Astar, thanks for the tip and recommendations. 

I dowloaded Media Info from SourceForge and ran it on my .mts files. 
I expected to see what you had suggested... that the Display Aspect Ratio would be 4:3. 
But Media Info reported 16:9. 
I found a good thread on this forum named "Is 1440x1080 considered a 4:3 resolution?"  
The answer, it seems, is no. Non-square pixels are the norm for 1440x1080. 

I'll consider taking your advice and converting the .mts files to something else. 
But I'm a little reluctant given that I've already put in several hours of editing. 
What sort of instability might I expect if I don't convert? 

Thanks in advance. 

Sorry for the redundant posts. I thought I had lost the first one.

Aud2Vid, most of the material I shoot is like yours (long concerts, etc.)

That's interesting, vtx. What genre?

The HS-P82 looks like a great piece of gear. Do you use its pre's and converters, or go external?

In my opinion, if the native mts footage is working OK then don't convert it.

Also, that 1440x1080 footage is probably meant to display at 16:9 with PAR1.33. Hence MediaInfo and Vegas are interpreting it correctly.

Aud2Vid, most of the material I shoot is like yours (long concerts, etc.)

That's interesting, vtx. What genre?

The HS-P82 looks like a great piece of gear. Do you use its pre's and converters, or go external?

 

Sacred and secular choral, classical orchestral, jazz, and occasionally a band at church.

The HS-P82 is superb, though quite large for a bag (for me). Hence, I'm happy to keep it parked on a desk for remote audio recordings. When new, it wasn't the most expensive 8 channel recorder, but it was still some coin. And, yes, when I don't take line level feeds, I use its preamps and converters: they are excellent, transparent, and very quiet. (FYI: my comparison are mic pres in my Sound Devices 302.)

I tried multicam, and it is definitely the way to go. I scrapped the previous work and started over, but still saved time overall. So thanks Nick & Old Smoke for the suggestion.

I used Plural Eyes to sync up cam1, cam2, and hq audio before going into multicam mode.

But I have to report one problem with multicam. After I completed my edits and rendered, I had a reason to split the cameras back into separate tracks. I clicked on Tools->Multicamera->Expand to Multiple Tracks.

One of the resulting camera tracks worked as expected, but the other wouldn't playback. The video was black, and the audio was silent. I could see the thumbnails of the footage on the timeline, but the gaps between thumbnails were mauve instead of gray. I thought maybe the track was muted, but it wasn't. And soloing didn't bring it to life, either.

Anyone know what the mauve color indicates?

Incidentally, the track names became blan when I applied Expanded to Multiple Tracks. It seems like they could have been preserved.

Not sure what you are seeing, can you post a screen shot? May I ask what your reason was to split the tracks? Maybe I know a workaround or it is something I can take care of earlier in the project if the same happens to me. To be honest, in the past 6 years I never ever had to split the tracks, there where always ways to correct the edit without seperating the tracks.

It think it's not the track which is muted but the event itself. Right-click the event and see if muting is selected under "Switches".

When you expand to multiple tracks after multicam editing there will be a choice where you'd be asked whether or not keeping unused Takes as muted events. If you click "Yes" here, that above is what you'd get.

I think I figured it out, but here's a screenshot anyway.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipMq6OSVS-I_6L47OsZoTuthOhbBaqX0YswCD_ZH

Note the deep, foreboding blackness of the preview pane.

I expected to see the wide image of the stage seen the timeline.

Apparently the take info was preserved when the tracks were unpacked from multicam mode. (Come to think of it, I was prompted about something relating to being able to recombine the tracks, and I said yes). The preview is black because the current take call is for cam2, which is muted.

So even though cam1 comes before cam2 in track order, VP considers cam2 to be active at the current time. If I move the cursor to a "take 1" clip, the preview shows the expected cam1 image.

This makes me wonder. Are take calls always present, even if you've never entered multicam mode?

Did you read the post above?

@Old Smoke:

Somehow I managed to accidentally lose audio/video sync during my marathon edit sessions. So I ran Plural Eyes again. I wasn't sure how it would behave in multicam mode, but I crossed my fingers. I think it succesfully sync'ed the hi-Q audio, cam1 audio, and cam2 audio, but the cam2 video was still out of sync.

This would seem to imply that a camera's audio got out of sync with its video, which seems strange since they embedded in the same source file. But I do remember clearing all groups at some point, and maybe that disconnected the audio from the video. Does that seem possible?

So I figured I needed to break out of multicam to work on the sync problem. I'm still in that mode, by the way, and was about to re-import all the media on new tracks and go from there. Any advice?

Sorry, Marco, I skimmed your post but missed the last line. You were exactly right.

If the audio is out of sync on the timeline, you would see the track changing color and a red indication of the time offset at the beginning of the event. This can be settled by either moving or slipping. If this doesn't work in your case, you can tried and copy the audio track that is out of sync to a new track, mute the original and sync it to the video; make sure it isn't grouped while syncing?

I haven't seen a red indicator in VP, but I have seen red blocks in Plural Eyes. Is that the indication you're talking about?

BTW, I noticed in some other post of yours that you are in the Houston area. I'm in Cypress. Maybe we can meet and swap lies sometime.