Hey dvdmike
I bought Vegas with the intention of using it with my DVX100 footage, but I'm skeptical about how it handles the 24p in the new update. Honestly it seems a little flaky, sometimes working perfect, other times seeming to revert to some sort of interlacing, without touching anything...it makes me nervous. I'm not new to video editing or software of this type, I've worked in high-end 3D for 9 years, but it could be that Vegas requires a steeper learning curve than I anticipated and I don't fully understand it's paradigm. Having said that, the preferences and settings are scattered and disorganized and no one has been willing or able to give me a "recipe" on how to get my DVX100p stuff through. I've tried to export as Quicktimes to do the pulldown in DV Film Maker but there's some sort of a bug in Vegas that prevents this. I asked about these problems in other posts and got no definitive answers.
Premiere has been rock solid for me so far. I spent 10 mintutes setting Premiere up with excellent results compared to 2 weeks with mediocre result in Vegas, and I'm sadly sticking with it until I can be sure of getting the best results in Vegas. Beleive me, I wish I could do my whole project in Vegas because as an editor it is vastly superior. I'm hoping they get some of the issues ironed out soon so I can jump on the band wagon,
Mike

Thanks, I've downloaded the Vegas demo. I still have not shot any 24p yet, but Vegas audio and surround mixing rocks. I've been using Premiere for several years and even use a RT card but without support for 24/96 I may have to switch to Vegas for at least my music based video projects. My premiere is stable and I am familure with it but the vegas integration between video and audio is supurb. I too am having some troubles figuing out how to edit video effectively in vegas but I have not done a tutorial or anything yet. There are some basics that I obviously need to learn before I can make a good judgement of the product as a video editor. Keep me posted if you solve any of your problems.

Mike:

Recipe:
1. Shoot in 24pA mode (2-3-3-2 pulldown). Vegas 4.0b can also read 24p footage (2-3 pulldown) but it's less efficient.
2. Make sure the "Allow pulldown removal from 24p DV" switch is ON in Preferences, General.
3. Use the "NTSC DV 24p (720x480, 23.976 fps)" project template.
4. Bring in source clips, edit.
5. For prerenders, use the "NTSC DV 24p (inserting 2-3-3-2 pulldown)" AVI template.
6. For final renders, use the "NTSC DV 24p (inserting 2-3 pulldown)" AVI template.
7. You can print-to-tape from the Vegas timeline, or render to AVI using the 2-3 template and print-to-tape from the Video Capture application.
8. For DVD rendering, use the "DVD Architect 24p NTSC video stream" template.

With Vegas 4.0b there is no need to use the DVFilm application, but it can read AVI DV, if you still want to use it for some reason.

Just today we verified that there is a bug in our QuickTime plug in rendering to 23.976, we're working on fixing it right now.

///d@

Thanks Dennis. I've ordered the full version of Vegas+DVD today, so I can't wait to try all of this out. I will ahve to wait because the place I purchased from started passover vacation and it did not ship out before they all left. ;-{ I'll keep this post handy for reference.

Dennis, thanks so much for replying and for your attention to the QT and DVX100 problems.

I have read the steps in the manual, as you outlined above and I'm still not satisfied with the results. I'm thrilled that you guys are supporting 24p and the DVX100 and the editor is awesome, but I just don't trust Vegas with my 24p yet. After reading your post I decided to test the pipeline again today (for like the 10th time in 2 weeks) feeling that I must have missed something stupid somewhere along the line, but I got the same results. I am definitely using 24pA footage (I shot it myself and have acheived flawless results with it using DV Film Maker and Premiere) and I have followed the instructions to the T. But no luck. The DV 2-3 pulldown output from Vegas has doubled frames and if I open Windows Media player to look at a DV clip, it screws up the pulldown removal on the clips in the Vegas timeline resulting in interlacing artifacts that don't seem to go away. Those things, along with the discrepancy between "draft" and "best" on clips in the timeline that have pulldown removal on them, have led me to the conclusion that either I am a total idiot, or Vegas isn't reliable for doing what I want to do. I wouldn't rule out me being an idiot, because in all my trials I haven't been able to get it looking right with any predictability. I would LOVE to hear from people who are.
Mike

