No, didn't work....

I try little experiment on exporting random audio to W64 format, from vegas, and check it via mediainfo, this is what I got:

General

Complete name                            : D:\test audio Wave64 export.w64

Format                                   : Wave64

File size                                : 2.75 MiB

Overall bit rate mode                    : Constant



Audio

ID                                       : 0

Format                                   : PCM

Format settings, Endianness              : Little

Format settings, Sign                    : Signed

Codec ID                                 : 1

Bit rate mode                            : Constant

Bit rate                                 : 2 304 Kbps

Channel(s)                               : 2 channels

Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz

Bit depth                                : 24 bits

Stream size                              : 1.00 Byte (0%)

The audio stream is the same..., but in 'General', there is Format Profile. Could that factor make stuck?

Well, with that information you could probably open it in Sound Forge in RAW mode, skipping over the headers and specifying the format parameters manually. That's a lot of work though, so if you can already do it in Audacity i'd stick with that method.

Wow, that seems very weak of Sony to not support an extended WAV audio format beyond their own wave64 format. Especially one spec'd by a prominent organization.

Sony W64 has a much wider support base than RF64.

You probably need to rewrite the 'fmt' header chunk to w64, perhaps resize it, and remux / index the file.

'eac3to' is a GUI muxer that says it is able to do this (I haven't tried it).
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/eac3to

There is also an ffmpeg / libavformat module called 'WAV Muxer' that will do this, if you enjoy playing with the AviSynth command line.

SUCCESS!

Using the eac3to 3.27 command line, I successfully remuxed an RF64 file (that locks up Vegas) named 'stereo4Gb.wav' to 'stereo4Gb.w64', which opens in Vegas Pro! (You could also change it to RAW, as Kelly suggested).

Took 9 minutes on my slow dual core notebook.

Really, it's this simple (probably simpler this way than the GUI):


General

Got it! Thanks musicvid10 !
The eac3to3.27 done its' job simply & quickly!

PROBLEM SOLVED.

Another small tool in the list... At least the 24bit quality is still maintained.

eac3to v3.27

command line: eac3to  d:\Master-ITB_24bit_48kHz.wav d:\master-itb_eac3.w64

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

RF64, 2.0 channels, 4:22:35, 24 bits, 2304kbps, 48kHz

Reading RF64...

Writing W64...

Creating file "d:\master-itb_eac3.w64"...

The original audio track has a constant bit depth of 24 bits.

eac3to processing took 4 minutes, 58 seconds.

Done.

General

Complete name                            : D:\master-itb_eac3.w64

Format                                   : Wave64

File size                                : 4.23 GiB

Overall bit rate mode                    : Constant



Audio

ID                                       : 0

Format                                   : PCM

Format settings, Endianness              : Little

Format settings, Sign                    : Signed

Codec ID                                 : 00001000-0000-0100-8000-00AA00389B71

Bit rate mode                            : Constant

Bit rate                                 : 2 304 Kbps

Channel(s)                               : 2 channels

Channel positions                        : Front: L R

Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz

Bit depth                                : 24 bits

Stream size                              : 1.00 Byte (0%)

PROBLEM SOLVED.

Yeah it's a keeper.. Works with about any modern audio.
eac3to is able to convert E-AC3, TrueHD, PCM and DTS-HD audio tracks to AC3, DTS or FLAC. Converts E-AC3, TrueHD, PCM, DTS-HD and FLAC tracks to AC3/DTS/FLAC. Removes Dialog Normalization from AC3, E-AC3, DTS and TrueHD tracks. Extracts AC3 frames from Blu-Ray AC3/TrueHD tracks. Extracts DTS core from DTS-HD tracks. Can remux the video track of a EVO/VOB source to Matroska(mkv). Command line tool but GUI also available. Requires external audio decoders.

Nice.

