Ajit,

We're getting closer. I'm even further intimidated by the wealth of options this program provides, but changing to 16:9 does fix the aspect ratio......except when I play either the file itself or preview the output, it's choppy. This goes for Media Player as well. This is regardless of whether I use Lagarith or Huffy, running HV20 Pulldown on a raw .m2t file. I went ahead and fixed the aspect ratio, then did a SAVE AS and renamed the file, and viewing that in Media Player is choppy. Am I missing a step?

And I appreciate all the info, very useful. I'm learning a lot. :)

Rick,
I would suspect that this choppiness that you are seeing in your video is merely due to its size! If you are making it of correct size using VirtualDub. Try resizing it at a small size (say 640x360) and save it with Xvid compression. Try playing the resultant file and it should not look choppy.
If the above mentioned thing is true for your video. Then dont worry about the choppiness. Go ahead with the original size files, edit and then go for making your final product.
As in my case its going to be a normal DVD (with the HD files saved for later when HD-DVD writer/players are a bit cheaper).
But in case your resized video also does not play smoothly than I would guess that problem is somewhere else. (excessive motion in video, shutter speed etc. etc.)
Hope this would help you.

Rick,

I have seen some choppiness viewing the output files through WMP as well, but when I put them onto a proper 24p timeline in vegas and play them, they play very smoothly. After re-rendering them back out of Vegas, in my normal output format, the previous stuttering they showed is gone.

As for the pixel size (forcing the squished aspect ratio), I didn't see anything specifically related to that that I can control from VDub. The closest I could find would be do force a resizing. I've grabbed a few samples for that and am playing with it right now. I've been trying to put together my kids little league DVD this weekend, so haven't had as much time to investigate this issue yet. On another forum regarding this issue, one person said that they were able to work around it by installing XVid. I cannot account whether that really resolved it one way or the other. I have that installed myself and at least all of my Lagarith compressed files show the proper apect ratio. It could be that, but I certainly cannot confirm that it really is the case or not...

--Steve

My movie files don't get choppy until I run them through HV20 Pulldown to remove the Pulldown.....what exact kind of difference am I supposed to be seeing after I do this? The only thing I see in my 24P videos that I don't really like is the blurring when I move the camera, is this supposed to take care of it? I want to do the right thing and make the videos as good as possible, but is the difference even noticeable?

Resizing doesn't help....once I put it through HV20 Pulldown, it seems the choppiness is here to stay. Steve, I have Vegas 4.0, and keep hearing about this 24p timeline, but can't find it. Do I need to upgrade?

Also, what is xVid? Do you have a download link? Where is it used?

XVid is yet another codec and can be found here: http://www.xvid.org/.
Since the Lagarith codec has nothing to do with the XVid codec, I don't see that having it would have any impact personally, but somebody on another board mentioned that after installing it, it had helped them. Shouldn't hurt to try.

Vegas 4.0 might not have the 24p timeline. Does Vegas 4.0 even do HDV? My first version of Vegas was 7.0, so I don't have any experience with the older ones, except for what I've read & heard in the boards.

Steve,
I do have Xvid installed my computer and my clips behave exactly the way you mentioned. The choppiness is not there when taken to vegas etc. and also in the the final output. But the avi file does judder a bit when viewed directly with vlc, wmp or virtualdub. But when re-encoded to a smaller size resultant clip does not judder.

@Rick, in case your still have choppiness in your video after installing xvid and resizing please try to check your shutter speed. I was wondering if you could upload a small sample clip for us to see.

Hmm....I think I need to re-summarize what I'm experiencing. I may have confused the issue.

Any video taken directly from the camera, is fine, even when I rename it to .wmv. It looks great to my untrained eye. If I want to do a little editing in Vegas 4.0, I can work with the .m2t file, then generate a WMV from that. I do notice a tiny loss of detail doing that. But the result is fine.

If I take an .m2t file and run it through HV20Pulldown, I get this:

<A HREF="http://www.barr26.com/personal/movies/cosmote after 24p pulldown - lagarith.wmv">After 24p Pulldown using Lagarith</A>

You can see that the video is not choppy, but the perspective is lost, it's no longer 16:9. It's when I open the above file in VirtualDub that it gets choppy. Simply opening the file and trying to play it is bad. I went ahead and changed the perspective to 16:9, then did a SAVE AS and chose a different file name, no other options. The resulting file was too large to put up here, but it was basically very choppy AND had lost the perspective fix I had put on it. I opened that in Vegas, rendered as a .wmv, and it wasn't choppy anymore, but was also not 16:9.

