help a new vegas user out! - imported HD footage pixely and blocky

C

c.g._eads

Veteran
new to Vegas here so maybe you guys can help. I imported a few full HD tapes using Vegas' capture tool. While looking at the footage, it gets pixely and blocky very frequently. Like every second or two. I looked at the footage in a seperate viewer (that viewer that starts with a "V") and it's the same thing. Anybody have any ideas why this might be happening?

thanks,
Chris
 
hey David,

thanks for the reply. if it is interframe compression blockiness, what does that mean (i.e. is that just there when you look at footage but doesn't get outputted to the final export? Or is it a permanent part of the captured footage)? And if it is permanent, is there a way to get rid of it?

If it was just that, I might be able to deal with it, but when I play it through Vegas, it's accompanied by the sound cutting out (the sound does not cut out on the original tapes). So it's just difficult to edit when the footage frequently breaks up.

Let me know what else you need to know and I'll be more specific.
 
an update. nothing really seems to be working as far as playing back video. Usually the video will just go - and stop - go - and stop - go - and stop, in about 1 second intervals. Occasionally it will cut to black for a second, then go right back to the start-stop routine. Also, the big blocky pixels (that i mentioned earlier) will come up, simultatenously eliminating the sound. This also happens for a second or less. What in the world is going on?

I am watching the video with the "Draft (auto)" option on.

p.s. I am using a 3ghz pentium system with 2 gigs of RAM. One of the reasons I switched to Vegas was because a friend of mine was using an AMD 2 ghz with 1 gig of RAM and said he could edit HD just fine. So I feel like I'm overlooking something. I would go out and just buy a newer system, but since everything comes with VISTA now, I'm afraid that the upgrade will only bring on more compatibility issues. I feel like I have nowhere to go.
 
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Draft is the worst quality possible.

Try changing that?

I'm not really sure what else you could do.
 
HDV is "full HD," assuming it's being used in the generic sense and not the current HDTV marketing sense -- I just need more specifics.
 
I assumed FULL HD was 1920x1080p. HDV is 1080i and that too with a 1440 1.33 par right ? Does that qualify as full HD too. Hmmm the learning never stops huh.
 
Oh ! would have helped if you said HDV. This could even be a tape problem. Did u use a master quality tape or ordinary dv tape ?
 
i'm actually using a master quality tape. It's funny because I usually don't. But I really wanted this footage to be great so I spent the extra money. Now, here's the kicker. And I don't know if I'm going nuts or what, but something really funny happened. I decided to review the footage on my HDTV. I wanted to see if the footage was okay on the tapes. Well, I started playing it and sure enough, the tapes would start and stop, start and stop (not exactly how they would on the computer - the image would freeze for much much longer while watching on the television). I started freaking out.

So I went over to the camera, which was propped right next to the TV, and picked it up to fool with it. As soon as I did, the image played smoothly. Then I placed it back down, the image started stuttering again. Picked it up? Smooth footage. Set it back down? Jerky again.

Finally I placed it on the ground, away from the television, and I didn't have any problems the rest of the way. ---- uhhhh, HUH???

The only thing I can think that's happening is that the TV signal is causing some sort of interference in the camera. Is this even possible? And if so, could that have been happening while capturing footage onto my computer as well?

Man, now I'm really confused.
 
Okay, I figured it out. This goes up there on the all time list of "duh" moments. Although it was an honest mistake. I know there is no one here who will have the exact same problem as this, so it's not even worth telling you how I solved it. But I'll do it anyway to close out the thread. I had recently bought an external USB 2.0 hard drive, a seagate 500GB. I played around with it to see if I could edit video on the thing but it was a no-go. I had named the hard drive "Seagate" or something (or so I thought). I stop editing video for awhile and come back after a couple of months and start dumping my footage onto the computer. Now, since time had passed, I forgot all the names of my drives. And there was another drive called "The Video Drive" which I was sure was my internal hard drive. You can see where this is going. After dumping a bunch of -[said HD footage I'd been talking about] onto "The Video Drive", I finally realized that I had named the EXTERNAL drive "The Video Drive". And that my internal drive, which was also a seagate, was named "Seagate". So I've been trying to edit off a freaking USB 2.0 external drive this whole time.

Anyway, problem solved.
 
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