Vegas won't "Print to tape" a progressive project...

S

Stephen Frost

Active member
... or, more precisely, it switches automatically to interlaced.

I have a 25P timeline consisting of progressive material recorded on a DVX100B (I live in PAL land). I want to create a MiniDV Master tape of the complete project. When I ask Sony Vegas (Pro 11) to "print to tape" I select "PAL DV Widescreen" (the material was shot in squeeze mode) and then when it starts to create prerendered files Vegas switches the project settings from progressive to interlaced. I can actually see it do this where the project parameters are displayed under the preview window. It successfully creates a bunch of prerendered files, as expected, but these are interlaced, so when I print to tape some segments are interlaced (the prerendered ones) and some are progressive (the sections that didn't need prerendering). Of course this is no good - not only do the interlaced segments look, um, interlaced, they also seem to cause some odd-looking pixelation on playback.

I have tried this on two different cameras - firstly a handycam, which I use for capture into Vegas, and secondly the DVX100B, just in case it was the camera at fault, but I get the same problem with both.

I have looked everywhere through the project preferences, but I can't find anything that might relate to this.

Anyone had the same problem and found a solution?

Many thanks for any help you can give me.

Stephen
 
Thanks very much for your replies. This raises two questions in my mind:

1) If MiniDV must be interlaced then how come I can record progressive DV on my DVX100B?
2) Why is the tape I generate by the "print to tape" method interlaced (I can see this in its properties when I capture back into Vegas) whereas a tape recorded by my DVX100B is progressive? Vegas is surely doing something wrong here?

Clearly DV has some way of recording progressive images, even if it's cheating it somehow.

David - print to tape PAL DV widescreen is exactly what I did and it gave me the problems I described. If you have any more thoughts, that would be appreciated.
 
Stephen, are you positive that you recorded to 25p and not 24p?
The reason I'm asking is that, in NTSC land, that camera records in 29.97 or 24p.
If it was recorded in 24p, than take a look at Sony's free whitepaper on this camera and how to print 24p to tape.
It's second from the bottom at 24p and Panasonic AG-DVX100 and AJ-SDX900

Mike
 
Stephen,
Are you rendering your completed project out to an .avi master progressive file before trying to print to tape? That has always worked well for me before outputting to tape. I'm in NTSC land so I use 30P for broadcast and print to tape backup.
Ken
 
PAL DVX100s shoot only in 50i or 25p.

25p is imaged as true 25 frames per second, but it must be recorded to tape as PAL DV. PAL DV is 50i only. What it does is split up the 25p frames into 50i fields. Vegas reassembles the frames and considers the footage 25p when you capture it. But it's on tape as 50i.

Playing from tape still gives you the look of 25p.

Vegas must print to tape as 50i, so it does the same thing the camera does -- it splits up the 25p frames into 50 fields. It makes two fields from each frame and records them in sequence. Nothing about the look or motion cadence will change when it's printed to tape, and if you recapture the footage, it will be the same as if you shot it on the camera.
 
Thanks everyone - some interesting and helpful insights, especially now understanding that Vegas is doing the right thing after all!

However, I do still have the original problem. When watching back the Mini DV I've generated, the sections that required prerendering have odd artifacts in them. Some are very small - the only way I can describe them is like tiny bubbles - and some are more noticeable - blocks of white that flash quickly into the image. My first thought was dirty heads or dodgy tapes, but the problem consistently goes away if I print to tape from a project that requires no prerendering - i.e. no transitions, text or colour correction. Now I've started to take a much closer look within Vegas at a rendered AVI of a section with transitions and/or colour correction and I'm seeing problems there too, before printing to tape. If I render the same offending section as an MPEG-2 the image is clean. Then I tried generating an uncompressed AVI (boy that was huge!) and again the problems went away. But of course I can't print to tape an uncompressed AVI. It is all very weird.

I've had to generate a Digibeta tape from an MPEG-2 file as I have a screening rapidly approaching, but that's not ideal, obviously.

Well, I'll keep investigating and report back if I find a solution. Do feel free to share any ideas you may have. Your input is much appreciated!
 
Last edited:
I've tried rendering some new AVIs but the problem persists. Here are three screengrabs. In the first one, a rendered AVI, there is what a call a "bubble" in the top righthand window of the house. It is not very visible, but much more so (and annoying) in the moving image, as the bubble moves and fluctuates. On the big screen it will be unacceptable. In the second screengrab, a rendered MPEG-2, the bubble is not there. In the third, a rendered AVI with no Titles and Text, again there is no bubble.

View attachment 43832View attachment 43833View attachment 43834

If you line these jpgs up one on top of another on three separate tracks and solo each one, you'll get a clearer idea of what I'm seeing I think. So my question is, if the "bubble" is caused by the presence of the Titles and Text, why is it not there in the MPEG-2 render? If it is caused by the AVI render process, why is it not there when the Titles and Text are removed?

I've carried out the process on both Vegas Pro 11 and Vegas Pro 10. The problem is identical in both. I suppose it might be a bug that has persisted across the two versions, who knows?

I'm beginning to think there isn't a solution to this, but that the problem is prowling somewhere deep within the dark corridors of the Vegas software.
 
rs170a said:
Stephen, none of your image links work for me.

Mike
Click to expand...

Oh sorry Mike. They work for me but that might be because I posted them? I clicked on the image link at the top of the reply box to include them in my reply. Can anyone tell me if I need to do anything else or if I'm doing anything wrong? Thanks in advance for any help. In the meantime I'll see if I can fix it myself...
 
Well, I don't know -- not something I've seen before.

Short-term -- why do you want this on tape? Won't a DVD suffice?
 
David Jimerson said:
Well, I don't know -- not something I've seen before.

Short-term -- why do you want this on tape? Won't a DVD suffice?
Click to expand...

The film is being screened at my local cinema and they can project it from either Digibeta, MiniDV, or DVD. I've had the odd drop out from DVD discs from time to time and don't really want to risk it if I can help it. As an insurance policy I've had a Digibeta tape created from an MPEG-2 file, so unless I solve the problem in the next few days we'll project it from that. Actually there are some aspects of the consequences of MPEG-2 compression that I quite like (but not others!) so I'm happy enough.

It would be nice to solve it for future projects, but I suspect people working with SD are probably quite a low priority for Sony, these days. I've contacted them but no reply as yet.

Thanks for taking a look, David.
 
You could try simply recreating that segment from scratch, render it out, and see if it does it again. Shouldn't take very long. If it doesn't, then there's something in your project which is causing it.
 
David Jimerson said:
You could try simply recreating that segment from scratch, render it out, and see if it does it again. Shouldn't take very long. If it doesn't, then there's something in your project which is causing it.
Click to expand...
I did copy and paste the segment from Vegas Pro 11 into Vegas Pro 10, therefore creating a new project, and got the same problem. What I will do is re-load the material from tape as perhaps that got corrupted somehow. I'll let you know how I get on.
 
David Jimerson said:
You could try simply recreating that segment from scratch, render it out, and see if it does it again. Shouldn't take very long. If it doesn't, then there's something in your project which is causing it.
Click to expand...

Ok, I got around to doing this. Everything was recreated from scratch, including re-capturing the video file from the original tape, and all the details of the text (placement, size, colour etc) duplicated exactly. I was quite hopeful that this might work, but no luck. The bubbling is still there and is exactly the same.

I wrote to Sony about a week ago but have had no reply as yet. I wonder if they ever will.

I'll keep trying things, if I can think of any, and post up any developments.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top