I have noticed something interesting with my 25PsF video that I don't understand. When I play it back with VLC with deinterlace off and take a snapshot, the resulting picture is lacking a lot of lines at the bottom (it can't even be displayed by some software, like Nero Photosnap Viewer - but you can display it with the Windows own Picture and Fax viewer, or Paint). When I switch deinterlacing on, the snapshot is complete (it's also complete from the V1E interlaced video, or from the Canon A1 progressive and interlaced).

Can somebody explain why that happens? Perhaps the missing bottom lines have something to do with the true 25PsF resolution?

Here is one such "incomplete" snapshot (to upload it, I had to convert from png to jpg)

UPDATE: the previous uploaded pic didn't have full resolution, this one has - and is reported as 1920x1088 here.

UPDATE:Unfortunately, the second one also gets scaled down when uploaded - hence jagged edges which are perfect in the original; don't know why...I also added a snapshot from the same clip with bobbing=on; the scan is complete but aliased lines are clearly visible.

UPDATE:Finally, both uploaded snapshot *are* full resolution after all; when downloaded with IE they must be maxed using the maginifying glass cursor tool. Then you can clearly see the difference: the first (left) picture is not de-interlaced and has no jagged edges, while the second (right) one is bobbed and has plenty of aliasing. The questions remain:

- why on earth cannot we play back (through HDMI or component) with the quality as in the first picture, ie. without deinterlacing?

- what does the missing bottom lines phenomenon come from?

You can record up to 1080-lines, but the question is what comes from the EIP. Given the number of CCD pixels in a column (540) there is an upper limit to the number of lines of V rez. that should be captured. (Way less than 1080.) This number is determine by the Nyquist value. A low-pass filter SHOULD remove all information above this number before the A/D to prevent aliasing.

When Piotr says too much, he means raising the filter higher than it should be. This allows more V detail which is why we see twitter. Aliasing is extra NOT REAL detail, and is visible as the dancing noise.

Well said... Of course, we should not get into a battle of V1 vs A1. Obviously, some users have had bad experiences with the V1 and are very bitter. However, if you try to understand the camera instead of bash it; you might begin to like it. Piotr is a prime example of a user who is trying to find a solution to a so-called problem with the V1E. Misinformation about any camcorder doesn't do anyone any good.

In my opinion, and this is only my opinion. The picture of the V1 and HVX 200 looks better than canon's A1/G1. So my decision for a camera is between those two models. However, I'll wait until NAB to make a decision. I'm hoping Sony will come out with an update to the V1 with 1/3rd inch CMOS sensors. After all, CMOS is the better sensor for High Definition. Why you ask?

Have you ever wonder why it seems that HD video is more noisy than SD video from CCD cameras? Well, It is because the S/N ratio of CCD-based cameras degrades ~3 dB per octave. For example, if a CCD camera has a standard definition S/N ratio of 62db, in high definition it will be 54db. Of course, you can apply more noise reduction but at the expense of lower resolution (1).

CMOS cameras, on the other hand, are capable of reducing noise and maintaining resolution because the noise-setting bandwidth is at the pixel amplifier rather than the video output amplifier, and since the pixel-based amplifier’s bandwidth better matches the imager sampling frequency, the CMOS output buffer’s noise is usually negligible, and the result is a higher S/N ratio (2).

These facts were obtained from an article on broadcasting high definition television called, "CMOS vs. CCD: Changing Technology to Suit HDTV Broadcast." Hopefully, you find it useful.



Additional Sources:

1. K. Mitani, M. Sugawara and F. Okano, “Experimental Ultrahigh-Definition Color Camera System with Three 8M pixel CCDs,” SMPTE Journal, April 2002.

2. M. Loose, L.J. Kozlowski, A.M. Joshi, A. Kononenko, S. Xue, J. Lin, J. Luo, I. Ovsiannikov, J. Clarke and T. Paredes, “2/3-inch CMOS Imaging Sensor for High Definition Television,” 2001 IEEE Workshop on CMOS and CCD Imaging Sensors, June 2001.