I think I could do away with VirtualDub if I could just get HV20Pulldown to not mess with the perspective of my files. As for xvid, I installed the program, but was there a simple codec that comes with it that I can install and use with HV20Pulldown?

And it sounds like I may have to bite the bullet and upgrade my Vegas. :)

Rick, I know what you mean in regards to being choppy. I think it's probably a combination of the file being so large (once rendered through pulldown.exe)and the computer processor you are using. I have a core duo 2.4 with 2 gigs ram and mine also plays back choppy when rendered out to a huge AVI file. Once you go back into the Vegas timeline and render out a smaller (more manageable) file then it plays smooth. V-Dub also screws with the aspect ratio. I just fix it when rerendering in Vegas.

Rick,
I think I understood what you are saying. Its just a small issue which you can fix without upgrading.
The information that is lost while doing hv20pulldown removal is that the pixel ratio is 1.333 and nothing else. So do the following...

1) take a clip (*.m2t) and run it through hv20pulldown.
2) Open the resultant .avi file in virtualDub.
3) right click and tell the aspect ratio to be 16:9 (not required)
4) Go to video -> filters ; choose resize and give this 640x360 size (output)
5) again in video go and choose some compression you like (I selected xvid)
6) Save as avi. (new file name)
7) Play the resultant file.
8) It should have correct aspect ratio and no choppiness.


Let us know.


Edit: I think Ian is correct. Thats why this resizing is going to reduce the load on your computer and should play smooth.

One other option is that when you bring the AVI back into Vegas, make sure you have the pixel aspect ratio set to 1.333 before you re-render out to your smaller file. My guess is that VDub winds up setting it to 1.0 for square pixels. I'm still trying to find a way so that it will not do that.

As far as HV20Pulldown.exe messing with the aspect ratio, it itself doesn't have anything to do with that. The automation exe only automates the process of ushering your clip through DGIndex & VirtualDub. It by itself doesn't touch the video files in any way at all. The closest that it does to that is by selecting one of the compressor scripts (which just came out of VDub) or by altering the DelayAudio setting in the .avs template produced by DGIndex. It absolutely will not do anything other than that.

For the re-sizing, you can have the exe automatically do that as well. Just add the resize VDub call in the compressor script that you are sending into VDub. WIth the last update of the exe, the templates are stored in a .XML file that you can update as you see fit.

-Steve

Ajit, that worked great, thank you! The resulting AVI file has decent filesize and looks terrific. The only problem now is that when I try to open it in Vegas for editing, only the sound portion is available, the video never shows up. What's going on there?

Steve, I like the idea of being able to fix this in the script itself so I don't have to go back into VirtualDub and wait a second time for rendering. I'm just not sure which parts of it to edit. Here is my default script for Lagarith:

<Name>Lagarith Lossless</Name>
<Script>VirtualDub.RemoveInputStreams();
VirtualDub.stream[0].SetSource(0x73647561,0);
VirtualDub.stream[0].DeleteComments(1);
VirtualDub.stream[0].AdjustChapters(1);
VirtualDub.stream[0].SetMode(0);
VirtualDub.stream[0].SetInterleave(1,500,1,0,0);
VirtualDub.stream[0].SetClipMode(1,1);
VirtualDub.stream[0].SetConversion(0,0,0,0,0);
VirtualDub.stream[0].SetVolume();
VirtualDub.stream[0].SetCompression();
VirtualDub.stream[0].EnableFilterGraph(0);
VirtualDub.stream[0].filters.Clear();
VirtualDub.video.DeleteComments(1);
VirtualDub.video.AdjustChapters(1);
VirtualDub.video.SetDepth(24,24);
VirtualDub.video.SetMode(3);
VirtualDub.video.SetFrameRate(0,1);
VirtualDub.video.SetIVTC(0,0,-1,0);
VirtualDub.video.SetCompression(0x7367616c,0,10000,0);
VirtualDub.video.filters.Clear();</Script>

What would I need to do to set the resolution to 640x360 and using xVid, or any other compression?

You are welcome Rick!
Well let me tell you that this resizing was just a test showing you that nothing went wrong with your footage or conversion. Its just that a little information missing from the big avi file (aspect ratio) that is creating all the problem.

