Sony Vegas - it's worth the trouble to get it to work

After battling for hours - I have the solution.

Problem: Sony Vegas won't play audio for .MP4 - they blame QuickTime (LAME!!). All other non-pro video editors suck. Apart from the ones I blogged about - I tried a whole bunch of open source ones. They all suck.

Solution:

1. Pay for Sony Vegas (incentive to get it to work + I'm a Sony whore even though their laptops suck)

2. Download DNxHD codec from Avid woohoo for open standards!

3. Set up a nice Ubuntu install in VirtualBox (I'll have to dual boot until Civilization and Vegas run native under Linux.) Skip this step if you are hard core enough to compile ffmpeg to work under Windows.

4. Praise the mighty ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i INPUT.MP4 -vcodec dnxhd -b 60Mb -acodec pcm_s16be OUTPUT.MOV

5. Boom. You're ready!!!