[Mark Davidson] "Why would Vegas default to 29.970 when matching media properties shows I have 23.976fps footage."
Is this HDV footage? I'm guessing that your camera is delivering the 24p as 29.97 telecine which is why Vegas only sees 29.97. I would also guess that the way that your camera is telecining the footage is different from the way that Vegas does reverse telecine (i.e., the pulldown method is different) which is why it looks worse when Vegas tries to make 24p out of it. Sony has this problem with their own cameras and one of the reasons I originally purchased CineForm is because it had the ability to correctly reverse telecine Sony's CINEFRAME24 format back into true 23.976fps.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com 
