The more relevant issue is that Vegas cannot print to tape with TC starting at anything other than 00:00:00;00

true, but i regularly had to produce program material in vegas 7/8 that had to start at proscribed times and though i can't now remember exactly what i did, i never had problems. perhaps i used insert as opposed to assembly edit on my sony decks (never used cameras for recording veas output).

[I]" If I smartrender 2 clips each with different Times, which time is the correct one which should be carried over with which metadata? "[/I]

The timecode from each clip denotes the time of day each frame was recorded.
No dramas carrying that over during the smart render and having that on a tape.
Now if you ingest that tape most likely the system would see that as a break in TC and split it into two clips but that's fine.

Bob.

[I]"perhaps i used insert as opposed to assembly edit on my sony decks "[/I]

Yes, prestripe the tape and tell Vegas to start record at...
As far as I know that only works for DVCAM, no insert capability with DV.
Pretty certain Vegas does not support this with HDV, in fact not certain if we were able to get frame accurate edits using two HDV VCRs and an edit controller.

TBH I don't really get why anyone would archive HDV back to tape anyway.
Using a now legacy format for archiving is asking for trouble down the track. Just keep the media as files on HDDs, make backups. All much cheaper and easier to work with. Even at its best HDV is far from a robust format.

Bob.

"The timecode from each clip denotes the time of day each frame was recorded.

That data already exists (on avchd). It's called a PGS steam (a subtitle file with each clip). We're talking about metadata which represents the entire (NEW) video. Two clips to one is an entirely new video with its own unique date of origin.

So try again please.

[I]So try again please.[/I]No, don't bother Bob. Let's stick to the subject and not wander off worrying about the internal consistency of each person's point of view, or whether Sony was using "Smart Rendering" as their name for not recompressing during a render.

If this was like forums elsewhere, I would ask that this thread be closed.

[I]"We're talking about metadata which represents the entire (NEW) video. Two clips to one is an entirely new video with its own unique date of origin."[/I]

No we were not.
We were talking about timecode which just happened to have come from a camera's real time clock.

Bob.

"No we were not."
I think you're a little confused. Go back up and re read the OP's first post.

"No, don't bother Bob. Let's stick to the subject and not wander off worrying about the internal consistency of each person's point of view, or whether Sony was using "Smart Rendering" as their name for not recompressing during a render. "

oooookay. So what did you ask the question for?

Let's try this from another angle. You can indeed keep all the metadata intact if you COPY and if (form your perspective anyway) copying is the same as smart rendering.... then why don't you just copy?

[I]You can indeed keep all the metadata intact if you COPY and if (form your perspective anyway) copying is the same as smart rendering.... then why don't you just copy? [/I]You have understood absolutely nothing that I have posted and have not contributed to helping me with my problem. Please do not post any further responses because you have succeeded in taking this thread in completely unproductive directions.

Everyone else understands that I am not confused about what smart rendering actually means and is not hung up on whether Sony has officially blessed the phrase "smart rendering," or not. My goal is to be able to have the date and time from the original video (if only one video track is used) available in the rendered video, whether re-compression is required or not. There is no technical reason this cannot be done, and there would be many benefits to lots of people if we can figure out a workflow that would achieve what I am trying to do.

John I think you're on a road to nowhere trying to get Vegas to do this.
Rob is right in that the Record Start date/time stamp would be an unusual thing to preserve through a render by an NLE as it's passive metadata.

The closest I can come to something that would do what you want is Sony's Content Browser but unfortunately it doesn't work with HDV, only Sony's XDCAM formats.

However all is not lost, there's a suite of open source MXF tools including one developed by the BBC. The MXF container seems to me a much more suitable path to investigate than HDV. From inspection of an MXF file with Vegas and from what the Content Browser provides, MXF uses the concept of "Created Date" and "Last Modified Date".

Bob.

Thanks Bob. As usual you are right with everything you say. I can definitely do what I want outside of Vegas and that is what I'll be doing.