How to import P2 MXF into Vegas 8(c)
 

Just shot my movie on a PANASONIC HVX200. Got Vegas 8. Now, how do I view the files?

Theres Raylight, but paying big money for a codex is steep. Any simple, free program that allows me to view? This seems like such a simple problem but I can't figure it out!

Thanks all for advice.

You can view using Panasonics free viewer app, but you cant do anything with the files in vegas unless you get Raylight. I just converted an entire shoot on multiple P2's last week into vegas with raylight and it was easy, very fast and the files are great. One thing to watch out for though is the P2 particians the hard drive you dump to with the MXF's. If you use the drive you dumped the MXF's to and then convert to Raylight it could take all the space in the partician as it ads the AVI's. This will result in a ton on 0kb files if you go over the edge. What we do is copy and paste every mxf from the dump drive to a new drive (yes this gets expensive) then convert the new drives MXF's to AVI using Raylight and delete the MXF's you copied. This allows you to keep back up MXF's on your primary (particianed) dump drive and work with the AVI's in vegas from the AVI drive. We have not figured out a better way yet and this was our first experience with the P2. You can see the Vegas results at planetpinned.com. The top three clips are all from P2.

The P2 is a great camera but very expensive to use.

Maybe you can convert panasonic's files into cineform? Am I right?

That is expensive. I'm almost at the point where I'll buy a mac. It sucks because I spent all this money on shooting and the only time i can view my footage is when my friends mac is around.

Why can't you just use Raylight? That's even the solution recommended by Panasonic!

I'm sorry, but I couldn't convince myself to pay $200 for a simple codex. Plus I needed to upgrade my computer to handle the massive information so I just switch to and bought an Apple IMAC (thats also HD -1920x1080) used with FCP ! Can you say FIREWIRE 800 - wow! I can now easily run a back-up drive.

It sucks because I really respect Vegas and it's capablities but i'm playing around with FCP and loving it. The basic skills transfer but I still signed up for APPLE 1 on 1 and there helping me out ( i'll report back with that as more lessons pass )

On the surface it seems $200 is the least expensive fix. JM2C
Good luck

If you do a search of the Vegas forum for "raylight" you get a bunch of hits including:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/what-happ...-raylight.html