Question about working with DV format in Vegas
 

Hi,

I've got a translation and VO project to do. My client said he would send me his original files in .DV format and wants me to return him the finished files in the same format. I did find some infos about this format (.dv) but I'm just wondering how Vegas 8 Pro will handle that file format for the import and more importantly the export. I didn't find any way to render in DV format. Will I need to render into another format and find a converter? What's the best way to handle it?

Thanks for any help,

Benoit

found this DV to AVI: Convert Video from DV(Digital Video Cassette) to AVI(Audio Video Interleaved) with River Past Video Cleaner, DV2AVI converter, conversion
will convert avi to .dv you will need quicktime.

I'd do a little test back and forth with this client to assure that everything is working.

The good news is that a .dv is a DV25 file in a QT wrapper. The DV files you're used to working with are also DV25 files, but in an AVI wrapper.

You should be able to import a .dv file directly to the timeline. If it seems unfriendly, rename it with a .qt or .mov extension. If timeline performance isn't satisfactory for the project you may need to do an intermediate render to the DV.avi standard. Better than this (if needed), would be a rewrapping of the original file from .dv to .avi, which is zero generation loss. I believe that Cineform Neo can do this rewrap, and there are others, I don't know anything about River Past that Bill found.

But going down a generation of render from qt to avi should not be a problem. Visual testing a few years ago showed 10 or 11 generations of DV before any visible artifacting.

For the output, Render as | Quicktime | Custom
Video tab
Frame Size: NTSC DV (720x480)
Field Order: Lower field first
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 0.909
Video Format: DV/DVCPRO - NTSC (Configure for interlaced or progressive, 4:3 or 16:9)

Audio tab
Audio Format: Uncompressed
Sample Rate: 48,000
Bit Depth: 16

Then save this as your .dv preset. Again, you may have extension mismatches, just rename the output file to .dv.

But do test this with your client!