Black bar fill - artefact with shadows at 0

Jonathan-Parle wrote on 11/20/2024, 11:57 AM

Hi, I recently built a new Windows 11 computer and upgraded from Vegas 15 to Vegas Pro 22. I was very excited to try the Black Bar Fill feature since I deal with a huge amount of 4:3 content from the old analogue days. Prior to this "all in one" solution offered in Vegas Pro I had done back bar filling using the old school method - two video timelines (and I used a third party plug-ins to help with the blurring as the dithering was better quality when rendering to 8 bit).

I am very happy with the performance of the new black bar fill feature since it very easy to use, quick to setup a render, looks very nice with appropriate settings and is very obviously faster than the old school method. But I notice one problem which is a bit frustrating given that I have always preferred to have no shadows on a foreground border to where the black bars would have been. So I had hoped that when changing the shadow parameters to 0, I would get that clear delineation between the foreground and background blur.

Unfortunately that is not the case - instead when the shadow is set to 0, there remains this ugly "hard" black border between the foreground and blurred background. It is very noticeable when the colours are lighter since of course this border then contrasts more. It is sufficiently distracting - at least to me - that there really only seems to be two options - either put a "proper" shadow there (which in my case 0.200 seems about right) or go back to my old school method if I want a "clean" border.

You can see what I mean about this border on this YouTube tutorial video - it is most easily seen at the 4:54 mark on the right hand side of the foreground image. It is obviously more noticeable when rendering it since YouTube obviously compresses footage and detail is lost.

I am just wondering if Vegas might be working on an improved version of this otherwise excellent effect or whether there is a workaround or settings that might make this "no shadow border" go away all together. If not I guess I will just go with the shadow given that seems to be the effect's only shortcoming compared to the old school method.

Back to post

Comments

3POINT wrote on 11/23/2024, 12:10 PM

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.

Probably because I do not interpret this as an "artefact" or as an ugly "hard" black border as stated by @Jonathan-Parle.

Also the Black Bar Fill FX doesn't have a setting for setting shadow to 0, but only a setting for shadow blur to 0 and that setting works correct in my opinion.

So @Jonathan-Parle probably expects something else when setting shadow blur to 0.

shadow blur or or no shadow blur

Gid wrote on 11/23/2024, 12:50 PM

@mark-y It's the same in VP18,

I agree with @3POINT in that it has a 0% blur rather than a 0% shadow, I had noticed but not mentioned that BCC Reframer has a shadow Off switch,

But your interpretation of whether it is 'hard' , 'ugly' or whether you interpret it as an artifact is irrelevant, the fact remains there is a very thin dark line down the edge, so your's & anyone elses comments saying things like- 'I cannot reproduce & it looks perfect to me' - is in fact incorrect.

PS. Perhaps this should be more inline with a feature request & not a 'bug'.

Gid wrote on 11/23/2024, 5:08 PM

mark-y I see it in VP18 as shown in my pictures above, the rest of that comment above was mainly aimed towards 3POINT, my comment says 'your' by which I'm talking to him, I thought quoting his remarks made it clear who i was talking to, you didn't say anything like that but as you were the initial tag I should have worded the remainder it differently.

So far I've only seen images with black lines down the side, those that say that can't reproduce it either don't show their work or show a picture clearly showing black lines (the one with a blue background is just bizarre, Black Bar Fill doesn't have a coloured background option so how that is relevant I haven't a clue). , 'They' are twisting the outcome of this by their own projection rather than showing their actual results.

-----------

I posted on here a few times a white 9:16 media on a 16:9 project + Black Bar Fill,

I challenge anyone to repeat that & show their honest work, if the resulting image gets doctored in some way to hide the lines .. well what's the point.

3POINT wrote on 11/24/2024, 5:21 AM

But your interpretation of whether it is 'hard' , 'ugly' or whether you interpret it as an artifact is irrelevant, the fact remains there is a very thin dark line down the edge, so your's & anyone elses comments saying things like- 'I cannot reproduce & it looks perfect to me' - is in fact incorrect.

PS. Perhaps this should be more inline with a feature request & not a 'bug'.

@Gid It's not my interpretation but @Jonathan-Parle interpretation. My interpretation is that there's nothing wrong with the Black Bar Fill FX, which has only a setting for the amount of shadow blur, but no setting for enabling/disabling the shadow itself, which seems to cause two small grey lines:

Which I oversaw at first sight, when I posted my first real life example and which I don't see as a showstopper for not using this FX, but rather looking for nails at low tide.