Comments

rmack350 wrote on 4/24/2008, 5:19 PM
Thought I'd bump this for you. Seems like AJA and BMD support has been spotty and I hear more complaints than success stories, but I have heard a tale or two of somone getting a card to work.

The DVCPro HD part is another issue, though. I know of no way to control the deck in Vegas. Unless AJA or BMD provide their own tools. One advantage if you injest via SDI is that you've effectively transcoded the video out of the DVCPro HD format as soon as it's in the SDI pipe, so there's no requirement to go back to that format. However, If you do then I hear that you need Raylight to work with the files in Vegas.

Rob Mack

ABeriault wrote on 4/25/2008, 11:05 AM
Thank you so much Rob.
This info is very helpful. I thus have two options, can you give me your opinion on the right way to go?

a) Transcode de DVCPRO tapes to 1080i AVI files and write them on a hard disk, then edit normally. My biggest cost here will be the transcoding I suppose.
or
b) Add a AJA card to my computer and capture myself to AVI mor whatever would be the best format in Vegas 8

Thanks
Andre
rmack350 wrote on 4/25/2008, 12:13 PM
a) the very act of ingesting via SDI is a transcode. For example, when you ingest in FCP from the DVCProHD deck via SDI and then write to a DVCPRoHD codec you've essentially transcoded out of DVCProHD and then encoded back again. The only way to avoid a transcode is to ingest from the deck fia firewire. That said, a transcode isn't necessarily a bad thing. The point is that once you're ingesting of SDI you aren't tied to a particular codec when you write it too the HDD. For example, we regularly take footage from a DV deck over SDI and write it to disk in a 10bit 422 codec.
b) You might have just as good results adding another NLE to your system that can control the deck an ingets the footage via firewire.

In the end, you need to be able to test all of this so I'd be looking for a dealer or equipment integrator that can help you out. I don't have direct experience with this, but we did recently go through a similar rig-a-marole with our Premiere Pro/Axio edit systems. Axio would allow us to control the deck and ingest over firewire but PPro was a total failure with the media when Axio was also involved. We ended up installing a final cut system for the particular project. Vegas wasn't a consideration because the people in charge had never used it and weren't interested in trying. However, you might find that PPro (without axio) or Edius can ingest the footage over firewire and then the question is whether Raylight lets you work with the footage in Vegas.

So your questions might be whether it's more worthwhile to have an AJA card or to buy a license for another NLE.

Most likely, any future solutions are going to involve P2 cards rather than ingesting DVCProHD from tape.

Hopefully someone with more direct knowledge can help you here. I think Spot has actually done this.

Rob