There are plenty of people using the DVX100 with Vegas 4.0b with no problems, so I'd like to figure out what is causing yours. Perhaps it is breaks in cadence of the 24p/24pA clips. You must have Video Capture set to create new clips for each scene. You must not have any dropped frames during capture. If you continue to have problems after looking at these two things, I will send you an FTP address to post some problem clips on, and I will analyze them to find the problem.
///d@

working fine for me.

mike

I shot a short film (actually 6 hours of footage to be cut to 30 min.) in 24p before the 24p ability was added to Vegas, so didn't yet have SoFo's advice about shooting in 24pA. However, I have loaded the project as 24p, and although there's some judder when playing back on an external TV (from the timeline), if I RENDER to regular 24p avi (as also advised by SoFo), the problem isn't there.

editor3333:

That's because the External Monitor feature uses 2-3-3-2 pulldown. Print to tape let's you pick 2-3 or 2-3-3-2 pulldown.

///d@

Thanks very much, Dennis,
Could you explain exactly how I should be capturing? In the past I had been testing on clips whose "in" and "out" points were chosen fairly randomly, on a shot by shot basis. Is this wrong? Do I need to start my clip at a certain place (like on the "A frame" in Avid Film Composer)?
My "test" clip from before was exactly 10 seconds taken from the middle of one continous shot, with no scene breaks or dropped frames-- but the "in" point was chosen at random-- actually at something like 00:10:45:00. Is this wrong? Should I always start my capture at the beginning of the shot (DV scene)? Is this what "create new clips" does? If so, where did I miss this important step in the documentation? Thanks very much!
Mike

Mike:

You should be able to capture from anywhere, as long as the first frame is correctly marked with shooting mode and cadence, Vegas will correctly interpret the footage. It handles 24p/24pA/30p/60i/25p/50i modes from the camera. If you suspect there is a problem here, try capturing with a 0 or 5 in the least significant timecode digit, or capture with DV scene detection.

Like I said, though, 24p/24pA modes are not guaranteed across shooting edits, mode changed, or with dropped frames.

///d@

Once again, thanks Dennis!
I'm so used to logging, I hadn't ever tried the normal capture with scene detection-- this is nice! I captured my tape this way and tried one of the clips. It came into the time line perfectly, pulldown removal was flawless. When I changed from 'draft' to 'best' it looked fine. But then when I did an export, it gave me the weird double frames problem. Subsequently, when I went back to the timeline and scrubbed or advanced through the frames of the clip, it had double frames. The weird thing is that some times it happens and sometimes it doesn't, and I can't tell what's causing it. I still having trouble getting a good render, though. Could anything I am doing be causing this?

I disable resampling-- ostensibly the fields in a 24pA file just need to be re-combined as is, and resamplling would just fuzz them unnessesarily, right?

Also, when I am rendering, I set the rendering quality to 'best.' Is this correct? Does this setting actaully affect the render in any way?

Strangely enough, when I render with the rendering quality set to 'draft' the final output looks the most like the original media-- i.e. no interlacing artifacts, crisp image.

If I can get this problem solved, I'd love to edit in 23.976 in Vegas. If not, I'll just use DV Film to batch convert from 2:3:3:2 to 2:3:2:3 and edit in Vegas on a 60i timeline...

Thanks very much!

Mike

Mike:

Are you sure you set your project properties to 24p? From your description, it sounds like you have 24p media in a 60i project. Similarly, for rendering, use a 24p template.

///d@

I'm dead sure, Dennis. I've spent the past 10 years doing 3D animation with Softimage (in Madison for a few years at Raven, which is another reason I'm thrilled to be using the "home-town" software), I'm not a novice software user. It seems like there is something bizarre with the way VV plays pulldown removal clips-- sometimes it works, sometimes it flakes out, seemingly reverting to a non pulldown removal state. I don't know, perhaps I'm cursed or unlucky or missing a setting. I've tried wishing and sacrificing a baby lamb, but no luck. I appreciate all the time you've spent answering my questions, you probably have more important things to be doing. For the time being I have converted everything to 3:2 and am editing it in a standard NTSC timeline-- and it's working beautifully. I'll give the 24pA stuff another whirl when 4.0c comes out and see if it's any better for me.
Thanks,
Mike

Mike:

Didn't mean to question your chops, it's just hard to diagnose visual problem using text <g>.

Can I get a project file and short media clip that shows this? I'll email you an FTP address.

///d@