I'll have to try writing direct to the camera, I haven't yet, but meanwhile, I've isolated the problem further with Vegas and the U1.

Yes, I do have the latest firmware and drivers for the U1.

The exact error message I mentioned before was actually a mistake on my part, I had added another internal hard drive and my drive lettering changed, and I didn't catch it, so that was Vegas telling me "hey, you've got the wrong drive letter, that's not a XDCAM device, dummy."

So forget that error, but there is still a problem. If I take an XDCAM clip that I shot in the camera that is now on my hard drive, I can use Vegas XDCAM Explorer to write it out to Professional Disc in the U1, so writing does work.

But I have found that any MXF clip I render from Vegas Pro 8 will NOT write out to the disc in the U1. Not via Vegas XDCAM Explorer or through the PDZ-1 DirectMode software, either. So there is something about the MXF Vegas generates that the U1 drive does not like. It will pretend to write it, but then the verify will fail, and when you look on the disc, the clip isn't there.

And yes, I did make sure I was rendering the same exact type of clip in terms of HD or SD, frame rate, number of audio channels, etc.

So since the writing works for MXF files from the camera, it seems to me that there's something wrong with the MXF Vegas is generating.

Can you write Vegas generated MXF files out to the camera? It may be just something the driver for the U1 doesn't like if the FAM driver to the camera does work with Vegas generated MXFs.

Actually, one other question, have you been able to actually generate 4 channel MXFs in Vegas with audio actually in all four channels? I've enabled the multichannel mode with the render and assigned audio to all four channels from multiple busses, but though my rendered MXF says it is a four channel clip, I only actually get audio on channels 1 & 2.

It has been awhile since I rendered using the Sony MFX template we were using V7
and I don't remember that a proxy is built. You could see it in the FAM drive listing.

We rent the camera and will be several weeks before we will get it for a gig.
IM http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowProfile.asp?UserID=745Spot/DSE[/link]
he would be a better candidate but don't know if he has the U1 drive.

EDIT: when you exported you did change in the audio tab the channels from 2 to 4
even though you selected the buses to use?
default is 2