From Vegas to Final Cut Pro - How to export without (much) quality loss

[BovineofWar]

Hello all!

I have footage coming in from an editor using SONY Vegas while I am on Final Cut Studio 2. The project is good 'ol NTSC SD and he has sent me decent .avi files. However I know nothing about VEGAS and I can't help but wonder if there is another way he can export those files so that there is little to no quality loss going between rigs.

If anyone knows the best way to export from VEGAS and has any suggestions I would be appreciative. Thanks in advance!

[Case]

There's a good chance that these AVIs are DV, as most Windows movie editors wrap DV in an AVI container. The file size (big!) should be a hint. Very similar to DV MOVs from iMovie/FCE/FCP.

I can't help but thinking that someone must have made a tool for DV AVI to DV stream (.dv) and vise versa, as such could be done lossless in theory, but I haven't found one yet. (Anyone else know of such a beast?)

Anyway, MPEG Streamclip should be able to make a nice conversion to DV, which FC should happily accept.

[poisondeathray]

Another option is a lossless export (uncompressed) .mov from vegas. Final Cut should accept almost anything .mov wrapped. Filesize will be even bigger than DV-AVI, but quality will be preserved. I don't know if this is feasible for you e.g. if you are on a LAN vs. if you are geographically separated, then filesize might play a role in your decision

[BovineofWar]

Right now we are overnighting HDD's back and forth so size really isn't as much of an issue but that is great to know. I will make sure he does that in the future. I just didn't know what VEGAS is capable of as I have never touched it and don't have a PC rig to download a trial copy. Thanks!

[rumplestiltskin]

I'll second Case's suggestion for the DV export. FCP really likes working in DV and doesn't seem to require the amount of rendering that other formats require.

[JohnnyMalaria]

I can't help but thinking that someone must have made a tool for DV AVI to DV stream (.dv) and vise versa, as such could be done lossless in theory, but I haven't found one yet. (Anyone else know of such a beast?).

The Enosoft DV Processor can read DV-AVI and write to raw DV.

Out-of-the-box it will do it in real-time but you can make it go as fast as your system will allow by disabling seeking/navigation in the main configuration dialog (before you select the source file).

If conversion is all you'll need to use it for then don't worry about getting a license (if you'd otherwise need one).

[BovineofWar]

Thanks for all the replies. I apolgize for this as it is probably a daft question, but isn't there quality loss between Vegas and my rig if it is exported as a DV AVI file? Is there a way to export form VEGAS with no loss of quality?

We are physically mailing hard drives back and forth so size is not an issue, but in order to preserve as much quality as possible I honestly don't have any idea what settings I should be telling the other editor to set and I don't have a PC I can download a trial for.

Any pointers would be helpful. Thanks!

[zagnut]

Bovine, not sure if you are still working on this project or not. I found myself here after being in the same situation your friend is in. I have to export from Vegas 9 in format that is FCP friendly. While I haven't tried yet, his best bet seems to be to export the footage in a lossless .mov container using QT lossless, animation or PNG render settings. Depending on if the footage is interlaced or progressive, I'm not sure what would be best for him to export for your use. I'm working with progressive and will be trying QT PNG sequence renders, as this seems to be best for my application.

[edDV]

Thanks for all the replies. I apolgize for this as it is probably a daft question, but isn't there quality loss between Vegas and my rig if it is exported as a DV AVI file? Is there a way to export form VEGAS with no loss of quality?

We are physically mailing hard drives back and forth so size is not an issue, but in order to preserve as much quality as possible I honestly don't have any idea what settings I should be telling the other editor to set and I don't have a PC I can download a trial for.

Any pointers would be helpful. Thanks!

DV-AVI to *.dv raw is just a container issue and the conversion should be lossless. DV is DV. QT Pro for Mac can also make the conversion but I'd check out Enosoft (free for personal use) first.

[rumplestiltskin]

If you're going to FCP, wouldn't Apple Intermediate Codec be the proper method?

[edDV]

If you're going to FCP, wouldn't Apple Intermediate Codec be the proper method?

For HDV or AVCHD yes, but for DV keep it native. DV is already intraframe based and edits natively in Final Cut.

[rumplestiltskin]

Ah! Didn't know Vegas produced DV files. I was looking at the "SD" in the original post.

[edDV]

Ah! Didn't know Vegas produced DV files. I was looking at the "SD" in the original post.

Just like FCP, the most likely SD "*.AVI" format would be DV unless you know they are editing uncompressed with a large RAID and SDI in/out. DV files will be around 13GB/hr. Uncompressed will be over 60GB/hr. They should be able to tell you what they intend to send.

