Why "cold feet"? Have you had problems or are you just wary of problems? Personally I just edit native UHD GH4 .MP4 files, which are basically the same as the .MOV ones and decoded in Vegas by the same codec.

My 1st choice for intermediates would probably be Sony XAVC intra (smaller file, smoother playback, lossy) or Magic YUV (bigger file, less smooth playback, lossless).

I really wonder a little bit. Your i7 5930K @3.5 GHz is a 6-core processor, and even with my older i7 2600K overclocked to 4.2 Ghz I have been able to edit my GH4 UHD 24p/25p *.mp4 footage with Vegas without an issue.

I do not know if you wish to do so - but first of all I would switch to *.mp4 instead of mov-files (what is the same in the internal recording).

Second possbility would be to try to overclock your system - but I do not know if you want to do so. Vegas would benefit from doing so.

So all together I think you should be able to edit the internal recorded GH4 files native, as I do that with my Vegas Pro 13.

There is also the trick to set the preview to preview/half to increase preview performance, if necessary.


@ Eagle,
take care with ProRes in Vegas. I use ProRes 10bit 422 shoot with my Shogun from the GH4 too. The major issue with ProRes in Vegas is that the luminance will be spread up and become wrong if you import ProRes in Vegas. The second issue is that UHD ProRes files will crash Vegas if you have more then 20-30 files in the timeline. And even worster - ProRes is not decoded in Vegas as 10bit but as 8bit only.

So I agree with you that a conversion to Cineform is fine, I also use YUV 422 Filmscan 1. But you have to take care with the conversion too. Critical points are if there a spread in the luminance range takes place, and the second critical point is if the tool that is used to transcode the ProRes files to Cineform will be able to decode the ProRes files as 10bit! I was looking a while to find an Encoder that is able to do that - and I ended up with TMPGenc 5/6 that is able to read the ProRes files as 10bit really. The luminance range in the GH4 should be set to 16..235 only, if you use 0..255 or 16..255 then you will see that the footage is clipping. In other Words: TMPGenc spreads the luminance range in the decoding process too, but you will not loose signals if the GH4 was set to 16..235 - and the final clips in Cineform will show the correct luminance after the transcofding prozess).

@ Nick
If one records internally in the GH4, you will end up not with 10bit 422 but with 8bit 420 only. So here I see no need for using an Intermediate at all, and for the 6-core processor that should work. So I agree with you to edit the UHD GH4 8bit 420 files native in the Vegas timeline. Maybe there is an issue with Vegas 12, but with Vegas 13 that works fine.

For 10bit 422 the XAVC intra codec is a great idea. But only for 10bit 422, otherwise it makes no sense really since Vegas will decode the 8bit 420 footage in the best possible way anyway. So I would use that for ProRes of an external recorder only.

But there are some practical drawbacks with UHD XAVC files:
1. the first question is which Transcoder you can use to maintain the 10bit 422 and which allow the output format XAVC. I have not found any transcoder that does not have issues here. For sure what would be fine is the Catalyst Prepare since he allows the output to XAVC - but ProRes can be imported in the Mac world only.
2. The playback capabilities of XAVC UHD are weaker in Vegas, compared to Cineform. And files will be much larger compared with the internal GH4 recording, and similar to the ProRes Shogun recording.
So I wonder if UHD XAVC makes sense really.

Hi Wolfgang,

@ Eagle, take care with ProRes in Vegas. I use ProRes 10bit 422 shoot with my Shogun from the GH4 too. The major issue with ProRes in Vegas is that the luminance will be spread up and become wrong if you import ProRes in Vegas. The second issue is that UHD ProRes files will crash Vegas if you have more then 20-30 files in the timeline. And even worster - ProRes is not decoded in Vegas as 10bit but as 8bit only.

Thank You for the input. My previous response in using Vegas Pro to render intermediate was to avoid, at the time, the $122 for additional software (TMPGenc 6). . I also have not been successful at finding a suitable encoder (other than TMPGenc 6), but wanted some time to keep up the search. However I wanted to test and make a comparison with what I had on hand, and responded with those results. Yes, I'm aware Vegas decodes ProRes as 8 bit.


Best Regards......George

It's not that I have had problems with MOV files, just wary because of the reports of problems with large numbers of files. The MOV files played fine at best full, when I was just reviewing footage. So, I may not have a problem at all. There are a couple of graphic scenes using CAD drawings, that I anticipated correctly were going to take quite a bit of time; I didn't want to risk losing that work. This is just a three minute project, which is now done; I converted to 24 kbs MP4s and worked with those. I'll try to duplicate the show with MOV files, sans complicated graphics, just to see if all goes well.

Thanks to all. I really appreciate the suggestions.

My big issue with MOV files from the GH4, GH3 and Nikon and Canon cameras is that Vegas stretches and clips the color levels. I have no such problems with other MP4 or AVCHD formats from my GH4. What happens is that the colors between 16-235 are stretched to between 0-255, and anything that was under 16 or over 235 is irretrievably lost. You are having this same issue too, you just haven't noticed yet. I guarantee it.

Try GoPro Studio to convert MOV to Cineform for Vegas.

[EDIT] Laurence, I think what might be happening is that Vegas doesn't recognize the 'yuvj420' flag from Quicktime formats. Players and other Windows NLEs generally do honor the flag, displaying them at their intended range.

That would make sense. The problem has remained through the past few versions of Vegas and Vegas will die without ever having dealt with it but that doesn't mean it isn't a simple one. In Resolve you can override the color range setting if you don't like how it sensed it. VLC makes the same mistake Vegas does, but Windows media player does not. Other NLEs don't have this issue.

I go back to Vegas 2, and it has never honored the flag, an Apple invention.
Support in VLC was spotty until 2-3 years ago.