I realise this is an old Pro forum thread but the backward and forward frame motion has been bugging me with MS12,13 & 14. And I'm not converting from PAL to NTSC or vice versa. With my PAL 1080 50i it occurs whenever I reduce an event's play speed and try to use resampling disabled in the switches. My projects have interpolation as the deinterlacing method and I'm rendering to 1080 50i.

My impression is that instead of deinterlacing frames and then duplicating the deinterlaced frames, VMS is simply duplicating interlaced frames. Consequently when the rendered output is deinterlaced the frame order is incorrect. For example if reducing the playspeed to 0.5 the final screened deinterlaced frame order should be 112233445566 but instead you get 121234345656.

I raised a ticket with Magix but they closed it probably due to more pressing priorities. The workaround is to convert clips to 50p and use those but this should not have to happen. It's clearly a bug that needs fixing.

I also find that at a Playspeed of 0.500 Smart resample and Force resample don't work. The result is always Resample disabled.

I think it was this thread that caused me to give up posting in this forum over three years ago. The total lack of response from Sony (and now Magix) to such a fundamental bug was stunning. The issue wasn't so much whether lots of people were seeing the problem, but rather that it exposed a major underlying problem in the software which was very likely to show up in other ways as well. One example is that many of us spent hundreds of hours (collectively) trying to get better rendering when downsizing from HD to DVD. After months of tests and workarounds, I found that simply changing the field order in the MPEG-2 render so that it matched the source made a huge difference in quality. This explained a lot because, back then, Vegas always defaulted to lower field first when rendering to DVD and, of course, most interlaced HD formats use top field first. Therefore, because Vegas was not properly handling the simple task of changing field order, not only did this field reversal bug happen, but I suspect some of this same bad field code also was at the root of why DVDs looked so soft when rendered from TFF HD material.

You will notice that a few versions ago, Sony quietly changed that default in the MPEG-2 (and probably other) rendering templates so the default is now TFF. Of course if you are rendering from SD NTSC sources you will have to remember to change it back. So they put a band-aid on the problem, but did not fix it.

Field order should not matter. It is trivial to render either way, if the code is correct (the simplest is to just drop the first field ...). It is a bug, and it should have been fixed.

-----------------

Finally, this is my second post using this Magix forum software and boy is it awful!! There is absolutely nothing good about this. The old Sony forum software was also a home-brew, but at least they got the basics right.

Why doesn't Magix simply buy some forum software, like every other company on the planet, and use that instead? You could actually have a decent search engine, much better formatting and linking, and ... oh heck, I don't care enough to go on.

I still use Vegas every day, and am still writing scripts and discovering cool stuff. Up until Sony sold the software, I still lurked in the forum to read posts by some of the gurus, but most of them have left the building. That's too bad because I sure learned a lot here fifteen years ago when I first joined.

Wow, I just looked for the "preview" button so I could preview my post ... there isn't one!! Good grief, how incompetent.

I just looked for a "submit" or "post" button ... there isn't one!! In fact there isn't even an actual button ... do any programmers study UI design?? I have to click on some blue text labeled "comment." Comment??? Comments are what you leave at the end of a blog. "Posting" is what you do in a forum. There is a difference. Words matter. UI matters.

Field order matters.

Grmpphhh.

Anyway, it's nice to see a familiar userid show up again. Hope you are well.

What a thrill to hear from an old friend again. Thought of you again yesterday when going through another old thread.

We lost Jerry, Kelly, Laurence, and a couple of other longtime posters about the same time.

Curmudgeons unite!

Ah, two familiar, friendly faces. Thanks for the kind thoughts.

Everything is fine here. I am still doing lots of media restoration and also still doing event videography. I did two weddings a year ago, with four cameras and an audio recorder with just "moi" operating them all. I gave both productions away as wedding gifts (actually, you could not pay me to do a wedding -- too many things can go wrong). I also taped another Nutcracker, making it thirty-six straight years I have taped at least one production (I used to tape two performances, plus the dress). So, not much has changed here.

I hope you two are also doing well.

-------------

FWIW, some samples of what I've been doing (nothing earth shattering)

I cringe as I watch my wedding music video however, because I remember, back when this forum was great, reading and watching the things posted by "GMElliot" one of the greatest wedding videographers of all time. You can see his current work here:

http://www.httcord3films.com/

Wow, wow, wow! To quote "Waynes Word:" I am not worthy. I remember asking him how he got his shots, and they were all hand-held without any post production stabilization. Those are some seriously steady hands.

