Retaining DATE CODE info outputting to miniDV

t-keats wrote on 7/20/2005, 5:54 PM
Almost everyone who shoots miniDV tape knows that time and date (and sometimes exposure) info is encoded in the miniDV tape recording and can be recalled and displayed (or not) during playback of the original tape.

After the tape is edited in VEGAS and transferred back to another new miniDV tape, the date code shows the date and time of the transfer from the VEGAS edit rather than the original date-time info. Is there a way to retain the original shoot date & time info when using VEGAS???

It seems that when I used a home version of Pinnacle Studio 7, it saved the original info.

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 7/20/2005, 6:15 PM
Nope. Vegas destroys this information. Too bad. I, too, would find it very useful. The usual response is that, as soon as you make any changes to the video, it is no longer the original video and therefore should not have the original date. Also, you can have dozens of video tracks, each with video having a different date, and in that case, what date should Vegas use?

My response to this has always been that it should be a user preference to retain the date/time when there is only one track, and you are doing "cuts-only" editing. When there is more than one track, or when the video is altered in some way, I have also requested that the user be able to specify a "master" track from which the date and time information would be taken. Any video on that track, even if it is altered with fX, would serve as the source for the date/time information that would be put on the final DV AVI file.

Unfortunately, I've never gotten any response to these ideas.
filmy wrote on 7/20/2005, 8:18 PM
you knopw I have talked about this for a log while now and I am 100% sure i was not living in the twilight zone at the time. I cut a promo for a documentary several years ago with Vegas VIdeo and the *output* - or final "render" did retain date_code info on shots that were not changed. Everyone had doubted me and I have done all I can to prove that it really happened. I even ran the output through the free date_code program and posted some parts of that and still people will not believe me.

What I did - captured select scene with vegas video for use in a promo. I cut the full promo with Vegas Video. I "rendered" the promo and that was that. Didn't think too much about anything date-code wise until the topic came up in these threads. The footage that was not changed - I mean footage that was input and output "as is" retained all info. Titles done in Vegas had no time code or date_code info. Footage that was color corrected also lost date_code info. However footage that was simply slowed down a bit - and this is weird - some of it retained the date_code info and some did not.

Now for all I know this was some sort of "bug" in the version of Vegas Video and was "fixed" in later versions thusly people can not duplicate the results anymore.
frazerb wrote on 7/21/2005, 5:22 AM
I agree with you guys.

Not retaining date code is probably my biggest complaint about Vegas. I will frequently archive short clips that I want to save on one tape. With Premiere is was so nice that the original date code was retained. Even if you had a transition between shots, the date code was only missing during the transition if no effects were added to the clip otherwise.

Buddy
t-keats wrote on 7/22/2005, 8:51 AM
I just checked it out and my Sony Vegas Movie Studio 4.0 software DOES retain ORIGINAL shoot date and time info when outputting to miniDV tape if the scenes have not been doctored. For example, date/time info blanks out during dissolves between scenes.

With VEGAS 6 costing a lot more and essentially running on the the same (albeit souped-up) platform, shouldn't we expect it to do the same?
johnmeyer wrote on 7/22/2005, 10:03 AM
Click on the "Support" button at the top of this page and submit your request as a "Product Suggestion."
t-keats wrote on 7/22/2005, 2:37 PM
Already did that John.
If others want it, they should write too.
filmy wrote on 7/23/2005, 7:48 PM
AHHHHHHHHHHH....

Thank you duraflex!!!!!!!!

I do believe you have been the first person in a year (or more) to confirm what I have said. Even though you did it via Sony Vegas Movie Studio 4.0 it was/is the same core as SoFo's Vegas Video 4 - so. hey...there ya go.

And yes I agree, and do not understand, why the ablity seems to have been removed in later updates and versions.
farss wrote on 7/23/2005, 8:51 PM
I agree, not only date data but the whole lot of the metadata, particularly the stuff that comes off digibetacam AND, yes a really big one here, the closed caption data. I never knew that the DV spec includes provision for handling CC data.

Even as a first step a way to access the data within Vegas would be nice and this shouldn't be hard code to write surely, it's just a matter of reading the info out of the file.

Bob.