Black frame with HDV

ScorpioProd wrote on 4/23/2008, 10:22 AM

Was there ever a final conclusion as to the cause or how to prevent black frames in HDV?

I have worked with HDV before on this particular Vegas Pro 8 system with no issues. But today I was working with some XDCAM HD footage that I needed to render out to HDV, and to my surprise, there was a black frame a little ways into the rendered HDV.

Not a good thing to find.

Comments

ScorpioProd wrote on 4/23/2008, 11:21 AM

I rerendered it to HDV again with the same results.

As it renders, the preview window shows the missing frames are there, not black frames, but in the finished render, just as before, at 00:00:05;02 into the finished render, there are 3 black frames.

Then I tried it a third time, and I didn't change anything and like magic, it rendered with no black frames.

Weird.

john-beale wrote on 4/23/2008, 12:22 PM

I've had similar experiences with V8, the black frames pop up randomly on HDV material. Sometimes they go away again, and sometimes they stay.

In the last project I had several tracks of HDV, one had been recorded direct-to-disc (using HDVSplit on a laptop) and the rest to tape, subsequently ingested with HDVSplit. There were some black frames on one track that came from tape, but I didn't notice any on the track recorded direct to the HDD. For what it's worth.

johnmeyer wrote on 4/23/2008, 12:30 PM

I created a method to eliminate black frames. I never posted it, but it involved temporarily changing the playback speed, playing through the section where the black frame occurs, and then changing it back. The black fame, in my experience, is actually not in the m2t file, but only occurs because of some bug in how Vegas plays it back. So the key to a workaround is to get Vegas to read the m2t file starting at a different point.

I figured that Sony would have absolutely nailed this problem ages ago, so I never took the steps of writing down the workaround (at one time, I even started writing a script that would eliminate the black frames at a push of a button).

riredale wrote on 4/23/2008, 12:56 PM

We are all waiting eagerly for that script! Your name will forever be fondly remembered on this site, and Vegans will raise their glasses whenever they congregate and shout "Huzzah!" in your memory.

One more request: could it be written in a way that allows it to run on either V7 or V8?

ScorpioProd wrote on 4/23/2008, 8:20 PM

So is this just a problem when actual HDV rendering is involved? Or should I watch for this when working with XDCAM HD as well?

MarkFoley wrote on 4/24/2008, 6:34 AM

johnmeyer,
I have a workaround also...but it is part of my normal workflow. I simply use proxies to edit with. At times, I will get black frames to show in playback with the proxies, but once I gearshift to m2t files for the render, they're gone...

mark-woollard wrote on 4/25/2008, 8:21 AM

My workaround has been to ingest/convert using Cineform's HDLink/Neo.

jb1203 wrote on 4/26/2008, 6:27 AM

Some of the same problems here. I have a project that has no black frames in the downloaded m2T file. When I render it out I have black frames. I have rendered it out three times and have had black frames in driffrent places. I'm at the point to where I will edit the section in PPro, and render it out and see if the frames are gone. Unless someone had a better anwser.

Thanks

ScorpioProd wrote on 4/26/2008, 11:41 AM

This has been reported to Sony, right? Any info from them on when there will be a fix???

Cause if this starts happening with XDCAM HD footage, considering Sony has been bundling Vegas Pro 8 with their XDCAM HD gear, that would be really, really bad.

R0cky wrote on 4/30/2008, 2:24 PM

johnmeyer, temporarily change playback speed how? Scrubbing? Media properties?

Item 2: I'm getting black frames when I render to HDV from media which are *.png stills. Any workaround ideas anyone?

rocky

johnmeyer wrote on 4/30/2008, 4:51 PM

I just did a project a few days ago and encountered black frames. If I get a chance in the next few days, I'll try to re-create it, and if I can, I'll post my workaround.

From memory: Playback rate is changed by right-clicking on the event and selecting properties. You change it to 0.5, temporarily stretch the event, play through the place where the black frame happens, and then re-size and change the playback rate again. However, I may be leaving out something which is why I want to re-create and then post the steps.

Sunflux wrote on 6/12/2008, 3:36 AM

So anything further on this? I've never hit the black frame problem before, but I'm in a situation in 8.0b where I need to stitch together two finished rendered M2T files, and surprise surprise when I drag them onto the timeline they're LOADED with black frame issues. These also seem to correspond with audio dropouts (the peaks actually have flat areas around where the black frames exist).

The source material here is Cineform AVI files (originally M2T), which have no issues in playback or rendering to other formats. Also I can play back the rendered M2T in Windows Media Player (Cyberlink codec) just fine without any of the issues that Vegas is showing.

Oddly on another project I'm working on with native M2T files I am having ZERO problems, so Vegas seems to only have a problem with M2T files that it's rendered itself... odd...

Any suggestions? I'm kinda stumped - especially stumped that this problem is still here.

fausseplanete wrote on 6/19/2008, 11:06 AM

I got the same problem from non-HDV media (Huff AVI) and also got rid of it just now. Not sure how fixed since I made more than one change! First located same point in trimmer. Frame by frame... No black frame there, only get it from the Event on the timeline. Presumably a good cluse to the root of the problem! Next, guessing, tried to clean any cached or prerendered video. Did Tools > Cean Project media. Then did Tools > Clean Up Prerendered... Neither made any obvious difference (though who knows maybe they made a nonobvious one!). Next created a new video track above with intention of pasting a previous frame to "patch" over the black one. Went to the original track, split before and after the previous frame, copied it to the new track ... and suddenly couldn't find the black frame anymore. Deleted the "patch" frame and all still ok. Stopped while the going was good, and rendered!!!!

BG wrote on 6/20/2008, 8:39 AM

I've encountered the same problems with black frames and also had audio dropouts (waveforms flat) in places when the audio is acutally there but Vegas won't play it. I just recently discovered that I can run the offending file through mpeg streamclip which changes the file to a .ts and it will load and play fine in Vegas. The process is much faster than trying to re-render from Vegas all the time. I wish they would get this fixed!