(I tried to provide a live link to Cord3Films, but it kept copying one of the above videos ... great forum software ...)

I've been shooting six swimmers all season and expect to deliver Blu-rays to the families just after the League Finals are complete next weekend. Though some parents have offered to pay me, I've refused. As soon as I put any number in the numerator other than zero, I establish an hourly rate for my work. Then, I would know what I'm really worth. I am truly blessed that I can afford to do that.

I am truly blessed that I can afford to do that.

Me too.

I've been shooting HD for twelve years and still have not had my first request for Blu-Ray (or for any other HD format). Amazing. And I live in Carmel, CA which is supposed to be "high end." I did deliver an HD version of those two weddings on a memory stick, just to ease my own conscience. I know the DVD will last longer than anything else, but as good as DVDs can still look, they obviously don't hold a candle to real HD.

I'd love to get a 4K camera and use that as an acquisition format, but the workflow is too complicated and slow. I have no interest in 4K to watch (I don't have a big enough living room to get a screen large enough to show off the increased resolution).

"I'd love to get a 4K camera and use that as an acquisition format, but the workflow is too complicated and slow."

Last fall I rented a camera that shoots UHD at 305 Mbps and tested the workflow on my system. That's ~9 x the 35 Mbps that I currently shoot for Full HD. Not gonna happen! I upgraded my system in January and just barely am able to get full 30 fps Preview with that media. Last weekend, I shot 44 GB of video. I shudder to think about editing and backing up 400 GB had I been shooting with the rental camera. This is especially meaningful since I have no offsetting revenue and the two common delivery methods are youtube and Blu-ray. I didn't miss the point about 4:2:2 color sampling and cropping into a UHD wide shot for a close up. I expect to get a 4K camera by next spring but it will probably record at 100 Mbps XAVC. 

What a thrill to hear from an old friend again. Thought of you again yesterday when going through another old thread.

We lost Jerry, Kelly, Laurence, and a couple of others' posts about the same time.

Curmudgeons unite!

Hi guys!

Crazy! I haven't been back here, lurking for maybe 3 months and immediately see a post by johnmeyer. Then I see this reply from musicvid. A tear is coming to my eyes. 😀

...Jerry

--> A tear is coming to my eyes. 😀 ...Jerry

Me too! For those who don't know Jerry, he is one of the finest nature photographers in the world.

Jerry am Ende -- National Geographic Photos

He is one of the few people I know who can actually take photos and video as stunning as what you see in the amazing Netflix series, "The Hunt."

We've sure had some great talents pass through this forum over the years: Douglas Spotted-Eagle (Spot) with his Emmy-awarded music, and his skydiving videos (which damn near killed him); Nick Hope, specializing in amazing Thailand underwater photography, and who knows more Vegas tricks than the rest of us put together; Bob Grant ("farss") who knows more about film than just about anyone; GmElliott, the finest wedding videographer that I've ever seen; and Glenn Chan, who knows more about video color space than the engineers who designed the NTSC video standard.

That's just off the top of my head, from memory. I'm sure I'm leaving out many other amazing talents. In its heyday, the Sonic Foundry forum was the best I've ever had the privilege to join.

The Deinterlace/Bob feature in Handbrake is worthy of comparison with what Vegas is doing, rather rudimentally.

Jerry, I am humbled and thrilled by your reappearance. I use your stills as examples for my students who have DSLRs, but no knowledge of Adams.

Would like to add a couple of names to John Meyer's list of legends - -

1. Patryck Rebisz and Muttley, both shining stars in the underrated medium of music video, and Marco, who has emerged as the resident technical guru and guide to the future of Vegas.

2. John Dennis, who is rock solid and an overachiever in separating the wheat from the chaff.

Thanks guys. I'm just a poser in your presence.

Wow, if I was planning to return on a regular basis (which I'm not), I'd suggest we put together a "wall of fame" for great members, past and present.

Gee, I'm so pleased I put you old fiends in touch with one another.

Seriously though how do we get Magix to look into this frustrating problem. Marco if you read this do you have any suggestions please? Yes, I did submit a ticket but it was just closed off. Frustrating when you spend a while investigating the problem and spelling it out. For a reputable programme like Vegas Pro/MS you don't expect such a basic bug.

