Its easy. The solution now is to purchase "Connect HD" from Cineform.com for $499.00. This application will capture the MPEG2 data stream from the Sony camera (you might have to download an extra patch for Connect HD) then convert it to avi for editing on the Vegas timeline. Then it will convert it back to the proper stuff for PTT to D-VHS tape or Mini-DV tape. You will be kind of stuck in the 720 x 30p mode however.

JJK

Yes,

I realize that purchasing ConnectHD is a possible solution, albeit an expensive one, for use NOW in capturing HDV. However, there were rumors that Sony would be announcing an upgrade path for Vegas that would hopefully be a less expensive solution for importing Raw HDV footage into Vegas. With the Sony HDR-FX1 now available, it would seem to be a good time for Sony-Vegas to step up to the plate on a capture solution.

Tom

"You will be kind of stuck in the 720 x 30p mode however."

That's just not acceptable, it defeats the purpose of buying a 1080i camcorder.

Sony, what's up? The cameras are shipping and Vegas users need to capture and edit the footage...

John

News soon.

Unfortunately we have been hearing "soon" for quite some time now. My Sony HDR-FX1arrived this morning, and i have already taken some footage and displayed it using my Runco 980 Ultra Front Projection TV on my Stewart 16:9 aspect 76 in. wide screen in my home theater. It is fully comparable in qulaity (if not better) than any of the 12 broadcast HD stations that I receive. Sony really did a great job on this camera, but it looks like I will need to look elsewhere other than Vegas to capture the footage. i cannot quite understand why it is taking so long to release a capture utility for Vegas for the Sony HDR-FX1. Somehow I feel this reflects the inertia of a large company (Sony) vs. the nimble responsiveness that I was used to under Sonic Foundry.

Tom

The SoFo team is now the one and same team under Sony to all but one man. It's one thing to release something quickly, it's another to release something that works reliably and without cludges.
I'd have to agree though they should have known and been working on a solution before the first designer put pencil to paper on this camera. Failing that they should at least flesh out what their solution(s) will be. It's no good having the best of class if your customer base has already jumped ship. Even if they've jumped to a leaky ship they tend to wait for the leaks to get fixed rather than jump back again, after all they've spent money to jump ship, money that could have been in Sony's pocket.

Bob.

I would guess that there are at least 10's of thousands of consumers willing to buy the top of the line consumer camera who have never heard of Vegas or any other NLE.

They just want to use it like a vcr on their hdtv.

Better for the bottom line to release the camera as quickly as possible.

Hi nickle. I don't think anyone is saying the camera release should have been delayed. The point is the support software should have been ready at the same time.

Richard Hunter

Not that it seems to matter, but Sony is a HUGE company, rivaling the miltary of the US.
Sony Consumer Electronics is one company. (Nothing to do with Vegas)
Sony Broadcast is another company. (Distributes Vegas in USA)
Sony Pictures Digital is another company. (Owns the Vegas/Sound Forge/ACID/old SOFO applications)

Getting all three on the same page at the same time is monumental. Vegas will have this shortly as announced a month ago. I can tell you that Sony Broadcast and Sony Electronics AIN'T gonna hold back release on a camera just because the engineers at Sony Pictures Digital aren't totally satisfied with the stability, look, smell, or taste of the update. I'm not suggesting there is anything right or wrong with the update, just that the boys in Madson don't release ANYTHING until they feel it's 200%

They probably felt that the Cineform codec would give them a cushion to people who wanted to use the camera right now for a tidy sum of cash until their own capture utility was available.

JJK

Look I'm eternally gratefull that the Vegas team don't treat us as beta testers, I've no argument there.
But compare how they've handled this to how Sony have handled the launch of the camera, the industry have known about it for around six months now, as time went by we we're let get closer and closer looks at it.
So here's the situation we're in. Vgeas will have a 'solution' at some undefined point in time. We don't know when and we have no clue as to what that solution has to offer. I'm betting we'll have the cameras well be the we even have a vague clue as to what the 'solution' has to offer.
At the same time the competition has a turnkey solution with local support. Personally I found it pretty twee compared to what I'm used to with Vegas, the CC tools look more like they belong in WMM than a 'Pro' environment. BUT it's here now, it isn't very expensive, it'll handle DVCPRO 50, SD, HDV, Varicam and CineAlta footage and on the one timeline and output as low end HD to HDCAM. We've know this was coming and had some idea of what would be on offer well before the launch of the product.
By comparison the best the Vegas team can offer is 'something soon', I'm sorry but I cannot see the upside to that marketing approach, I cannot for the life of me see any downside to announcing where you're heading, if you can't make it fly and have to pull the product, no harm done. At least knowing what's in the pipeline enables us to make an evaluation whether to wait or not.
Bob.

Farss has hit the nail squarely on the head! I now have a Sony HDR-FX1 which I love. I now have Vegas 5.0b which I love. I can't capture HDV footage with Vegas 5 as it stands now. The Sony Vegas team has known about this camera for at least six months and one of the Sony folks even posted a clip from this camera about two months ago. I don't know whether to spend $500 to purchase Cineform's ConnectHD right now or not. As sure as I do, the Sony Vegas team will announce a less expensive route to HDV capture with the HDR-FX1and I'll be out the $500 that I will have just spent for ConnectHD. So such comments as "Not to worry" and "Soon now" don't do much to lessen the uncertainty around when this product will be released.

And Spot, to compare Sony in size to the U.S. military is with all due respect, simply invalid. Sony is big, but not that big. And whereas the U.S. military is supported by tax payers it is we consumers who pay the slaries of all of Sony's employees including those in Madison.

