Vegas 7 and Canon Powershot (A530) AVI clips

[Edward Troxel]

Do a search here for “MJPEG”. Bottom line is that you need to install the codec used by that camera. Many still cameras use the MJPEG codec. Some use other codecs.

Edward Troxel

[Mike Kujbida]

Odds are that you need an MJPEG codec.
Google it and you’ll find several links.
Most of them are in the $20 price range.

[David R israel]

Edward and Mike,

many thanks — installing an MJPEG codec sufficed to
solve the problem.

There’s now one fine-point questions I wonder about.

A curiousity of this MJPEG footage is that, even though
it is only 10 frames per second, when I insert it into a
Vegas timeline — where the Vegas project is set at a PAL
standard framerate (25 frames per second) [I’m in India,
and working in PAL here], oddly enogh, every frame — i.e.,
all 25 frames per second — appears as a UNIQUE image on
the preview screen, even thogh there are only 10 frames
per second visible on the timeline.

Can somebody explain this? Is it a characteristic of the
MJPEG format — or of the Vegas timeline — to extrapolate
an image in this way? It seems quite surprising to me —
and makes me wonder whether, if I instead set the project
at 50 frames per second (I think there’s that option, so-
called “double PAL”), I would then have 50 unique images
per second from this 10-images-per-second footage? The
phenomenon strikes me as almost a case of science fiction.

Awaiting enlightenment,
d.i.

david raphael israel
(in bhopal, india)

[Doug Graham]

When I had the same problem, I found that I could import the video into MovieMaker, then export it in a format that Vegas could read.

Regards,
Doug Graham

[Gary Kleiner]

The picons that make up the filmstrip representation on the timeline are for a loose reference and change depending on how much you are zoomed in or out. They are not necessesarily a direct reference to each of the frames that the video is comprised of.

Gary Kleiner

Learn Vegas and DVD Architect

http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com

[David R israel]

Gary,

although you make a generally useful point,
it’s beside the point in this case. What I’m
telling you is that with this footage, I get
25 distinct, different frames per second! —
despite the fact the footage is clearly
marked (in metadata) as being “10 frames
per second).

And incidentally, those 10 frames do happen
to be accurately reflected (far as I can tell)
by the 10 images per second that I see on the
Vegas timeline, when looking at the farthest
level of granularity of view.

Now — can you explain the phenomenon?

Also note this: Many of the images are rather
blurry. This was video of martial arts, and
there’s a lot of motion — but I still am
inclined to believe that 15 our of every 25
of these distinct frames have been created in
Vegas (and/or by the MJPEG codec) as extrapolated
approximations of intermediate stages of what the
software opines to have been there.

Agree? Disagree? Other explanation?

cheers,
d.i.

david raphael israel
(in bhopal, india)

[David R israel]

ps — and just to clarify:

as initially said, these “25 frames”
that I mention are in view on the
Preview monitor, when moving, frame
by frame, along the timeline (when
the project is set to 25 frames
per second and the timeline ruler
is set to “Time and Frames”).
There are NO two identical frames
among those 25 / sec frames– each
is unique.

The audio is at a normal rate, and
has the same duration as the video.
Thus, it seems quite clear that 15
new video frames have been created
here. As I was unaware of this as
a thing that might happen, I thought
I’d ask about it — and am curious
whether it can be attributed to
Vegas per se, to the MJPEG Codec
per se, or (as I might guess) to
a combination of the two?

david raphael israel
(in bhopal, india)

[Mike Kujbida]

David, my guess is that it’s Vegas that’s doing some kind of interpolation.
I just loaded in an avi file shot with my Canon digital still camera (320 x 240 @ 15 fps).
I applied the timecode FX and then stepped through it on the Vegas timeline.
What’s interesting is that, while the Vegas time display shows it incrementing frame by frame, the timecode FX only displays the odd frame numbers. That is, it shows 00:00:00:00, 00:00:00:01, 00:00:00:03, etc. with each odd frame number being displayed twice.