And NO you don't have to create that particular size (640x360). That size was a very small one that still maintained the 16:9 ratio (so was very easy on your computer not choking it to show the choppy video).

now to edit in vegas, I would ask you to do the following steps--

1) Take the original avi file in vegas.
2) set the properties of the project (File->properties) to 1080HD-24p ( I dont remember the exact name; can tell you later when I get back home)
3) drop your avi files into the timeline
4) righ click over the clip on the timeline and get into properties
5) define pixel aspect ratio as 1.333 (HDV).
6) Output from vegas as you wish, and try to play that. (It would have correct aspect ratio but might be still choppy due to the file size).


On a general note, I would like to tell all these are problems of HD. the HDV format (*.m2t files) have the same bit rate as DV and thus can be edited (and played) without problem.
But as soon as you convert them to some other format (like avi) they become too big (thats what we need to do while removing pulldown) and handling them smoothly needs a hell lot of computer power.


@Steve, Sorry for my previous post which sounded as if your exe is messing up the aspect ratio. What I wanted to mean is that the hv20 pulldown process messed it up not your hv20pulldown.exe!!

Ajit,

I'm going to save this info, but I think I am going to need to upgrade. I just don't have those exact options in Vegas 4.0 (this is seeming to be more of a problem as we go along). In my project properties, I have:

width
height
field order
pixel aspect ratio
frame rate

There are a bunch of templates available, but none for HDV. Should I just set my height and width to widescreen equivalents until I can figure out how to upgrade?

Rick, I see if you dont have any HD or HDV templates probably you would need an upgrade.
Anyway in the "project properties" (File -> Project properties) you can set
width -- 1440
height -- 1080
field order -- none (progressive)
pixel aspect ratio - 1.333
frame rate - 23.976


Edit:- The above setup would be the template HDV 24P; and in case you set width 1920 and pixel aspect ratio 1.0 it would be HD 1080 24P

and if you go to clip properties (by right-clicking on any 24p clip) and then the media tab (hope they are there)
you can set

All the above parameters exactly the same and hit "apply" to get perfect video!

If none of this options are there than you would need an upgrade soon!

good luck!

Vegas does not like the XVID fourcc and is misdetecting which codec to use. You can fix that by changing the fourcc to DIVX when you encode. Go to Virtual Dub -> Video -> Compression -> Options -> Advanced options. You should find an option fourcc (4cc). If you've already encoded, you can change it with the Nic's fourcc changer which should have come with your XviD install. Xvid is still doing the encoding not Divx, it's just masquarading itself.

Steve:

I'm using your HV20Pulldown.exe program.

Looking at the Script Editor it appears that the line:
VirtualDub.video.SetCompression(0x75796668,0,10000,0);
is the one responsible for the codec that's used for compression.

How do you figure out the codec information that's in the parentheses?
i.e. Lagarith (0x7367616c,0,10000,0) Huffyuv (0x75796668,0,10000,0)

Does VirtualDub have the ability to render out files based on quicktime codecs? Specifically the Avid DNxHD codec http://www.avid.com/dnxhd/index.asp.

Thanks,
Rastus

Rastus,
Capture the avs/d2v/mpa files generated by the exe and then feed the AVS directly to Virtualdubmod. Set the compression to the QT codec with all the settings you want. Then go to File -> Save processing profile. This generates a VCF file. Open it up. You can copy and paste this to a custom profile in HV20Pulldown.exe so you can use whatever codec you want.

Mike:

Thanks for your reply.

The Avid DNxHD codec does not show up in the VirtualDub compression dialog box.

Does VirtualDub does have the ability to render out files based on quicktime codecs? I'm not sure it does, but I have little to no experience w/ VirtualDub.

You wrote, "Set the compression to the QT codec with all the settings you want." I assume you mean VirtualDub -> Video -> Compression as you mentioned in post #25? Is that correct or is their another place to do this?

Thanks,
Rastus

Thanks Ajit, and Mike. I don't have those options. Sadly, I think my version of Vegas is simply too old, and in light of that, I am going to lay off a bit on trying to perfect my process (I'm keeping this thread handy, however, you have provided a ton of valuable information). Frankly, the video that I am taking and editing looks great to me, with the exception of some slight detail loss after I render in Vegas.

What exactly does removing the 24P Pulldown do to videos?

Rick, the pulldown removal process basically strips the interlaced frames out of the 24p footage and leaves only the progressive frames behind. This gives you a pure progressive clip. You can leave the interlaced frames in there and do some blending etc, but often what you will see will be some "ghosting" in the final output file. Depending on the clips it may or may not be noticeable.

