No, it's not that. It's the video in the Vegas Video preview window that looks soft. And it seems to stay unsharp as I render it out, whether it is to uncompressed avi or windows media video.

I've got the graphic cards overlay thing while capturing too but that's something I can take.

Is your Vegas preview monitor set to Best/Full?

Mike

If you capture DV, put it on the timeline, then print toback DV, you will see EXACTLY the same video as the same 1,s and 0s are being sent back and forth.

Anything rendered will theorectically have some degradation, but tests have been run on 50 or more generations without a difference noticable to the eye.

In short, the problem is something in your setup.

Gary

I just helped a girl coming in with a DV tape who wanted to have the material converted to a DVD. I captured the video and to my surprise the video was much crisper than the other stuff I get from our in house production.

She had filmed it on a Panasonic vx100(or something, don't remember what she said exactly) and edited on a mac with Final Cut Pro and then put it on a mini-DV using her camera as tape recorder. In vegas I don't even have to crop this video, it fills the frame, no black borders at all.

We use DVCAM tape recorders (sony DSR20-p:s), which I believe have exact the same quality as DV but are a little safer (more bandwithd on the tape). I can't figure this out. How come her video looks as all video SHOULD look in Vegas?

I don't think it's our cameras either, Sony 100,150 and 300 cameras. I still believe it's a codec problem of some sort. Any thoughts? This is driving me crazy!

You mentioned Codecs - what settings do you have in Preferences for Ignoring 3rd Party Codecs and Using MS Codec?

Waccin, I have noticed that when I apply any kind of filter to the material in the timeline there appears to be a "softening" of the image. Is this what you're referring to? This does not/will not affect the final output when the video is rendered. The rendered video is crisp and sharp.

I don't have the answer, nor have I found one, as to why this happens. I've learned to accept it and live with it.

How are you capture material from the DSR20?
If it's via 1394 then the ONLY codec involved is the one in the camera. The camera encodes the analogue signals from the CCDs to digital and nothing touches it from then on in. If you apply no FXs in Vegas you can PTT with no rendering and the bits on that tape will match 100% what the camera recorded. Well the TC will be different but that's it.
Bear in mind that Avid systems apply chroma smoothing by default. This makes their output look a tad better than Vegas (you can do the same in Vegas using the chroma blur FX, at least with Vegas YOU get to decide). Problem with doing this is you are increasing the generational loss. Probably if this was your final generation and you kept all your master tapes then some may prefer the look or if you're going out to a higher res system like 4:2:2 and you wanted to knock a little of the DV edginess off the images it'd maybe a good idea.

BTW, DSR20 is pretty old from memory and I think they have the odd quirk or two.
Bob.

I have ticked "Ignore third Party DV Codecs" and unticked "use Microsoft DV Codec."

Also the video looks unsharp even when no filters have been added and the preview is set to best. I have matched the project settings to the DV file, Vegas wants it to be PAL DV (720x576 25 fps) which is what it is supposed to be...

I capture directly via fire wire. Video is not only blurry with tapes from Avid systems. Even with material from or old Mac Final cuts and Media 100 systems the video has this softness...

Jay, the reason you see it soft when you apply a filter is that the video is being recompressed on the fly, but you're seeing it at half resolution if you're in Preview/Full. If you put your monitor in Best/Full, you'll not see the softening, but you'll probably drop frames like crazy, depending on the speed of your system.

Waccin, can you post a still or better yet a frame or two of vid?

Thanks, Douglas! Nice to know the whys and wherefores!

Assuming that the video is coming in straight over firewire and you're not adding any FX...

Does the footage look blurry on another player, like Windows Media Player? If not, then it's definitely Vegas.

Since it actually renders out blurry, even without FX, I wonder if you've got the field order reversed. Yes, viewing at half size or as preview or draft will make things blurry, but they wouldn't render that way. Reversed field order would do it though.

If you take a single clip in over DV, drop it on the timeline, and then render to a new DV-avi clip, it should be nearly instantaneous-about as fast as your system can move the file from one disk to another. If not then Vegas is rendering. That would be a big clue that something's not right.

Rob Mack

The "Reduce Interlace Flicker" switch adds some blur. Could that be what you are seeing?

John

Hmmm... here are the things that are suspicious:

"I have a system with Vegas 5 and Avid installed."

"it seems to stay unsharp as I render it out, whether it is to uncompressed avi or windows media video."

"I captured the video and to my surprise the video was much crisper than the other stuff I get from our in house production."

"In vegas I don't even have to crop this video, it fills the frame, no black borders at all."

"not only blurry with tapes from Avid systems. Even with material from or old Mac Final cuts and Media 100 systems the video has this softness..."

Okay, let's eliminate a few things. If you are taking DV25 in from tape over firewire, and your project settings match the media, you should never have to crop. There shouldn't be any black borders. (Okay, our DSR500 puts a black edge on the left side of frame but it's tiny. No cause to crop.) You should run tests with just DV25 camera original footage to eliminate some of these other factors. Don't let the footage touch another NLE before Vegas.

Taking in files from other edit systems that are "supposed" to be DV25 may not be the same as capturing DV25 off a tape. You KNOW it'll conform if it's coming from a tape. Coming from a Media100? That's a proprietary mjpeg codec so there's got to be conversion going on there. Also, Media100 uses a 720x486 frame (at least for NTSC). Chances are you need to crop and render before you ever bring it into Vegas at 720x480.

I think you've got a lot of wildcards here. My wild guess is field order. You can test that simply by throwing some suspect footage onto the timeline and changing the field order in your project template. If one of the choices is sharp then that is probably your problem. From there you need to figure out which field order is wrong-the project or the media.

Just a guess here.

Rob Mack