Interlaced Rendering Problem (Vegas 7e)

[Xdirect]

nothing?

[Rick Mac]

Well, looks strange.
How about giving us somemore details.

1) Where did your source clips come from? The ones on your Vegas timeline. You say MPEGS. Did you rip them from a DVD?

2) What are your project settings in Vegas and project settings in DVD Architect? If not creating the disc in DVD Architect, which program?

3) When you tried redoing things did the same clips have the problem or did the problem move to other clips.

Can you walk us thru your workflow.

Regards, Rick.

[Xdirect]

Thanks for the reply.

1. The source files came from my Sony HDR-SR1, a hard drive based camcorder. No capture needed, just straight mpeg from the camcorder.

2. I am using DVD Architect, but that doesnt seem to be the problem. The rendered files show the odd clips when viewed with a software based video player too (media player, quick time). I just posted that am burning to DVD so you know what my end goal is. When these problem clips are burned to a dvd, they are dark as well, but also choppy and full of artifacts.

Project Properties:
– Field Order: Lower field first
– Pixel aspect: 1.00 (square)
– Deinterlace method: Blend

Render Template:
– Default Mpeg2
– only changes, video quality high, field order lower field first.
I have tried adjusting these settings to find the magic combo, but have not found it yet.

3. The same clips have the problems. I recently made a promo trailer where the clips that had problems in the main dvd had problems again in the promo. However, I can look at the source clips in media player without rendering in vegas and they look fine.

My work flow is as such:
After filming, transfer files from camcorder’s hdd. Edit in vegas with several clips per project. Some panning and cropping, but not on all the problem clips. Render to mpeg2 using properties above. For the dvd, add files to architect project and burn disk. The promo mentioned earlier is for a web site, so the only difference is the conversion to flash flv file instead of using architect.

The problem occurs somewhere during the vegas render. The camcorder settings did not change from clip to clip. Some of the problem clips fall between two working clips filmed no more than 2 minutes apart with same lighting and settings. I’m grasping at solutions and running out of time for this project.

[Rick Mac]

Are you using Vegas 7E?
Previous versions do not support AVCHD Cameras. Depending on your capture method.

Vegas 7.0e allows users of Sony AVCHD video cameras to create high-definition or standard-definition content using files recorded to their AVCHD camera’s hard disk, flash memory, or DVD. Skipping the real-time capturing stage common for tape-based projects eliminates a time-consuming step prior to editin.

I think the trick here is to look at the format settings that your
camera is outputting and match your Vegas project settings to that.
I think your Vegas project settings are confilcting with what your camera is outputting. Look closely at the manual for your camera and figure out the settings, such as 1080 Interlaced, lower field first, etc.

By the way, I beleive that your pixel aspect ratio should be set
to .9091 instead of 1.0 square which is for computer screens.

Good luck.

Regards, Rick.

[Xdirect]

thanks for the reply. yes 7e (see subject line). using hdd camcorder, no need for capturing. check out the benefits of a hdd based camcorder and be amazed, no tapes, no capturing, no nonsense. i think i forgot to mention this is a standard definition set of video files (implied with dvd). so, the vegas 7e avchd bit is a non issue.

you are correct, the pixel ratio needs to be .9091 for the dvd. i had it set to 1.00 for the promo. this does not affect the interlacing though.

i will check the manual, see what i find. it is strange that some files get corrupted in vegas while others dont. same camera, same settings, same vegas. different output

[Xdirect]

UPDATE

After using a program called ReStream, I found that the files are all upper field. When I set a project to upper field, it works fine during render. Then I nest that project into a larger project, with a bunch of vegas projects pre-edited. When I set that project to upper and render, I get the same dark output. The idea is that I create a bunch of sections of a larger chapter, then add each section to the chapter project and render as one file. That chapter file is what has the issues with dark scenes and such.

Does vegas use the project settings when nesting one project in another? or does it ‘render’ it with default dv settings? We are getting close to figuring this out.

[Rick Mac]

[xdirect] “When I set a project to upper field, it works fine during render. Then I nest that project into a larger project, with a bunch of vegas projects pre-edited. When I set that project to upper and render, I get the same dark output.”

Could it be that some of our nested projects are saved with differing project settings? I’m speculating that all nested projects on the timeline need to match and jive with each other and the master projects settings.

I have had pretty good luck with nested projects, however I ran into a problem once with a complex nested graphic that I never was able to resolve. Of course I was in a hurry and found a quick workaround.
For me it helped to render some of the very complex veg files to avi uncompressed and then drop that onto that master project.

I really think that the problem your having may be that all of your nested stuff is not sharing common project settings. How about checking each project file to see what your settings are for each.

Wish I could be of more help. Looks like you have a fairly complex project. If you can’t get it figured out you might try rendering sections to Sony’s YUV avi codec. It looks awesome and takes less space than the uncompressed avi codec. The only downside to the YUV Codec is that you can not use it if you need to preserve the alpha channel info to be keyed over other video in your master project.

Good luck man, and let us know how it’s going.

Regards, Rick.

PS. I have seen many problems on this forum solved by taking a good hard look at the project settings.

[Rick Mac]

One last thing.
According to Sony’s help file, all nested media must reside on the same drive or be mapped to the same drive.
Do a search for nested in your help file for clarification.

Later…Rick.

[Marc Istook]

Field order can cause big problems, especially when you’re going out to DVD. You might never notice when watching on your computer monitor because your monitor isn’t showing you interlaced video, field by field — it’s showing you the entire, progressive frame.

If you’re having trouble with your source footage having a different field order than your output (DVD and DV use lower field first), the fix is simple. In your project media window, right click on the media file(s), and scroll down to properties (I think — I don’t have Vegas up right now!). From there, you should be able to find a setting for the field order of your video. If it’s upper field (odd field, I believe) first, simply change it to lower. Make sure to change that for each video file you’re using in your project and you should be good to go.

I ran into this problem when using some XDcam footage recently in Vegas that I was outputting to DVD. Static shots looked fine, but anything with motion was awful. Oddly enough, Vegas never told me about the field order conflict — with such a common workflow, I’d think there’d be a popup warning, or something that would’ve let me know my source field order didn’t match the output. Anyway, hopefully that helps.

[Xdirect]

thanks for all the advice. you are correct, it is a large project and it has now resonated with me that I have a lot of property changing to do (100+ projects) or a lot of rendering.

Either way, this seems like a work around like you said, maybe an update to vegas will fix this interlacing problem. It would be helpful to have a message that lets us know when property values conflict.

thanks again, i will test this out and post the results.