Captured clip frame rate
 

New user here with Vegas 7. I shot some HD footage with my Canon A1 at a frame rate of "60i". When I captured it into Vegas, it is shown as "30i". This is confusing me. The project settings don't have anything to do with this do they?

Surely someone has an idea. I don't want to continue capturing clips until I'm sure I won't have to recapture everything to fix a problem. Thanks.

i am quite sure it's the same and you dont need to worry about it.

it's not the most scientific terminology since i would have thought 60i (as opposed to 60p) would suggest 60 frames a second (but interlaced) - which clearly isn't true. so your camera shoots at 30i and vegas imports it as such.

It's the same thing for your purposes. I do wish the whole idea of referring to 60i as having a "frame rate" of 30 fps would go away. Probably way too entrenched for that, though.

It's called "60i" because 60 separate pictures are taken per second, so there are 60 moments in time -- 60 time samples -- captured. True, they are half-pictures, comprised of every other scan line per, but they're still 60 distinct pictures.

Hi David,

Thanks for the additional input. I was still a little confused but I think you've cleared it up for me. Correct me if I'm wrong. My A1's manual says 60i is the same as SD TV. This is more commonly referred to as 30fps interlaced, which is how Vegas describes it. Did I get that right? Initially when I saw 30fps interlaced, I thought 30 half pictures per sec. I could still be confused by it if I try to overthink it. Thanks!

You did get it right Wade :-)
As David said, 60i refers to 60 half-pictures (or fields) per second.
Since one frame = 2 fields (odd numbered field and even numbered field), 60 of them (when interlaced) = 30 frames per sec.

Thanks Mike.

I'll tell ya. Another thing that added to my confusion was a frame rate option in Vegas's project properties that was referred to as "double NTSC". I wasn't so sure they weren't talking to me with that one.

You can use that if you have, say, 60p footage, because it's 60 (or 59.94) actual frames per second.