Sounds like a great theory and one that I had hinted at some time ago except it doesn't apply!
The A>D converter is converting lines, not columns so it's only a factor in the H direction.
All else being equal, same sensors etc when they're being clocked interlace V res is reduced by 30% as line averaging is applied to contain line twitter. This improves S/N by 6dB. Note this is line averaging which is quite different to a low pass filter.
When clocked progressive line twitter is impossible (assuming it's displayed corrrectly!), so line averaging is turned off. You get the full res but 6dB less S/N.

The above is from a Panasonic white paper, sorry I can't find a link to it anymore.

Bottom line is a progressive scan video camera, no let's stop calling them that, a digital film camera, takes a sequence of still images, film cameras, RED, SI-2K, D20 etc none of them will employ line averaging or limit V res in any way. You want to display moving images at full V res from them on interlaced displays, well without processing you're going to have the potential for line twitter.
If you doubt what I'm saying take my 1080 res test image, my P displays have no problem with this, a full 1080 lines of V res. Try displaying a HD res chart, on a display that's displaying P correctly you'll get to 1000 line no sweat, on an interlaced display at around 700 line it'll fall apart.
The question might be, should Sony have done something to limit V res so the progressive scan images would display correctly on legacy interlaced displays, fair question. Are the other HDV cams that record P doing this in camera, I suspect so, I've not read of one offering 700+ lines of V res.

I'm a few days away from Sony's Full HD presentation, be interesting to see what they have up their sleeve, maybe they have a HDTV that'll display the images from the V1 correctly.

Bob, just to make it clear - my monitor can display your chart with no problems; thanks for this great test!

Great, step 1!

So on the same monitor, same everything do you have issues with twitter on images from the V1E?

If anyone's interested the ISO 12233 res test chart should come in handy for seeing what you monitor(s) are doing. Digitise it to 1080p HDV correctly framed, no AA filtering. I'd post a copy but it might be copyright, A Google will find a vector PDF version of it.

The first step in testing anything should be testing your test equipment, yes this is measurabator stuff. Sorry but I spent a lot of time working around a standards lab, this was drummed into me relentlessly.

So your first port of call should be to take the camera out of the test. When and only when you know your test system is upto the task at hand then bring the camera's images into the test system.

YES - everything the same, the monitor fully capable of clearly showing your chart with all lines distinguishable - yet the 25PsF is twittering when fed from the camera via component, or played back from a captured raw file with VLC bobbing.

No twitter at all when fed from camera compressed through firewire, or played back from VLC with deiterlacing off.

I'll repeat what I have already stated many times: the component input on my monitor (as well as the component and HDMI inputs on the Bravia HDTV I tested) are doing to the 25PsF from camera exactly what bob deinterlacing does to a raw captured file played back from the HDD.

OK
but just to be really clear. If you're feeding that monitor by DVI from a PC that's very different to feeding it via HDMI or component.
What happens if you print that test image to tape and feed the camera to the monitor via HDMI or component playing it back?

See when a monitor is connected via DVI from a PC it's refresh rate, de-interlacing etc is being controlled by the PC. My Dell 2407 is a good example, it displays the 25PsF perfectly via DVI from a PC out of Vegas, feed it component from the camera and yuck.

What you've seen using VLC ties in exactly with this, VLC lets you emulate what HDTVs are doing, mostly wrongly too.

I'm not a full beliver in the "theory" for exactly the reason you said -- the A/D is sampling along rows.

But, we do see aliasing on rows, even with the V1U. So something equivelent must be happing as cameras are "sampling" an image vertically. Nyquist still must apply. I just don't know what or how.