Tom

What I meant by Sony being as big as the US MIlitary is that there is a LOT of redundancy, where one team isn't totally aware of what the other is doing or isn't always able to directly support each other in the most efficient form.

I guess I'm always gonna be fighting a losing battle trying to explain that there are SEVERAL Sony companies that are out there, and they aren't necessarily always working together. Not for any reason other than sheer size and various goals by various departments and arms.
For instance, the FX1 is a CONSUMER CAMERA.
Vegas ISN'T a consumer application.
Sony Broadcast, who distribute Vegas, don't have ANYTHING to do with the CONSUMER CAMERA that Sony Electronics sells.
Maybe that helps the thought process? In other words, if you want to bitch about something in this vein, bitch that the 99.00 Consumer Sony Vegas Movie Studio doesn't capture the stream from the Consumer Sony FX1.
Sony hasn't announced a ship/launch date for their professional camera yet.
Sony Canada only got their one last week, Sony Hawaii only got their one display last week, I can't comment on whether Sony US has one or not.

the point here should be that you want to be able to capture the raw data, just like you do with the dv format... paying $500 for the connecthd utility that re-encodes the data is absurd... you certainly wouldn't settle for re-encoding raw dv as part of the capture process, why compromise with hdv?

what i'd like to hear from sony vegas is whether or not it'll capture and work with raw hdv data.

"what i'd like to hear from sony vegas is whether or not it'll capture and work with raw hdv data."

Of course it will. You can work with raw HDV data right now, dropping .m2t files on the timeline. They will update it soon so the capture utility works as well.

For getting pure raw editing speed, that's a bigger question as to how and when that will be solved. I would suspect they'll use some sort of proxy frames system, but that will be hard-disk-intensive. Somewhat similar to how Cineform does it.

But obviously they're going to support it, Sony's already said "coming soon".

"of course it will" ...thanks, but do you have an official sony vegas statement to back up that claim?

perhaps it's not clear exactly what i'm talking about: http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=28667

the current editing trend is re-encoding when capturing... if vegas joins pinnacle as being the only native capture solution, it would be a big feather in their cap.

SONY are not dumb. The camera needs software that isn't out there yet, but I bet you Sony has it up it's sleve - and I suggest it is better and more than expected. This whole timing with the Consumer out before Christmas and the pro in January, and everyone wondering when to buy is creating suspence and journalistic exposure that Sony will capitalise on. I think the company is just playing a little game with us. I think a better question would be when will we all have drives that will play HDV.

The pros who will buy the pro model know what they are buying the camera for and would not buy it unless it was fully functionable, so we know all will be resolved by January. As for the consumer model I wonder how many Christmas shoppers know about Video capture? Half the people here don't so you know Joe Public will be buying this camera and happily wireing it up to there HDTV and forgeting DVD's, and then when the software is out (I guess December 14) a big bonus and a spur to the hesitant to splurge.

Just my opinion here, native capture is NOT a good idea. There's no reason in the world to re-encode DV25 as it doesn't use temporal compression. There is every reason in the world to re-encode HDV as it does use temporal compression.
I know nothing about the Pinnacle solution, if they trily can edit native HDV would be one thing, getting the other apps such as AE to also play along is quite another.
Given that they are the one and only who think this is a good idea I'm extremely suspicious. Neither Apple, Adobe, Canopus or Vegas all of whom have HDV solutions think this is the way to go, does that tell you something?
I'd much rather use an intermediate codec that has almost no loss than the native one that is very lossy.
Bob.

the only time that there should be any encoding losses with digital formats is during transitions, titles, etc... so a mixed-format timeline that uses the wavelet codec only during those periods would still allow for the very best possible output quality.

remember that most of the current delivery scenarios could mean still yet another re-encoding step... wm9 is what is used for voom, it's now accepted for both of the new hi-def dvd formats, etc.

the only reason that some of the currently proposed hdv capture solutions are re-encoding as part of the capturing process is because most computers today won't be able to encode and play back the native 1080i hdv 25mpbs mpeg2 data stream... it's very processor intensive, i don't believe that this is a hard drive issue... so premiere pro, etc., obviously can't sell a software product that won't work right on todays computers.

all of the above is outlined here: http://videosystems.com/mag/video_hdv_sweet_spot/

i believe that pinnacle is way ahead of the bell curve, in that their hdv editing solution includes hardware that'll handle the native mpeg2 function.

i just think that people shouldn't expect too much from a software-only 1080i hdv editor like vegas... it's going to have limitations, when compared to hdv hardware editing.

"Before the end of the year, however, Avid Xpress Pro will be ready and raring to capture the HDV format that is being supported by a growing consortium of developers. "We are big believers of HDV in Xpress Pro land," Russell tells us, "so we are building a long GOP editor that will let Xpress Pro handle HDV in its native format. The system will utilize DNxHD for titles and effects and mix them with HDV files on the same timeline."

DNxHD captures high definition material through a standard HD-SDI connection as a SMPTE 292M bitstream into the Nitris or Adrenaline hardware. Whatever the HD format or frame rate, Avid's DNxHD keeps it in the original resolution while retaining the full raster of the active video. Avid President and CEO David A. Krall likes to call his team "rasterfarians" because of their determination not to discard parts of the video image." -http://www.tvtechnology.com/features/Focus-on-editing/f_focus_on_editing-06.23.04.shtml

I have heard reports from people that capdvhs (google for it) is able to capture the mpeg data over firewire from the HDR-FX1, even if it was not written for this purpose. This application is freeware I think (google for it). Maybe it is worth a try as a temporary solution until the Vegas update is out.

I did a search for capdvhs, but it appears to be an apple utility for macs. Are you saying there is a PC version? If so, can you please provide a link? Thanks.

Richard Hunter