DV Video, iMovie, and Vegas

metrazol wrote on 5/14/2004, 11:57 AM
Ok, here's the problem...

I'm using Vegas 4 to put together a short video from uncompressed DV NTSC video (.dv) and the video is fine (came out surprisingly well for the dolt running the camera...) but the sound shows up on the timeline as a short (<1 sec.) click. I first saw this, thought "Odd..." and opened one of the files in Quicktime...fine...Sound Forge...a-okay, everything normal....but in Vegas, I get just that click. Nada mas. It even recognizes the sound as 48k 16bit, but as, obviously, .85 seconds long or so.... Here's what I did to cause this, I think....

I imported the 3 hours of source video shot on my GL1 as uncompressed DV NTSC video into my PowerBook using iMovie's capture function. I used my Mac because, lo and behold, whoever ordered my workstation was a goddanged idiot and didn't check that they'd ordered a Firewire card (Dual Xeon's, pro video card, huge disks, NO FIREWIRE, real smart there people...and now they won't pay the $20 for a card or let me install one myself...) I then transferred the video via the network to my machine and that's where the problems started. All the other times I've used the same format but imported in other software, no problems, it's just these iMovie clips that work in every other piece of software, that Vegas goes freaky. I know the network transfer is not a problem, and the capture went perfectly, it's just Vegas. I even tried hitting "Open in Audio Editor" and then Sound Forge sees nothing but the click.

So I'm using a workaround (open the .DV in SF, split off the sound, then attach it to the video in Vegas) and sync is fine, but it's a bit of a pain (58 3 minute or so interviews...) and I'm wondering what I can do without transcoding the entire thing beforehand to .AVI to make Vegas play nice with the sound? Is there a separate DV codec that Vegas needs specially installed? Am I simply stuck with the workaround? Should I know better than to mix Mac's and PC's if I'm going to end up using the PC?

P.S. I'd love to be able to do something with my brand new G5 that was delivered yesterday using Final Cut Pro, but guess who had to send it back this morning b/c it arrived broken? Advive: If the fans run full bore and won't turn off, run HW test, if you get error code POST/2176/0, you win a new machine, free of charge...in 7-10 business days.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 5/14/2004, 6:07 PM
Very strange, that sounds like one for the engineering team. I wonder if for some reason iMovie is sticking in a flag that Vegas is confused by?
FWIW, there isn't such an animal as uncompressed DV...DV by definition is compressed at either 4:1:1 (common/GL2) or 4:2:2 (rare, specific DVCam only)
I've never used iMovie, but do use FCP occasionally, and those files transfer just fine from FCP to my VAIO, over the network.
farss wrote on 5/14/2004, 7:00 PM
Same here,
I've imported FCP backup files of CD into Vegas and aprt from adding .avi as the extension not a problem and that was from an ancient version of FCP.

But maybe iMovie is a bit different, I think even Mac guys have some oddities with it, it's not just a crippled copy of FCP.
Cheno wrote on 5/14/2004, 9:27 PM
I've never been able to export a Quicktime file from iMovie that doesn't come up as an iMovie file when on a Mac. I'm almost certain that there is some kind of flag on it. It also doesn't allow for capture of large files without splitting them up, like the 4Gig FAT32 issue. Really wierd stuff.

FCP files had no problem back and forth from Vegas as long as what I captured in Vegas had been rerendered. Native Vid Cap files weren't read right in FCP.

Mike