Slowmo trouble with HMC150 and Vegas

T

TheMusician

Well-known member
I read about this somewhere but couldn't find if anyone has found a solution. I shot some 720 60p with my HMC150, pulled it into Vegas on a 30p timeline and slowed down the clip to 50% with a velocity envelope, and it should make frame-accurate 2:1 slow mo. But I got crazy jerking motion. There is a guy that posted a clip that shows a problem similar to what I am seeing seen towards the end of the clip.

http://www.vimeo.com/1958008

I have tried it on two computers and am getting the same results. Has anyone else had this problem, or does anybody know of a solution? Thanks.
 
Someone said that instead of using a velocity envelope, right clicking on the clip and setting the playback rate to 50% eliminated the problem.
 
That's a really cool effect for a music video :) but pretty annoying for anything else :(

For the record I just tried this procedure with one of the 720 60P samples that were made available here a few weeks ago (the rainy porch shot) and get the same thing too except that the problem was intermittent and only when I slowed footage down more than about 60% also it only appeared in the preview window and not in the final render. By the way, it did not matter which method of time stretch I used they all produced the same intermittent stutter as shown in the vimeo clip.

Oh boy we're finding more and more problems with this AVCHD codec and the way Vegas handles it as we go along, I feel like an involuntary Sony Vegas beta tester :(
 
TheMusician, I was the OP of the stutter problem on a slomo golf shot. I submitted it to Sony Creative Software and received a reply that it was a complex problem that would not be resolved quickly.

I was able to get limited success (i.e., worked most of the time) by doing these three things:

1. Turn OFF my anti-virus/spam etc. I can't believe I had forgotten to do this in the first place but I have gotten so used to Vegas handling DV without problem even if anti-virus is ON.

2. I shortened the clip slightly (click-drag right edge of the clip in a few frames). Apparently Vegas has a problem with the clip boundary if you don't do this - it would often cause Vegas to hang if I didn't do this.

3. My original render was to WMV. I changed to MainConcept MPEG-2 using the HDV 720-24P template.

I would be interested in hearing if these in fact work for other people experiencing this problem.

Oh, one other thing. My original footage was 60p (59.940 Double NTSC) and I put that in a 23.976 project. I then set the playback rate at 0.40 which should yeild frame accurate slomo - at least as far as I understand the way Vegas conforms frame rates. Also, turn Resample off so Vegas doesn't generate any intermediate frames.

UPDATE: I just tried rendering again to WMV and it worked today, so you may only need steps 1 and 2 above.

Jerry


TheMusician said:
I read about this somewhere but couldn't find if anyone has found a solution. I shot some 720 60p with my HMC150, pulled it into Vegas on a 30p timeline and slowed down the clip to 50% with a velocity envelope, and it should make frame-accurate 2:1 slow mo. But I got crazy jerking motion. There is a guy that posted a clip that shows a problem similar to what I am seeing seen towards the end of the clip.

http://www.vimeo.com/1958008

I have tried it on two computers and am getting the same results. Has anyone else had this problem, or does anybody know of a solution? Thanks.
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VideoMaker, I've been reading your posts over on the Vegas forum. I tried a test with your suggestions, and although it improved, it did not solve my problem. I opened a 720 30p timeline and put 720 60p footage on it, and slowed the clips to 40%. I then resized the clip to get rid of the first and last 6 frames, and then rendered. The final clip would work fine for awhile, and about 15 seconds into the clip it began with the jerky motion. I forgot to turn off the resample so I will run this test again, and will try it on another computer. Has anybody tried transcribing using cineform and then slowing down the clips to see if it only has trouble with AVCHD or if it is with any 60p clip regardless of format?
 
Musician, how long is your clip? I am finding that short clips generally work ok if you follow my steps above. But on a 25 minute clip, even if I only render a 20 second segment, I usually, but not always, get the jitters. And I only have the problem with 60p so far. But I haven't tried any long 30p yet. I'll try to do that tomorrow. I suspect that it is a problem ONLY with 60p AVCHD clips - and perhaps just ones from the HMC150. I believe 60p AVCHD has a much longer GOP than 30p.

