Danny Fye is a Genius! .m2t gaps Firestore > Vegas workaround

[Kit Hannah]

I didn't see this posted anywhere here, so for all of you having the gaps in Vegas, this works! I tried it! You're my favorite person of the month Danny!

This is a Workaround for the gaps that some people are experiencing when using a Firestore and importing it into Vegas. Works perfect! Thanks Danny!

Name: Danny Fye
Subject: HDV files not seamless in Vegas 7 and a suggested solution.


Problem: *.m2t HDV files are not seamless in Vegas 7.

Solution (Workaround) and procedure:

The following assumes: Windows XP Home, drive "V" is the destination video work drive with a folder named "capture", and the FS-4 HD is drive "F". Also it assumes that there is an hour of video on the FS-4 HD and there are 7 *.m2t files. Also the destination file will be named, "cam1.m2t". Type all the following without the quotes. So "command" is simply typed as command.

Once the FS-4 HD is mounted, use Windows to go to the FS-4 HD drive "F". Rename the folder with the video files to "fs".
Rename the video files to 001.m2t, 002.m2t, 003.m2t, 004.m2t, 005.m2t, 006.m2t and 007.m2t. This assures that they stay in order.

The purpose of all this renaming is to avoid major hassling with the default and long original file names in the next part, reduce a ton of typing and possibilities for errors.

Close the window and then click Start, Run and type "command" and press enter.

You should now be in DOS.

Next type "f:" and press enter. You should now be at the root dir of the FS-4 HD's drive.
Next type "cd fs" and press enter. You should now be at the "fs" folder.
Next type "copy /b 001.m2t+002.m2t+003.m2t+004.m2t+005.m2t+006.m2t+007.m2t v:\capture\cam1.m2t" and press enter. Be absolutely sure to include the /b which is for binary or the destination file will be unuseable. On my system it takes approx 5.5 minutes to finish the copying so it will take a little while.
Type "exit" and press enter to leave DOS.

Unmount the FS-4 HD, shut it down and you are done.

I hope this helps those who use Vegas 7. For those who use other NLE's, I hope it helps you with the time code and other issues.

Please let me know what you think, what your comments are and especially any suggestions to make this whole thing easier.

The purpose of this in a nut shell is to simply combine the files into one file so it is seamless in Vegas 7. When it comes to editing, not to have to deal with a bunch of little files. Not quite NTFS but at least it is something.

Danny Fye
www.dannyfye.com
www.vidmus.com/scolvs

[Kit Hannah]

Hey Chris (or Matt, any moderator), would it be possible to make this a sticky? I know many people have brought this very topic up, thought it might be good to have it out in the open so people realize that the FS-4 series will NOT in fact ruin their projects! Now I am happy, very happy. Thanks guys.

[Danny Fye]

Thanks much Kit Hannah. Having long files to work with helps a ton when it comes to multicam use.

The link to my thread on this is: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=84003

I have improved on it a bit since then. I also created a batch file that helps a lot as well.

Ok, the batch file assumes that the FS-4 HD is drive 'F'. If it isn't, then change the f: in the first line to the drive letter that the FS-4 HD is.

The batch file also assumes that the drive you are copying the files to is drive 'V'. If not, then change the v: to the drive you are copying to.

Finally as far as drives and folders are concerned, the batch files assume the folder is capture. So be sure to create the folder. Note: There are better ways to do this batch file but I am quite a bit on the rusty side with DOS having used Windows so long that I have forgotten many of the nifty tricks that would automate this more.

Procedure:

After mounting the FS-4 HD, go to the folder that contains the video files and rename it to fs. Open the folder and rename the first video file to 000.m2t, the second one to 001.m2t and so on. This will setup the FS-4 HD to work with the batch file.

Run the batch file and then sit back and relax for a while.

Note: The batch file most likely will list more files than what you may have. Don't worry about that. The files you don't have are ignored and the process will finish properly anyway. The batch file simply ignores the files that are not there and goes on and finishes the batch.

This should work for any NLE. Also this will work with SD files as well but the FS-4 HD must be set for raw *.dv files.

Here is part of another post I did on the raw *.dv files.

------------------------------------
Did some tests and the AVI files would not concatenate but the raw .dv files would.

Windows Media player won't play them but QuickTime does.

When I loaded the test file into vegas 7 the aspect ratio was wrong. It is supposed to be 16x9 widescreen but looked like a scrunched 4x3. Even with the proper settings. I fixed that by right clicking on the file and then selected properties and uncheck 'Maintain aspect ratio' and then it works perfectly.

