Whilst trying to use those settings you suggested above I get an error message and the cause can not be determined.

I have played around with quite a few settings now and either the picture quality is terrible or it plays in slow motion.

When I set the bitrate at 16,000kbps to render as a .mov file, the bit rate of the file produced is actually 65,000kbps why would this happen?

What should I try now?

h.264/AVC is the main codec accelerated (decoding/playback) through your graphics hardware OS wide, or at least should be. Do you have a discrete GPU on that laptop? Check out the GPU FAQ to attempt to get the timeline acceleration working. Processing and rendering out the video to h.264/AVC as detailed above using the CPU only may be the best option since you are having so many issues (with even the GPU turned off under Options -> Preferences -> Video -> GPU acceleration of video processing "Off"). Can even YouTube videos run at a decent pace on your laptop right now?

MPEG-2 may be the codec to choose if all sources of h.264/AVC are causing issues. You are tossing quality out for playback performance at this point . . .

The camera records in .mov format...

Rewrap it losslessly to .mp4 with ffmpeg. It will then play much better in Vegas with Vegas' native compoundplug.dll codec instead of the Quicktime qt7plug.dll codec. See this comment and the one below it. You may be able to make this more friendly by using an ffmpeg GUI, of which there are many. I so far haven't been able to find one I like for doing this, so I just use the command line.

I have tried rendering to all the settings available and the only two that work are .wmv and .mov

.mov if I set it to 16000kbps is renders a file of 65000kbps why is that? The file is jumpy and doesn't play properly, I can render a file at a much lower bit rate and it plays better but the image looks pixelated.

.wmv I can get a smooth clean image but the colour looks faded and dull compared to the original (not even close to the original)

I have tried to convert using ffmpeg in the command prompt refering to the link you posted above which suggested using this command "ffmpeg -i George.MOV -vcodec copy -acodec copy George.mp4" but it wont rewrap the file stating:

"could not find tag for codec pcmsi6le in stream #1 codec not currently supported in container.

Could not write header for output file #0 <incorrect codec parameters ?>: invalid argument"

I have tried to convert using ffmpeg in the command prompt refering to the link you posted above which suggested using this command "ffmpeg -i George.MOV -vcodec copy -acodec copy George.mp4" but it wont rewrap the file stating:

"could not find tag for codec pcmsi6le in stream #1 codec not currently supported in container.

Could not write header for output file #0 <incorrect codec parameters ?>: invalid argument"

Your audio is pcm, that's while it fails as ffmpeg dopesn't supportt his audio format with mp4 container.

This command will work but your audio will be reencoded to aac.

ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v copy -c:a aac -b:a 384k output.mp4

384k can be modified depending on how many audio channel you have on your video (usually 192k is enough for stereo)

Thanks, that seems to have produced a pretty good copy, just to clarify is this really "lossless"? or is it just as close to as possible? The two differences I noticed between the files are that the new .mp4 one has a slightly smaller file size and the frame rate is 29 on the .mp4 and 30 on the original .mov I cant see any difference so why are the frame rates different?

just to clarify is this really "lossless"?

The video is lossless, the audio is not. That's why your file is slightly smaller.

Regarding the frame rate, it shouldn't change.

Can you post the mediainfo properties of both files?

how do I get media info?

how do I get media info?

You can check this link.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-to-post-mediainfo-and-vegas-pro-file-properties--104561/

Original:

General
Complete name                            : H:\Video's\Footage\SJ4000\George.MOV
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : QuickTime
Codec ID                                 : qt   0000.00 (qt  )
File size                                : 67.6 MiB
Duration                                 : 35 s 433 ms
Overall bit rate                         : 16.0 Mb/s
Movie_More                               : CarDV-TURNKEY
Encoded date                             : UTC 2017-03-13 21:01:56
Tagged date                              : UTC 2017-03-13 21:01:56
Origin                                   : NVT-IM

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP                     : M=1, N=15
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 35 s 433 ms
Bit rate                                 : 14.7 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 30.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.237
Stream size                              : 62.2 MiB (92%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2017-03-13 21:01:56
Tagged date                              : UTC 2017-03-13 21:01:56

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings, Endianness              : Little
Format settings, Sign                    : Signed
Codec ID                                 : sowt
Duration                                 : 35 s 300 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 512 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 1 channel
Sampling rate                            : 32.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 2.15 MiB (3%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2017-03-13 21:01:56
Tagged date                              : UTC 2017-03-13 21:01:56

Copy:

General
Complete name                            : H:\Video's\Footage\SJ4000\George.mp4
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media
Codec ID                                 : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
File size                                : 61.0 MiB
Duration                                 : 35 s 434 ms
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 14.4 Mb/s
Writing application                      : Lavf57.66.104
Comment                                  : CarDV-TURNKEY

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 1 frame
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 35 s 434 ms
Bit rate                                 : 14.3 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Frame rate                               : 29.210 FPS
Minimum frame rate                       : 2.000 FPS
Maximum frame rate                       : 30.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.237
Stream size                              : 60.5 MiB (99%)
Language                                 : English

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile                           : LC
Codec ID                                 : 40
Duration                                 : 35 s 332 ms
Duration_LastFrame                       : -28 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 108 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 192 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel(s)_Original                      : 1 channel
Channel positions                        : Front: C
Sampling rate                            : 32.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1024 spf)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 465 KiB (1%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Alternate group                          : 1

Something is weird in the rewrapping + audio encoding. You start from a constant frame rate and end up with a variable one. That's not normal.

I've tried on SJ4000 raw footage I found online (here) and everything is fine on my side, the output.mp4 file has a constant frame rate.

Any mistyping in your ffmepg command?

You can also use Xmediarecode to transcode the file the same way as the command line (using copy for video and aac for audio)

I also tried to render the same raw footage using a modified Mainconcept template and everything is fine.

Project properties

Render template

BTW, Vegas (14 in my case) reads the file with with Vegas' native compoundplug.dll codec, so you shouldn't need to re-wrap the footage.

BTW, Vegas (14 in my case) reads the file with with Vegas' native compoundplug.dll codec, so you shouldn't need to re-wrap the footage.

Me too (at least in VP10, 12 and 14), so it was poor advice of me to recommend rewrapping the file to MP4 as it won't gain the OP anything really. Better just work with the original footage. (but by the way, I'm liking Xmedia Recode!)

I recommend working through this post first: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-why-does-my-rendered-video-look-bad-troubleshooting-quality--103361/

Then this post: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-can-i-improve-the-quality-of-my-avc-h-264-renders--104642/

This whole effort might go a little quicker if you would share one of your source media files on dropbox.com, etc. Others could take a crack at it and 'splane to you what they did.

This whole effort might go a little quicker if you would share one of your source media files on dropbox.com, etc. Others could take a crack at it and 'splane to you what they did.

+1

Been hoping for more of this in light of multiple recent discussions wrt MOV wrapper in Vegas.

...source media files...

The video files in the zip file GJeffrey linked to earlier share identical MediaInfo with those Skater_Dave posted above: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7cdc2b6btzz8pys/AAAfnzEjnuKjguuC2avLNlIKa?dl=0

I'm interested in determining exactly which file parameters allow a .MOV file to be decoded by compoundplug.dll, and which require it to still be decoded by Quicktime (for an FAQ post "Do I need Quicktime?"). Any enlightenment welcome!

Using the referenced source files, I managed to pinch one of these out with Vegas Pro 11 on my 8 year old Q9450 machine. The whole process was uneventful. None of my machines currently have Quicktime loaded.