Moreover, the E really does have significantly more aliasing vertically than does the U. It's not simply that the camera does not filter enough. My U works exactly like you describe. But, Piotr's does not. He is recording crap in the same 1080 HDV that I have. Something is fundamentally different -- so inherently different that Sony could not simply "adjust" it. Therefore, I think the "theory" is correct--except it's not the A/D.

The last question I'm waiting for an answer to from Sony is: does the V1 do row-pair filtering for interlace. In the past it has always been done. But, the V1's sensitivity does NOT change by 6dB. This is a clue it may not be used. If it's not, a low-pass filter can be used in or before the EIP. But, no mtter HOW it's done-it works fine on the U models. So it is a differentiating factor.

Aliasing happens when a frequency above 0.5 the sampling frequency is allowed to get into the converter. For example with a A>D converter clocked at 1Khz a 1,001Hz signal will produce an ouput from the converter of 1Hz.

For this to happen in the V res, even though the converter isn't working on rows there might be an issue. This camera is employing 3 chips and producing a Y signal by interpolating them, quite possibly that signal contains more than 1080 lines of V res and certainly that could cause aliasing problems.

I think though we need to be careful, line twitter is only a problem with interlaced displays, aliasing can be seen on both I and P displays.

I can see this issue with my 1080 line image. Using Vegas and other programs to downconvert to 720 I can get either a set of fat lines, what looks like graduated fills of varying frequencies etc or a screen of grey. The screen of grey is what I should get but I only get that using bicubic interpolation (Best), all the aliasing problems occur using nearest neighbour (Good).

So yes, potentially you might be onto something with an idea you proposed a few days ago. The camera might be internally creating an image with more than 1080 lines and sampling that into 1080 lines. If not done carefully aliasing could occur. This issue will only occur with an image containing enough detail of course. I believe it's been known to occur in the SD world by using HD glass on a SD camera.

A new firmware load enable the FireWire output from my HD cable box. I can record to D-VHS both 1080i and 720p programming. (No copy protect is on all 16 HD channels!)

And now I can switch my HDTV between the Cable box and D-VHS deck. Both feed analog component. The cable box is obviously softer. The detail from the DVHS VTR is amazingly high -- too high -- and looks like Piotr's S=8 but without the twitter.

So Piotr's questions about METHOD may be unnecessary. It's clear the same TYPE can be very different depending on the analog output (and input) circuits. Even when HDMI is used, unless the HDTV is ALL digital, there is a D/A and low-pass filter on its output.

For now, I have created (in Vegas) a 1080/25p MPEG-2 clip out of your chart and played it back with VLC. As long as interlacing is off, it plays perfectly (of course the lines are not as clearly separate as with a still picture, yet distinguishable). But with bobbing on, the flickering is so awful my eyes can hardly watch it for more than a couple of seconds!

Bob, what's the point of printing it back to tape - I can only do it as 1080/50i anyway? Or am I missing something?

UPDATE: I have rendered another clip in Vegas, this time using the minimum possible Gaussian Blur in vertical direction; while the flickering is easier to watch, the lines are no longer distinguishable. No big surprize!

I would once again like to express my gratitude to Steve and Bob (first of all - there were others whose input I should also have mentioned), who - I think I can say it safely now - have helped us all establish the V1E/P cameras are not guilty of the "flaws" with their 25PfS video presentation. If I can recreate this flaw with a 1080-lines chart, it's clearly a display device problem (or more specifically: the way a display device is treating the 25PfS signal). The only thing that beats me is how Sony could have released a camera that uses a format which, for the sake of all interlaced playback equipment backward compatibility, is actually not compatible with most up-to-date HD viewing devices. And even worse, instead of informing the community about this fact, they advise to simply turn the sharpness down to 3. Dear Sony, this is not a professional attitude! Turning down sharpness is against the very idea of HD video, and it doesn't solve the problem - a slight line twitter is still visible.

Sorry, should have included a warning about staring at it for too long :)

Open a 1080 50i HDV project, drop image onto T/L and stretch it out a long as you need it for. Render to m2t file and PTT.