I don't know if this will work with other NLE's but all one can do is try it.
-------------------------------------

Note: The above problem applies only to the raw *.dv files, not the *.m2t files.

The batch file below starts with f: as the first line and ends with exit as the last line. Since I am using two cams, I name one batch file cam1.bat and the second file as cam2.bat. Simply copy from below and then paste it into notepad and then save it as cam-1.bat.

Here is the batch file.

--------------------------

f:
cd fs
copy /b 001.m2t+002.m2t+003.m2t+004.m2t+005.m2t+006.m2t+007.m2t+008.m2t+009.m2t+010.m2t+011.m2t+012.m2t+013. m2t+014.m2t+015.m2t+016.m2t+017.m2t+018.m2t+019.m2t+020.m2t+021.m2t+022.m2t+023.m2t+024.m2t+025.m2t+ 026.m2t+027.m2t+028.m2t+029.m2t+030.m2t v:\capture\cam-1.m2t
exit

------------------------

To edit the batch file, simply right click on the file and select 'edit'.

And now for the very sticky part. Be sure to combine ONLY the files that were split but were part of the same shoot. Do not try to combine files that were created by from starting and stopping the recording. You will have bad long file if you do. It can get a bit difficult if you have a mix of files in the folder. You then will have to determine which files to combine and which ones to leave alone. If you see more than one file with the same name except for a number such as *file(0).m2t, *file(1).m2t and *file(2).m2t and so on then you can assume they belong together. I am typing this out of memory so the above naming may be a bit off. Anyway, it should be enough to help you know what I mean. Easier to show all this than to type it all up.

I plan on doing a video tutorial on this soon, so that should help a lot. I just moved my computer into another room and I have a ton of video work to do as well. So I will get to this tutorial ASAP.

I hope this helps you all even more.

Finally, The ONLY reason why I figured this out at all is because this whole thing was bugging me a lot and so I prayed about it and this is the results.

Anyone know of a prayer that will get Focus Enhancements to cut their prices in half or more? LOL!!!

Danny Fye
www.dannyfye.com
www.vidmus.com/scolvs

[Chris Klidonas]

OK what does this do exactly? make one large one hour mt2 file? can't you just grab the bunch of files in vegas and drop them on the timeline and have them align up or is there something worng with the filename convention that places them out of order?

[Jeremiah Rickert]

I believe the problem was, that you were losing a few frames in the "gaps" between the files. The firestore is formatted to FAT32 so it has a file size limitation. If you record for more than 9 minutes or whatever it is, it creates a new file on the firestore. When you load consecutive clips into Vegas you get little gaps of a few frames. So there are hiccups in continues takes that are longer than the 9 minute FAT32 limitation.

[Julian Frost]

I don't use Vegas, but read the thread anyway...

To save some time renaming all those files, try a utility called 1-4a-Rename. It's a Windows utility with a bad interface, but once you get the hang of it, it can make life a LOT easier.

It allows you to do such functions as:
Replace XXX with YYY (eg. from MyFile01 to YourFile01)
Change extension from .XXX to .YYY (eg. from Clip01.mpg to Clip01.m2t)
Change any part of a filename (eg. from AAABBBCCC to AAAYYYCCC)
etc.

Here's the link:
http://www.1-4a.com/rename/

Oh... and it's free!!

[Julian Frost]

I posted a better batch file (one which doesn't require renaming files) on another thread (http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/focus-en...s-use-nle.html). Also included in that thread,is a sweet free Windows utility which will combine the files automatically.

Anyway, here's the batch file and the link to the utility, since this is the sticky versionof the thread:

echo off

rem Delete old files, if they exist...
if exist combineit.bat del combineit.bat
if exist nullfile.tmp del nullfile.tmp
if exist combined.m2t del combined.m2t/p

rem Create some temp files where we store the names of the files to be joined...
type nul > combineit.bat
type nul > nullfile.tmp

echo Combining all M2T files in this folder to "combined.m2t"
echo This may take a while...

rem Create the 2nd batch file containing the command which will join the M2T files...
echo copy /b nullfile.tmp^^>> combineit.bat
for /f %%a IN ('dir /b *.m2t') do echo +%%a ^^>> combineit.bat
echo combined.m2t>> combineit.bat

rem Run the newly created batch file...
call combineit.bat

rem Tidy up!
del nullfile.tmp
del combineit.bat



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