Pros & cons of Device Explorer in Sony Vegas

[http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/sony-xdcam-ex-cinealta/235167-vegas-9-imports-native-xdcam-ex-files-2.html]

  • as of May 2009:
    • Technically, you “can” edit the .mp4 files right from the card. You’d need to drill down through the directories via the standard Vegas Explorer tool (not the new Device Explorer), find your .mp4 clip, and bring it into your project.
    • “We do not currently support shot markers from EX in the Vegas Pro 9 Device Explorer, but it is on our radar.”
    • Spanning clips does not work properly for everybody (could in principle be due to their circumstances as much as the app).  Recommended to join these together using ClipBrowser thenexport as MXF for NLEs.  … It is really the same concept as (FCP’s) XDCAM Transfer except instead of re-wrapping as [.mov] it re-wraps as [.mxf].
    • (In the case of FCP) … the metadata is part of the MOV after … re-wrapping the file for FCP.  (Possibly) Vegas had a problem with managing the metadata and their solution was just to (import the) native (essence/mp4) files.

My own experiences:

  • A long shoot gets listed as a sequence of smaller clips, corresponding to the separate [.mp4] files recorded by the camera.  This is known as a spanned clip.  Each of the smaller clips is of size no more than around 3.5 GB.
  • Device Explorer import results:
    • Clips with names like [929_1332_01_20100318_191600] i.e. having datetimes.
    • These clips consist of the following files, with main file name as per the clip:
      • XDCAM-EX:  [.mp4], [.xml]
      • AVCHD: [.mts] (but no clip info files).

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