Re: Vegas Pro 11 loading long files over 5GB

I'm an HMC40 user... it has a similar behavior.

First of all, you don't need tsMuxer to join files, and in fact, I'm not sure that's a good idea. When your Panny breaks files up, it's breaking them exactly at the 4GB mark. So there's no logical boundry there.. it'll break in the middle of any frame. That's why you can sometimes get a dropout at the transition point.

Because of this, all you need to do is concatenate the pieces into one large file. I have historically used a Cygwin shell command for this:

> cat 00000.MTS 00001.MTS 00002.MTS >thewholeschmeggie.mts

But these days I get lazy and use JD Design's "File Concatenate/Split Context Menu" application, which basically adds this function as a Windows shell extension.

As for the cut-off... I don't have anything recently that went over 1:30 in a single take. But be careful about mixing takes. In theory, you can concatenate MPEG-2 transport stream files all day, and Vegas should read them. But I think you get some kind of end marker when you stop the camcorder, and that's used by many programs in the usual PC world (MPEG2-TS was defined originally for never-ending streams, like satellite/cable TV) to signal an end-of-stream. So if you concatenate multiple files in a single take, great. If you put together two different takes, many programs will only see one of them. Check what the Windows file browser thinks of your file lengths, and see if they match what Vegas believes. I've done a little experimentation here, and was able to create a 95 minute file that shows up in Vegas and Windows as a 44 minute file, based on where one of the streams ended.

-Dave