I jsut started using vegas4 recently, and i have read up a little on this scene detection feature they included. I was under the impression it would automatically break up your clips, but apparently i dont quite understand how it works. i tried to capture a 16 minute piece that was started and stopped many many times. It still caprtued it as one long segment...does the timecode actually have to restart again for this scene detection feature to werk? It is enabled in the settings of the capture section. Any others on here have any experience with using this feature?

I've had no problems with capturing in segments with Vegas 4 (but I can't capture in stereo with my PDX10P and Vegas is currently looking into this. I have to say that the Vegas support is excellent).

My capture in Vegas was a 18 min clip with many stops (resulted in 64 segmented clips). My timecode was date and time for the shoots and apart from the obvious paus between shoots the timecode was consecutive (?). If you have scene detection activated the only things I can see would cause the problem would be if you have activated any of the minimum, maximum or delay settings under capture.

Hans

i have left all the settings at the default so far, i assumed it would be setup already. in the preferences of capture i have enable dv scene detection enabled, min clip length 1 sec, the capture start delay is not checked. under advanced capture pre-roll was already set to 5 secs; i left this. the only other place i that enything is set for delays is printing to tape settings....

Your segment was 18 min and your timecode ran continuously rite? when you say "pause" you mean pause in action? i mgoing to try and recapture later this evening again when i have some more time.

With pause I meant pause in time. These pauses varied in time (a minute, one hour, next day).

right, this is actually very poor clips i recorded off of VHS (which now i also am going to figure out if there's anyway to color correct, or at least make it look somewhat better). My dad took the camera this afternoon so im waitin till tonite to try it again... hopefully i can get it working so i dont have to log 40 different clips.

Trey. I didn't catch what camera you are using. I assume it is digital? Scene detection only works with digital I believe. I recorded a gymnastics meet for my first test of my VX-2000, and panicked when I imported it into my V4, when I saw all of the little files, then I realized what it was.

GL1....but now im getting errors trying to capture...aviplug.dll, other files...my whole system has been running like a POS lately, so im going to FFR this beast and hopefully have it all up and running by tomorrow afternoon. such a pain...oh well.

You aren't doing anything wrong. The Vegas scene spliting won't work with the GL1. Once in a while it will split some but generally it won't. It is because of the way the GL1 handles the timecode etc. I cant explain it but it is true. I have the GL1 and Vegas. Tapes that were recorded in other cameras or decks will be split by Vegas. If you want this done with the GL1 you'll have to use an optical scene spliter like in scenalyzer software.

well that suks...i mean what characteristic does the camera need to perform this function? i figured most prosumer cams would be able to handle this. im gonna be getting a GL2 soon, im wondering if it will handle this scene detection. im going to keep lookin around to find more info on this scene detection feature. if it doesnt work on the GL1, then does it work on the XL1s? questions...questions...

Vegas handles scene detection off the GL2 just fine. I suspect it would actually work okay off the GL1 as well, but only when your breaks are digital (when you're actually shooting with the GL1 and stop and start the tape), not optically, such as dubbing off VHS. I'd suggest you go get the free, offline version of scenalyzer and just run that over your capture. It will break up the scenes for you, and you can edit from there. In the future when you capture scenes that are shot on a GL2, they'll capture correctly with scene clips in Vegas.

OK, here's the bottom line: Scene detection works just fine in Vegas with the XL-1, GL-1, GL-2... but is based on CHANGES TO THE DATE AND TIME. When the Date/Time jumps, a new scene will be created. The most common cause of scene detection not working is THE DATE AND TIME WERE NOT SET IN THE CAMERA.

Is the date/time set on your camera? If not, then scene detection CAN'T work.

i just did a wedding this weekend,...and most of the time, I had the tape just recording w/ no pauses..using the demo version of VV4 (until i receive the full version) I captured the entire tape at once using the 'capture tape' feature...now i'm new to NLE's and to VV in general,...but i noticed it captured one entire avi file per tape...when I open the avi file in vegas,...it seems to split it up into many little scenes...is this what everyone is talking about? Do i have the option to take each scene from there, and re-log, and split manually so as to organize all those clips? Does it still remain as one large file on the hard-drive? or should i expect a bunch of little clips separately saved? Thanks!

No, that is not what they are talking about. Those are just the little images you can use to see where you are in the video.

For Vegas to split into multiple scenes, two things must be true:

1) The camera Date/Time MUST be set
2) Enable DV Scene detection must be turned on in the Vegas capture program.

If either of these is false, Vegas will capture into one BIG file.

i had both. i was having some pretty serious issues though, sometimes when capturing i would get errors in aviplug.dll. i hav enow FFR'ed my system and will be trying to recapture. hopefully this will solve me issues! ill let everyone know when i get it done (prob tomorrow).

Well I'll be a son of a gun. Ed, I never did set my time on my GL1. I'm sure you are right. I can't wait to do my next wedding and not have to split all those clips (although in Vegas splitting is a breeze compared to premiere).

Ed Troxel Thanks a lot, and Trey sorry for misleading you but I'm am a happy camper if my scene detection works.

so i didn't have the camera date/time set...and for each tape, i ended up getting one large file...i'm not sure i understand correctly, but does this mean i can't automatically split the file but I CAN manually split? Since i was stuck w/ the big files now, i was hoping to split out scenes in able to edit them, name them?, etc to make it much easier to track all the events...thanks

Yes you can split them manually, or you could get scenalyzer, a software capture scene splitting utility which can automatically split all the scenes you have captured. It would do it optically not based on the timecode so it won't be perfect but it's pretty good. I say just do it manually this time. It's good practise, but set your time on the camera now so next time they can split themselves.

Actually, the SCLive product will perform either method of detection, TC or Optical based upon how you configure the detection settings.

I can choose either free-run or record-run TC on my GY-DV500. As I understand from the thread, to take advantage of auto scene detection, I would need to use free-run TC. Is that correct?

Thanks,

Michael

Scene detection works on a break in the DATE/TIME signal, NOT
timecode. So it shouldn't matter which setting you are using.

Think about it. You pause recording at 14:15.30 (time) and the
timecode is 00:00:37:28. You start recording again exactly 10
minutes later at a new setup. The first frame then will be recorded
with a timecode of 00:00:37:29 [no break] and a time of 14:25.30
[break!]. That is what the software detects.

Now perhaps you can change your camera that it always begins
with a new timecode [ie, 00:00:00:00] at each recording but this
is not standard, and therefor won't be used.

I'm confused then. This is SMPTE timecode. When in record run mode, where is the day's time stored? In the userbits? When recording in run mode, the only TC I'm aware of being recorded on tape is the timecode, no separate day's time.

Information stored on tape (in a section you could call userbits)
is at least:

- "SMPTE" timecode
- Time
- Date
- Day of the week

Usually some camera settings are stored as well.

Just goes to show what *I* know. :) I'll dig deeper into SMPTE user-bits. I know I can manually set them to some useful number. I didn't realize there was additional info there.

However, ASD didn't work in either Vegas' video capture or Scenalyzer for about four different tapes acquired on other gear including an XL-1. I was queueing them on my JVC DV500.

I'll explore further.

You do have date & time set on the camera, right?