ProRes work very well with VEGAS. I've edited ZCAM footage before with HEVC codec. It barely play the video smoothly in timeline even after doing Proxy.

Thanks for both the replies. I got sample footage of both 4K ProRes and 6K ZRAW. Both play and import into Vegas. I found that lowering my Preview to Draft or the one above Draft (Can't remember) I can get them to play well enough to edit with. I have a feeling if I had a better rig, they would play back at higher qualities. Also, when I hit pause it always goes to Best quality. Thanks again, I'm glad to see this works flawlessly in Vegas.

I have the original E2 but stay away from ProRes 4:2:2 because it's editing and render performance is so poor due to lack of gpu support. And file sizes are so large. Not Vegas issues, btw. Neither AMD or NVidia natively support ProRes. I think the best support for ProRes would be on a Mac Pro duo running Final Cut... which I understand uses dual Radeon VII's with custom drivers that use them like math co-processors to accelerate video calculations.

ZRAW didn't work at all with Vegas 17 or 18 last I tried it. If you want to use that I'd suggest you try Resolve or Adobe with the Zcam plugin which I have not been able to load under Vegas either. Btw, converting ZRAW with the zcam tool runs slower than molasses in the Winter.

I get very good editing performance in Vegas with all my gpus shooting Zcam HVEC rec709 on stage or zlog2 w/LUT for wider dynamic range. If live stage ever comes back, the S6 is on the top of my buy list.

@star_wyvern ... just remembered I tested this once about a year ago and made a video...

@Howard-Vigorita

I am messing around with some sample ZRAW Files right now. Nothing is importing into Vegas after using the ZRAW Video Suite (DNxHD, YUV, H265, EXR). What are your settings on your camera you use to get the MOV files to import into Vegas so nicely? Sorry I am super new to this camera, but it looks like a great entryway into cinema cameras! Thanks for the reply!

@Howard-Vigorita

Would you be able to do a workflow video for your ZCam from Camera Settings and into Vegas/Rendering? If you use any of the Z Programs (Video Suite, Transcoder etc).

That would be extremely helpful for PC users.

Thanks again!

@star_wyvern I think I started doing a workflow video once but only did the audio side mostly focused on Vegas. See: https://vimeo.com/448757781. I should get back to that some day. 😀 But I can give you a rough verbal summary. Generally set the camera to 29.97 fps (I'm in the US), 4K resolution (3840x2160 16:9), low bitrate (60 mbps), WDR normal, ISO nativ (500 or 2500), White Balance auto (plus: Lock on Record), Focus manual, Image Profile zlog2 or rec709... I also turn on focus assist which zooms the display while focusing and zebra to assist exposure on highlights. For the filetype I usually select mp4 for h265. Use mov only when testing ProRes or pcm audio. On the Vegas side I set most everything to default (no legacy or deprecated stuff like QuickTime) customizing only for my video board (prefs: video... amd or nvidia) and decoder (prefs: IO... Intel hd630 if available). For workflow, I save the project with a new name every major step of the way. Do audio mixdown first with a single camera track plus audio from an external recorder. Do multicam camera alignment next followed by multicam track editing and color correction after that. Then to intermediate for slicedown with show intros and credits. I deliver full shows in HD to my 2 syndicators using Magix AVC (VCE or NVENC) but also make a 2K version available on Vimeo for stations to download if they want (Magix HEVC 4K preset modified to a 2560x1440). I also often throw the song clips (marked off in Vegas regions using the batch rendering script) up on YouTube rendering them 2K also.

@Howard-Vigorita

Wow, thank you for the extremely detailed reply. I watched your audio workflow. That's WAY more in depth then what I do haha. I am curious why you chose H265 instead of H264 though. If I read the Z Cam manually correctly it does both. Everything I have heard about H265 is that it is much harder on editing then H264. Do the files directly from the camera import into Vegas and play back fine with those settings? Thanks again for the amazing post, it would be great to see a video walkthrough sometime! Do you have a rig for your E2?

I think video shot h265 just looks way better after rendering for a given file-size of the footage. It does put a much bigger load on the hardware... without a good gpu it's probably not practical to edit without proxies. My E2 rig isn't nearly as advanced as some of the ones folks post in the Z CAM E2 private facebook group... you should join that if you haven't already. It's frequented by the Pres of the company and his top tech folks. Got some pics of my latest rig on my facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/howardvigorita/posts/2741800019411628