As my first post to DVInfo, I pose this question: Since Video Vegas 4.0 appears to be able to render an AVI file as 24p with either a 2-3 or 2-3-3-2 pulldown, is there still an advantage to running your piece through After Effects and Magic Bullet?

I think perhaps that the only advantage would be to take advantage of MB's deartifacting and film style filters. But I wonder if it would be worth the time investment since in reading here and online it seems that MB takes 2-10 seconds to render one frame. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

The two programs are totally different. I'm assuming your footage is originally 60i. So you HAVE to convert it to 24P first. Vegas won't do this conversion for you. Magic Bullet does this conversion for you and also applys some color correction to emulate certain film stock. Then should you wish, you can render the pulldown on to it. So as you can see, you have to use Magic Bullet or some other techniques to get 60i footage to 24P

If I understand correctly, you're describing working on the footage in Vegas converted before editing to 24p. Does this have any advantage in Vegas over working with original 60i footage and exporting (rendering) the AVI at 24p?

My ultimate goal is a 24p rendered file with a 2-3 pulldown for NTSC DVD distribution. Since I don't intend on making film from this, would MB be a necessary investment?

You can convert 60i to 24p in Vegas. Follow the directions in the 24p whitepaper from Sonic Foundry.

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/support/productinfo/24p.pdf

Bruce, vielen dank!

Let me know if you like the results.

I tried it on some of my latest short footage and wasn't too excited (felt too quick/stuttery/strobey). I also tried it on some footage of my dog and my wife said it looked like a PBS documentary. I thought that footage looked better, it looked like an 8 or 16mm film.

Maybe 60i to 30p would be better ?

You have to watch the DVD on a regular TV to see the full effect. Just watching the MPEG-2 file on your computer won't be enough.