Ghosting When slowing down clips...
 

Hey guys. I'm getting the hang of using 25p clips in vegas now... just wondering is there some way to avoid this ghosting i get when i go to slow the clips down... i've split a clip and am holding down control to lengthen it and stretch out the time, but i get a lot of ghosting in the movement...
Any ideas?

25p is almost impossible to get to look good in slow motion. Shooting a high shutterspeed can sorta help, but it's still only 25fps.
One trick that works with some footage types...
Duplicate the track once you've slowed it down.
Zoom in deep,
turn off Quantize to Frames.
Nudge the top track to half a frame diff than the bottom frame.
Reduce opacity on top track to 50%

This is a de- interlacing trick that sometimes works with progressive footage that has high motion. But...that blur you see is motion blur, it's an artifact of 25p, and there is little you can do about it. Shoot highest possible framerates for best slow motion. 60p is the best affordable framerate available right now (assuming you need sustained recording time), or if it's critical, there are cameras like the Phantom available for rent.

ahhh ! thank you.

I had a feeling 25p would have a problem with this...
its a shame my ancient DV camera was able to handle it well and now my new state of the art HD cam cant !

That doesn't make sense.
You mean your old DV cam shot 50i, right?
So shoot your HD cam 50i. It'll be the same as your DV cam.
More frames = better slo mo.

thanks douglas.
I'm not sure what my dv camera shot at.
I have been shooting at 50i, but converting down to 25p to make editing easier.
I thought 50i meant half frames which were put together as opposed to 50 frames ?

50 *is* half-frames as opposed to 25 full frames, but it's still twice as much motion information... Try using the original source of 50i for your slowmo using the half-offset trick I mentioned. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

ahh i would but i've been having to convert my footage down from a 1080i Mpeg 4 file to a 720p mpeg 2 file to edit it smoothly, maybe i should start converting all my clips to a 1080i mpeg2 file... altho it seems like its gonna take up a lot more space just for the sake of slow motion :(

thanks for all this help by the way !