I still think Vegas should support the format. It's not like SCS would have to pay any license fees for commercial use like nearly every video codec. It is still fundamentally a WAV file with some extensions for large files. Should be easy to support.

Well, in order to support RF64, Sony would first have to to include full BWF read/write in their products. Their complete silence on that subject for the last five years, despite multiple attempts from users to enable a dialog here, shows just how likely that is to be . . .

musicvid10 : +1 ... sadly

I've been spot checking here from time to time these last years in case they listened to us but so far, no success...
I still don't understand why is that... you're ''pro'' or you're not, for god's sake !

I looked at some WAV files from a friend, he is an Avid guy, and at least one was Broadcast Wave and Vegas imported it. So Vegas does support import of BW, just apparently not the RF64 extension for files greater than 4GB in size.

[I]"So Vegas does support import of BW"[/I]

Yes, Vegas will import a BWF file.
Now try exporting a BWF file with timecode from somewhere other than at the start of your timeline. Then bring it back into Vegas. It should come back in at the same place on the timeline as you exported it from.
One can try to get around this serious limitation in Vegas using Sound Forge and a free utility from Sound Devices. You will at least then get a Broadcast Wave File that others can read correctly except now you cannot get Vegas to read it.

Bob.

Hi Bob (farss), does Sound Devices' free utility called 'Wave Agent' (Beta Version) ?

Just tried out (for experimental only), but the utility can't read this RF64 Wave...
Double click the file and got nothing shows up...

[I]"Hi Bob (farss), does Sound Devices' free utility called 'Wave Agent' (Beta Version) ?"[/I]

I think that's it, sorry being a bit vague but it's been years since I looked into the BWF thing. Wow, still beta :)

[I]"Just tried out (for experimental only), but the utility can't read this RF64 Wave..."[/I]

Not surprised. It's main purpose is to edit the BWF file header metadata from SD's field recorders and I suspect they're always limited to 4GB.

I did find this regarding RF64: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF64

So RF64 is an EBU standard that extends BWF to files greater the 4GB.
I most certainly agree that Vegas should be able to import and export these files [I]correctly[I] with all the attendant metadata. Given how long it's taken SCS to deal with the basic BWF files I wouldn't hold my breath :(

The real problem here is commercial. As you've seen you can probably kludge your way around most problems that the broadcast / professional world throws at us. Many here will say "problem solved". My issue with this is around once a year a thread appears along the lines of "Why no love for Vegas in the professional / broadcast world?". The answer is quite obvious to me and to address the problem we should all place greater importance on Vegas supporting all the professional standards and workflows even though we will rarely if ever need them ourselves.

Bob.

We're talking separate complaints here.
1. Vegas will read BWF but not write or save the metadata.
2. Wave Agent Beta will write compliant BWF metadata, but as of this thread Vegas will not always recognize it.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=19&MessageID=704412
(Someone should check on this to see if it's been fixed.)
3. I haven't tried RF64 in Wave Agent, but since the EAC3TO workaround above seems to work consistently, it would be worth trying the resulting WAV64 files in it.
4. The last mention from Sony about BWF write support was here (in 2009):
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=3&MessageID=727643
5. The "improved" BWF record support (2010) in Vegas 10 was not exactly what people had hoped for.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=732098

In business, when something is incompletely addressed after that long, there are usually some politics involved.

#3 : Unfortunately audio.w64 extension is not recognized in Wave Agent.

Wave Agent only supports .WAV and .BWF


Add:
Just for a little curiosity only, I got Lightworks 11.5 over here, it is for experiment and learning experience only, trying import the same RF64: nope, cannot do.
(And failed to recognize .w64)

That's probably because all their recorders use FAT32 hence BWF and WAV is all their utility needs to support. I cannot be sure here but at a guess I doubt there's any field recorder that is using anything beyond FAT32.

Bob.

Probably correct, Bob.