Jerry
 
Well, I shoot 50P full time with my JVC and although fast moves can get blocky due to the nature of HDV, I never experience these sorts of problems no matter how much I slow the footage down. There's big trouble in the little house of AVCHD ;)
 
Interesting, in my most recent test, I did everything the same using the same computer as I did on the other tests, but this time I forced the clips to not be resampled(under switches) as VideoMaker suggested. This worked much better and made for some very nice slow motion... but it is still not perfect. I get a few frames of jerking on the last piece of each clip in the sequence. This was on a 1:36 video made of 2 clips. Everything was fine except for the last 5 or so frames of each clip. Hmmmm...
 
I've also seen some problems with the AVCHD clips with Vegas. However, my problems all go away when I shorten the clips. I get the stuttering on the last 3 seconds of a 60 second clip. When I shorten the clip to get rid of the last 3 seconds, the problem goes away.
 
VideoMaker said:
Musician, how long is your clip? I am finding that short clips generally work ok if you follow my steps above. But on a 25 minute clip, even if I only render a 20 second segment, I usually, but not always, get the jitters. And I only have the problem with 60p so far. But I haven't tried any long 30p yet. I'll try to do that tomorrow. I suspect that it is a problem ONLY with 60p AVCHD clips - and perhaps just ones from the HMC150. I believe 60p AVCHD has a much longer GOP than 30p.

Jerry
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This is disturbing, as I just purchased the HMC150 specifically for the 60p AVCHD functionality, and would like the option to slo-mo clips.

I was going to purchase Vegas for editing, but is there another package in the same price range that I should get instead that avoids this problem?
 
Musician, last night I rendered my entire 25 minute 720p60 golf swing clip to Cineform intermediate. It was absolutely beautifully perfect.... until about 9 minutes into the clip. Then the jittering started, slowly at first, but growing significantly worse as the clip progressed. This must be some kind of memory corruption issue.

TheMusician said:
Interesting, in my most recent test, I did everything the same using the same computer as I did on the other tests, but this time I forced the clips to not be resampled(under switches) as VideoMaker suggested. This worked much better and made for some very nice slow motion... but it is still not perfect. I get a few frames of jerking on the last piece of each clip in the sequence. This was on a 1:36 video made of 2 clips. Everything was fine except for the last 5 or so frames of each clip. Hmmmm...
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Musician, I received a response from Sony Creative Software Support and I am hopeful this may correct my problem. I have done a few short renders using their suggestion and they worked properly. I am now rendering the entire clip to see if it holds up there.

I have been dropping my 720p60 clip in a custom 720p24 project template. SCS recommended using the standard 720p30 project template instead. I then disabled resampling, set playback rate to .4 and rendered using the standard WMV 720p24 template. As I said, this worked on short segments of my 25 minute clip. I'll post the results of the full render later this evening.

Jerry
 
It appears that the key here is to use the stock 720p30 project template as suggested by SCS. This is labeled HDV 720-30p (1289x720, 29.970) in the Vegas template drop down. Using this, I successfully did the following:

1. Rendered my 25 minute 720p60 clip from HMC150 to Cineform intermediate using 720p60 so it should be an intra-frame equivalent of the original footage. This worked correctly.

2. Rendered to WMV 720p24 a 3 minute segment of the Cineform intermediate with resampling off and velocity set at 40%. This yielded a "conformed" slow motion video, meaning that all frames in the original clip were used - Vegas did not generate any intermediate frames.

To my eyes it hasn't lost any quality by going through the intermediate. But of course, per previous post I have also been able to render the conformed slow motion direct from the AVCHD as well - I just haven't had time to try that on the entire 25 minute clip.

I'm happy now.

Jerry
 
VideoMaker, glad to hear things are working for you. Wish I could say the same, there seems to be no consistancy. I did everything as you outlined using a 30p timeline and rendering out a 60p intermediate. Then I used that to render out a 30p clip by slowing down the 60p intermediate(rendered to MPEG instead of WMV). It worked great right up until about the last 3 seconds - then jitter. I was a little discouraged and rendred out the same clip to a 24p MPEG and the jittering was worse. So I setup a new 30p project, imported the 60p intermediate, slowed it down 50% and turned off the resampling. This time, more than half of the video was jittering. So it is not consistant, and it seems that things are getting more and more goofed the more things you try. If you quit Vegas and restart it, the first edit is always the best, but the longer you try changiung things, it seems to get all messed up in memory. I don't know. I think that if you plan ahead and make sure you have plenty of footage at the begining and end of what you need to be in slow motion, you could trim off the jittery sections, but in all honesty I think an update is going to be needed. I will continue testing and look for a solid alternative, but haven't found it yet.
 