The Sony Vegas guys have told me that what will come out the HDMI and component ports of the camera will be identical to what you get for PsF. The V1 is only capable of outputing fields on both those ports.

That test image was created in Vegas BTW.

The point of it, perhaps none.
When you say you played the clip back in VLC, how is the monitor connected?

DVI, Component or HDMI?

What I'm getting at is the monitor may well react differently when it's fed via those 3 different paths. DVI is a pure digital connection, the screen refresh is set by the PC and pixels are mapped one to one, Component is analogue video and HDMI is digital video. By my understanding with the last two the monitor has to process the signal to display it.

I suspect what you're seeing with VLC is pretty much what you'll see going to the monitor via HDMI or component from tape, the monitor is bobbing the image creating the flicker.

Bob, my ATI graphics card / Fujitsu-Siemens monitor combo enable me to playback (with VLC, from an NLE, or any software that uses video overlay in general) with *BOTH* the digital DVI and/or the analogue Component. There is no much difference between them, apart from the fact that the component HDTV output from the graphics card is more dynamic ("punchy") than the DVI (but of course they can be tuned to match in the ATI Catalyst control center).

So, when I say it's OK with deinterlaing off and awful with bobbing on, I mean both interfaces - the DVI and component.

UPDATE: After a second thought, I must add that the above is a bit more complicated, actually. The thing I'm sort of uneasy about is: why do I need to enforce bobbing in VLC to recreate the twitter even through component, which itself should be doing to the captured 25PsF clip exactly the same it's doing to the live V1E output when fed through it? It beats me...

Piotr,
first off, thanks so much for all your hard work on this.

I don't really have an answer as to why you have to use Bob on the component outputs to recreate the problem, could it be that without it the video card is sending frames?
As far as I know that cannot be done, a component connection only supports fields but I'm far from well educated on what component connections are capable of. However if that were the case it would explain a lot given that the camera itself can only output fields.

By the way, have you tried using the Median filter instead of GB in Vegas?

Yes Bob I have - it offers finer control indeed, similar to the Gaussian Blur in Premiere, thanks for that hint!

You are saying the line-twitter only appears when 25p is displayed and is not "in" the recorded video from a V1E. Correct?

Which means it should also be seen when 30p is displayed. But I've not seen it and there have been no reports of it from V1Us. Which means it can't be the PsF system.

Moreover, the video you sent me had more than twitter -- it had dancing dot aliasing noise on fine details. I don't have anywhere near this level of aliasing at 30p.

All this tells me there is must be something unique to the V1E.

My theory of aliasing from the A/Ds is wrong -- thank you Bob. But, I remain convinced that something to do with greater V rez in the E/P units is correct. And, I'm equally convinced it has to do with the need for E/P units to record 576-line rather than 480-line SD video. Because the SD signal is derived from the HD signal, it seems logical that the E/P units "have" greater HD V rez -- before the video is encoded and recorded.

Why? I'm not sure without understanding the insides of the V1 we'll ever know.

Steve, I tend to agree that the R50 V1 differs from the R60 model - your explanation of this difference may be accurate. I believe it is a quantitative rather than qualitative difference. I saw similar aliasing and mosquito noise in the 30p clips. I didn't see line twitter - but of course all 24p or 30p clips I ever saw were downloaded from the net and played back from the computer, and my own clips watched this way do not flicker, either.

Out of the methods of post-processing the 25PsF materials tried so far (selective Gaussian Blur in vertical direction in Vegas and Premiere, antialiasing filters etc) I found the v=2.5% GB in Premiere was most effective (99% of line twitter removed while the V-rez reduced only slightly and the H-rez untouched). I have tested even more solutions and now think an even better one is the Canopus Flicker Reduce filter; I'm uploading my "garage" clip with sharpness 7, encoded in Edius with this filter.

