ps yes that's sarcasm or whatever.

Someone tell me this isn't true!
I thought the whole point of adding BWF support was so we COULD use those recorders. I just bought the Edirol FR-4 assuming V6 would handle the 4 track BWF files that it records and now I'm hearing that's not so. I gotta ask what's the use of a single track BWF file over a regular .wav file?

Only thing saving me from having a total dummy spit over this, the FR-4 can record 4 tracks as dual stereo .wav.

PS, I'm a video guy, some of us at times have been known to record audio, wake up Sony.

Bob.

It's extremely sad seeing that Adobe Audition supports polyphonic wav files.
I just sold a copy to the recordist doing "The Alice' so that he could 'audition' (that's listen to) his Sound Devices polywave files on his laptop before burning them to disk.

Sony this is a major worry.... it needs addressing, along with the dismal AAF implementation, long before Vegas 7 if Vegas is going to have any professional credibility.

Yeah it's a great program and my personal choice for video and audio editing when I'm not trying to interface and exchange files broadcast facilities but I really can't imagine why these basics have been left out.

Steve

There is a I think free utility that'll split the file into separate .wavs for you. That does make one wonder though, if it's that simple to do why can't Vegas open the dang things.
Using interleaved multitrack audio is far more efficient than separate files per track, it reduces the amount of work the disk system has to do, that's one reason why they're used in field recorders and it'd make life way easier for many Vegas users if they could export in that format.
This is getting pretty sad, we've had a lot of the audio guys spitting the dummy because Vegas has become too video centric and yet the video guys can't use audio files that are the industry staple in the video world. This isn't a new request either, it came up a very long time ago, the response back then was along the lines of, we didn't think anyone needed support for it but if enough do we'll look into it.
So now they've pushed Vegas into the world of pro video with V6 and ah, well, these are the things pros work with. The biggest attraction to Vegas for a pro video user is it's audio capability but it's coming up one sandwich short of a picnic.

Bob.

"There is a I think free utility that'll split the file into separate .wavs for you."

Do you know the name of it? I'd like a simple app that can assemble and dissemble interleaved wavs.

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=3&MessageID=256170

You can try this:
http://www.thozie.de/avimaster/
I got that from DSE who'se never tried it and looking at it it doesn't look all that easy to use but it's free and it does support EBU BWF.

Given that not that many audio apps appear to support these types of files (my Edirol does recommend you check if your app can work with them before recording them) I'd imagine we'll hopefully see some more apps around to split the files. That's still no excuse for Sony not getting their act together, certainly being able to export multiple tracks into one file would also be very nice.

Bob.

I don't know of anything free that will assemble mono wavs into a polyphonic BWF, but Fostex have a free app that will expand the polyphonic BWFs their recorders produce into a set of mono BWFs.

You can get it from http://www.fostexdvd.net/fxdvd_route/docs/techsup/bwf_manager_1.htm

Mark

"I gotta ask what's the use of a single track BWF file over a regular .wav file?"

BWF allows the inclusion of Metadata including timecode stamp, scene and take numbers etc. A group of BWF files with timecode could be thrown onto a timeline and automatically ordered and synced with video.

Great idea except as far as I know Vegas will not automatically sync anything based on TC.

Bob.

Bob, you're correct. One of the benefits of a bwav file is the fact that it has the "recorded at" timecode embedded, or stamped with the file. Traditional wav files have no means to do this. I used to use an AMS Audiofile, which we purchased in 1989. It recorded incoming timecode and stamped each file with this timecode, and then you could drop files into the timeline either 1. whereever you wanted or 2. at the timecode location that the file was recorded at. This was great for conforming location sound from a nagra or timecode DAT. But wav and aif files just don't have this ability. WIth bwav, I was all ready for Vegas 6.0 to be able to offer this function...but..alas, nope. Oh well. Otherwise, Vegas is a fine audio editor. And it's a lot cheaper than an audiofile (original price in 1989, 127,000).

Wait a minute. I thought Vegas 6 now had support for broadcast wave files. I knew that Vegas couldn't create them (so I haven't been able to test it. need to get some PT guys to send me some files) but since Sony advertises support for broadcast wave files now I thought that Vegas would be able to read the timecode of these files and place them in the appropriate point on the timeline. Is this not the case?

I did this once with PT Free and was able to recreate a few small projects just by reading the timecode from the files. Helped in a pinch and then I rendered the tracks out to Vegas (hated PT Free) where I did some editing and recorded some more tracks. This was 4 years ago.. I was sure Vegas would be able to do this when I heard about support for broadcast waves.

Dave

From what I'm hearing all it can do is open a stereo bwf file and treat it as it would a stereo wav file. That's hardly rocket science. As far as I know it will not even display any embedded TC data much less sync to it. Even if it'd display it would at least enable us to manually sync the thing.
Bob.

/edit/
Checked the manual, it'll read the timestamp data and optionally insert the track at the matching point on the T/L. No mention of dealing with embedded TC or syncing using that, no mention of multichannel bwf and no mention of outputing bwf files.
/edit/

"/edit/
Checked the manual,..."

Doh! The obvious answer, or at least the first place one should look. Good to hear that Vegas can at least read the timecode (and really I would have been shocked had it not been so) so that my above scenerio with PT Free could be entirely done in Vegas. A cumbersome workaround to opening AAF files but the PT folks I mainly dealy with are using PTLE and don't have the cash flow for Digidesign's Digitranslator or whatever it's called.

Jury's still out for me on Vegas 6. Would be nice to make use of the broadcast waves, but I may simply opt for EDL Convert Pro, or even the new version of ProTools that will run with M-Audio sound cards since I already own one M-Audio device.

Dave.

For what it's worth I have the M-Audio Firewire 410 and it runs just fine with Vegas. Can't speak for any of their internal cards, seem to get mixed signals about them here.
Bob.

I did some BWF import experimentation and here's the catch. If I select 15 or 20 consecutive takes from my BWF disc and import them it definately puts them on the timeline BUT it creates a separate track for each take. You would have to render all the takes to a single track to see them all in sequence on a timeline.