Vegas Pro 8 24F/24P Question
 

When importing 24F images from my XHA1 into Vegas 8 Pro, I'm having a few difficulties. The images in the time line appear to only move every 2 frames. When I render to 1080-24P wmv or avi, ghosting/interlacing of two images appears in the preview and on the rendered file.

Where am I going wrong?



- I have set the Pulldown option "checked" to remove downconvert on 24P files

- File Properties:
Templeate: HDV 1080-24p
Field order: None (progressive)
Motion blur: Gaussian
Deinterlace method: Blend ( tried "none" as well; no effect)

- If I right click on 24F clip in timeline:
Format: MPEG-2
Attributes: 1440 x 1080 x 12 (would have expected 24)
Field order: None

Anybody out there.... I've tried a number of things to clear up this problem, but I'm stuck. The rendered footage has interlacing. I shot footage in 24F, preference is HDV(1080-24p), frame rate is IVTC(23.976), and I've tried interlace settings on none, and blend.

Any ideas?

Roger, first of all, I have close to no understanding of this process. Additionally I use the FX1000, not the Canon. That being said I'll try to regurgitate accurately what has been told to me. Caps below are for added emphasis, I'm not shouting!

I don't know how the Canon works. Below is how the Sony works in 24p according to Sony (courtesy of Tim Akin)

"Signals scanned at 24p/30p are converted to 60i (using 2-3 pulldown for 24p) and recorded on MiniDV tape, allowing footage to be played and edited using existing HDV products. In this way, progressive images can be handled in the conventional HDV editing environment."

What the above means (IF YOUR CANON IS THE SAME) is that when you shoot in 24p THE FOOTAGE WILL COME OFF THE CAMCORDER AS 60i. (caps added for emphasis, I'm not shouting).

Vegas does not remove the pulldown nor does it see the footage as 24p, but it STILL RETAINS THE LOOK OF 24P.

Now, if you want to remove the pulldown in order to smooth it out and for it to actually BE 24p footage, you must use Cineform to do so.

Treat your footage as 60i all of the way because it IS 60i unless you remove the pulldown with Cineform. then you can treat it as 24p.

If you are unsure how the Canon treats 24p, then go to the Canon forum or read your manual. But what you want to know is if your footage comes out of the Canon as 60i or not.

Sony Vegas ideally would be equipped to remove the pulldown, but it is not, which really pisses some people off, but that is the way it it.

Hope this helps!

On the weird way your footage is acting on the timeline, if you are using m2t files, is your PC older with a slower processor?.

Jeff,

No, its a dual running at 3.2GHz. No problem processing .m2t's.

I clearly see two frames in the rendered work (rendering to HD 1080-24P wmv) and the work is extremely jittery with any movement (not whip pans). I've attached a frame showing this effect (by putting the rendered wmv clip back into the timeline).

You've not told us yet how the Canon delivers your footage. Remember, IF the Canon handles 24p the way the Sony does, your footage is 60i and you don't want to treat the footage as 24p unless you've used Cineform first to convert your footage. Until then your project properties should NOT be set to 24p, don't render it as 24p, do not try to remove pulldown, etc with Vegas. Treat it as 60i.

If your Canon does actually deliver footage with the pulldown removed (I do not know that it does) then you can treat it as 24p. Other than that caveat, I have no idea what is wrong.

Soon someone who really understands your camera and who uses Vegas will jump in and help you, I'm sure!

Jeff,

Thanks for the help. The Canon XHA1 embeds 24F (Canon's 24P) into 60i. My understanding was that Vegas converted 24F embedded from 60i automatically. Please tell me intermediate processing isn't required!!!!!

When I put a 24F(embedded 60i) clip into the timeline, the clips show 24 frames. The same clip in the media window (before pulling into the project) are 60 frames. I'll start looking at a way to get Cineform or some other package to convert unless someone has a way to show me how Vegas does it.

Thanks again for responding.

Good luck Roger. Chris Barcellos helped me out with this issue re: the FX1000. You can download the Cineform NeoScene trial version. It is fully functional for a week or so. You might have to re-capture the footage though, I don't know. Haven't used it myself yet.

If you're using 24f footage, make sure you're using Vegas Pro 8.0c. If you're on one of the earlier versions, download and install the update and try again.

Edward,

I'm on 8.0c. Is there an intermediate conversion necessary, or can I just set the properties for the project to 24P and pull things into the timeline?

The older 8.0 versions didn't capture 24f correctly. Once captured, you should just drop them onto the timeline.

It is my understanding that Vegas does not and cannot do the pulldown removal from the Canon AVCHD cameras recorded at 24PF. The pulldown is 3:2 (not 2:3:3:2); you can tell such by noting that for every five frames two consecutive frames are interlaced. This article can explain how to remove the pulldown without using Cineform (this method's free), however, it takes a lot of time to process: Eugenia’s Rants and Thoughts Blog Archive Canon AVCHD 24p Pulldown Removal

In fact, I've been looking at the way these AVCHD files are encoded and they are basically high profile MPEG-4 files encoding in an MPEG2 transport stream. Looking through the transport stream standard, it does not look like a .m2ts file would be too hard to re-engineer to include the flag that signals the footage is 24p with 3:2 pulldown. My only question is whether Vegas would even then open the file as 24p, as it says in the help file:

"Right-click an AVI file in the Project Media window and choose File Format Properties from the shortcut menu. The AVI/DV Media Properties dialog is displayed.

This command is not available for clips that are not AVI or DV or those that use 2-3-3-2 pulldown."

Has anyone actually important *any* AVCHD footage from *any* camera and had pulldown detected and remove? If not, I guess in the worst case I could write some sort of frameserving app that would decode the footage correctly and then serve it to Vegas.