I will add the link to this clips in a while; please compare it with your results from FCP and share your opinion.

UPDATE: Here is the link to the abovementioned clip:
http://rapidshare.com/files/20590009...ker_reduce.m2t

Steve and Bob:
It's very important that you check it, as the Canopus Edius Anti Flicker filter effectiveness on eliminating twitter and flicker from the 25PsF video is astonishing! In fact, I have added it to my clip with Bob's 1080 lines chart - the result is an absolutely clean video, even with bobbing enabled in VLC! I wish I knew how this filter differs from all I tried previosuly in how it actually is doing the magic.

Are you certain the dancing dots are aliasing?
The amount of them is very dependant on light levels and they taper off away from the edges. This looks to me like what's left after the level sensitive DNR that Sony have said they're using.
What also makes me doubt it's aliasing is it's apparent on both vertical and horizontal edges. What confuses me though is they're quite different in nature to typical chroma noise, they're bigger than one pixel and they're only black.
I've had to push the camera hard to make them really noticeable though.

1) The fact that your twitter is so bad and I don't have any -- tells me there is a real difference between units. It is only quantitative.

2) Now about making HD DVDs. I tried creating a real 24p file. The burning application would not accept the fame-rate. So, the only thing I can burn is 24p with 2-3 pulldown added!

3) Which raises the question, given how difficult it is to remove 2-3 pulldown from source video using FCP, is it worth the trouble just to have a 24p timeline?

A) One is supposed to not cut-to a judder frame. OK -- what happens if one does? (You can learn to spot the judder frames in the timeline so one can avoid them -- if it's really important.)

B) What happens when you edit and break the 2-3 cadence at each edit point? Since the cadence in the output file will not a perfect cadence -- your HDTV's deinterlacer will not be able to follow it. Which means 24p will be deinterlaced incorrectly. Does this matter? Does it matter when 80% of HDTVs can't correctly sense the 2-3 cadence even on a test signal?

I'm wondering if it's worth all these issues just to get 24fps motion judder. It's not like anything you shoot is going to fool anyone into thinking your video is film. And, it's not like very many people shooting with a $4K camcorder are going to transfer to film.

I think the dancing dots, marching ants or mosquito noise (whatever you call it) is indeed aliasing. I'm encouraging you again to download the s=7 clip I encoded with Edius aniflicker filter; not only is the twitter gone but even with bobbing imposed and through component, the noise around the garage roof bottom edge and on the trunk is almost gone!

Around 20% of the films submitted to Sundance this year were shot on DVX100 or similar camcorders and 24p. Virtually all of the SlamDance entries, and same for the XDance entries were shot with sub 10K camcorders shooting 24p or resampled to 24p. There were several entries I viewed that were shot on the Canon XLH1.

I'm not a big fan of 24p for most things, but there is no denying the elephant in the room. Marcus van Bavel or one of the other transfer houses such as DFL could likely provide an extremely accurate number of how many sub 10K camcorders are used in the digital media submitted to their transfer houses.
There is at least enough work to keep them in business.

Here's a link to a test clip I shot a few weeks ago:

http://www.yousendit.com/download/T2...Z1A1bmcwTVE9PQ

I think it pretty clearly shows what I've been talking about regarding noise.
Sorry it's a big file (147MB) and pretty boring stuff so only download it if you've got bandwidth to spare.
This is deliberately badly shot to try to 'provoke' the camera.
Make of it what you will.
And sorry it's on Yousendit who require you to sign up to download.

I've downloaded it and yes it looks very clean. I don't have a HD monitor here capable of displaying interlace but all VLC modes show it cleanly.

I did a little research and it would seem that you can send frames down a component connection. This might explain what was worrying you before. The camera is sending fields, your video card unless told to bob is sending frames.

post deleted for errors

If you have 720p you always send frame sat up to 60p. And with HDMI you can send 1080 frames at up to 60p.

