PAL Compatibility - Vegas 4

newhope wrote on 4/16/2004, 6:07 PM
I've recently had some problems with Vegas captured AVIs being incompatible with After Effects. The reply from Sony left me feeling somewhat disturbed so I thought I'd mention some other PAL incompatibilities that Vegas is making me work around.

If I render to my Pinnacle DV2 codec, for my Pinnacle Pro-ONE card, my Sony DSR-30P (PAL DV Deck) thinks its receiving Copyright material and won't record. I get an onscreen message generated from the deck indicating that it is receiving the copyright bit in the video stream yet the video is original footage I have shot with my DSR-150P. This only happens over rendered areas but obviously stops me outputting rendered effects.

If I turn off "Ignore third party codecs" the output is totally useless and pixellated so that's something I can't do.

If I select the Vegas PAL DV codec I can output so it's not a total disaster but it is obviously this is something that Vegas is adding when rendering to the Pinnacle DV2 codec because the same codec when rendered from Premiere does not cause this fault.

If I start to think about HD, something I'm not trying at present, none of the presets seem to be suited to PAL. Vegas doesn't even offer 1080-50i rendering in MPEG-2. Yes we are 25 frames/50 field in most PAL countries.

This is not a situation that leaves me feeling happy about Vegas.

I'd like to see the PAL side of Vegas fixed. Although I generally love the program it can't/doesn't do everything I need, I wish it did, and I need to have simple AVI compatibility between the other software I use. After all After Effects is an industry standard. I look forward to the release of Vegas 5 but I also look forward to Sony fixing the PAL bugs in Vegas.

Comments

TVCmike wrote on 4/16/2004, 6:24 PM
Have you tried Panasonic's DV CODEC for output? You can get a free copy of it at http://www.free-codecs.com/cgi-bin/TopDown/download.pl?file=0100. Try frame serving from Vegas out to VirtualDub and saving in DV AVI format, then dumping that out using the PTT.

Regarding HD, how do you intend on filming and distributing HD content? The options that are out there right now aren't exactly cheap (e.g. JVC's $1000+ D-VHS decks and don't even ask about the cameras...). There's nothing in the way of DVD support yet anyway, and a lot of the solutions are proprietary. My understanding is that most of the HD content in TV stations is kept on servers and backup data tape. HD as a whole for the desktop isn't quite mature enough to be a concern yet either for NTSC or for PAL, but that's going to change this year I"m sure. However, if all you want to do is render MPEG-2 MP@HL, you can specify the resolution, frame rate and other parameters in the Render As... dialogs. I could be wrong, so someone please correct me if I am.
newhope wrote on 4/16/2004, 6:45 PM
TVCMike
While I appreciate the info on the panasonic codec the point Ii was making isn't that I can't use the Vegas codec it's just that Vegas is incorrectly adding the copyright bit into the video stream if I use the correct codec for my card. I really don't want to add another codec into the mix I'd rather Sony look at what was causing the problem and fix it.
On the HD side I think I clearly indicated that I wasn't considering doing this at present but using the example of HD presets to highlight the lower effort that Sony have put into PAL presets on Vegas when compared to NTSC. I probably could have selected another example where PAL is relevant but this was one that was obvious.
I'm perfectly aware that the presets can be modified, and do this to suit the type of output I need but I can't 'fix' a copyright bit by modifying the output preset.
I believe Sony need to support both NTSC and PAL equally and, as a PAL user I don't feel this is the case, particularly if you read their reply to my After Effects problem. (Separate post)
As for frame serving to Virtual Dub ... it may help but but in the and all I'm trying to do is output the edit to DV tape from the software that it is edited in I don't need to have to do that type of gymnastics to cure what appears to be a bug that Sony should fix. As I said the Vegas PAL DV codec will work anyway so it's what I use.
TVCmike wrote on 4/16/2004, 6:49 PM
Point taken newhope. Hopefully Sony can help you out a bit more on the support side, and I do agree that PAL and NTSC should be equally supported.
farss wrote on 4/16/2004, 8:36 PM
Particulalarly as even in the USA quite a few people shoot PAL for its higher resolution and demographically there's a lot more people in PAL land than NTSC!
As for Newhope's problem though I just render using the Sony DV codec which from every test is the best there is and have no problems at all.
As for the HD issue, interesting one. For a long time we were under the illusion that HD was the same in NTSC and PAL but sadly that isn't the case.