@Jonathan-Parle Hi, yep I see that & I can't find a way around it.

This is a 9:16 solid white clip & a 'not 16:9' PNG.

Black Bar fill added, no shadow but black lines can be seen.

BCC Reframer added instead of Black Bar fill, no shadow & no lines down the edges.

Try disabling GPU Processing in Vegas temporarily, then see if the issue is still there.

Thank you - I will give it a try once my current render is done.

@Jonathan-Parle Hi, yep I see that & I can't find a way around it.

This is a 9:16 solid white clip & a 'not 16:9' PNG.

Black Bar fill added, no shadow but black lines can be seen.

BCC Reframer added instead of Black Bar fill, no shadow & no lines down the edges.

That looks perfect! Those were the results I was getting doing it the old way though I was using Pixelan tools for the blurring as the built-in Vegas gaussian blur at the time (at least in the much older version I was previously using) did not dither very well so colour banding was quite obvious in the blurred areas but not apparent at all with the Pixelan tools.

That said, with a whole new computer massively faster than the old one and a whole heap of Vegas versions later I am happy to try something new. I will look into BCCReframer but just one question - does it degrade in any way the quality of the foreground image or does it maintain the quality 100% (as did my old school method and indeed the Vegas black bar fill).

@Jonathan-Parle Hi, I think this dark edge problem also shows up with some png's with transparency when used as simple overlays, Vegas is under a major upgrade at the moment & the team will be busy but hopefully once they get to a certain point they'll be able to address these problems. 🤷‍♂️

Boris BCC Reframer comes in a package called Continuum, it isn't cheap but well worth purchasing, you could download the trial which will have red cross watermark but you can test it or yourself. (the majority of the 300+ Continuum fxs have built in Mocha track & mask) https://borisfx.com/products/continuum/

I don't about 'degrade in any way the quality of the foreground image' . I would expect the answer to be No, but I don't know the specifics, you could ask on the Boris forum, the majority of the people who reply in there are the Boris team themselves & you'll normally get a good response https://forum.borisfx.com/

Try disabling GPU Processing in Vegas temporarily, then see if the issue is still there.

OK, have tried this and no difference I am afraid.

@Jonathan-Parle Hi, I think this dark edge problem also shows up with some png's with transparency when used as simple overlays, Vegas is under a major upgrade at the moment & the team will be busy but hopefully once they get to a certain point they'll be able to address these problems. 🤷‍♂️

Boris BCC Reframer comes in a package called Continuum, it isn't cheap but well worth purchasing, you could download the trial which will have red cross watermark but you can test it or yourself. (the majority of the 300+ Continuum fxs have built in Mocha track & mask) https://borisfx.com/products/continuum/

I don't about 'degrade in any way the quality of the foreground image' . I would expect the answer to be No, but I don't know the specifics, you could ask on the Boris forum, the majority of the people who reply in there are the Boris team themselves & you'll normally get a good response https://forum.borisfx.com/

Yes I went to the website and I'm afraid the prices are beyond me - I am just an amateur tinkerer and that is way more than I can afford after building this new machine and getting a battery backup for it. That said, I just tried the old school method of the two video timelines with the second stretched with gaussian blur (medium). It does not seem to have the problems my previous much older version of Vegas had with the poor colour banding on the blurs so I am giving that a go and see what it looks like when I sit down to watch it on the LG OLED. Even if the inbuilt blur does not work there are probably alternatives that are not in the Boris FX price range. Nothing against what they charge at all - just that it tends to put them more into the professional league where a person earns a living from video production and editing. Which again is obviously great - just out of my league though.

It also just occurred to me that perhaps the reason for those black borders with the Vegas black fill is that unlike the old school method where you are (under the bonnet so to speak) effectively processing two videos with one literally under the other, with the black fill it is probably only rendering exactly what you see. That black border is possibly a result of the way the effect composites the two separate images together. It would also explain why there is virtually no processing speed penalty involved whereas the old method can almost double the rendering time.

@Jonathan-Parle Sorry you have not found a direct solution for this..... Really strange, because no matter what i try, i'm just not seeing that border when the shadow is set to 0. That lead me to wonder if the problem was a GPU display processing issue.

I have BorisFX BCC Reframer but don't use it, as the one in Vegas is easier to use and much faster.

@Jonathan-Parle

In the first video you posted, the preview resolution has an odd-numbered width, which does not exist in the real world of modulus 2 video. I doubt the single row of black pixels would show in the render in any Vegas version. If you have such a render, please post it here along with the timeline snapshot.

Also, any still images you place on the timeline must have even-numbered dimensions, for the same reason.

That said, I do not have Vegas 22, so if something has been introduced that would affect your output, I can't be certain.

Thanks again for all the help. In the end I decided to try my previous tool which was Pixelan Blur Blender Pro (along with a few other effects to get the exact look I wanted). I did not try this initially because I expected that the black bar fill effect would be trouble free if not wanting any shadows and was also concerned about rendering speed (it was intolerably slow on my old computer but that was powered by a first generation Core i7 870). Not only does the Pixelan Blur Blender Pro work flawlessly but I was really surprised to see that the process is no slower than using the Vegas black bar fill - if anything it seems to render about 10% - 15% faster.

