Vegas and HDCAM
 

Hate to sound like an idiot, but when it comes to HDCAM I am. I have some stock footage in HDV 1080 60i. A customer would like it "delivered in HDCAM." Its okay to provide it to them via an ftp site (i.e., I don't need to burn it to tape). So is it possible to convert from HDV to HDCAM in Vegas? If not, any other solutions? Thanks.

try this thread

HDV to HDCAM - HDW2000 : HDV Format

Thanks John. It was enlightening (and a thread that I didn't come across in my "Googling"). But I'm PC based so some of it wasn't relevant to my setup (i.e., Vegas). I'm getting the sense that to go from HDV to HDCAM will require some new hardware.

I took a look at many threads, and as i'm not familiar with HDCAM, i'll try to tell you what I concluded from my findings. HDCAM would just be a tape medium for carrying the footage around/recording it. But when it goes on the computer for editing, it would be a certain codec. I'm thinking that you should find out what codec HDCAM uses and convert the HDV mpeg to the codec that HDCAM uses.

edit: Hmm i found some more info. HDcam is apparently around 600mb/s 4:2:2 with mpeg4 codec .

http://www.sony.co.uk/biz/view/ShowC...=1169220709744

Are you thinking of HDCam or HDCamSR. HDCamSR is quite different.

Since the original poster is unlikely to find or use the HDCam codec anywhere, it would stand to reason that he ask the client what file format they would like the data in. HDCam is not a file format. I can't send you a "Blu-Ray" file, but I can send you an mpeg4, VC-1, or Mpeg2. So the original poster needs to find out what they want. And when they write an HDCam tape they'll have "HDCam". Alternately, he could ask when they capture HDCam tapes to their NLE, what format they do it in, thus it would save them a step, and allow the poster rto provide the data in a usable format ready to go.

Thanks to all. I ended up telling the customer I didn't have the equipment to produce a HDCAM master, but I could do an HDV master - they were fine with that. Based on my research, with the assistance of the posts above, it appears that to produce an HDCAM master would require 1) spending thousands of $ in equipment, or 2) spending $ to send it to a processing house with the equipment.