Okay, I have found at least one solution, although it is not cheap. I personally tried the solution that Sony suggested to VideoMaker, and unfortunately it did not work for me, at least not reliably or consistently.

But one very reliable and consistent method is Cineform. I downloaded a free trial of NEO HD from Cineform. It is a standalone tool that you can use to capture video, and also to convert your clips to very high quality intermediates that endure multiple renders better than MPEG-2. I used the trial to convert all my 720 60p AVCHD clips to an 720 60p AVI intermediate. I then put the clips on both a 30p timeline and a 24p timeline, slowed them down appropriately, and got frame-accurate results. Disabling resample was not necessary, an no frames were lossed or dropped, no jerking or jittering, no errors or problems whatsoever. Unfortunately, it is a pretty expensive solution.

I love Vegas and will continue using it, but I am confident in saying that it is not very mature yet with AVCHD editing. I have not had any problems mixing or rendering my footage from the HMC150 except where it involves 60p footage and varying the velocity of the clips. But I feel that it must be how Vegas adjusts untraditional frame-rates of AVCHD clips, because when I tried to create various intermediates within Vegas on 60p clips, it was not able to do it without inducing jittering towards the end of the clip. Cineform is a standalone program, and it converts the footage to a solid AVI that Vegas is very capable of handling and manipulating. I am going to continue to look for other solutions, but if you need something immediately for slowmotion from the HMC150, I would not be comfortable leaving it entirley up to Vegas at this time. Please correct me if you have found otherwise(and let us know your solution)
 
Musician, glad to hear you found something that works. I have heard nothing but praise about Cineform's NEO HD (except the price).

Did you try the Cineform intermediates that come bundled with Vegas? I'm not sure what you give up compared to NEO other than I believe NEO converts your footage to 422 color space, and it is more configurable. In my last post I mentioned that rendering to the built-in Cineform intermediate worked for me.

You access the built-in Cineform intermediates by choosing Video for Windows as your render type, then select (for example) HDV 720-24p intermediate. This uses the CineForm HD Codec V2.8. If this also works for you it might save you some $.

TheMusician said:
But one very reliable and consistent method is Cineform. I downloaded a free trial of NEO HD from Cineform. It is a standalone tool that you can use to capture video, and also to convert your clips to very high quality intermediates that endure multiple renders better than MPEG-2. I used the trial to convert all my 720 60p AVCHD clips to an 720 60p AVI intermediate. I then put the clips on both a 30p timeline and a 24p timeline, slowed them down appropriately, and got frame-accurate results. Disabling resample was not necessary, an no frames were lossed or dropped, no jerking or jittering, no errors or problems whatsoever. Unfortunately, it is a pretty expensive solution.
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Here is the process I have been using. Please let me know if Sony technical support suggested that you do something different that worked for you.

- Start a new project with the HDV 720-30p template.
- Verify and change the project properties so that the de-interlace method is set to none(mine always defaults to blend)
- import 720 60p footage from HMC150 and put it on the timeline(at this point I have tried both setting the properties to no resampling and have tried trimming the first and last second off of each clip)
- Now I render out using the preset AVI HDV 720-30p intermediate template, but click on "Custom" and change the frame rate to 59.94. This should render out a 60p cineform intermediate AVI file even though it is on a 30p timeline.
- I now create a new project using the HDV 720-30p template, verify that the blend mode is set to none, import my new AVI intermediate and place it on the timeline.
- At this point I have tried two different approaches. One is to set the playback properties to .5, and the other is to insert a velocity envelope and set it to 50%, and then I drag the clip to its new final length. At this point I have also tried trimming off the first and last second of the clips.
- Now I right-click on each clip, go down to switches, and disable resample.
- At this point, I render the final output to MPEG-2 using the HDV 720-30p template and click custom and set the video quality to "highest

Result - final seconds of each clip start to jitter violently. Jerry, I am wondering if it just does this towards the tail of a clip and since yours was like 25 minutes, maybe you just didn't catch it somewhere over that longer time. Maybe you could try several shorter clips. Thanks for following this, and let me know if I am not doing something correctly according to the procedure that you have gotten to work for you.
 
Musican, there are a few differences which I will highlight inline below. I don't think they should matter, but who knows. But first, recall that my original problem (the jittering golf swing) was a short (maybe one minute) segment out of my 25 minute 720p60 footage.

Ok, here is how my workflow compares:

- Start a new project with the HDV 720-30p template.
Same.

