can I import HDV in QT format into Vegas?

john-beale wrote on 5/22/2007, 6:48 PM
I'm running Vegas 7e on a WinXP box. Another videographer has given me a file on a data DVD from a Mac that is HDV (1440x1080i) in what I assume is a Quicktime format. I can play this file in VLC Media Player and it looks fine. VLC reports the codec is "hdv2" and the video is 1440x1080 resolution at 29.970 frame rate.

I can drag the file into Vegas but it shows up as an audio track only with no video. What's the recommended approach to convert this into something usable in Vegas?

First try: Using Quicktime Player 7.1, I loaded the file and selected "save As..."
and checked "save as a self-contained movie" to write a .mov file.
This file worked just the same as the original: VLC could play the audio+video
but Vegas could only see the audio portion.

Second try: Usint QT Player I chose "export" to uncompressed AVI. This took a long
time to generate a very large file which Vegas could not import at all.

Comments

Laurence wrote on 5/22/2007, 7:12 PM
I hate to give you bad news, but it will be really tough to get it to work. Talk your friend itno getting the Mac beta version of Neo and you'll be able to go back and forth with no problem. Otherwise, the only really common HD formats are uncompressed and HD-CAM.
john-beale wrote on 5/22/2007, 7:56 PM
That's disappointing news (he is in a different state and since this was a no-budget favor, I don't like asking him to spend time converting and then mail another DVD).

Given that I can actually view the video using VLC Media Player, it seems that I ought to be able to also convert it somehow. In some cleaner way than pointing a camera at the screen :-). Surely this is not "rocket science", as they say?
Laurence wrote on 5/22/2007, 8:31 PM
The fact that you can view it in VLC is encouraging. Have you tried Virtualdub?
john-beale wrote on 5/22/2007, 9:30 PM
Success, or at least a viable workaround for now. I have managed to get a file that I can import into Vegas, using VLC to transcode. I used the arcane command-line incantation shown below, with my input file being "H:\video\file1-qt.mov" and my output file being "E:\VLC-output.m2t". This is re-encoding MPEG2 at 15000 kbps. I'd like to use a higher bitrate, but VLC seems to automatically throttle back the requested bitrate if it is high, maybe if your machine can't encode in real-time (VLC was designed for live streaming, after all). You'd think that I could avoid transcoding since the original is also MPEG2, but I could not get that to work.

vlc -vvv "H:\video\file1-qt.mov" :sout=#transcode{vcodec=mp2v,vb=15000,scale=1}:duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=ts,dst="E:\VLC-output.m2t"}}

using VLC Media Player 0.8.6b from www.videolan.org
Note: under windows, above line MUST be invoked from the directory where VLC has been installed. Simply copying the executables and .dlls elsewhere does not work.
ForumAdmin wrote on 5/23/2007, 4:31 AM
This becoming a fairly common problem that people who collaborate should be aware of:

HDV first ingested by FCP cannot from there be opened in most other editing apps without a time-consuming and often quality-degrading export or a transcode to a new file.

Capture HDV in Vegas, Cineform, Premiere, or HDV split...the other 3 apps will see the native captured .m2t files just fine. These .m2t files are truly native and can be printed back to tape without re-rendering/re-wrapping.

Laurence wrote on 5/23/2007, 5:24 AM
Yeah, this is really a FCP problem, though you'd never know it talking to one of the FCP fanboys.
Xander wrote on 5/23/2007, 7:38 AM
Have a look at TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress from Pegasys-inc. I use this for most of my transcoding work. It uses the MainConcept codecs as well plus lots of tweakable parameters.

www.pegasys-inc.com