Fostex FR-2 and Vegas

farss wrote on 8/20/2004, 5:06 PM
Don't really know if this belongs here or in the audio forum but here goes.
Looking very seriously at the FR-2 with TC option board. I've done a bit of research regarding how audio with TC is meant to work, the BIG question is will Vegas handle this correctly. The FR-2 records in BWF format (only stereo) but I seem to recall Vegas cannot handle this format. Also the FR-2 can record markers along with the audio.

I'm curious as to how well Vegas will handle this and resyncing the audio using the TC data in the audio file. If Vegas can't do this anyone recommend another app that can? No I'm not trying to jump ship, once it's synced and/or converted to 'standard' .wav then I can use it in Vegas.

Assuming I'm right and Vegas cannot handle BWF, one has to ask, why the heck not? This seems to be the industry standard for professional location multitrack recorders, I'm also looking at the more upmarket kit from Fostex and HHB.

Bob.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 8/20/2004, 5:51 PM
Farss, with an MTC/SMPTE device as a sound card, you should be able to sync the Fostex up just fine. Vegas won't open Broadcast Wavs, wish it did. I can understand the not writing to, but wish it could open them.
Anyway, lashing the two up in time shouldn't be any issue at all, couldn't/shouldn't be any different than doing this with the DA-98, which we do fairly regularly.
farss wrote on 8/20/2004, 6:14 PM
I'd agree there's absolutely no point writing BWF, once you're outside the real time domain having separate tracks isn't an issue. I can see why so many 'disk' recorders use it, writing a muxed multichannel stream to the one file avoids heads having to whiz back and forwards.
But being able to digest it is another matter, guess I'll have to do a little research to find an app that can demux the data stream. I'd agree, BWF is the thing that video needs from the audio side and needs support in Vegas.

As for the TC sync, hopefully all here know that modern kit is so accurate and even if it isn't resyncing in Vegas is a cakewalk if all your sources are at least crystal synced. However there's still a lot of old school guys around who see TC as make or break stuff.

But maybe this isn't as complicated as it would seem, assuming the camera and the FR-2 are fed TC from an SPG then they'll both lock to that so when the audio is read back it will be frame accurate. Perhaps I'm envisioning a problem when there isn't one, maybe the only time resyncing to TC would be an issue is if the audio recording was an analogue device that recorded LTC in which case Vegas could handle that via MTC.

Bob.