HELP! Sony Vegas Video is Killing Me!!

[chesnex]

Greetings,

I have been using Sony Vegas Video 6 to edit a snowboarding holiday video. When editing in Vegas and watching the preview window the quality looks fantastic, the slow mo's and action motion is crystal clear.

HOWEVER......when I render normally to AVI (although I have tried the Mpeg formats) there is some shadowing of fast moving objects on screen, this is certainly not ideal but still acceptable. The problem occurs when I author to DVD using either Nero Express or Sony DVD Architect, the shadowing is dramatically increased making it virtually unwatchable.

I have tried playing around with some of the suggestions I have found on various forums including setting Upper field or Lower field first and setting the reduce interlace flicker but nothing seems to work.

Why do the AVIs look fine played on Windows Media Player and look terrible once authored? Is it a codec issue, if so I can I fix it?

Please Help

Kind Regards

ChesneX

[edDV]

Tell us more about your "snowboarding holiday video". What format is it? Are you using DV format project settings?

[guns1inger]

Right-click on each clip that is showing this effect (clip - not timeline) and check the field order. I had one installation of Vegas 6 that would randomly chage field order of some clips, even though they were all taken from the same tape. A reinstall fixed the problem.

[chesnex]

Hey edDV,

I am still a bit new to this whole thing. Do you mean my preference settings or my render settings?

Cheers

ChesneX

[edDV]

Hey edDV,

I am still a bit new to this whole thing. Do you mean my preference settings or my render settings?

Cheers

ChesneX

Both are important. The more info you give the better the clues. Are the clips from a DV camcorder or something else? What is the project setting? DV?

When you "render "avi" is this DV-AVI or are you trying to use a progressive format like divx-AVI? All for this helps define what your issue is.

If the clips are DV format, you should be using lower field first settings.

[chesnex]

Hey EdDV,

I have taken some screen shots and attached them of some of the settings I have used. You will notice in at least one of the screen shots that the field is set to "Upper Field First", this is due to some experimenting I have been doing. I have tried both "Upper" and "Lower" field first for the project properties and matched the settings on the individual clips. When I changed the setting to "Upper" and "Lower" the qualtiy of motion was much better however a problem then occured whereby the still image in the background (The Mountains) had a constant flicker.

So basically the new settings have improved the motion but I now need to get rid of the flicker on the still image. I have selected the "Reduce Interlace Flicker" option but it does not seem to do anything.

Any Suggestions

Cheers

pics.zip

[edDV]

What is the source format? DV camcorder? How do you capture?

[chesnex]

EdDV,

It was a DV Camcorder. I used some dodgy shareware to capture. and I no longer have the tapes so cant recapture. From memory I captured at 29fps but it was the first time I had ever done it so I was and still am a bit clueless. The thing that upsets me most is that for the 60+ hours I worked on the project I assumed that what I saw in the preview would be what is output.

Cheers

[edDV]

EdDV,

It was a DV Camcorder. I used some dodgy shareware to capture. and I no longer have the tapes so cant recapture. From memory I captured at 29fps but it was the first time I had ever done it so I was and still am a bit clueless. The thing that upsets me most is that for the 60+ hours I worked on the project I assumed that what I saw in the preview would be what is output.

Cheers

Was it a IEEE-1394 transfer or a video/audio A/D capture card? If the former you should always use bottom field first (PAL or NTSC). If the latter you use what the card specs but often they are top field first.

In the future, always use IEEE-1394 to get a first generation DV format file on the hard drive.

[chesnex]

From memory I believe it may have been the IEEE-1394 format. Unfortunately I did try the 3 different formats (Lower, Upper and None) all with no luck. I find the fact that when set to lower or upper the still background flickers somewhat illogical. If anyone else has any suggestions I am all ears.

Thanks

[edDV]

From memory I believe it may have been the IEEE-1394 format. Unfortunately I did try the 3 different formats (Lower, Upper and None) all with no luck. I find the fact that when set to lower or upper the still background flickers somewhat illogical. If anyone else has any suggestions I am all ears.

Thanks

That would have been encoding not capturing. With DV format over IEEE-1394 you don't make those choices. You are streaming the data from the DV camcorder to the hard disk in a process that results in an one for one copy if done correctly. The field order is set in the hardware of the camcorder and it is always bottom field first for DV format. If Vegas is set to a DV project format and the encoder uses proper settings then all is well.

All I can conclude from your lack of memory is you have been using incorrect procedures and settings to capture and encode. You need to start over, learn what you need to do and then do it right.