SD problems in Vegas 9
 

My system (i7 860, 8gig ram, Windows 7 Vegas 9.0c 64 bit) handles AVCHD like a dream. Rock solid, smooth and fast. But it won't do SD: Drops frames downloading, loaded video is choppy, or red, and/or crashes. Same thing in Platinum Pro 9 (32 bit). These are normal clips, they download with no problems via firewire through Windows live, they play back smoothly in Windows Media Player and Virtualdub doesn't see anything wrong with them. Anyone with the same problem or suggestions?

Update: If I resize to square pixels in vdub and no compression, everything runs smoothly. But that is somewhat tedious and takes up a lot of space. (And forgot to mention Geforce GT240 graphics) Any suggestions?

What if you capture straight DV-AVI through Vegas? I'd use the "external" capture in Vegas to capture SD via firewire.

What format is Windows Live actually saving as? You can use GSpot to determine the codec being used.

Hi Edward, thanks for your response. External or internal makes no difference. The Live codec is Microsoft dv video 1 (dvsd DVC/DV Video in GSpot). My current working workaround is converting to 3:4 PAR (compressed) via VirtualDub and resizing to 16:9 in Vegas.

External capture is for SD. Internal capture is for HD (so it DOES make a difference). If you're capturing SD, I'd try with Vegas' DV capture program or Scenalyzer Live. I'd want to start with straight DV and not have to go through extra gyrations of creating new files.

Hi Edward, thanks again, sorry, I wasn't clear. I tried Vegas DV capture also. As you suggested, it seems to be a codec issue: the footage comes dvsd compressed from the camera and I note Microsoft has said this codec is obselete, not sure of the details but it may mean its not handled totally well in either Windows 7 or 64bit. Decompressed (if you can handle the storage) or recompressed with Microsoft video 1 (if you can handle the possible slight quality hit; I really haven't noticed any) deals with the problem. Checking the "adjust source media to match project.." takes care of the PAR. A minor nuisance overall, I won't be doing much SD in future and would have hated to go back to XP.