Initially I thought this was a software issue, now I'm not so sure.

When I captured HDV footage (720p/25fps) from the BR-HD50 deck through Vegas 7, instead of the wonderfully smooth preview playback I should be getting, I instead got a playback rate of about 7fps. However, if I rerendered the footage with exactly (apparently) the same settings, printed to tape and then recaptured, it played smoothly.

Thinking it might be a Vegas issue, I tried some captures with CapDVHS, with the same result. Then, in the section of CapDVHS where you see the specs of the footage being captured, I noticed that the original footage was apparently coming in as 50fps, whereas the rerendered footage was fine at 25fps.

So, have I screwed up the settings on the camera and/or deck somehow? And if so, which settings? As far as I could tell when shooting the footage, I was in normal 720p/25fps mode. So what am I missing? Why does the original camera footage appear to be recorded at 50fps?

I'm really bashing my head against a wall here, so any suggestions would really be appreciated.

Cheers
Pat

You can check the characteristics of the files within vegas, so you better look there and see whether vegas sees it as 50p or as 25p. Although Vegas should support smooth native playback, I get only about 7 fps from the timeline (with the project in 720 25p and no effects or rendering on the clips), where I get a better framerate (about 20) when previewing it in the trimmer (well, 'smooth', it hiccups every 2 seconds for about half a second). Actually since vegas 7, Cineform is no better: both codecs perform about the same (without effects added).