Can Vegas output to Pro Tools?

[Marcia Janine Galles]

Hi all,
I have a friend who is a Pro Tools sound editor, and if I get buried under with the time crunch I'll be up against, is there any way to hand off my audio to her to tackle in a Pro Tools suite? Traditionally you hand off from Avid or FCP as OMF files, and it works seemlessly. But I don't see that option available to me in Vegas. Is Vegas just not compatible? Is there a work-a-round, and if so, is it more trouble than it's worth? She's a pro, and not going to be terribly patient with monkeying around with the thing when she's used to not having to.

Thanks. Just exploring my options.

[Bruce A. Christenson]

Render your audio tracks as uncompressed WAV files, and pro tools will be able to import them. They may need the latest versions/hardware of pro tools to read 24-bit audio files, so you may want to render 16-bit files if you're unsure.

Render your audio tracks to separate files, for the most control.

[Marcia Janine Galles]

Thanks Bruce. Just the kind of info I was hoping for. :-)

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Vegas doesn't support OMF, nor AAF. There is an EDL script available, but that's not gonna help.
Put a spike at the front of all your tracks to give the protools editor a transient to line up all audio at sample accuracy.
Funny thing is, Vegas does more than ProTools HD can. But that doesn't help when you are in a time crunch.
ProTools can bring in Vegas 24/48K files, but we've had problems with 24/192K files. Don't know why yet, ProTools just can't see them correctly.
If you are going to a Mac version of ProTools, render as aif, and that will help your friend, since latency is slightly higher with wav files.

[Marcia Janine Galles]

Douglas, I apologize for my ignorance here about all things audio, but what does "Put a spike at the front of all your tracks to give the protools editor a transient to line up all audio at sample accuracy" mean? Are you basically talking about a countdown with a 2 pop? If so, do I use the same megahertz tone as I would with a 2 pop as well? Also, what's "latency is slightly higher with wav files?" Does that just mean they tend to lose sync? (Most of my time in edit bays was on film based projects, and I'm finding that I'm having to learn a lot of new terminology here.)

BTW, just got my email from Amazon that you're book is on the way. Can't wait!

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

A spike is just a hard transient like a pop sound, snare hit, even a hand clap or a striker board sound. Something that has a fast attack so that the editor can line up waveforms.
Latency with wav files on a Mac only means that realtime playback/monitoring will be slightly behind. If all files are equally behind and no live recording is taking place, this is no problem at all. It's just a harder load on the CPU when the app is converting the wav files to a format it can read. It's simply better to have them be native to the application. If it's ProTools on a PC, then wav is the way to go anyway. Both PC and Mac versions can read wav or aif files.
Which book? The Vegas, Soundtrack, or Encore?

[Marcia Janine Galles]

Ahh, I get it. Thanks for the explanation. Insofar as which book, the Vegas book, though the Soundtrack one is tempting. Am in an anti-Apple mode at the moment, however. Still, I've had fun messing around with Soundtrack, on my Powerbook. Gave up on FCP though. Kept finding glitchy issues with unacceptable answers, or I should say, issues where there were no acceptable answers/solutions at this time. But I'm bucking the trend in CA. Say you dislike FCP around here and people look at you like you must be the most unsophisticated, unenlightened person on the planet.

Can Vegas handle Soundtrack files?

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Vegas will handle the aif files output from Soundtrack just fine.
Don't feel bad, it's not just California. Say you like anything but FCP anywhere, and it often gets backward looks. I get it a lot because I use multiple tools. I'm not married to anything. But I've noticed that FCP and Vegas users are VERY tribal.

[Marcia Janine Galles]

Lol... "VERY tribal," I love it. Too true. I've known Lightworks editors that are just as bad. They've never gotten over Avid's rise in Hollywood and their favorite program's demise.

I must say, Vegas is putting the "fun" back in editing for me. There have been (and will continue to be) frustrations here and there as I make the transition, but overall, even with the learning curve, I'm finding it to be a really great program. Can't wait to get into compositing when the full version comes. My only concern is potentially painting myself into a corner, should funding materialize and I need to hand my project off. They'd have to rebuild from scratch anything I'd done in Vegas. But I'll worry about that when and if I should be so lucky as to have my grant requests come through.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

<<<<-They'd have to rebuild from scratch anything I'd done in Vegas.->>>> Only if they didn't want to finish in Vegas. Since Vegas is a finishing tool, it would be silly to step to anything else.

[Marcia Janine Galles]

Douglas, do you know the names of any Vegas editors in LA that you can recommend for me to file away just in case? Cuz absolutely everybody I know uses either Avid or FCP, which is why I was thinking of it from that perspective. Or is there maybe a Vegas job board network like there are with the other programs?

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

There is the Southern California Vegas Users Group, headed up by Jay Mitchell. he's a great guy. Newsshooter(at)hotmail dot com