The preview uses the same engine as the render.

"Quantize" wasn't enabled but following your suggestion, I enabled the function, then saved the file and restarted the project to be sure the setting took effect. Unfortunately the wrinkles still show up.

There's no track motion on the track where the wrinkling occurs but there is track motion on several other tracks in the project.

You seem to be downscaling your video to standard defintion in which case you should be using Best, not Good.


Bob.

Yes, as I and many have said, you should be using Best for video render quality.

If your project, video and rendering properties are all as you say they are, and you're confident the clip looks fine in a new, clean project, you may have been bitten by having quantize to frames off while you were editing. Simply checking the box will quantize all new material you put on the timeline, and all material you move on the timeline, but it won't fix frames that aren't already aligned.

. You should always have quantize to frames ON when you start a project, because if you start including varying frame rates you'll end up in a situation where oddities like this come up. I'll see if I can find the Vegas script that may help with this, but in the meantime, try this test:

On your original edited timeline, park the playhead on a frame where this interlacing is apparent. Then right-click on the clip, select properties, and click the button for "disable resample". See if the interlacing artifacts are still there. If the frame now looks good, it would tell me that the frames in this clip are not quantized - which would mean Vegas is looking at 2 frames (4 fields) and trying to figure out how to interlace it into one frame. OR, now that you have quantization turned on in this project simply moving the clip left or right one frame will align the clip to the project frames. If this is the case, you'll have to do this for all clips - the script I'm looking for will do it for you automatically.

Quantize doesn't "take effect" after the fact. It must be enabled BEFORE placing anything on the timeline.

But that isn't the cause of your problem. Five people have given you the same answer. Take mercy on all of us, and go back and read that Help topic in its entirety, then follow follow what the Help says about that and deiinterlace setting.

I still working with HDV, got Z5 here with MRC1k CF Memory unit Recorder, and mainly I still working with interlaced until now.

Just go to Project Properties, and set Deinterlace Method to 'Blend' or 'Interpolate'.
The default installation of Vegas may set this to None, but it is better to leave it to one of selection.

Quantize to frame is better kept ON, and I never have to sync any picture deeper than one fps, except audio, and you can ungroup, and move that audio part.

Set

To all who have responded to this post, I send a sincere "thank you"!

I have enabled the "quantize" function, reloaded the offending clips to the timeline, set the render quality to "best" and re-rendered the first 2 1/2 hours of the video. The results are outstanding -- no evidence of the wrinkles!

You all are an incredibly great resource for someone like me who has a fair amount of knowledge about Vegas but not nearly as much as many of you who monitor this forum.

Again, many thanks for all the kind help.

There is one, and only one reason for your problem: you set deinterlace method to "none." Absolutely none of the other settings mentioned have anything whatsoever to do with what happened. Not even a little bit.

Just to be clear, the reason for the artifact you showed is the result of resizing interlaced footage without deinterlacing before doing the re-sizing. Then, to maintain interlacing, the footage is then re-interlaced after the resizing operation is completed. The way Vegas works (and it works very badly in this regard), when you set that setting to "none," it will ALWAYS screw up any render that involves changing the resolution of interlaced footage.

[edit]While using the "Good" instead of "Best" setting when rendering does not contribute to the classic, well-known artifact you posted, it can slightly reduce the quality of the video when resizing. In general, you can leave it set to Good when the output resolution = input resolution, and save a little render time. However, any time you re-size during rendering, you should set it to Best. If you read the help file, it says pretty much the same thing.

Sony should fix the program so that this happens automatically. They should also make it very difficult to set Interlace method to none when dealing with Interlaced footage.

In almost every instance, it is better to set the deinterlace method to "interpolate" rather than "blend." This is particularly true of your video has motion, if it is a static shot with virtually no motion, blend might be the appropriate choice.

Thanks to both who were the last replies. I will take your advice and make the suggested changes but I still have to wonder why the wrinkle artifact showed up on the timeline before rendering occurred? Would this be the case with mixed video formats and the de-interlace method is set to "none" instead of "blend" or "interpolate"?

It seems that once I enabled "quantize to frames" then reloaded the problematic clips from the trimmer to the timeline, the wrinkles disappeared (even without the use of wrinkle cream as one responder suggested).

"I still have to wonder why the wrinkle artifact showed up on the timeline before rendering occurred?"

The interlaced frame is being resized to display it in the monitor. Setting deinterlace method to other than "none" tells Vegas to resize the fields separately and then recombine to a frame.

@johnmeyer

Thanks for the summary, my head was spinning.

Happy New Year to all!

Sony should fix the program so that this happens automatically.

SCS, One more thing you need to add to your fix list, on handling Interlaced-media issue:
I found this when working in SD vegas-project timeline, but I had source media in HD.
Doing Sony Stabilize of HD media INSIDE SD Project will downconvert the HD media and ignoring interlace factor.
In the end I had similar 'Wrinkles' issue just like this thread.

The solution is Stabilize my HD media in HD Project first, then render intermediate it to put to SD Vegas-project.

Set

My original assumption was that the problem was simply no deinterlacing and/or "good" render instead of "best" - and that may have been the case. The only reason I asked the OP to check quantization was because I saw the same artifacting on my external monitor when I "unquantized" a 1080i clip by 1/2 frame.

Project setting was 1080i 29.97 with upper field first - deinterlace set to either blend or interpolate made no difference. I could not see this in Vegas' preview window set to best/full even with rescale to fit turned off - it looked like typical interlacing - but on my external HD monitor through an AJA Kona HDMI connection what I saw looked exactly like the OP's screen grabs. So I wasn't sure what was happening, but thought it was worth a check.

The request should be, "Put a decent deinterlacer in Vegas." Linear interpolate and blend are pushing 30 years in age.

The request should be, "Put a decent deinterlacer in Vegas." Linear interpolate and blend are pushing 30 years in age. Yes, definitely!!

And, because SCS engineers clearly don't understand the implications of their failure to act on ALL of these issues, every software engineer still involved on this project should read the following thread, in its entirety, do their own tests to confirm the results, and then be given an exam to prove that they learned the subject.

Interlaced HD to DVD AGAIN - some test renders

My only explanation for their failure to address this for so many years is that they simply don't understand the fundamental mathematics of video, and instead simply purchase libraries (like they do for all the modern codecs) and "bolt them together" into a new release. I think the wonderful engineers who built the marvelous Sonic Foundry DV codec all those years ago have long since left the building.

John Meyer

Priority is always given to new features because that is what sells new versions and generates income.