VEGAS 4.0 HELP PLEASE!

txshock wrote on 6/26/2005, 11:12 AM
I have two problems. I can't get the film directly from my camera onto the Vegas software. I have a Sony DVD201 Camcorder and I have to upload the video onto the software ,(Image Mixer), that came with the camera first, then grad the media file from there. I can do anything I want from there, but the only problem with that is....I don't have any sound from the film once it is in the Vegas 4.0 environment. It's in the Image Mixer environment, but not the Vegas environment. Any suggestions on both or either of my problems? Thanks in advance.

Comments

Liam_Vegas wrote on 6/26/2005, 11:20 AM
It's because the video is in MPEG and the audio is in .AC3. Vegas does not "read" .AC3 audio. Also... currently... Vegas is a pretty bad tool to use for editing MPEG (most NLE's are actually). MPEG is a pretty darned awful format to start with if what you want to do is edit.

There are hundreds of posts here all about how to cope with editing MPEG files ... and with coping with .AC3 format audio.

To get started you will need to convert the .AC3 to something else. Various tools will do that... one of them is BeSweet (do a search on Google).

Good luck.
B.Verlik wrote on 6/26/2005, 11:24 AM
What format is the sound?
If you're camera records to a DVD, I can tell you now, you're going to have problems editing. You'll somehow have to convert your audio into a usable format (wav or mp3) and you may have to convert your video to .avi to do any real editing.
Do a search for "Converting" and "Mpg2 editing" and there should be some posts here to help you. It will probably be frustrating until you find your solution.
Edit: I forgot, there's a free ac3 decoder at www.ac3dec.com
txshock wrote on 6/26/2005, 3:27 PM
Ok...I've been reading the manual and it says that I can upload straight from my camera with a video capture card. I mean, I have a Sony Digital Video Camera Recorder...just like the one the lady is holding on front of the owner's manual...it seems like this should be pretty easy! My question is....what kind of capture card should I buy?
Liam_Vegas wrote on 6/26/2005, 3:57 PM
All "Sony Digital Video Camera Recorder" are not created equal. Unless you have a iLink (1394) port on the camera (and I know that model does not have one)... you will still have problems capturing and working with video from this camcorder within Vegas.

Those DVD Camcorders are pretty much designed to provide a convenient method for a consumer to get video in the DVD format directly and then to do very minimal edits of the content afterwards - often using the supplied software.

Check back over the many posts in this forum about these DVD Handycams... and you will find the consensus is to not even bother to use them... especially if Vegas is your editor of choice.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/26/2005, 6:21 PM
> Check back over the many posts in this forum about these DVD Handycams... and you will find the consensus is to not even bother to use them...

I will save you the trouble of searching the forums and repeat what you will find:

I am sorry to say this but if you want to edit your videos you bought the wrong camcorder. Get yourself a miniDV camcorder. DVD camcorders are for people who want to shoot and watch. Period! I know the box says you can edit your movies. You can. You will never be happy with the quality of the footage after you edit it and re-render it back to MPEG2 but you can edit it.

The capture card they are talking about is an Analog capture card like you would use to capture your VCR footage. Something like an ADS Pyro A/V Link or Canopus ADVC-110. This will capture the DVD MPEG2 footage as a DV avi file via a digital to analog conversion and back to digital. Does this sound like the Department of Redundancy Department? That’s because it is.

When you capture it you won’t be DV quality because:

1) You are taking an MPEG stream that is already compressed at 25:1 and recording it to a DV stream that is only compressed 5:1 except that the 25:1 compression artifacts will already be there (read: you can’t made bad video look better) and so it will not be the same quality as DV.

2) You will be passing your digital footage through an analog converter which by its very nature will alter it in some way. With miniDV, there is no capture. You copy the bits directly from the tape to your hard drive unaltered. No loss in quality.

Besides this, you didn’t buy a $1000 DVD camcorder to go out and spend another $200-$250 to capture your footage when you could have just bought a nice 3 CCD miniDV camcorder for $500 and have superior video transferred to your computer via firewire to begin with.

Once again, DVD camcorders are for the shoot and watch crowd. If you want to edit, get a miniDV camera. It will save you a LOT of headaches. If you don’t, prepare to learn more about MPEG2 and AC3 and DVD Rippers than you care to know.

~jr