Spanned EX1 clips

dpvollmer wrote on 5/28/2009, 12:48 PM

Will Vegas 9 handle XDCAM EX card clips that span between two cards? If not, how do I join spanned clips?

Thanks,
David Vollmer

Comments

Jay Gladwell wrote on 5/28/2009, 12:52 PM

No, it will not.

You will still need to use the Clip Broswer until SCS fixes this in Vegas, presuming they will fix it.

megabit wrote on 5/28/2009, 12:53 PM

Currently, no.
You must use Clip Browser to seamlessly merge them.

dpvollmer wrote on 5/28/2009, 1:05 PM

Thanks. I was afraid of that. I usually don't shoot where I have to span cards but I have a two hour + graduation with no breaks to do this Saturday.

David

megabit wrote on 5/28/2009, 1:12 PM

It's not just spanning a clip over 2 (or more) cards that can be merged by Clip Browser. Even on a single card, a longer clip will be split and saved in chunks < 4GB, which is the FAT32 limit.

Importing such chunks with V9's Device Explorer will not merge them, but put one native mp4 file after another on the timeline. The transitions (both audio and video) are glitchless, so - unless you really need a single large file per take - it's workable.

blink3times wrote on 5/28/2009, 1:24 PM

You should also be able to merge the clips with a simple dos based command. It works for avchd anyway.

dpvollmer wrote on 5/28/2009, 2:27 PM

What would that command be, Blink?

blink3times wrote on 5/28/2009, 3:21 PM

1. Open command window (Start -> Run -> cmd)
2. Go to the directory with files you want to join (using dir command)
(or use "windows commander" and in the directory with m2t files run cmd)
3. Enter in the console:
copy /b a.m2t + b.m2t + c.m2t out.m2t

Jay Gladwell wrote on 5/28/2009, 5:26 PM

I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt that's gonna work. To begin with, these are not mt2 files. There are other issues as well.

blink3times wrote on 5/28/2009, 5:57 PM

Dos commands don't really care what extension exists. All I can say is try it.... I don't have the means to (for mxf) but I know for a fact that it works with MTS, M2TS, M2T

blink3times wrote on 5/28/2009, 6:01 PM

Here's yet another example for MTS clips:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=15764029&postcount=5

apit34356 wrote on 5/28/2009, 7:32 PM

If there is a problem that Jay may be referring to is the EX's META data contained in each small file. Since the copy is a simple linking of files, the resulting big file will buried meta data. I doubt the Sony's codec will trip up with with multi META data, but its something to check out.

blink3times wrote on 5/28/2009, 8:09 PM

Oh, I think there's an overwhelming chance of that happening. You're in fact creating a whole new file. I don't see how the meta data within each clip can still exist as it's joined to create a completely different file.

On the other hand.... you haven't actually destroyed the original clips.... you're using the COPY command so the originals are still there. If you need the meta data then I don't think there would be anything to stop one from attaining it from the original files.

UlfLaursen wrote on 5/28/2009, 8:58 PM

Some guy actually made a small util to do it, called MTS merger ment for this kind of stuff. I cannot find the link for it right now, but if you e-mail me I'll send it over - it's less than 1 MB.

/Ulf