--Steve

Rastus, Now that you mention it. The QT codecs don't show up in Virtualdubmod. I must have seen them in Vegas. Sorry my mistake. Vdub needs a vfw compatible codec and it appears the QT ones are not. Which is a shame. I'm not familiar with Avid DxHxD ... is that better than H.264 and Sorenson3?

Rick, are you on Vegas 6 or much lower? The resolution loss is probably due to your codec choice. Funny thing, I knew someone with Vegas 6 which is where I learned to use the product and I thought that was more flexible than the new 7 in terms of encoding. As long as your videos look good then you should be happy.

24p pulldown removes the ghosting/blurring that you get with the interlaced wrapper. Vegas is usually smart enough when you tell it to blend/interpolate to give you decent video. Same case with Movie Maker when encoding WMV9. On occasion you'll see a glitch. Some people don't notice the glitch until they've compared footage with and without pulldown running in front of them. Sometimes your display might be kind enough to mask it from you. I watch most of my footage on a PC and add effects so the ghosting/blurring/combing is more apparent to me with my unsteady footage.

Steve, I pretty much understand what you are saying about how the pulldowne.ex file removes the interlced frames. I have mentioned my workflow in another post before but I was told that I was doing it the wrong way. Before the existence of your software I was using MPEGStreamClip. What i di was...

...Capture my files with HDVSplit (which seperated all of the clips perfectly).
...Brought my clps ito the Vegas timeline and edited away
...Rendered the file to MainConcept MPEG2 (M2T), but instead of the 25,000,000 bit HDV rate I did it at 60,000,000 bits 29.97 upper frame first
...I ran that .m2t file through MPEG StreamClip (knowing that MPEG StreamClip supported pulldown) and it came out perfect.

Someone in this forum explained to me that because I had to click on the deinterlace button within MPEGStreamClip that I was not really looking at "true" progressive frames (I understand the reasoning behind that but that program "does" support pulldown removal and it seems clicking deinerlace was the only way to do that). Because of what he said i gave up on that method....but.....then came your HV20Pulldown.exe. So..what i did was try out that same method again but this time i used your program instead of MPEGStreamClip. My reasoning for doing this was because if it worked then there would be no excuse of deinterlacing. Guess what? It worked. Every time. All ghostig/blending was gone and the video was progressive all the way through. And this was only usig your program at the very last step.

It looked so good that I decided to do some tests. I used your program on a RAW m2T file and rendered it out as file "A." I took the same RAW m2T footage and placed it on a Vegas timeline ...rendered it out to another M2T file and then ran that file through your software as footage "B." To my suprise both footage were identical....a perfect match...not only in size...but I blew both of them up 400% and they matched pefectly even down to the grain of the picture. I opened them both up at the same time in two instances of VDUB and walked through the entire 4 minutes of footage, FRAME BY FRAME and they were perfectly matched. NO DEGRADATION AT ALL. Both files were the same size and frame length.

At this point I am saying to myself...how does the software do its pulldown removal? It must somehow intelligently find the interlaced footage and automatically remove them. There is clearly no deinterlacing done with this software so that ruled that out. I posted my findings in the forum but the only logical response i got was that it worked because I only used one footage and there was no cuts, transitions or any kind of editing in the footage on the timeline. I said fair enough and I went back and repeated the whole process...but this time while on the Vegas timeline I added other footage...did cuts...fades..and all kinds of editing. Guess what...the results were exactly the sme...pulldown was removed from the Vegas rendered file and there was absolutely no degredation of the file compared to the RAW footage.

So I ask myself? Why am I even bothering to go to an intermediate codec when I am able to render a whole edited footage with the same exact result. At this point it does not seem to make any sense.

I challenge anyone on this forum to give this a try. You will be hard pressed to find any difference in the Processed and Unprocessed M2T files (so to speak). What I have been doing is using the HV20Pulldown.exe as the very last step giving me only one large file and then using that file to make smaller more internet friendly copies which still looks magnificent. this would save people a ton of hard drive space. Tell me, is there somethng that i am missing here?

I sincerily apologize for the long post.

Ian

Ian, you have a point with your workflow. Since you're doing all your editing in interlace you can do pulldown removal at the end. I'll have to confirm if I don't get any artifacts from cadence that doesn't quite join evenly. I used to have that problem when I was using the MPEG Streamclip from the front-end.