In business, when something is incompletely addressed after that long, there are usually some politics involved

I red the links to old threads and it is interesting that ForumAdmin did engage in some dialog. I would not have expected that. Who knows who that was and their position.

If you want to give it a go again, Chris Dolan, trolls this forum and he is one of the developers on the Vegas team at least. If you can convince him of a useful addition it would have a better chance. It still goes in a request database and can languish there, but if you have a champion on the inside then maybe there is a chance.

A concentrated feature request submission (simultaneous) at the time could not hurt either. +1s in a forum thread are worthless "votes".

Chris originally stated he was monitoring about helping with problems. Poor workflow is a problem of sorts but you still have catch his eye, be concise (work out the wording) and explicit about UI integration suggestion.

From what I can see SF does save BWF info, but it is a manual entry process. It sounded like people wanted edits to affect the timecode. ForumAdmin balked at this and I can understand why. Insertions are problematic. If you do 10 edits, then the file is now a "new" entity and will get its own timecode. You have to understand counter arguments and have a reasoned response. Because something else does it that way is not a response. The response is how it helps your workflow, saving you time and mistakes that have to be fixed later.

One possible feature addition would be to drop a BWF file in SF and select a region and in the render dialog have a check box to preserve embeded media timecodes with the region offset. Such a change would let someone trim the fat from a large clip and preserve timecodes of the little pieces. Also, a change like this should not get in the way, or conflict, of any existing SF feature and should be trivial to implement. All plusses.

Vegas does not write BWF files. Vegas does write timecodes to Video file formats with such support. I have only tested MXF. I have selected a region and rendered and the file got the region start timecode. The Vegas timeline defaults to 0, but you can change it. This mechanism is kludgy and can be easily improved. Like set the project timeline start to a media file timecode. You can cut and paste now, but that is a lot of clicks. So in Vegas you can trim the fat from a large clip into pieces and preserve timecode.

The SF operation suggested could easily extends to WAV files in Vegas. This would be a nice symmetry in UI between SF and VP. BTW, I do not know if SF lets you change the timeline offset like VP does.

Saving BWF in VP is little work. SCS already has the code in SF.

A workflow argument I can see about this trimming idea presented here is. I have 1.5 hour footage of a concert and I need to trim the songs into pieces and my video and audio have sync'd timecodes and it makes sense to not lose the sync timecodes for such a simple trim like operation.

I have written a book here so I will stop.

"Who knows who that was and their position."

J. , like Chris, myself, and others that post here, are developers. We are interested in problems and ideas. There is always on going discussion of what is discussed on these forums. Some like to post here. Others lurk and send links to the teams. Depends on the individual.

Keep the requests and discussions going. Bugs, workflows, whatever. I assure you that the dev teams hear about them, even if we may not actively engage in the conversations.

Peter

I just downloaded a SF 11 trail. I see lots of issue with implementation the way SF currently is. The timeline is fixed to start at zero and you cannot adjust it like you can in Vegas. You cannot save a selection (like render loop region in Vegas). Wow, what a missing feature that is. In general and not related to this discussion.

Given the timeline timecode thing I can see that edits would have to adjust and maintain the BWF timecode entry field. Yikes, what a PITA that would be and maybe why it has never happened. If one could map the timeline to start with the file timecode start then the timecode is "maintained" by the timeline itself. No muss no fuss. Of course I belive SF should in general have a save selection option.

With Vegas it should be all good, IF, they supported BWF in output. The timeline can be adjusted. You can save a selection and the selection already computes correct timecode offsets for output since that works for video. Vegas already saves the BWF info internally, and the trim tweak here only modifies the timecode field of BWF. A simple check box in the WAV render as, to save metadata and/or timecode to file. Easy Peazy.

SF looks like PITA work, and may be a lost cause unless the timeline offset feature gets added. Even without a use adjust, then why not have the SF timeline start at zero, or optionally start at the media timecode. Then a save selection, or whatever timecode offset becomes trivial to implement.