Hopefully the old fix of Reduce Interlace Flicker will cure this ..
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Reduce Interlace Flicker blurs the video too much IMO. That is why I don't ever use it.

John

>> Selecting a deinterlace method (it doesn't matter which one as it doesn't actually deinterlace) is really important

It is indeed!!! Using Pan/Crop or TrackMotion to scale video while having the Deinterlace Method in the Project Properties set to "None" could cause strange horizontal artifacts. It must be set to "Blend Fields" or "Interpolate Fields". Mine is always set to "Blend Fields" and I have no problems scaling video even if this might not also be the problem in Bob's case.

Marco

Marco,
I'll check the setting tomorrow when I get back to the machine with this project on it. If you're right then this deserves more prominance as it's a pretty common problem, I recall long ago someone raising a very similar issue with PAL to NTSC conversion.
Makes you wonder, in my specific case the artifacts are way too big to ignore (well they come and go as the crop zooms in) however in many cases they could be producing subtle image degradation that a lot of people might just assume "that's the best Vegas can do".

Bob.

John,
you could be right. I haven't used it for a long time and from memory only on VHS and 8mm film transfers i.e. the source was soft so a slight softening would have gone unnoticed.
If Maroc is right, and I suspect he is, that's quite a find.

Bob.

I just finished a dance concert edit using the process I documented last December. I had HD and SD on the same timeline. I did a LOT of panning on the HD, and zooming as well. I spent a lot of time looking at the resulting test DVD to see if I could spot any artifacts. I didn't see any. This is NTSC. The project properties were set to HDV 1080i (and NOT to 720x480 NTSC). I used my pan/crop script to crop all HDV that wasn't already cropped when I applied pan/zoom. Here's the link to where I described what I am doing:

My workflow for HDV to SD projects

I sure as heck don't mess with any interlace settings, but just use the defaults that "ship" with Vegas.

We're pretty much doing the same thing, rendering from the CF DI. This isn't a problem with just HD, I've had it happening since V4 with SD PAL. It was also apparent doing a simple PAL to NTSC conversion if Vegas did a straight frame size interpolation. I remember someone way back complaining of bad aliasing on fast motion, DSE's prefered flow was to crop the PAL frame to the NTSC frame which would avoid the problem, I got around it using the Reduce Interlace Flicker switch.
The only real uncertainty is if it's ONLY a PAL problem but as the HDV frame size is the same at 50i or 60i I'm inclined to think not.

What appears to be happening is that Vegas is doing a simple field merge to produce a frame, scaling that and then splitting the result back into fields. For a static frame this will give the highest possible quality output. However on a fast moving object where there's significant differences between the fields, lines from field B end up in field A. However that'll depend on the amount of scaling being applied and as seen a possible significant amount of aliasing, in one case I've just seen most of the frame looks OK, looking down the frame at the edge of the moving object one sees the interlace aliasing artifacts come and go, probably they're around 10 scan lines high, the next 10 scan lines are perfect, then the next 10 they're back.On those portions of the frame where there's no motion, no artifacts. What makes them really stickout is the moving objects are moving at different speeds. We have a car full frame, the shot is almost panning at the same speed as the car and there's the odd vertical post.
The horizontal size of the artifacts seem to match the offset (of what's being affected) between the fields.

I'm pretty certain I was able to repo this using just generated media also. I'll try some time today and post my results.
Would be nice to hear from the Sony guys on this one.

Bob.

Using "Best" quality rendering when downconverting is advised.

Already doing that.
However deinterlace method was set to None.
Will try again later this week with Interpolate.
Bob.

Yes, that was the point Laurence made in the reference I mentioned. In fact, Bob, a thread to which you contributed.

Here's the thing though.
The basic HDV to 16:9 SD downscale looks perfect (well to my eyes anyway). The problem is using Event Pan/Crop to zoom in. This happens even with SD and obviously only affects interlaced material.

Why do I keep hammering away at this?
I'm certain following the good advice given here I'll fix MY problem and I could just let it rest at that, more power to me.
However from my experience 90% of Vegas users don't frequent this forum and even of those that do eventually this thread will fade away so the probability of any Vegas user knowing how to avoid this problem is pretty slim. Worse still the ones least likely to learn this are the ones that matter most, the guys in the front line with deadlines to meet and clients breathing down their necks. So what happens when this happens to them, do they spend time trolling fora while a client twiddles their thumbs? I think not. I'd bet pounds to pennies that's the last chance Vegas gets in their facility.

What's further frustrating is I don't think anyone's asking Sony to fix the problem. I (and I assume the others who've worked on this issue) would just like a simple acknowledgement that yes, the problem does exist, that our solution is valid and that this information will be included in the knowledgebase and future documentation.

This is in Sony's best interests, not ours, we seem to have gleaned a valuable bit of information, I sometimes wonder why we spend time pecking away at a keyboard just trying to give away something of value!

Bob.