--> Also IMHO titles to posts often color those who read them and your title does read like click bait and the really helpful and knowledgeable forums members can sense those.

Thank you, D7K, for reminding me why, after almost 10,000 posts in this forum, I no longer post here. I expose a bug that is probably at the core of some of the biggest problems in Vegas, some of which you cannot "work around," and you think it is click bait.

I only came back because they guy who necro'd this thread emailed me. However, after a pleasant few days re-connecting with some old friends (and temporarily taking my original thread OT) I am, once again, outta here.

I expose a bug that is probably at the core of some of the biggest problems in Vegas, some of which you cannot "work around," and you think it is click bait.

John,

I hope you will stick around and explain why you say it is "probably at the core of some of the biggest problems in Vegas"

In my opinion, I mentioned that already in 2015, I don't see it so much as a bug but as a quirk, just the way Vegas is, similar to the way it handles levels, but maybe I miss something.

I would also say that just because someone doesn't agree with you or your assessment leaving the forum again doesn't show greatness. Especially when someone has done so much. I really admire your film restoration work and wish I would have to the time and knowledge to use the same tools you use; I have to stick with Vegas and Neatvideo to digitize and restore my father's and grand father's old 8mm films.

--> I hope you will stick around and explain why you say it is "probably at the core of some of the biggest problems in Vegas"

OK, one last post. The reason I made that statement in the first post in this thread, and then again earlier today is that Nick Hope, Musicvid, and dozens of other people created some of the longest threads in this forum's history trying to figure out how to get better renders from Vegas when creating DVDs from HD source material. Nick, in particular, uncovered all sorts of issues, but they all seemed to point at how Vegas was handling interlacing.

We collectively came up with all sorts of "workarounds" using MeGUI or Handbrake, fed with video that was frame-served out of Vegas and then through various AVISynth scripts. It was great stuff, but hardly what the average user wanted to go through. While some of the issues uncovered pointed to weaknesses in a few of the rendering engines inside of Vegas (Handbrake/MeGUI still do a much better job for low bitrate MP4 encoding, for instance), it was (and is) my belief that some of the problems simply had to do with how Vegas was handling field order changes. I proved this with an example, posted many years ago, where I rendered some HDV (TFF) interlaced material to DVD using the default (at that time) BFF setting, and then rendered the same thing after changing the default field order in the Render As MPEG-2 setting to TFF. The TFF setting (which matched the HDV source material) was noticeably better in every way.

To be clear, the issue is not field reversal, something that results in unwatchable, horrible, "vibrating" video, but instead the issue looked like badly-done deinterlacing. I obviously cannot know exactly what goes on "under the covers" inside of Vegas, but it definitely had that feeling.

What bugged me at the time -- and still does -- was the glassy-eyed response from Sony who never seemed to have any sense of what was important, and what was not. The vast majority of enhancements in Vegas, from release 9 onward, were to adapt the program to new video and audio formats. Bugs were also fixed, but in a rather haphazard fashion, with many bugs (and this one is a bug) never addressed, or not addressed for many releases. This forum is filled with posts, after each new release, with users amazed that some of the better-known bugs were not fixed.

I have run three software companies and so I know about how bugs are prioritized and also know that in a major commercial program there are literally hundreds of bugs on the the "fix it" list that will probably never be fixed because there just isn't time in the day to get to them all. That is just the way it is. However, the difference between a great software company and a lousy software company is the development team's ability to understand what is important, and what is not. It usually comes down to the product manager, and if that person is involved, and if that person uses the product every day, and if that person is passionate about his or her work, then good things happen. On the other hand, if that person is none of those things, the product languishes. IMHO, from Vegas 9 onward, the product languished.

@johnmeyer

+1

When hobbyists feel entitled to attack credentialed producers, it speaks poorly for the quality of the user base and the future of the product. It proves that johnmeyer saw it coming first, and took the appropriate action.

It also leaves a compelling impression that Magix is catering to self-entitled posers and defiant nonlearners as the "new" user base for its "professional" products. Wonder how that's working out?

What an embarrassingly poor showing.

johnmeyer attacks issues with discipline, thoroughness, rigor and passion. When he speaks, people should listen.

...Jerry