Sony Vegas -- 720p Framerate issues

[floz23]

Greetings everyone.

My HMC150 came today, and I'm still currently trying to figure out if I like the 720 or 1080 mode the most (PH bitrate, of course.)

Now, 2 observations with sony Vegas (both 8.0c and 8.1). I hardly use 8.0 anymore...

First: I was under the impression that this camcorder could record in NDF mode (non drop frame mode), leading to exact frame rates, like 30.00p, instead of 29.97p. In vegas, I notice that everything is reported in DF mode, even when I look at the "Properties" of the video in Vegas.

Two: in 720p mode... the 30p is incorrectly reported in vegas as 59.97p (60p). I looked through the manual and I couldn't get an exact answer if the file is actually 30p over 60p (or 60i). This leads to funniness, if you manually set the vegas project file to 29.97p, it trys to "resample" to 30p, which makes the video look like crap.

The 720 24p, 720 60p, and all the 1080 modes all work fine (but still are reported as DF frame rates.)

There is a simple workaround for the second issue that I discovered. Right click on your 720 30p file and select properties. Under the video Event tab, select "Disable resample." -OR- you can change the Undersample rate to 0.500 (29.97 fps).

I will finally say that I haven't had vegas crash on me yet when playing with these AVCHD files. Native editing of all of the PH formats is choppy, but very do-able, and if I select the "Good" preview mode, then its very good. I think some people should try switching to Vegas 8.1 and get 8gb of ram. I currently have 4gb, and I hope that by going to 8gb, everything will be even better.

-Adam

[Barry_Green]

NDF has nothing to do with the frame rate. It has to do with how the timecode counts the frames. The 150 shoots at 23.976, 29.97, and 59.94. All video cameras do, except for the uber-expensive professional models like the F900 or VariCam, which have the option of doing exactly 24.00 or 30.00.

NDF numbers each frame sequentially, but leads to reporting the wrong total running time of your footage (i.e., a minute of footage will show timecode of something like 00:59:12 or something). DF doesn't number every frame sequentially, it skips certain frame numbers so that the reported total running time is the same as the actual running time (i.e., 1:00 of footage will show a timecode of 1:00).

[Rainer]

Floz23, my most heartfelt thanks, you are spot on, trying to cut 720p 30fps Canon TX1 footage on Vegas was driving me mad until I found your post.

[joey101010]

i gotta bump this. i found this after searching for sooo long and it helped me out immensely. i'm sure it will help someone else too.

[DaFireMedic]

This is good. My first thread start after buying the HMC was on this very subject. This is the best answer I've heard on how to handle it in Vegas.

[floz23]

I happy this thread helped someone! Now, the real question is: Where is vegas PRO 9???

-Adam

[handymus]

Adam -

You don't realize how much you just helped me out!! I just spent the last 3 days trying to figure out why my editor was not working correctly because of this..

Thanks!

[Skilled]

I disable resample on all my footage. I will tell you 9c handles 60p much better than 8.

[rambooc1]

The only time i DON'T set the clip properties in Vegas to disable resample, is when i convert 1080 50i footage to 1080 50p footage for use as supersmooth slowmo. Once the 50p is brought back in then the clips are set to disable resample and the clip velocity set for slowmo. From there i render out to 25p... bingo .. super smooth slowmo as if the original footage was shot in 50fps.

Cheers Rambo

[MadHMC150]

i disable resample on all my footage. I will tell you 9c handles 60p much better than 8.

+1