Jerky Video after rendering (MPEG2)

[andy15star]

Hi,

I recently bought an HD Camcorder. I had paid a small fortune for Sony Vegas Pro 11 and so wanted my HD Camcorder to be compatible. I figured therefore i'd buy a Sony HD Camcorder just to be safe. I got the CX190.

I am having really bad results in Vegas after rendering, and to be honest the quality of my little old Sony Bloggie is much better !

Because this camcorder seems to output files in .MTS format, Vegas reads them no problem. The problem i'm getting is that after i have rendered a series of clips i get varying results, and no where near as good as the original clips. I like to use .mp4 files so i first rendered to "XDCAM EX - HQ 1920x1080-30p, 35Mbps VBR" template in Vegas, which does give nice results, however, on fast panning (infact on any panning) it seems to leave ghosting effects which are not on the original files. I'm not sure if this is a frame rate issue because although the camcorder says it films in 1920x1080 50i, i don't believe it is true 50fps, are these interlaced and only giving 25fps ??. TheKM Player reports that it's only 25fps yet the handbook suggests 50fps !

Anyway, to cut a long story short, i''ve now been on with this for best part of a whole day and still cannot find the best template to render with.

XDCAM (mp4) looks great, but on panning there is noticable ghosting (blur, whatever you want to call it).

I then tried the "Sony AVC/MVC (*.mp4;*.m2ts;*.avc)" template, thinking that should work with it being a Sony AVCHD Camcorder. When i render a file it looks great, no ghosting etc. HOWEVER, i have just now noticed that when rendering a longer video (or video with a number of clips) after about 1min 40s it gets very choppy and video is unwatchable (although sound is still fine). I can render a clip of 40 seconds without any issues, but as soon as i try to render a clip of more than a minute and a half (approx) it gets VERY choppy after around 90 seconds. It's as if the frame rate suddenly drops from smooth to around 3 fps. Not sure why this is!. The choppiness is apparent in VLC Media Player, Windows Media Player and a couple of others i have, so i don't think it's the player i'm using which is at fault.

The only template which seems to work (although still does have choppiness issues) is the "Main Concept MPEG-2 (*.mpg;*.m2v;*.m2t;*.mpa)" template which outputs the files in .m2t format (so ONLY Windows Media Player will play them, KMPlayer won't!), and they seem to be okay after rendering, although still a little choppy in parts and no where near as good as the original files (.mts))

My computer is brand new, Core i5, 7GB RAM, HD Graphics etc so i cannot see it being a computer issue.

Any ideas what i can do ?.

Is it worth rendering these .mts files to nother format BEFORE rendering them in Vegas, or is this just losing quality ?. Am i missing some codecs ?. Is there a better template in Vegas to use ?.... i have tried most of them !


Best Regards,
Andy

[Midnight Blue]

If you are shooting in 50i then why don't you render it in 50i to see what it looks like.

[andy15star]

Hi Midnight Blue. I have done, but still seem to get choppiness. Oddly enough the best template seems to be the "Main Concept MPEG2 HDV 1080_60i" rather than the 50i one. It seems to be less choppy, not sure why that would be. I just can't understand why all the templates i use (apart from the one mentioned above, which is still a little choppy here and there) render so badly when the original files play perfectly. The computer is pretty high spec, so i just cannot work it out. This is what got me thinking am i missing a vital codec, and if so which one ?. I installed K-Lite codecs (which apparently support .mts etc), and have even uninstalled it when i was getting the choppiness.

I have no problems at all with my Sony Bloggie HD camcorder or my Samsung one, they render perfectly. I'm sure the .MTS file which this camcorder produces must be the problem here !

Incidentally, this camcorder has only 4 settings, which are:
1) Highest Quality - AVC HD 24M (FX) - 1080 @ 50i
2) High Quality - AVC HD 17M (FH) - 1080 @ 50i
3) Standard - AVC HD 9M (HQ) - 1080 @ 50i
4) Long Time AVC HD 5M (LP) - 1080 @ 50i

Which is a little annoying because i would have hoped there would have been an option for true 30fps, 60fps or at least 720p !. Seems Sony forgot about these settings somewhere along the line.

I tend to use the highest or high although i can't really tell of any loss of video quality in any of the above (sound does suffer slightly, but i'm not too bothered about that because it still sounds good)

Thanks

[vkmast]

Your camcorder was sold in a PAL country.

[Midnight Blue]

Can you post a sample of the footage so we can see what you mean by choppy.

[vkmast]

If you search around on video forums, you will see that it is often recommended you also reinstall Vegas Pro after uninstalling the K-Lite or any other codec pack.

[andy15star]

Really ?, ah i might have to give that a go too then. Although i'm getting similar results on my laptop which has never had the k-lite codec pack installed. So i'm thinking maybe that wouldn't help.

Andy

[andy15star]

Your camcorder was sold in a PAL country.

That's right. But it's a UK version of the Camcorder, so what do you mean ?

Regards,
Andy

[andy15star]

Can you post a sample of the footage so we can see what you mean by choppy.

It's a big filesize, but what i mean is that it plays fine up until around 1 minute 40, then the video suddenly turns to what i can only describe as around 3 fps, yet the sound is fine. I have tried this with 20 seconds worth of footage and all is fine, but when i try to render a longer clip (of a couple of minutes +) it suddenly gets choppy after a minute and a half onwards. I have tried playing the clip with various other players, and even on my laptop and results are all the same, so the problem has got to be in the rendering process. But as i say, this only happens in the template for "Sony AVCHD 1920x1080-50i (.mts)", which is the template closest to the original file format (i think).

Regards,
Andy

[vkmast]

Andy,
different frame rates in NTSC and PAL standards.
Generally, camcorders available in the US or Japan are NTSC compatible while PAL system is the video standard for video cameras in Europe.