The Definitive Solution to using Vegas with DVCPRO50?

slacy wrote on 12/1/2003, 3:10 PM

Hi all,

I've scoured all the major boards looking for info on this subject. I've picked up bits and pieces of useful information here and there, but I'm still looking for a specific "will work" solution.

I have a DVCPRO50 deck with 1394 interface. And I have Vegas. What is the most straightforward/inexpensive way to get my DVCPRO50 footage into Vegas? As I understand it, Vegas can read DVCPRO50 with the appropriate codec installed, but it can neither capture nor print such footage.

So, long question short: what are the pieces (software, hardware, etc) I need to connect my DVCPRO50 deck to my Vegas NLE?

Thanks,
Scott

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/1/2003, 3:26 PM

I know that Matrox cards support capturing/printing DVCPro. The one I have at work (Matrox RT 2500) does DVCpro25. i belive the new ones do DVCPro 50.

If you wanted, and DVCPro25 was good enough, you can get the RT 2500 cards on e-bay cheap. You can capture with the capture software from Matrox (a free download on their website: part of their drivers), edit in Vegas, then ptt with the Matrox software. Only 1 catch with the RT2500: your video and audio MUST be seperate. 1 AVI compressed in the DVCPro codec and 1 WAV PCM, 16bit, 48khz. They must be the same name too,

filmy wrote on 12/1/2003, 4:59 PM

Or you could check out the new Main Concept codec. It supposedly will work with any program that interfaces with Direct Show filters. There is a demo available. http://www.mainconcept.com/codecs.shtml#dvcpro

farss wrote on 12/1/2003, 5:32 PM

I don't know much about DVCPRO but one thing you need to be very aware of. PVCPRO 25 is D7 I think, now there are some decks and devices that will spit this out as D7 and others that will downconvert to DV. Of course editing DV is going to be totally painless but you do kind of loose the point of shooting PVCPRO in the first place!

slacy wrote on 12/2/2003, 7:47 AM

This may be an ignorant question, but why buy a standalone DVCPRO50 codec? How does MainConcept anticipate this will be used?

As far as I know, there's no way to capture this footage without having an SDI card. So unless you can get your footage into your NLE, there's no way to read it anyway.

filmy wrote on 12/3/2003, 1:18 PM

I did some testing - sort of.

The Main Concept DVC-Pro codec seems like it would interact with anything DirectShow compliant however it is not available in VV or Premiere. For the hell of it I also opened up heroglyph, TMPEGenc and Virtual Dub and it isn't available in any of those either.

What does work - If you have the Main Concept Mpeg encoder you can capture/convert to this codec . I notice there are now two choices - one for Main Concept DV and another for Main Concept PRO DV. If you select the pro option and click on the "config" you get a pop up with options that include DVC-Pro 25 and DVC-Pro 50. If you select one of them, that is what you get after capture.

I wonder, out loud here, if any updates will be made so that VV can use this codec? Or will is just be woven into the next version? Right now it seems like you can only use it inside of a Main Concept program even though it says "The Codec comes with a full-featured DirectShow filter. It is compatible with any program which supports the standard DirectShow interface." For some reason I thought Vegas had this sort of interface.

filmy wrote on 12/4/2003, 9:10 PM

Form the Main Concept forums - someone asked if this was compatable with Premiere or Vegas and this is what the reply was:

========
Thorsten Schumann
MainConcept Team

The DVCPro50 codec has no VFW support until now just DirectShow. Maybe this programs do not support DS compressors and so they are not able to find the codec. We will try to find out what the problem is.
===========

SonyEPM wrote on 12/5/2003, 6:46 AM

DVCPro 50 should work just like DV - there should be no reliance on custom hardware or myriad custom drivers like there were in the early DV days.

Email Panasonic and Microsoft and tell them we need them and them alone to work together "to create a freely distributable driver compatible with amcap.exe, similar to msdv.sys".

I've talked to both companies, no traction that I'm aware of. Sob...I'm not worthy!

Bill Ravens wrote on 12/5/2003, 6:54 AM

Filmy...

neither I, nor anyone I know, has been able to get V4 to recognize the MC DV50 codec

filmy wrote on 12/5/2003, 9:10 AM

So are you saying that the Main Concept DVC-PRO codec won't work in Vegas because of issues with Panasonic and Microsoft? Just not sure I follow you.

MainConcept wrote on 12/5/2003, 10:07 AM

We're also looking into it to see if it's an issue at our end.

Mark
MainConcept

SonyEPM wrote on 12/5/2003, 12:27 PM

Filmy: Codecs aside, we need the two companies to write a windows capture filter for us (and any other Windows video editing tool).

Apple and Panasonic have already partnered up on this part.