Black frames being inserted into H264 AVI file

Simmo1985 wrote on 12/12/2015, 7:18 PM
Hi guys,

Just wondering if someone can have a look at a video file I'm having trouble with. It's an AVI / H264 file, 10mb in size (link below). It seems that every 4th frame SVP is inserting a black frames. This is present in the video preview and rendered files. Every other video player and video editing program on my computer can play the file fine. All of the frames seem to be present in the original video file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fmkxjfi90hi5zgr/RECO0002.AVI?dl=0

The video is 720p. Oddly enough, if I use the same camera at 1080p Sony Vegas plays back the video fine.

Things I have tried:
- Enabling / disabling re-sampling
- Adjusting the framerate of the project (if I set project framerate to 15, no black frames are inserted - obviously this is not a viable solution though)
Installing the latest version of 'x264vfw' / trying various combination of settings.
- Installing K-Lite Codec Pack / trying various combination of settings.
- Changing "media properties" in SVP to progressive/interlaced, adjusting timecode
- Enabling / disabling Hardware acceleration

SVP appears to use the x264vfw 64-bit codec when decoding the video file. I couldn't find any alternative codecs to try out.

I'm using Windows 10 64bit / SVP Pro 13 - build 453.

Comments

john_dennis wrote on 12/12/2015, 7:32 PM
Mediainfo for the source:

General
Complete name : F:\RECO0002.AVI
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
File size : 10.3 MiB
Duration : 10s 410ms
Overall bit rate : 8 293 Kbps
Recorded date : 2015-12-12
Writing library : AMBA
ICRT : 22:35:56

Video
ID : 0
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L4
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=4, N=32
Codec ID : H264
Duration : 10s 410ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 8 001 Kbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.290
Stream size : 10.2 MiB (99%)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : FF
Duration : 10s 347ms
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 1 channel
Channel positions : Front: C
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 80.8 KiB (1%)
Alignment : Split accross interleaves
Interleave, duration : 21 ms (0.64 video frame)

Vegas Pro 13 on my laptop won't open it and identifies the file as "unknown", Windows Media Player plays it.

I encoded it to an mp4 in Handbrake and the result opened in Vegas fine. Try to remux it in AVIDemux or the like.
Simmo1985 wrote on 12/12/2015, 8:06 PM
Thanks John. Ideally I want to be able to get SVP to able to work with the original file as I need the original metadata. I use SVP to add date/time onto the video using the Vegasaur plug-in, which pulls the information from the "date modified" tag. Re-encoding to a new file will lose that info.
Simmo1985 wrote on 12/12/2015, 8:16 PM
Ok, so I think it might be the 64-bit version of x264vfw. What makes me think that? I downloaded two copies of virtualdub, x86 and x64 versions.

VirtualDub x64, which I assume can only use the 64-bit version of the x264vfw codec has the same problem as Vegas.
VirtualDub x86, which I assume uses the 32-bit version of x264vfw can play the video fine.

I guess what I need is an alternate codec to x264vfw that will still allow me to open these video files in Vegas.
Simmo1985 wrote on 12/12/2015, 9:03 PM
Solved. Uninstalled all previous codecs. Installed 'ffdshow tryouts' with the VFW interface enabled. Seems to be working fine now.
john_dennis wrote on 12/12/2015, 9:10 PM
Good..