Sorry Steve but from what I've seen there's some glaring errors in what I assume you're saying.
I can convert 25PsF to 24p, frame for frame in Vegas. I can then insert pulldown and create a 60i m2t file, I posted a link to exactly this a few days ago. Only thing I haven't investigated is doing Advanced pulldown.
I can take the same thing back into a 24p timeline with Remove Pulldown enabled and get back the 24p. The only thing I come up short on is being able to set the P flag on the tape. This is hardly a new challenge as far as I know, DB, SP, DV and probably most other industry standard tape formats leave you in the same boat, including footage from the DVX100.

Same goes for 25PsF, OK, I've got to render it as 50i and print that to tape, so what? Same deal applies to every other tape format out there, from VHS to DB and HDCAM.

In the case of the camera it makes zero difference from what I can see, 25PsF or 50i on tape is going to come out the HDMI or component ports the same way. Realistically the flags aren't that much help, just saves you loging what it was shot in.

This is nowhere near the issues Canon's F mode creates, the only way to play the tapes is in a Canon camera. And once you get it on a T/L then what , you're going to have to PTT as 50i anyway unless you've got a CineAlta deck or a Canon camera on hand.
And then for broadcast, as far as I know there's no standard even being discussed for 1080p broadcasting and when there is it'll probably be 60p.

If you want to gripe about anything, well I for one think it'd be nice if Sony came out with a HDV deck that played it all, what's a post house to do when handed a 25F tape?

There is always 24p and 25p DVD. It is SD of course but even the sony site states that a great use of the V1 is to create true 24p DVD's. This has usually been the delivery format of those shooting 24p with the DVX100 or Canon XL2 camera.

As for not authoring a 24p HD-DVD that is the fault of the highly limited HD-DVD authoring software we have at this time. HD-DVD sadly only supports 1080 24p sitting inside of a 60i stream with flags sort of like how 24p DVD works. With proper authoring and encoding software we should all be able to at some point create a HD-DVD with the proper flags set. The limited specs I could find did say that 24p was supported for 720p but there was no 25p support. If 720p 24p doesn't work right now I would have to take a guess that it is a limitation of the current crop of HD-DVD authoring software.

If Vegas itself will not export export a 23.976 with pulldown file then the next best thing would be to export a true 23.976 file and use a stand alone encoder such as the Main Concept encoder to encode the mpeg2 file with the proper flags.

Since HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are still pretty new I'm sure most people dealing with 24p will continue to do it the way we have for the last few years which is to either deliver as a 24p DVD or deliver a image sequence to a film lab, both methods which are listed on the SONY website.


As for editing 24p without removing the pulldown, you have to be very carefull. If your project is 100% cuts only and you cut on the right frame then you should be ok. As soon as you add any type of rendered effects or animation those effects will get rendered as 60i while the video under will still be 24p inside of 60i. This is going to not only create a funky look with the effects having a different style of motion compared to the video but also really mess up any pulldown detection hardware.

"Then I rendered to 1080 60i HDV but in the MainConcept mpeg encoder set the frame rate to 23.976 + 2-3 Pulldown and moved the quality slider to 15.

Vegas will render the file with a .m2t extension and although I haven't tried as yet you should be able to PTT this file."

Bob, did you try PTT? My friend said that the problem was the V1 wouldn't accept anyhing 24p. Perhaps, the camcorder does need certain flags set. Perhaps it thinks you have a ripped movie.

I'll delete my post as I think I have figured out a way to fool the HD DVD burning software to do 24. No point in doing this for 25p if the players can't play it.

I understand that many people still deliver in SD. But, HDV has been around for about 4 years -- some claim it will be "replaced" by AVCHD within another year. There are those who bought into HDV because they must deliver HD. The lack of support NLE support is horrible. Given Bob's "how to do it post" I find it amazing that that Sony software and Sony video have not worked together to promote this capability.