Vegas can also export DV in MXF wrappers (e.g. DVCPro, IMX or XDCAM) or other more obscure formats but not it seems directly to raw *.dv unless converted in Quicktime Pro for Windows.

[zagnut]

I tried the DVCPro codec for exporting to FCP. I found the results disgustingly horrendous, the video looked horrible. I settled on the QT PNG codec cranked to max quality. This is for 1920x1080 AVCHD footage that is going to be downrezzed to SD in FCP. Size wise, the PNG codec compresses quite well at about 11gb for around 25mins (around 2gb - 3gb p/min) of footage on my first clip and is nothing but amazing quality. I can't tell the difference between the png .mov and the source (which is 24mbps).

I don't see an option for "apple intermediate codec" in Vegas 9P anywhere. Not sure if that's only available in Vegas Pro or I just overlooked it.

[edDV]

I tried the DVCPro codec for exporting to FCP. I found the results disgustingly horrendous, the video looked horrible. I settled on the QT PNG codec cranked to max quality. This is for 1920x1080 AVCHD footage that is going to be downrezzed to SD in FCP. Size wise, the PNG codec compresses quite well at about 11gb for around 25mins (around 2gb - 3gb p/min) of footage on my first clip and is nothing but amazing quality. I can't tell the difference between the png .mov and the source (which is 24mbps).

I don't see an option for "apple intermediate codec" in Vegas 9P anywhere. Not sure if that's only available in Vegas Pro or I just overlooked it.

The original poster is dealing with SD only. HD is a different set of issues. I'm not sure we should expand to HD in this thread since it gets much more complicated.

[rumplestiltskin]

The Apple Intermediate Codec is only available in FCP (or other Mac -based) software.

[zagnut]

The original poster is dealing with SD only. HD is a different set of issues. I'm not sure we should expand to HD in this thread since it gets much more complicated.

Not really trying to expand into HD transcoding. I chimed in since my HD footage had to be transcoded and downrezzed to SD for a FCP project at another location. Similar to the OP except I'm the guy with Vegas, supplying footage for final work to another location using FCP. Just trying to merely point out that the QT png codec seems to be an excellent choice for cross-platform compatibility as a lossless intermediate. Well, for progressive anyways. I have no need to transcode to interlaced, so I'm not sure how it fairs in that area.
Anything I've said in regards to HD can be thrown out the window as irrelevant to the topic, as I (Vegas guy) am sending SD footage to another location (FCP guy) requiring SD footage. It's really no different than the OP's dilemma, except in my case I'm the sender, not the receiver.

The Apple Intermediate Codec is only available in FCP (or other Mac -based) software.

Ah, ok. You guys had me searching all through Vegas looking for it. I should drink more coffee before reading anything technical.

[edDV]

The original poster is dealing with SD only. HD is a different set of issues. I'm not sure we should expand to HD in this thread since it gets much more complicated.

Not really trying to expand into HD transcoding. I chimed in since my HD footage had to be transcoded and downrezzed to SD for a FCP project at another location. Similar to the OP except I'm the guy with Vegas, supplying footage for final work to another location using FCP. Just trying to merely point out that the QT png codec seems to be an excellent choice for cross-platform compatibility as a lossless intermediate. Well, for progressive anyways. I have no need to transcode to interlaced, so I'm not sure how it fairs in that area.
Anything I've said in regards to HD can be thrown out the window as irrelevant to the topic, as I (Vegas guy) am sending SD footage to another location (FCP guy) requiring SD footage. It's really no different than the OP's dilemma, except in my case I'm the sender, not the receiver.

We are lacking info on what the Vegas project is in this case. The most likely SD project would be either interlace DV format or interlace uncompressed. If DV format, it is best to maintain DV format to FCP. Done correctly, unprocessed DV frames will still be camera first generation after transfer to FCP. You can't get more "lossless" than that.

Progressive projects require more detail on source video, Vegas project format and the type of processing done in Vegas. We can only guess.

[BovineofWar]

Well, several months later I have upgraded to FCS 3 and my counter part is still on VEGAS 9.0d.

I recently built my own gaming PC rig and realized VEGAS allows for a trial download. After installing it and looking at this mess of windows and icons trying to make sense of the layout I finally got to the export section called "Render to New Track." Why not call it export? Eh..details. Sorry, not trying to troll.

Anyway I see the export options available now and one is QuickTime 7 with an uncompressed option. The original footage is being shot in HDV 1080i 60i but the final output is NTSC DV for SD Broadcast. I prefer to edit in Pro Res 422 when possible and I exported the footage in QT7 (.mov) with no compression and coverted it with MPEG Streamclip on my Mac rig and it looks great.

Hopefully this helps others as well, becuase this was a nightmare.