Sony MicroMV in Vegas - yes or no?

ibliss wrote on 2/25/2003, 8:05 AM
I frequent a DV forum where threre is a thread asking about software to use with MicroMV. All I know about the format is that it's MPEG-2 compressed video, which I assume once it's in your PC can be edited with Vegas (yes?).

The difficult bit seems to be capturing from the MicroMV format in the first place, with only a couple of programs able to do it.

So I'm itching to jump in and say that Vegas is compatible, but I have no way to test it. Anyone know?

Comments

MyST wrote on 2/25/2003, 8:10 AM
I'd recommend calling SoFo customer service.

M
ibliss wrote on 2/25/2003, 8:20 AM
Cheers - I might if I lived in the US :) Guess I'll fire off an email to tech support (kinda hate to do it 'cause I know they're probably busy with more important stuff!)
MyST wrote on 2/25/2003, 8:25 AM
Oh yeah, that's right, their 800# is in North America only. Oops, sorry.
In that case, yeah, send an e-mail. In the meantime someone might answer here. I always figure it's best to get an answer directly from SoFo regarding compatibilities and such.
Maybe someone from SoFo will answer here.


M
ibliss wrote on 2/25/2003, 8:34 AM
Just mailed tech support with the question, will post back when I get a reply.
MyST wrote on 2/25/2003, 8:36 AM
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/Products/showproduct.asp?PID=808&FeatureID=6903

Above is the link for the V4 feature list. It mentions importing Sony EDLs... don't know if that helps you or not.

M
SonyDennis wrote on 2/26/2003, 12:47 PM
In theory, yes, it should work. You'd need to capture and print-to-tape using whatever Sony utility comes with the camera. But, the MPEG-2 should drop on the timeline, and you should be able to edit it, and then render to a similar MPEG-2 format to put back on the device (if that's your destination). I've never tried it. The DV External monitor feature would recompress except for pre-renders.
///d@
Roche wrote on 3/1/2003, 2:59 PM
You can use MMV format with Vegas but it takes extra steps.

Sony ships a (fairly crappy) piece of software called MovieShaker. Not worth using for anything but will capture video and write MPEG-TS files at 12K fps.

You can convert this to MPEG-PS format using Xmuxer or a variety of other shareware programs with no loss of image quality (just rewrites the format slightly).

MPEG-PS files can be edited by Vegas or any other NLE that supports MPEG.

If you want to rewrite to tape, you need to do the above backwards (i.e., convert back to TS format, etc.).

I have used camera, found image quality to be very good but was not writing back to tape so did not test that out.
bgccdx wrote on 3/1/2003, 3:59 PM
I use (crappy) MovieShaker to capture the MPEG2. Then I batch rename the files to something related to the project that makes sense to me. I then batch convert them to MPEG-PS using the mmv2mpg utility. (available here: www.geocities.com/jrowe88/) I edit in Vegas and burn the finished project to DVD. Works perfectly!
JonErik wrote on 4/11/2003, 7:07 PM
I have just bought the Vegas 4.0 and would like to inform all MicroMV users that you don't have to transform the *.mmv files to MPEG2-PS. The only thing "needed" is to change the name to *.mpg, then they show up in the explorer window, and the MainConcept mpeg plugin can read MPEG2-TS directly.

Unfortunately it can not render MPEG2-TS, nor do smart rendering. But anyways, I have a work around for people having wasted their money on the Pinnacle Studio 8.

It is possible to send the MPEG2-PS through the Pinnacle Program/Transport stream filter graph, using Microsoft GraphEdit, and then directly to the camera. I could not notice any difference in the re-rendered movie when doing this, as long as I set the field order to Upper first. That made a very significant improvement to the rendered file.

To get the remux to work, you open the Video Capture source: Microsoft AV/C Tape Subunit Device, then the DirectShow filters: File Async source, and Pinnacle Program/Transport mux. Then connect them together and press play. (using Microsoft GraphEdit)

The only problem with this workaround is when using 16:9 format the camera does not recognize that, but I don't think it is a big problem, because you can always adjust the tv to 16:9.

It would have been nice though if SonicFoundry Vegas had the ability to output the rendered *.mpg directly without using this workaround. A smart render functionality would also be great, especially when you don't add a lot of transitions you would have saved a lot of rendering time, and the quality would be 100% as captured.

Best Regards

Jon Erik