drive.

PS I tested with my laptop - still no mp4 import capability. I.e. - editing from the SxS card seems to be the only advantage; otherwise copying while rewrapiing is still the way to go; smart render doesn't work with mp4 either - only mxf!

Piotr, you can import the clips from the sxs card with 9 and device explorer.
View> device exlporer, window pops up, on the left you have the sxs card, right click on it and choose where to import, by default it's in c drive, users, blah blah blah.

Paul.

Paul,
Device Explorer only seems to work with USB connection (either EX direct, or the USB SxS card reader). Otherwise, it "fails to initialize".

Piotr,
I can't really offer much comment at the moment as it'll be a few days before my official boxed upgrade arrive.

What I was sincerely hoping for was that V9 would work as seamlessly as Ppro. With that I can drag the mp4s directly from the cards or from a disk image straight onto the timeline thus avoiding all the messing around with the clipbrowser. This is a much faster way to work.
Doing the Clipbrowser tango to get to MXFs is very tedious and slow, especially how we've had to handle clips split over cards and the later versions of the Clipbrowser.

I did it today with the transcend card and the little sdhc>usb reader.

Paul.

So it looks like USB is the only device type recognized by the "Device Explorer" - neither my laptop's nor desktop's PCIe ExpressCard reader is...

Is it really faster?
It seems like it would be hassle to work that way since every clip is buried within it's own folder. That seems like it would be a pain in the butt to have to open each indivdual clip folder to drag out the MP4. How are you going to deal with that issue?

At least with using Clip Browser and XDCAM Transfer they take care of all that clip wrangling for you and put the imported clips all into one folder.

What are your complaints about Clip Browser? It should be just as fast as a straight drag & drop.

Doug

Doug,

I think that once V9 recognizes every possible device that may be used as an SxS (or SDHC adaptor) reader, importing mp4's straight to Vegas may have its advantages.

Not sure how it handles split clips though - ClipBrowser does really good in this department...

There is something I am missing about how v.9 directly uses EX1 files. According to page 147 of the manual (if I remember correctly) you still have to convert to MXF files. The step-by-step EX1 workflow still needs Clip Browser (again, according to the manual). Did I misunderstand something?
Pete

I think you did. now, vegas uses the mpg4 files coming from the camera. no more clipbrowser. no more mxf needed for vegas.


piotr: I just tried device explorer on my laptop, with the SxS card in the express card slot. everything works fine for me. is it something with your computer?

Indeed Ian - on my Vaio laptop, VP9 does recognize the SxS card (I tested again).

On my main workstation PC it doesn't - but this has probably to do with the fact that my Synchrotec PCIe reader is not hot-swappable (which doesn't prevent Clip Browser to access, copy and re-wrap my EX clips blastingly fast...).

Using the Clipbrowser is about half the speed of drag and drop. The original version was about the same speed, the later versions are much slower. I suspect but have not confirmed that this is because when converting to mxf from the cards it first copies from the cards to a temporary location and then from there does the rewrap.

If you have clips that span cards though it gets worse. First you have to copy the cards, intact. Then you have to move the split mp4 containers into the one BPAV folder using the Clipbrowser and then export to MXF.

I don't understand why you see any need to drill down. In Ppro CS3 I can Import an entire BPAV folder in seconds. Once imported each MP4 is directly accessible from the bin. The MP4s work just fine for me through Bridge as well. I cannt get AE CS3 to read the rewrapped MXFs though

There's another good reason to work directly from the native media format. Once you rewrap the media you can loose compatibility. Those rewrapped MOV files that FCP creates are probably not readable by any other NLE. If you're editing from the native ex-camera media then any application that can edit XDCAM EX should be able to read them just fine. This is a bit of an issue with HDV, the rewrapped files that FCP created are not readable outside of FCP. That's not so much of an issue with tape, you can always go back to the tapes. With tapeless you're forced to keep backups of the camera original if you ever think you're going to have to move the media to another system.

If you do a search on your media drive .mp4 only the .mp4 files will display then copy them to your dir on your hard drive.

That's a good tip.

Doug

Answers from Sony
 

I received some additional information from a friend who is high up in the chain of command at Sony Creative Software (Vegas). I should have gone straight to him in the first place.

Point #6 answers my original question about editing native files.




-----------------------------------------

1. Using EX Clip Browser is still a perfectly acceptable workflow for Vegas Pro 9, as it was for VP8. It is really the same concept as XDCAM Transfer except instead of re-wrapping as .mov it re-wraps as .mxf.

2. In Vegas Pro 9, we’ve added the Device Explorer tool and .mp4 file support. The Device Explorer benefits AVCHD users as well as EX users, because it enables the editor to navigate to the recording media/device (i.e. SxS card, Memory Stick, etc.) and instantly preview the clips prior to ingest/transfer. You don’t have to drill down into the directories; all the clips show up as picons. Click once on the picon (with Auto Preview default “on”) to see the video at full frame rate.


