.

The appearance of the solid colored frames would not seem to be a bug rather an idication that something has gone wrong. I'm really guessing here but something like this:

1) Request frame from decoder.
2) Request times out or reports it cannot decode frame or it's corrupted.
3) Replace unavailable frame with solid color. Specific colors may indicate different errors.

Bob.

You know, I just had the red frames thing happen this past weekend, never happened before. It's like they appear as offline media then seems to be searching for missing pieces and gives up and boom red frame. Not all video tracks just the odd one or two segments.

This was a very small piece i was working on too... less than 40 seconds. The only thing I was doing differently was that I grabbed two chunks of video that were avi files and one wave file through the Explorer window within Vegas. These files worked okay, just the few others that seemed to go red on the timeline. Note I never used the explorer window for grabbing media before this as I always grabbed media via imported project media. Don't know if that helps trace the cause or not. After reloading and using import media I haven't had the red frames glitch appear again.....so far that is.

Using 9C on Windows 7 32 bit quad.

.

.

I seem to have more red events with Cineform but the files are bigger, 1080p vs the HDV I usually work with which is 720p. Seems to happen more when I am going between the timeline and the media bins. When I get stuff on the timeline things seem to settle down.

Would love a fix.

.

.

I've noticed that if I have internet explorer open and selected while Vegas is opening a project many of the thumbnails turn red.

Without knowing exactly what or why, it seems related to memory use or availability. Happens only very rarely for me now with 9.0c and MXF files.

.

I think that firstly you need to consider that the thumbnails themselves are only refreshed under certain conditions e.g. Vegas looses focus or you change an event. In addition we can select how many thumbnails are displayed. Also consider that the app would probably not be designed to wait around forever to get the data to display a thumbnail, doing so could lead to a very sticky GUI.

When one level / procedure in an application requests data from another the challenge is what to do if the process fails, either the called procedure fails to signal completion or it signals an error. Some would argue to display a whole heap of information to the user but this might be coming from only a temporary condition. Should processing halt or what etc. All this is on the mind of the programmer plus there may be serious limitations on what can be sent back up the chain. This is a discussion I used to get involved in regularly. A classic was a programmer who'd written code that logged a serious alarm every time a HDD driver reported that the drive had detected a corrected error.

Many things seem to cause odd colored thumnails to appear and until SCS deem us worthy of knowing more we're all taking stabs in the dark. It does seem highly probable that they relate to either some form of data corruption in the data being accessed to create the thumbnail or it cannot be retrieved in a timely manner.
If you're suddenly starting to see a lot of them and the preview performance if dropping it could indicate a HDD on the way out or some other hardware problem.

As noted, other apps stealing CPU cycles or memory might also be a culprite. I doubt there's one single source of the colored frames.

Bob.

.

curiosity -

are you displaying ALL thumbs?

i have head and tail, and fortunately have never experienced red / green frames with m2t / mxf / avchd.

i think bob might have nailed it down to refresh rate and giving up to do something else (his explanation was much more elegant!)

leslie

Just to be clear for Lars's benefit, you can now control how many thumbnails Vegas displays and indeed showing less of them can significanly reduce GUI goo. Mostly I run with head, middle and tail.


Bob.

I had to install VP9b.

This is very inconvenient and unfortunate but Sony knows about this issue here's a thread w/ a response from Sony Admin:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=691167

Subject: RE: Jpg, png black in preview and rendering
Reply by: ForumAdmin
Date: 11/30/2009 4:18:14 AM

This is a known issue that occurs when combining AVCHD and certain still images on the timeline, and we're working to correct it. We apologize for the inconvenience.

In the meantime, workarounds include:
-Rendering still images to a video format (such as AVI)
-Rendering AVCHD footage to an intermediate format (such as AVI)
-Working in 9.0b

Thanks.



Here's the answer I got from Sony Tech:

Response (Whitney M.) 01/14/2010 02:19 PM
Hi Byron,

Yes, it does sound like yours is the same issue since you are seeing red and black frames when using high-definitition *.jpg files in Vegas Pro 9.0c. There hasn't been any word of a Vegas Pro 9.0d release date yet. Please check back with us at sonycreativesoftware.com in a few weeks to see if there is any new information. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, but do appreciate your understanding.

If you still have a follow-up question on this particular incident, please feel free to update it. If you have a completely different question, please create a new incident.

Sincerely,

Whitney M.
Customer Service
Sony Creative Software Inc
www.sonycreativesoftware.com

.

Hello, I have the same problem with images with HDV converted with Neo Scene. I have also black bands on the right side or left in auto mode in the preview window... It's difficult to watch video properly in real time... I am disappointed... Where is the upadate ??? (sorry for my english google traduction...)

This has been happening this week with my deshaker renders.
hdv 1440x1080 60i template.

I had a red frame show up last night.
Single clip on the T/L.
I trimmed the end of the clip it went away. I extended the clip back to it's full length and it was still gone. This again indicates that it's a problem that occurs when the thumbnails are built. Sliding the clip along the T/L had no impact on the problem as doing that doesn't cause the thumbnails to be rebuilt.

Bob.

My issue with Red Thumbs appearing were NOT AVCHD files or HDV, Cineform etc. Just Wide Screen standard SD. So there is more to this than just formats.

Yes, I think you're right that it's not just the formats. Not sure what version you're using, I've downgraded to 9B but in 9C 64bit I would intermittently get the RBFoD (Red & Black Frames of Death), on my new i7 Win7 machine, when I just placed the .jpg photos on the time line, even before I placed a video event on the time line.

Funny though that 9C 32bit seems to work OK on my P4HT 32 bit XP NLE.