Avid Express Pro to Vegas
 

I'm a wedding videographer that primarily uses Sony Vegas 8.0. I have found a local editor that wants to help us out with our back-log of video, but she uses Avid Express Pro on a Macbook Pro. I captured video in Vegas and burned the .m2t files on a DVD. This wouldn't work on her laptop without some type of transcode. What would the easiest way for me to get the video clips to her be (other than giving away the original tapes)? Are there any capture utilities that would play nice?

The easiest way is to give her dubs of the original tapes. Any other method is going to require some sort of conversion, as well as the time it takes to get them into Vegas. So the shortest time between your masters and her NLE is a dub of the tapes.

Beyond that, you could capture and convert to Quicktime. MXF or OMF files.

Should I convert them in Vegas or is there another option? Would I lose any quality?

Never worked with Vegas, so I couldn't tell you how clean their conversion to Quicktime is. I'm assuming its lossless. So just convert them to Quicktimes, and she can import them into the Avid system.

Avid supports AVI type I NOT AVI type II, which is what Vegas uses. Even then the AVI I files will have the 2gig limit on them. The Quicktime files will import and be turned to OMF files, or MXF if she's got that selected.

As long as she is working in 1080/30 or 720/30 HDV, then Xpress Pro directly imports m2t's into a bin and seamlessly on import converts to DNXHD 110 or 145TR. It is still HDV and the DNXHD in this case is really a wrapper around that.

The import is pretty fast. Avid uses smart splicing on HDV so it only rebuilds the few frames before and after a transition therby saving a compression hit. The only major transcode would happen on downconvert to SD. I think the m2t import ability exists with version 5.2 and later.

So, she should be able to import your native m2t's. I do it all of the time, including today.

Cheers.

Dave, is it just me, or does Avid have a real advantage when editing HDV over most other NLE's? When I use Vegas, resources are much more hogged, but with Avid, my computer is not really breaking a sweat.

I guess Avid is using the Quadro FX video card, while Vegas only uses the CPU. Whatever the reason, I'm really surprised at the difference.

Davids right, I was not thinking HDV flow... duh.

I think Avid has improved since 5.5. I think that as much as I complain about their lack of camera support, ( having trouble with Xpress 5.8 on MAC controlling Canon XHA1 without error messages, works fine on the PC though)
and still no 24p in HDV, they do have a good workflow in 1080i. 720p is a little strange, but works.

But the one thing to remember with Avid is that it uses codecs like DNXHD that while proprietary, give you the best video at a chosen bit rate. The code, especially on Media Composer is time tested and pretty tight. I would be interested in knowing if Xpress owners are noticing speed differences when they upgrade to MC.

I've looked at Vegas on another persons computer about a year ago and it looked like it would edit pratically anything you put into it, including MPEG 1. (That's not a typo for MPEG 2). BTW, Vegas is the one edit program that is a little too open for me. Actuallly kinda scary to a 3 point/4 point editor who trims a lot after the fact. That's just me.

So it is wild west open standard and the trade off is possiblly performance because you're not editing in a codec designed specifically for
editing in that app. Edius has an Avid-type advantage in the same regard. FCP with ProRes.

When editing in HDV, Avid uses DNXHD to help process the m2t. I imagine in Vegas, it's struggling with the raw m2t without any wrapper help. Also, I think Vegas started out as an audio only editor, like Pro Tools, and then Sony took the core interface and code and adapted it to editing video. When I looked at it, my first comment was, "It looks like Pro Tools." So, the interface is a bit strange for someone like me.

Bear in mind, I'm not a Vegas editor, so I might be completley wrong some of this. But, overall Avid is a much more mature editing application with 20 years of development under the hood. That's why you're much more likely to see feature films edited in Avid. Not many people are going to risk editing a feature in Vegas.

As someone who has been using Vegas since v3.0, and a recent convert to Edius, I'm very serious about moving to Avid. I'll be attending a Fimmaker's Intensive editting course that uses Avid and FCP. While there, I'll have the opp to buy MC at the student discount.

As of version 8, Vegas has fallen on its own sword. Preview window is incorrect, scopes are flaky. All in all, it has become very undependable. Playback stutters very badly in HDV. Lots of crashes, dropped frames for m2t files. MXF stutters in 32 bit mode. Actually, everything stutters in 32 bit mode. Totally unacceptable. Edius plays very smoothly, real time even. I hope DNxHD plays real time as well.

I'm a little dismayed MC won't read EX1 35MB/sec files, tho'. Any word on when 1920x1080P HQ will be read by MC?

So, all in all, Avid may be the sign of my future.

Bill,

I don't know when HQ mode will be supported, but clearly it's more of a priority than some other formats that Avid has promised supporting. So I'd be hopeful. FWIU, there are work arounds for Avid and that FCP does not support HQ right out of the card either.

BTW, if you want to bring Cineform files into Avid, you might want to take a look at TMPGEnc Xpress 4.0. It will pretty much encode, transcode and decode almost any format you can throw at it. Making Cineform to DNxHD a possibility.

Peter...

thanx for your reply. I have Neo HD. It's one of the most dependable codecs I use for an intermediate. I am also familiar with TmpGenc. I'll give them a go.

Thanx, again.