So although I could not get rid of the shadowless border, I have found a solution that works perfectly.

Thank you

Not only does the Pixelan Blur Blender Pro work flawlessly but I was really surprised to see that the process is no slower than using the Vegas black bar fill - if anything it seems to render about 10% - 15% faster.

I tried a 2160x2160 60 second HEVC clip in a 3840x2160 8bit timeline encode to 4K HEVC via voukoder(Nvenc)

VP22b194 (no fx) 60.1fps (75w-95w GPU)

VP22b194 (black bar fill) 21.2fps (125watts GPU)

So without FX the slow point is the encoder because Vegas can play the footage fine at 120fps, but with black bar fill fx slow down is in processing due to limited ability to use the GPU. This is also the problem with color grading panel. Resolve as a comparison:

Resolve19.1 (no fx) 214fps (235watts GPU)

Resolve 19.1 (blanking fill) 210fps (290watts GPU)

Currently VP22b194 decoding is as fast as the hardware can provide(most cases) but slowdowns in processing and encoding. I will revisit this post after further Vegas updates.

I wonder if Marc is right that the odd pixel dimensions is the issue with the border.

For performance I think it's a sign that the video engine work is still incomplete- earlier in 21 the CGP and some other Fx didn't even use the GPU at all.

'odd pixel dimensions', can someone explain further?

In my post earlier the white 9:16 video is 2160x3840 created with Vegas, the woman is a 720x1080 png (same woman video below)

I my pics earlier I left the preview on Good (auto) purposefully because it shows the black lines better but even at Best (Full) the line shows as a faint black line,.

Render is exactly as seen in the preview window,

Thanks Gid for making it clear you could fully replicate it- do you think this is only a PNG with alpha issue?

@RogerS Hi, I don't think it matters what type of media is used, this is that 9:16 .MOV initially created with Vegas on a 16:9 project.

When Best (Full) is chosen the black edges are very hard to notice on a normal colourful image but they are there & show very well on a simple white image, I think that is why some people have said they can't see them. On the video above with the woman everything looks perfectly fine full-screen/100% view but if you zoom in & compare to other fx's like BCC Reframer or if you do this effect old school by duplicating the media, enlarging it & blurring it as a background copy you can see the difference.

I wonder if Marc is right that the odd pixel dimensions is the issue with the border.

For performance I think it's a sign that the video engine work is still incomplete- earlier in 21 the CGP and some other Fx didn't even use the GPU at all.

@RogerS Hi, I don't think it matters what type of media is used, this is that 9:16 .MOV initially created with Vegas on a 16:9 project.

When Best (Full) is chosen the black edges are very hard to notice on a normal colourful image but they are there & show very well on a simple white image, I think that is why some people have said they can't see them. On the video above with the woman everything looks perfectly fine full-screen/100% view but if you zoom in & compare to other fx's like BCC Reframer or if you do this effect old school by duplicating the media, enlarging it & blurring it as a background copy you can see the difference.

 

I actually got quite excited initially when I read Mark's comment regarding the odd dimensions as it actually made a lot of sense and was consistent with my theory that it is some sort of aliasing artefact caused by the way it composites the final image when the foreground image has odd dimensions yet the resolution of the output is for example, even at 1920 x 1080. Even more so because in my case, the original image emanated from broadcast PAL footage which I have upscaled (using Topaz AI) to Full HD. I then tend to crop all the edges slightly such that it is consistent with how the broadcast would have looked originally when viewed on a CRT TV. That minor cropping (depending on the nature of the footage) may result in odd dimensions (such as 1433 pixels wide for the foreground, for example).

And when I tried cropping such that my dimensions were always even, there was actually an improvement in the black line artefacting but it did not go away - certainly not the extent that it was no longer noticeable - it still was and it was still annoying (to me at least). That said, it did lessen the effect which makes me feel that Vegas may somehow have compromised on the precision of this effect in order for it to have a neglible effect on rendering speed.

I'm also seeing this issue with a standard X-AVC S mp4 added to the timeline. When the shadow blur is at 0 you see a thin line. I'm not 100% sure if this is by design to make it stand out or a bug. Maybe if there were a border thickness option that would make everyone happy.

I cannot reproduce, using an old DV 4:3 recording in a HD 16:9 project with Black Bar Fill FX with Shadow Blur at 0, looks perfect to me

I'm seeing it on your attached screenshot, particularly noticeable on the left hand side.

I'm seeing it on your attached screenshot, particularly noticeable on the left hand side.

I wouldn't worry about that....😱 it just makes it stand out a little from the background.

Same example just with a colored background.

I cannot reproduce, using an old DV 4:3 recording in a HD 16:9 project with Black Bar Fill FX with Shadow Blur at 0, looks perfect to me

Yep I can def see the line also. maybe you need better glasses.

@Jonathan-Parle "If" the line shows up in your render and not just in the preview, then you should include the word [BUG] in your Topic Title, so that it gets seen by the right people at Vegas.

I am not able to reproduce your observation in VP18.