As for MPEG Streamclip, I did read that 1.8 had full support for 23.976 3:2 pulldown removal. If it came in at the end of your process, I can see where it wouldn't be much trouble to drag one large mpeg-2 to process rather than a bunch of clips.

Could you confirm if these are your default project settings: HDV 1080-60i, 29.970 Upper field first, 1.3333 Aspect, Rendering: Good, Motion blur: Gaussian, Deinterlace: None

Mike....that's exacly the same settings I used. This is cool. I'm glad someone else is finally giving this a try. I really need to confirm this.

edit: Correction..instead of Good it should be Best.

Ian, you have a winner! I followed your method and used HV20pulldown.exe on the intermediate file (mainconcept mpeg2) and the effects applied were not affected by 3:2 pulldown removal. There were some artifacts on text I had on the front of the test project but I think that is more to do with the WMV9 codec because all the other text that followed were fine. The effects I applied were overlay text, one with blurred overlay text, and image rotation. I compared the 24p of the individual clips (also WMV9) versus the total project and had pulldown as post, there were no glaring differences.

I can see the advantage of this in total saved time:
1) No need to pre-render to true 24p
2) Editing m2t (though lossy) is still "faster" than fullsize lossless especially for slower systems
3) Space requirement: 12GB per tape + project mainconcept render + final render

Here's the result of the project:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0vz70u <- 59MB (mainconcept mpeg2 was 908MB)

I used 'good' on this render, didn't see your comment to use 'best' until after ... but it's still good. I have to change the way I work with videos a bit with this new workflow. Pulldown removal should be done to create the 24p render ... that render can then be converted to a different codec/format/aspect afterwards.

This is great. I knew it would work. I have been doing it this way for almost two weeks now and was wondering if anyone else was doing the same. I'm glad it woked for you. My initial reason for doing this was because I was hoping there was another way of working without using these huge intermediate files and taking up lots of hard drive space.

I suspect if HV20pulldown.exe used flags to remove the pulldown then this method would not have worked because I believe the flag information would have been stripped from the "Vegas Rendered" file. But it is obvious that it utilizes a whole different method to remove pulldown and that is what I based my initial experimentation on. What I am even more amazed at is the quality of the final ouput.

Ian, yes if we had flags we'd probably be using forcefilm rather than TIVTC and it might not have worked. DGIndex (which is called by Steve's HV20Pulldown.exe) probably works by comparing frame to frame to determine whether its a mixed half-frame or the same progressive frame (only so many combinations of 3:2 / 2:3 you can be in).

For me, this is great for an all PF24 project as it saves on the pre-render time (it takes my fastest PC 1 night to re-render a full tape to WMV9). If I'm mixing 60i and PF24 sources, I suspect running IVTC in post will munge the 60i source. I'm hoping it won't ... if someone has mixed sources and some time I'd like to see how it turns out.

Hey Ian, this workflow is incredibly efficient, but I have what may be a really stupid question- is there any inherent benefit to exporting the mainconcept mpeg at 60 mbits as opposed to the default 25?

Honestly Tim, I don't know. I would think so. Knowing that the HDV codec is already a lossy format I look at it like this:

If you take an orginal paper document and made a copy of it on a standard office copy machine the copy usually appears to be a little different (whether a little lighter or other artifacts introduced) but if you had a super high end copy machine (one that copies at about 3 times the normal resolution) then you are guaranteed more of an exact duplicate of the original.

So...in my analogy...HDV would be like the standard copier...but when you bump up it's capacity 3 times (in this case almost 2.5 times..25,000,000 to 60,000,000) then you have a better chance of keeping or duplication its original resolution.

Sorry for this corny analogy...but...that's where my mind is at.

Edit: I know there are probably others laughing at this but...blah blah blah.

Delay Audio Error
 

Hi Steve:

I've searched the forums for an answer but no luck. I have the same problem that another poster had, but unfortunatley, updating the HV20pulldown.exe didn't solve my problem. The error I keep getting is:

Avisynth open failure:
Script error: Invalid arguments to funtion "Delay Audio"
(m:\working\cliptest.avs, line 2)

Even though files appear to have been produced to the work folder, the only file that will show up in Vegas is the Audio file. I installed, and placed everything to the letter per instructions, but no luck. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Steve Boutin

Steve,
Your problem sounds like a DGIndex problem. Make sure you are using DGIndex 1.49. Unclick the 'Remove DGIndex temporary files option.' Dump your m2t file in a directory that has no spaces or special characters. Make sure you are using the correct template.avs. Then give it a try. If it doesn't produce an mpa file we'll have to look at it again.