3. You can import some/all of the clips via typical shift-click to select, then right click to “Add to Project Media.” Or, you drag them right to the timeline. Either process automatically combines clips that span across multiple directories… it’s all seamless to the end user.

4. With a built-in Express Card reader in a laptop and a reasonably fast drive, the transfer times are extremely good… like 10x faster than real time. In comparison, my EX Clip Browser transfer plus re-wrap times were in the 3x to 4x range.

5. One caveat: You cannot currently trim prior to ingest, as you can w/ EX Clip Browser. The entire clip will come across, and will need to be trimmed as part of the edit process. Not a huge deal IMO due to the speed and the relatively modest 35 Mb/s bit rate.

6. Technically, you “can” edit the .mp4 files right from the card. You’d need to drill down through the directories via the standard Vegas Explorer tool (not the new Device Explorer), find your .mp4 clip, and bring it into your project. However, there is no provision for spanned clips, no picon view, and if you remove the card, the media will go offline. So, clearly this is NOT the preferred way to work. Makes much more sense to transfer to the local drive.

7. The advantage of re-wrapping to .mxf vs. .mov is better interchange w/ other broadcast devices like Omneon, 360 Systems, etc. I don’t think everyone embraces QuickTime because there are licensing costs tied to it. Obviously for interchange among other FCP users it works fine, but I don’t think the FCP .mov files even open in an Avid project running on the same Apple machine. I’m basing that on feedback from Avid customers that I know… not sure of all the circumstances. I know for sure that we can’t read ‘em.

8. The advantage of working w/ the .mp4 files directly is speed of ingest and convenience. The files don’t play back any better or worse than .mxf files… they’re still essentially MPEG2 files, which Vegas handle very well.

Thanks for that Doug.

Do you know whether it's possible to locate Shot marks from the EX1, in Vegas, or in any other NLE for that matter.

Doug,

Could you ask your friend at SCS to elaborate on the point above - specifically, how is V9's Device Explorer supposed to combine spanning clips? It doesn't seem to work...

TIA!

Peter,

Sorry to take so long getting an answer.
This is what I heard today from my Vegas contact:

"We do not currently support shot markers
from EX in the Vegas Pro 9 Device Explorer, but it is on our radar."

Piotr,
Thank you for your patience.
This is what I heard back:



"Looks like I was unclear about the process, and I apologize for the error in my previous statement. In Device Explorer, the XDCAM EX .mp4 clips are shown as a single icon
in the Device Explorer, but when you drag to the timeline, multiple
files are dropped. No frames or audio samples are dropped, but the
clips are not technically stitched together into a single clip.

BTW, AVCHD spanned clips are combined to a single clip via Device
Explorer, but currently not the EX clips."




I hope that helps.

Thanks for the update Doug.

Talking of updates, you may like to include on your EX Update site that the later EX1 firmware allows you to preset shot numbers to whatever you want.

Thanks Doug.

Not a good news, though. It's strange AVCHD is handled better than Sony's own XDCAM EX.

OK, so Device Explorer won't join spanned clips for me the way Clip Browser does. But why it will reverse-engineer clips already merged by Clip Browser, is above my means...

I would strongly advise against upgrading to Sony Vegas Pro 9. It is totally incapable of rendering a file out using the Main Concept MP4 codec. Crashes every time no matter what settings you try, even on a short 15 second segement, where Vegas Pro 8 has no problems.

This looks like yet another "rushed to market" release from Sony and is totally unusable as far as I'm concerned.

You can't convert a Vegas Pro 9 file back to Vegas Pro 8 once you've wasted your time building your edit, only to find the software can't render it out.

Avoid!

May I disagree, Ian. Vegas 9 has been very stable for me, and considerably faster than V8 (at least comparing the 64-bit versions) - both in playback and rendering.

Hi Piotr,

Can you try using "Renders as..." use the "Main Concept AVC/AAC (MP4)" setting (same drop-down as has always worked in Vegas Pro 8) in the drop-down? Take any short clip (I've got a short 15 second clip). Change the template to reflect PAL 25fps and 1280x720 or 640x360 and let me know if it works for you. Thanks.

Admittedly I CAN render out a wmv or an avi but that's not the format I've always used in the past.

The same settings in Vegas Pro 8 work fine. On my setup Pro 9 is as useful as a catflap on a submarine.

It works like a charm, Ian. I've tested all formats I might possibly want to use (including MC and Sony's mp4), and all runs well.

Works very well here. (Q9400, 2 GB, WXP32)

Cheers SCS!

Ernesto

I think it happens to a select group. I cant render to MPG4 either. but I didnt use it much before. I would like it to work though.

I just created a test clip and tried to open and import into Vegas Pro 9 but it does not recognise the file...anyone have any similar problems?

Sorry...ignore the above...for some reason it started working ok after closing and re-opening.