- Verify and change the project properties so that the de-interlace method is set to none(mine always defaults to blend)
I left de-interlace method at default, assuming it doesn't come into play.

- import 720 60p footage from HMC150 and put it on the timeline(at this point I have tried both setting the properties to no resampling and have tried trimming the first and last second off of each clip)
Up to now I have only worked with the single long clip. Tomorrow I will be doing a number of short clips and will report back how that works for me. I now no longer trim the front and end - going to the HDV 720-30p template seemed to eliminate the need for me to do this.

- Now I render out using the preset AVI HDV 720-30p intermediate template, but click on "Custom" and change the frame rate to 59.94. This should render out a 60p cineform intermediate AVI file even though it is on a 30p timeline.
Same.

- I now create a new project using the HDV 720-30p template, verify that the blend mode is set to none, import my new AVI intermediate and place it on the timeline.
I created my own template HDV 720-24p. It is identical to the 30p except I set the fps to 23.976. I did not set blend mode to none.

- At this point I have tried two different approaches. One is to set the playback properties to .5, and the other is to insert a velocity envelope and set it to 50%, and then I drag the clip to its new final length. At this point I have also tried trimming off the first and last second of the clips.
I also tried both playback rate and velocity envelope. I set mine to 40% since I was rendering 24p.

- Now I right-click on each clip, go down to switches, and disable resample.
Same.

- At this point, I render the final output to MPEG-2 using the HDV 720-30p template and click custom and set the video quality to "highest
I rendered to WMV 24p and HDV 720-24p but left both at the default "good" setting. This might be the source of your problem if it is somehow a memory problem.

One other note. I rendered my entire 25 minute clip to intermediate, but then only rendered a 2 minute segment to WMV and MPEG-2. I was also able to successfully render segments straight from the source mts to these two formats (i.e., did not have to use intermediate). Also, I am on a slow 4 year old PC - Pentium 4, 3.0Ghz, 2Gb ram. I plan to get a quad when the intel releases the next gen in November. Editing AVCHD definitely takes some serious computing power.

I hope you will find something here that will get it working for you.

Jerry
 
Oh Man, I thought I had it! I did everything the same but this time I left the interlace method in my project properties set at "blend". I rendered out my 60p intermediate clip, blah blah blah, and my final Mpeg-2 render looked really good for about 40 seconds... then the inevitable skipping starts! The problem gets translated to the intermediate if you actually sit and watch the whole thing, it starts jittering before you ever try to slow it down and make slow motion in another format.

VideoMaker, like you I was able to render out a small portion of the intermediate and it looked fine, but in the end the problem is still there. I think if you shoot several small clips so that you can render it all out and see the results, you are going to see jittering before it is all over. Let me know how your shorter clip test turns out.

This is a little frustrating.
 
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Musician, I rendered a project made up of nine clips that totaled about 3 minutes of video. I rendered first straight to 7200p60 mpg-2 and it rendered smoothly and played smoothly. Then I rendered to the 720p60 cineform intermediate and it also rendered and played smoothly. BUT, then I applied some color correction to the first event only (vegas color curves) and rendered the project back to intermediate again. The color corrected event was jittery just like we've seen before, and the remaining eight events were smooth. This strengthens my belief that this is caused by some kind of memory corruption.

Recall I am on a slow Pentium 4, 3Ghz with 2 Gb ram. What processor/memory are you running?

I heard back from Matt at Sony Creative Software today and he said he was able to get a bit of jitter in the sample I sent him but it wasn' repeatable. I highly recommend you submit this to SCS technical support and send them a sampe veg and media. When you submit your report they will send you instructions for FTPing to their server. Matt has been very responsive and helpful and hopefully if we give him enough to go on they can get to the bottom of this.

Jerry

TheMusician said:
Oh Man, I thought I had it! I did everything the same but this time I left the interlace method in my project properties set at "blend". I rendered out my 60p intermediate clip, blah blah blah, and my final Mpeg-2 render looked really good for about 40 seconds... then the inevitable skipping starts! The problem gets translated to the intermediate if you actually sit and watch the whole thing, it starts jittering before you ever try to slow it down and make slow motion in another format.

VideoMaker, like you I was able to render out a small portion of the intermediate and it looked fine, but in the end the problem is still there. I think if you shoot several small clips so that you can render it all out and see the results, you are going to see jittering before it is all over. Let me know how your shorter clip test turns out.

This is a little frustrating.
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