Is it possible to: capture with Avid, then edit with Vegas?

[Adi Head]

I have some HDV material that I need to capture from tapes to my hard drive for editing with Vegas.

I don't have an HDV camera or player, but there's an editing facility that has agreed to let me use the HDV player they have at their studios. This means I'll need to bring my hard drive to the studios in an external usb enclosure and capture the footage using Avid, which is the editing platform they use there.

Will I be able to return home with the footage (on the hard drive) and then edit the material with Vegas (even though it was captured from tape with Avid)?

Looking forward to your replies.... thx!

[Bill Mecca]

I believe once it is captured in Avid as an OMF, it would have to be exported on that machine as whatever file type you want, QT or Avi etc.

[Michael Chenoweth]

You can get the Avid DNxHD coded from Avid and that will play back pretty well in Vegas. If you can capture to that codec in Avid upon ingest, you're good to go.

mike

[Michael Chenoweth]

You can get the Avid DNxHD codec from Avid and that will play back pretty well in Vegas. If you can capture to that codec in Avid upon ingest, you're good to go.

mike

[Adi Head]

Originally Posted by Michael Chenoweth

You can get the Avid DNxHD codec from Avid and that will play back pretty well in Vegas. If you can capture to that codec in Avid upon ingest, you're good to go.

mike

thanks for the replies!
Mike - is the Avid DNxHD codec something i'll need to install on my own pc as well, while editing in Vegas, or is it just for capturing on the Avid system at the editing studio? (sorry, if it's a dumb question)...

[Vito DeFilippo]

Any chance you could show up at the editing facility with a laptop with Vegas installed? You could hook up to their deck and save all the format trouble.

You can download the Avid codecs for free. If the studio has a recent Avid installed, they have the codecs already.

[Adi Head]

Thanks for the replies.

One other thing I forgot to mention... I'm editing on a PC (windowsXP), the hard drive I'll be capturing on and storing the footage on, is a Windows NTFS formatted Western digital hard drive (model: WD7500AAKS). Yet, the Avid systems they have at the post-production studios are Macs. Does this make things more complicated....??

Showing up with a laptop definitely could be the best option.... I actually have a laptop, but never crossed my mind to use it for this. I bought it about 5 years ago and I've never used it for editing video.

It's an HP Pavilion dv4000
Running Windows XP
Pentium M 1.73GHz
1024 MB DDR2 memory

As mentioned, the hard drive I'll be capturing on is a WD 7500AAKS. Only way to connect hard drive to laptop is USB.

Will it work?

[Mike Kujbida]

Originally Posted by Adi Head

One other thing I forgot to mention... I'm editing on a PC (windowsXP), the hard drive I'll be capturing on and storing the footage on, is a Windows NTFS formatted Western digital hard drive (model: WD7500AAKS). Yet, the Avid systems they have at the post-production studios are Macs. Does this make things more complicated....??

Not if you have a utility called MacDrive ($50.00 U.S.)
It allows your PC to, amongst other things, read from and write to a Mac-formatted hard drive.
Be advised that the drive you bring them will have to be formatted as a Mac drive so make sure it has nothing on it.
This is a case where you may want to buy another external drive and save it for this purpose exculsively.
I do this on a regular basis as I deal with a local post house that runs FCP.
One portable drive is set aside for files that I get from them.

[Vito DeFilippo]

Originally Posted by Mike Kujbida

Not if you have a utility called MacDrive

Mike, Macdrive is useful for the opposite of what he needs...

Adi, if you show up with an NTFS drive, a Mac should be able to read it, but not write to it without special drivers, and I'm guessing you don't know if they have that installed.

You could reformat your drive to mac, then use macdrive to read it later.

But really, you are going to avoid a lot of hassle if you just install Vegas on your laptop and bring it with your usb drive to the editing facility. HDV has the same data rate as DV, so you could test the setup with a DV source to make sure the laptop and drive are fast enough.

Do you only have one shot at this? Do you know anyone with a HDV camera that you could borrow to capture your footage at your computer? There's got to be an easier way...

[Adi Head]

Not if you have a utility called MacDrive ($50.00 U.S.)
It allows your PC to, amongst other things, read from and write to a Mac-formatted hard drive. Be advised that the drive you bring them will have to be formatted as a Mac drive so make sure it has nothing on it.

Hi Mike. I guess that could work, but I'm not going to purchase a new hard drive just for that, at least not now for this project. Anyway, thanks for the information. It could come in handy in the future.

just install Vegas on your laptop and bring it with your usb drive to the editing facility. HDV has the same data rate as DV, so you could test the setup with a DV source to make sure the laptop and drive are fast enough.

Thanks Vito for the tip. I'll do that test and see how my laptop performs. I don't know anyone with an hdv camera that I feel comfortable asking for. But maybe renting one for one day won't cost too much. I'll check out that option as well.

Thanks for the help guys!

[Peter Moretti]

I think it would be a lot easier to just get a hold of an HDV camera, perhaps rent one for a day, and capture directly into Vegas. You'd avoid the Mac to PC issues, installing the Avid codecs on your computer and other unforseen complications.

I use both Avid and Vegas at home. But they are on the same machine, so things are pretty straight forward.