As far as I know both BR and HD DVD movies are on the disc at 24p.

HD-DVD supports 25P movies. This caused an outcry actually. BD supports 25P through Psf. Just like HD broadcasts support 25P.

What is so difficult to understand Steve?

TT

The process is documented in the manual. Also from way back when the DVX100 came out the Vegas team had a white paper on handling 24p and converting between 24p and 25p.

The trick with adding pulldown for HDV is it's done in the MC encoder, under the Video tab > Frame Rate Select 23.976 + 2-3 Pulldown. There's no template as such but a simple task to create your own, again explained in the manual. I believe the manual can be downloaded by anyone and the white papers are also freely available from the Sony Vegas site with a little digging in the Knowledgebase

I'd suspect the reason we can't get a 25PsF or 30PsF file out of Vegas is a limitation of the Main Concept encoder rather than Vegas itself. I'd not be in the least surprised to see that option becoming available at some time. It's hardly a pressing need though, we've been coping with film telecined to DB etc for a long time.

http://pixeltools.com/tech_hd_dvd.html

Specs are very hard to find but here is a $3,000 HD encoding tool that lists the formats supported by HD-DVD. This list has nothing to do with what the current HD-DVD authoring programs can support. For example Pinnacle Studio HD-DVD authoring I'm pretty sure wouldn't support any form of 24p since Studio itself doesn't support 24p. It seems as though Pal users are kind of left out in the cold when it comes to 720p HD-DVD. Your options seem to be to either encode with duplicate frames to make it 50p or convert time shifted to 24p. I have no clue if 24p would even work in a Pal region but I assume it would. The 50p wouldn't be all that bad either because due to the GOP compression the every other frame would be a 100% duplicate so it would take up very few bits if any at all. Has anybody tried just encoding 720p 25p into a 720p 50p to see if that would work in their HD-DVD authoring program? The same would work for 24p as well. 2 out of every 5 frames would be total duplicates and wouldn't need to take up any bits so the encoding should look just as good as if it were just 24p encoded using the same bitrate. The amount of space used should be pretty much the same as well so encoding 24p, 25p or 30p as 50p or 60p should look almost exactly the same. The only difference is that instead of the player having to add in the extra frames to make it fit within the 50p or 60p specs the video is already fit to those specs.

The only HD DVD player does NOT until a firmware update at some point in the future. I posted the exact quote fromToshiba a few weeks ago. If you really have any interest -- you can go look for it.

I found your post, but you said you not actually done a PTT. So have you actually had your V1 write a Vegas made file to tape?

That's where my friend is stuck. The V1 will not write the the Vegas 24p timeline to tape.

Spot should it do so? How?

Steve, after you open Print to tape from Vegas Tools, when it detects the V1 connected it only offers the choice between 1080/50i or 1080/60i. These optins are not fixed, and only show after a camera is recognized - so probably there is a possibility to PTT 24/25p to some other cameras?

That is irrelevant. The HD DVD specs allow 25P (i.e. progressive) as an option for studio film delivery. BD mandates 24P for film delivery across all regions.

25P will/can be delivered as Psf in 50i on both formats.

TT

Once you've had the encoder add the pulldown to 60i and produce a m2t file, you simply PTT as 60i.
I didn't physically try this, I can if you like but I can think of no earthly reason why it will not work.
I can take that m2t file back into Vegas with pulldown removal enabled and get back the 24p on a 24p T/L.

Or I can disable pulldown removal, take it into a 60i T/L and edit as such.

As far as I know this is what has been done with DV for years.

You can PTT 25p as 50i also, exactly the same as 25PsF, all that's missing is the flags. When you capture it back this is even easier to deal with on the T/L, you just change the Field Order to None - Progresssive and presto, you have your 25p back again.

Exactly, this is what I did. So the workflow for the 25PsF is there; the only thing still missing in this puzzle is: how to tell a HDTV to weave instead of bobbing!