Contents of template.avs:
v=MPEG2Source("__vid__")
a=MPASource("__aud__")
audiodub(v,a)
TFM(d2v="__vid__")
tdecimate()
DelayAudio(-0.222)

error
 

OK, thanks, I'll try that.

Steve Boutin

It works.. but,
 

Thanks, changing the template worked, but now I get the 'out of disc space 4gig file size FAT32 partition' error. Is there a work around for this? BTW, what I saw of the clip before I got the error looked GREAT!

Thanks,
Steve Boutin

Steve, FAT32 has a 4Gig limit to files. If you're working with uncompressed or lossless formats you should convert to NTFS (if you've got a special condition like Linux dual boot there are ways to r/w these fs nowadays, if you still don't like that one you can install ext2 filesystem drivers). If you don't mind the performance hit from long GOP, you could convert to a lossy format like WMV.

Ntfs
 

[QUOTE=Mike Dulay;707180]Steve, FAT32 has a 4Gig limit to files. If you're working with uncompressed or lossless formats you should convert to NTFS.QUOTE]

That's what I'm going to do. I Googled the procedure to convert to NTFS, and it looks pretty simple to do, and fairly safe. Would it be better to actually format an external drive, instead of converting my C: drive. Or is that even possible?

Thanks
steve Boutin

I've not had any problems with NTFS conversion of a boot drive before. As for using external drives, USB 2.0 is usually fast enough but I still prefer to use internal drives. In 24p conversion, you're more CPU bound than I/O. Converting the external is probably safest if you're not comfortable with messing with C:

Thanks for picking up on those answers Mike. I haven't been on the boards for about a week now, went to go to NY for my grandmothers funeral.

Steve, I won't use FAT on any of my drives and haven't for years now. NTFS is certainly the way to go there. For external hard drives, I recently picked up a 500g WD myBook. Had some frustration with them about the firewire cable (mine was bad and getting a replacement was a real pain) but it works great, either USB 2.0 or Firewire. Like Mike, I do prefer the internal drives as well, but the externals are really cheap now and you can just unhook them and store them like you would your tape, until you need them again.

While in NY, I took about 4 hours of tape. I shot everything in 24p, mostly in cinema mode (a little in TV mode). This is the first time that I have shot everything in 24p and boy I'm hoping it comes out! I'll be spending the rest of the weekend here doing the conversions back and forth. Got some nice shots from the plane of downtown Chicago (not 24p though) as well as just outside of Vegas with the canyons. I might have to toss together a "From the Plane" video if I get the chance.

--Steve

Sorry to hear about your grandmother, Steve (S.). Glad you're back. Hope your 24p footage comes out clean. Ironically, now I'm experimenting with 60i -- its tricky switching from the "progressive" mindset.

Steve B., NTFS is quite robust especially for external drives. Knock on wood, I haven't lost a file from an accidental power off. USB 2.0 is fast enough. Technically, Firewire 400 has more available bandwidth but some people on the forums have reported issues with the HV20 hooked up on the same card concurrently.

Thanks Mike, we had been expecting it but of course had been hoping that she might improve (she had alzheimers and was in a very rapid decline over the past month).

So far the clips are looking pretty good. This is the first "real" test of my own application aside from some test clips! Most of them have come out really good so far but some will need a little color correction here and there. Of course I left my tripod at home, so there's a bit of motion as well, until I remembered to turn on the image stabilizer! Got some nice clips of a retired destroyer (The Sullivans), a cruiser (Little Rock) and a WWII submarine (The Croaker). I was more surprised by some of the footage shot out of the airplane window during the trip though. Got a beautiful shot of downtown Chicago just before sunset as well as a nice pan down the strip in Vegas (looks like from the Wynn casino down to the Luxor). The plane was moving at a perfect pace along the strip so I didn't really have to do too much.

60i huh? Yeah, for some clips I still prefer it just because 24p hasn't yet come into my full comfort zone. For the kids little league, there's no way I was going to do 24p with all of the fast panning required. I figure it'll be a few more months before I can truly start appreciating what this camera can do!

--Steve

It's all good now
 

Thanks guy's for all the help. I bought PartitionMagic, and didn't have to do anything except click the mouse a couple of times, everything works great. I'm also using a MY BOOK USB drive, it's a real workhorse. My internal drive was already formatted to NTFS, I didn't even know it. Anyway, everything is good now. Thanks again, Steve B