rraud,
We were kind of hoping you'd jump in here. There's a new WaveAgent release, and I don't know if that or something else is the cause of Bob's observation. I don't recall having the problem with the Beta and Vegas 9.0c, but I'm going to try some things.

The background discussion is here:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=703782&Replies=11

"Which version of Wave Agent are you using?"

Version 1.10, recently released.


Bob.

Wave Agent 1.10 (still called "Beta" for some reason) does the same thing. It will not create the proper chunk info from a standard WAVE file for importing into Vegas I have not tried Wave Agent Classic yet. (whatever the difference is)
My work-around: Copy and open a known BWF in SF and replace the original audio with the audio you wish to use. Save the file, making sure the "Save Metadata" box is checked. Import into Wave Agent. make the desired metadata changes. Change or fill in the frame rate and uncheck the "Preserve TC start" when editing the TC start.
PS:-- I did not try poly files with more than 2-tracks.

If you need a BWF template file to work from: (1.5MB)

https://www.yousendit.com/download/bFFPNU1JWlRxRTFjR0E9PQ
Note: file expires on 04/09/10. Contact me directly after that.

PPS:- Even a file created with an H2 has the proper BWF metadata to work with.

This may shed a little more light on the problem:

I downloaded a BWF sample file from SD's website. It imported just right in Vegas at the right spot on the timeline. So far, so good.

I then took a standard wave file, edited the metadata in WaveAgent, and was not able to import in Vegas, but was OK to drag to the timeline, but without the T/C offset, of course.

I compared the metadata for the two files in WaveAgent, and found nothing significantly different. WaveAgent does not display the chunk data, however.

I downloaded the trial version of BWFWidget Pro, which is kind of neat in the amount of stuff it will tell you, and compared the chunk data between the two files. Again, nothing obvious that should break Vegas,

I then noticed that the chunk order in the WaveAgent file was reversed from the reference BWF file; the bext chunk was last in line (after the wav chunks) as opposed to appearing first in the reference file.

Does Vegas expect to see the bext chunk first and only first in line? If so, is it the only app that has this limitation?

I have no way of knowing, just speculating, because neither of the utilities (WaveAgent or BWFWidget) has a way to re-order the chunks. But my speculation makes sense in light of rraud's observation that if you paste new material into an existing bwf and save with metadata, it preverves the chunk order and data of the original.

Then again, I could be full of beans.
EDIT: Just stumbled across the thread here:

http://duc.digidesign.com/archive/index.php/t-102100.html
This could breathe some life into my theory because something similar seems to affect ProTools. Especially interesting are the last two posts which suggest "fixing" the chunk order in Sound Forge.

I could be on to something. More to come . . .

You ARE on to something MV, makes sense. I appreciate your tenacity.

Thanks,
I got it to work. Took your sample BWF file then in SF10 converted the bitdepth to 24 bits then used the channel converter to convert to 4 channels. Then deleted all. Opened my ex Vegas 4 chan wave file, selected all, pasted into BWF and saved with Preserve Metadata ticked. The order is important as SF will not do anything to an empty timeline.

Opened that in WaveAgent, changed frame rate to 25 and changed Start Time. Save that and exited.

Opened V9.0b, File>Import>BWF and it worked. One thing to watch for, make certain the Ruler matches project frame rate. The Import seems to use ruler time to position the event, I had that wrong at first and got a few frames offset.

Vegas appears to ignore track names from the BWF file. Not a huge problem I guess.

Good luck getting someone from Sony HQ to understand you. Hard to find anyone who even knows Vegas exists.

Bob.

I can also confirm that the workaround from rraud works.
For those still interested, I have sent the following support email to Sound Devices (only because I suspect they will respond more quickly than Sony).
First of all, I really apologize for sending a support ticket for a free product.

Well, if the proplem affects not only V but also PT, is it not possible that the problem is in fact in WA ? (Sorry my understanding of bexts and other metadata is not deep).

geoff

Not really, Geoff. In the first BWF spec the chunk order was specified (according to other posts on the internet), but was dropped long ago; it is not specified in the current specs. Although placing the bext chunk last is unusual, it should be recognized by any program that claims BWF import support.

That being said, it would probably be easier to fix in Sound Device's WaveAgent than in Sony and DigiDesign. That is, if my theory is correct; it is supported although unproven at this point.

UPDATE:
I got the following responses from Sound Devices today:
Joe Ramos said:
Unfortunately this does sound like a Vegas issue. Any application that can read .wav files should be able to look at the various chunks in any order and have it work fine. We don't have any plans at the moment to change the way Wave Agent saves edited files, however our engineering department is going to have a look at this and do some tests with Vegas. We will investigate whether their is an issue on our end or not.
Nic Stage said:
I know Joe already responded to you, but I was just wondering what version(s) of Vegas you were seeing this in? We can forward this over to our contacts at Sony to help them out too. :)
I responded to him that this had been confirmed in 8.0c and 9.0b.

Same behavior in Vegas 6.