[Solved] Slow Motion Not working properly? Vegas Pro 14, VMS 12-14.

Brandigan wrote on 1/3/2018, 12:42 PM

I have 60 fps (59.94 fps) video clip which I want to use in a 30 fps (29.97fps) timeline in Slow Motion.

No problem when I drop it in and do NOT set the project to match the media. Vegas Pro 14 (and Studios 12-14 because I went back to try those as well) adjusts on the fly and just drops alternate frames and plays at the correct x1 speed. Good so far.

But now I want to use those extra frames for slow motion...but they're apparently gone forever.😕

I've unticked 'Adjust media to match project settings' so the media is (should be?) left alone when imported and I keep the project at 29.97 when I add it to the timeline.

I Right Click > Properties and select the Playback Rate to 0.5. Done manually in VMS, Pro has the 'Conform to Project Frame Rate' button. Same result. Also same result as CTRL-Dragging, because that's doing the same thing.

The video now plays at "half speed" (Resampling turned off, because I should have *real* frames to display, not blends) but jerkily, and when I single step through it, it's just doubling up alternate frames, not displaying the 'inbetweeners' that were in the original clip.

I changed the Viewer to Best - in case Preview mode was just trying to be helpful and not show all frames - but, same result.

Exported the clip at 29.97 to see if it gets fixed on Export, then reloaded it in. Nope. Its now stuck at 29.97 fps with every second frame duplicated. i.e half the original frames that were in the source clip.

I can't believe this hasn't come up before, so I must be doing something monumentally dumb, but what is it?

How do I get to see all of the frames? Why is it discarding half of them permanently?

Comments

Brandigan wrote on 1/3/2018, 2:48 PM

Thanks, but that doesn't work either.

It's the same as adding it normally and then Right Click > Properties "Conform to Project Frame Rate" or manually setting to 0.5 Playback Rate. It just slows it down in the same way...which would be weird if it didn't, TBH.

I was hoping I'd missed a "Use all frames in source clip" button or something somewhere. No?

Marco. wrote on 1/3/2018, 4:17 PM

There's another option:

Use a 29,97 fps project and put your 59.94 fps video into the timeline.
Ensure your timeline ruler is set to 29,97 fps.
Right-click your timeline video, select "Properties" and for "Playback rate" click onto "Conform project frame rate".

Brandigan wrote on 1/4/2018, 4:03 AM

Marco, thanks but that's what I thought I'd described I did first. 😉

But, solved: It's Mercalli's fault. Mercalli 4.0 standalone to be precise.

Input was a Constant Frame Rate .MTS file, it exported a Variable Frame Rate .MP4 file.

http://i854.photobucket.com/albums/ab106/pickaname2/mts.png
http://i854.photobucket.com/albums/ab106/pickaname2/mercalli1.png

If I load that file directly into a 59.94fps Vegas project it's quite skippy when single stepping through it, so no wonder Vegas was having problems. Mercalli has made a complete dog's breakfast of it. It clearly doesn't like .MTS files. Has no problem with .MP4 as I found out later.

Vegas was apparently doing the best it could to maintain a Constant frame rate and so conformed the file to the timeline speed of 29.97 and seems to have discarded the 'extra' frames.

When I put the original file through ShotCut to turn into an .MP4 file, that remained as Constant and at 59.94fps.

I used ShotCut because its a) free, b) fast and c) doesn't have the problem with 59.94 files (and 23.96) that HandBrake does. That will make those files Variable Frame Rate every time, no matter what settings and overrides you use to try and remain as CFR. It's just broken for those two speeds.

ShotCut turned the 59.94 CFR .MTS into 59.94 CFR .MP4 with no problem.

I took the CFR file from Shotcut into Mercalli, which then produced a correct CFR .MP4 output:

http://i854.photobucket.com/albums/ab106/pickaname2/shotcut.png
http://i854.photobucket.com/albums/ab106/pickaname2/mercalli2.png

This file then worked as expected in Vegas Pro (and VMS) and allows me to slow down and get those extra frames back, as Vegas doesn't have to try and correct Mercalli's mangling of the file.

So, careful with .MTS files and Mercalli. Don't know how the internal Vegas Mercalli 2.0 stabiliser would handle them; I'll leave that as a exercise for someone more curious than me.