Alternative m2t browser?

jamesfrankham wrote on 8/15/2007, 8:04 PM
I'm having ongoing issues with corrupt clips in the Project Media window. Vegas crashes at the mere sniff of a file error and I appear to have half a dozen clips with errors among 4000-odd good ones making it near impossible to find them.

If I turn off thumbnail view, it doesn't crash (unless I try to play one) but makes it impossible to browse them. I've heard there's a registry hack so make m2t files preview as thumbnails in Explorer but can't find the details. Advice on this, or any alternative thumbnail browser would help me finish the project. Getting more desparate by the day!

Comments

Laurence wrote on 8/15/2007, 8:28 PM
I'm working on a pretty large scale project myself. I was having all kinds of Vegas crashing m2t errors.

The way I dealt with it is to use Gearshift to render proxies. While Gearshift was generating proxies, I kept coming back into my studio to check and see when it crashed so I could fix that particular clip and continue from that point. It took a couple of days, but I am pretty confidant now that the clips are all crash free since they've all loaded and rendered completely at least once. Editing with the proxies will be quite easy as well (and necessary on all the fixed crashing clips since after they are fixed they preview pretty inefficiently.

Anyway, this process will get me through this project, but it is such a pain in the but, I really don't want to do it again. Among 9 HDV tapes, I easily had 40 errors. That's a lot of sleuthing around to find the offending files. I feel like I am a pretty competent guy and I have gotten a lot of support from this forum, but quite frankly, I don't see how a regular editor could work this way. It is just too inefficient.

Wierd, Vegas 7e is still a work in progress which can only work in native m2t mode with a lot of jury-rigging, and yet it seems like Vegas 8 is just around the corner. I can't believe that I am about to head into a whole new world of problems and half-baked workarounds when 7 still can't just edit an hdv project without regular crashes without an extraordinary amount of effort finding and fixing damaged m2t clips.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still one of the faithful and I have no doubt that other NLEs have their problems too, but boy is it frustrating sometimes.
jamesfrankham wrote on 8/15/2007, 8:42 PM
Totally agree. WMPlayer can play through the GOP blips and errors - why can't Vegas at least draw a thumbnail without failing over calling foul?

I now have to sift through 4000 files looking for bung frames, just so I can see a thumbnail to continue editing. Just to repeat the plea - if anyone has any other way of previewing or thumbnailing m2t files other than the Project Media Window I'd be very interested! Unless it's been fixed in v8.0?
jrazz wrote on 8/15/2007, 8:47 PM
Out of curiosity what tapes are you using? What camera are you using?

I am using HVR-A1u's and an HC1 with Panny PQ tapes and I only record on them once. I have encountered 3 events that caused the problem both of you are having. Those 3 events were discarded and I never bothered to see if I could recapture them or not. The crash did not come for me in the project media area but on the timeline when I clicked the event or played through it. Those 3 times occurred back in June and has not happened since or before. Since June I have been through about 26 hours of tape.

j razz
jamesfrankham wrote on 8/15/2007, 9:11 PM
I ran 18 brand new Panasonic Master tapes (MQ) through both my HVR-V1 and HVR-A1 and had similar drop outs on both across all tapes and cannot find a pattern for why the errors occurred. Miffed.

I haven't tried redigitising the affected clips because I don't know which ones have errors. Not even sure if the problem is at record or on capture.
jrazz wrote on 8/15/2007, 9:18 PM
Here is something to try if you have the time. Capture the tape without scene detection. See if you can drag it to the timeline and play it. Turn back on scene detection and capture again and see if that works. I used to capture using hdv split but started using Vegas Capture. No particular reason for the change save for Vegas recognizing scenes now.

I believe that Laurence laid out a work around in another post involving a third party program. If you are pressed for time, you might want to give that a try.

j razz
riredale wrote on 8/15/2007, 9:20 PM
Knock on wood, but I don't know what crashes you guys are talking about. To date I've digested about 75 tapes full of m2t clips and have seen a couple of dropouts but nothing that brings Vegas down.

I'm running 7d and capture with HDVSplit from an HC3 and an FX1.

Could it be that the "Rapid start" (I don't remember exactly what the feature is called) function on some cameras could be trashing the GOP structure?
Laurence wrote on 8/15/2007, 9:24 PM
The easiest way to fix the faulty clips is with the program http://homepages.roadrunner.com/mwilczyn/mpeg2repair/Mpeg2Repair[/link]. You can even batch fix a bunch at a time.

The only problem is that the fixed clips are recognized by Vegas as having a different codec and they don't preview anywhere near as efficiently.

The hard part isn't fixing the clips, it's figuring out which ones need to be fixed.

I understand that Vegas 7d is less prone to crashing on m2t clips with errors, but I haven't gone back to that version myself.
jamesfrankham wrote on 8/15/2007, 9:26 PM
Not using 'Rapid start', but probably should have used HDVSplit to digitise instead of Vegas. Thanks all for the suggestions - I'll know for next time, but for now I just have to find a way of previewing the m2ts I have already digitised.
jamesfrankham wrote on 8/15/2007, 9:28 PM
> The hard part isn't fixing the clips, it's figuring out which ones need to be fixed.

Exactly. A dozen needles to find in a haystack of 4000 :(
Laurence wrote on 8/15/2007, 9:30 PM
I'm using regular Sony DV tape. Has anyone tried http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/473208-REG/Sony_5DVM63HD_DVM_63HD_Mini_DV_Video.htmlthese[/link] tapes? They look like they might give fewer mpeg errors without costing an absolute fortune. Of course they are currently out of stock...
jamesfrankham wrote on 8/15/2007, 9:51 PM
Bingo!

http://www.konvertor.net/indexe.html

It can browse m2t clips with thumbnail previews without crashing. Wow, now that's a program! Available for free trial for all you poor sods who, like me, can't make Vegas stay alive long enough to find a m2t clip due to clip errors. And it's quite quick too.

Now I can finish the cut. I'm a happy man.
Laurence wrote on 8/15/2007, 10:11 PM
Can you drag it directly from the viewer to the Vegas timeline?
riredale wrote on 8/16/2007, 8:41 AM
Laurence:

Those are popular tapes, available from many places on the Internet for about $9-10 each. The Sony claim is that they are certified to have 1/2 the dropouts of "regular" tapes.

I have a whole bunch of them, sitting here unused. I keep telling myself that I will switch over to them if and when I see dropouts with the cheapo Sony blue tapes (DVM60-PRL, about $3 each) I usually use. But so far, no dropouts.
Laurence wrote on 8/16/2007, 9:03 AM
I never have dropouts with the regular sony tape. Just some kind of formatting errors that cause Vegas to crash. They're probably with the extra transport data and not even with the actual video at all. The reason I'm looking at those tapes is because of these errors. The video itself looks pristine with regular old Sony DV tape.
jamesfrankham wrote on 8/16/2007, 6:17 PM
> Can you drag it directly from the viewer to the Vegas timeline?

Nope. It can't do much with video, and it displays 16:9 clips as 4:3 thumbnails ... but it can provide thumbnails (in lots of different sizes not just one) without crashing. That's tops :)