[Peyton Todd]

Well, it turns out the Resample is already disabled so I guess that’s not the problem. As to how I captured the footage, these were ancient videotapes recorded in about 1970 on a 1/2 inch reel-to-reel black-and-white SONY video camera. When I got around to digitizing them in about the year 2000 the oxide on them had crumbled somewhat and they all had to rescued by scraping off what would come off and re-recording – to beta, which I have no capacity to play, and to VHS, from which I digitized them using the version of Vegas that was current at the time (approx. version 3.0). So who knows what problems were introduced in that process. Most of them play rather well, however, considering their checkered past.

– If there’s a way to attach the video clip and my Vegas of it I’d be very happy to do that. Thanks for your help so far.

[Peyton Todd]

I’m relieved that it was so easy to solve since that means there are not future gotchas (at least of this particular type) awaiting me as I continue to work through my data. Not only is the solution to this one available (thanks to you), but it’s easy to see that this situation must have arisen when I went ahead and saved a letterboxed video without fixing it.

As to the poor resolution, that could have either of two likely causes: (1) in my ignorance, I was experimenting with parameters, and had got more or less acceptable results with that setting; (2) at one point, I had decided to go with smaller videos to reduce the file size of the resulting PDFs, an approach I discontinued when a reviewer of a paper I wrote complained that he couldn’t see the signs clearly enough.

In case you’re curious, the project is about a child of normal hearing but deaf parents, whose early speech followed the grammar of his native sign language. Now that he’s an adult, I have videos of him expressing in sign language the same sentences he spoke as a child.

Thanks again,
Peyton

[Peyton Todd]

Here’s the link again:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/v3yefe8069i9f44/AAAO4dgFllhvUDRZVrZViPGca?dl=0

And links to each of the two files in the folder:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aveye1pferhl5ko/40_1213-23%20want%20see%20dog%20down%20carQ%20%5Bpillarboxed%5D.veg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7jz4krs33ehy1sj/40_1213-23%20want%20see%20dog%20down%20carQ.avi?dl=0

Did these work?

[Peyton Todd]

Okay, here’s the link to the two files, VEG and AVI. Enjoy!

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/v3yefe8069i9f44/AAAO4dgFllhvUDRZVrZViPGca?dl=0

[Peyton Todd]

I do get good results with the same AVI file if I simply open it in a brand new VEG project. That solution is far from ideal, though, since I have a lot of editing work invested in the current VEG file, which was always working in earlier versions of VEGAS.

Fortunately, John Bolton’s solution worked perfectly in the current Vegas file, even though simply choosing the correct parameters from the list box offered by Vegas in the Properties dialog did not. I wish I could tell you why.The choice offered in the Properties dialog said “NTSC DV (720×480, 29.970 fps)”, and picking it sets the pixel size to .9091, which is exactly what MediaInfo tells me (although MediaInfo does not mention pixel size). Strangely, choosing Match Source Aspect does not change what appears in the Properties dialog. As long as I have chosen Match Source Aspect beforehand, I get perfect 4×3 results even with properties set to HDV 1080-60i (1440×1080, 29.970 fps).

With my problem solved, I can now proceed with my work. But in case you – as a video guru – have an interest in trying to get to the bottom of the problem, let me know, and I’ll place the AVI and VEG files on Dropbox for you to have a look at.

Thanks again for your help.

[Peyton Todd]

Thanks, going to pan/crop and choosing Match Source Aspect worked perfectly!

[Peyton Todd]

Thanks. Yes, the ghosting is still happening. Just to clarify, I don’t believe what I’m rendering technically qualifies as an ‘event’. The full source video is loaded to Vegas as one big event, and what I’m rendering is a selection within it. Per your post, what I did in hopes of improving matters was to make sure the edges of the selection fell at a location reached by cursoring with the arrow keys instead of clicking with the mouse. That did not improve matters.

Based on the 29.97 fps vs. 30 fps question, that might seem to make a difference since the template I use for rendering is MOV 3Mbps, which defaults to 15 fps, an even fraction of 30. But the Customize Template option lets you choose 29.97 instead. I appear to get identical results with both choices however.

One oddity about the ghosting – though perhaps not so odd to someone who understands it – is that it’s not just a faint copy of the protagonist moving exactly beside him and offset a little bit. Rather, at one point the protagonist reaches out to grasp something. What one sees is the ghost (fainter) arm reaching out first, then it’s suddenly joined by the ‘real’ (i.e. less faint) arm.

Anyway, bottom line, I’ve decided for now to just live with this problem and move on to the many other tapes I have to edit, most of which don’t have this problem.

Come to think of it: although I did make sure the edges of the full selection were at frame edges as just described, I did not attend to that issue in determining the size of the sub-titles (these are tapes of a child whose speech is not easy to understand), which I placed in a different video track by means of inserted text events. I made those the same length of time as the spoken sentence they matched.

[Peyton Todd]

Many thanks for the explanations. I was able to figure out that the missing VEG never existed at all; I had purposely not saved it, under the mistaken impression that the bad parameters I had entered would mess up whatever the specs were of an earlier version that I mistakenly assumed did exist. When I started afresh today, everything worked fine.

I still haven’t fixed the ghost problem in the other video, but I’m living with it since I have so many other AVI files to edit.

As to old AVIs, I wonder why yours can’t play. Mine were originally black-and-white recordings made on 1/2-inch reel-to-reel tapes in the 1970s, which already couldn’t play by 1998 since (a) very few of the old machines still existed; and more importantly, (b) when one did play them, the oxide that stored the info had degraded to the point that it gummed up the VTR head and caused it to grind to a halt. I had to have them rescued at about that time at great expense by a company called Vidipax. The technique was to scrape off the loose oxide and re-record them to VHS. Then I digitized them myself via Vegas Video.

Peyton

[Peyton Todd]

Thanks for sticking with the problem, John. I’m ashamed to say that after a half hour searching, I can no longer find the VEG file I was dealing with. All the evidence (dates on yesterday’s renderings, etc.) points to a particular VEG that no longer exists on my PC for some reason, not even in the Recycle Bin. I tried again with the video clip I thought it must have been but no problem occurred with it when I set the properties to what you told me – not even letter-boxing. (It seems odd, by the way, that the MediaInfo report on these AVIs says 720 x 480 but 4:3 ratio… Vegas seems to know to go with 4:3.)

For now I’ll just have to wait till the problem re-emerges, which may soon happen since I have lots and lots of videos to edit, all of the same type as this one.

Meanwhile, I have your solution for the most common problem I’ve been experiencing, which is the letter-boxing. And thanks for providing the term ‘pillar-boxing’.

Incidentally, I have no particular desire to go with either square or .909-size pixels. Square is just what keeps popping up as default.

Peyton

[Peyton Todd]

This could be on the right track, Mike, since when I chose ‘match output aspect’, the “vertical letter-boxing” (as I’m calling it, since I forgot the appropriate term for the vertical equivalent of letter-boxing) disappeared in the preview window. But not in the actual output, unfortunately.