Black Screen glitches in Vegas Pro 20 (Help!)

Debbie-Whitmer wrote on 1/8/2023, 3:28 AM

1-8-2023

My operating system on my PC is Windows 10 Pro version 22H2, OS build 19045.2364

Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor 4.00 GHz. Installed RAM 64.0 GB. System type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor.

Pen and touch: No pen and touch.
I'm using and a registered user of Vegas Pro 20.0 (build 214)
GPU is the Radeon RX 580 Series

I’m having a horrible time with a “black screen” glitch displaying in Vegas Pro 20 and then after it’s rendered, the black screen is still there. I’m a videographer for a radio broadcast in which the host of the program does LIVE streaming. After the broadcast is over, I download the video and do all the post production on it. And I’ve been doing this for over 7 years and have used Vegas this whole time. The last broadcast I did just this past Thursday was a 1 hour and 43 minute interview and these “black screens” have been frustrating and totally unacceptable. Just yesterday, I did a restore on my computer system from an earlier date hoping this problem would go away but as I tested it today, the “black screen” keeps prevailing. I did a search on black screen glitches to try to find a fix but the only thing that showed up were suggestions for Sony Vegas. I tried them but they did not work, I’m assuming because Vegas Pro 20 is newer. I uploaded a short 7 second video segment so you can see how the host who is doing the interviewing disappears with a black screen and then comes back again. I also get these glitches directly on the colored lower third where their names are located too. The lower third will turn black and then return to its natural color. The only effects that I have used where it’s glitching out is the “split screen” option (as you can see the split screen) and, on the lower third, I have to use the “chroma keyer” to remove the black background from the lower third or else it will hide the faces. The lower third is made up of a colored-strip at the bottom and the rest of it is black.

Please help! I’m at my wit ends about this and, as I previously stated, the black screen is totally unacceptable. When you have deadlines, this kind of thing with the “black screens” can cause anxiety especially when you’ve tried every way you know to fix it and it still will not work.

What in the world is causing this and how can I fix it? Please give clear step-by-step instructions and perhaps more than one way to fix this so if one way doesn’t work I can try the other suggestions. Even if you have 5 (five) different ways to fix this for example, then please give me step-by-step instructions for all the different ways. Please see the 7 second video clip for your reference. Thank you so much!

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Debbie-Whitmer wrote on 1/9/2023, 5:33 AM

@Debbie-Whitmer, I suggest that, as a test, you disable the GPU (RX580) in the preference to see if it solves the black frame problem you are suffering.

I too use RX580 and, like your horrible experience, I saw the black frames in my preview screen as well as the rendered videos. In my case, those black frames started to appear since the 22H2 Windows updates were installed, it seems. I then restored a disk image that was backed up prior to the 22H2 Windows updates, and everything was back to normal. Hence, I am assuming that VEGAS Pro 20 (& 18 had the same symptom as well) was somehow having trouble working properly with the GPU in conjunction with Windows updates.

@Shinra Bansho - Hi there. Thank you for responding. I was suspecting that 22H2 was causing the problem. It seems like every time Windows updates, there's another problem that arises in one way or another. I don't know for sure if that is the reason but I'm suspecting that it is. Thank you for sharing your common problem that I have been having as well. I appreciate that.

I tested turning off the GPU inside of Vegas Pro 20, and it was unacceptably way too slow. This interview video that I did is 1 hour and 43 minutes long and and as I watched it rendering, it was going towards five (5) hours in the rendering process! I just canceled out. I think you would agree that is way too long to render. I know it's there to use when I'm absolutely desperate when there is no other recourse. But I really don't know at this point if the black screens will still be there as I canceled out of the rendering process.

I also updated my my Radeon RX 580 Series video card drivers by going to the Radeon website directly but that did not make a difference. With a normal render, I'm still getting the black screens.

cc: @Grazie

RogerS wrote on 1/9/2023, 5:59 AM

Which AMD driver version did you download? 22.5.1 seems to work well for most.

If you are getting glitches you may not have a choice but to disable the GPU for preview acceleration. Try turning off the GPU and using a GPU enabled VCE preset through MagixAVC or Voukoder (Voukoder preferred) and see if glitches remain. VCE should speed up render times vs Mainconcept (MagixAVC) or x264 (Voukoder).

Debbie-Whitmer wrote on 1/9/2023, 6:39 AM

Which AMD driver version did you download? 22.5.1 seems to work well for most.

If you are getting glitches you may not have a choice but to disable the GPU for preview acceleration. Try turning off the GPU and using a GPU enabled VCE preset through MagixAVC or Voukoder (Voukoder preferred) and see if glitches remain. VCE should speed up render times vs Mainconcept (MagixAVC) or x264 (Voukoder).

@RogerS - My updated driver for my Radeon RX 580 series is version 22.11.2.

Hi there. I am already rendering under the format of MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4 and the template is Internet HD 720p 29.97 fps (AMD VCE). I've been using this all along even with the GPU turned off or left on.

Under the rendering format selections in Vegas Pro 20, I even tried rendering with Windows Media Video V11 and still got the same black screens. I really do not know anything about "Voukoder" which is unfamiliar ground to me.

This situation is perplexing! All of my other 21 programs I have installed work perfectly except Vegas Pro 20!

Reyfox wrote on 1/9/2023, 8:45 AM

I would try the 22.5.1 drivers. Use AMD's driver cleaner first.

RogerS wrote on 1/9/2023, 6:29 PM

Try the older driver in case it helps.

Voukoder is great as Vegas just sends it frames to encode and it takes care of the rest. It may be a way to avoid whatever is conflicting in Vegas between the GPU preview and the encode.

I wasn't sure if it would fit into my workflow but for quality and flexibility has proved its worth and I donated twice.

Just install the program and connector from the link above. Voukoder will come up in render options. Click show Voukoder dialog. Then you can pick a codec such as h.264 (VCE). Select default or another option, hit apply, then render. That's it! Voukoder's resolution and framerate follows project settings. If you need you can scale it under filters (add Zscale and set it to height 1080, width 1920 for example).

Debbie-Whitmer wrote on 1/10/2023, 1:11 AM

@Shinra Bansho @Grazie @RogerS @Dexcon @walter-i.

MY SOLUTION TO THE BLACK SCREENS!

Hello everyone. I want to share with you all what I did to fix my black screen glitch situation inside of Vegas Pro 20 with my OS of Windows Pro 10 version 22H2.

I went through so much testing for the last 3 days and even turning the GPU off was not only extremely slow but I still had black screens. Going through all of this testing for 3 days with no results, I decided to reinstall my backup on my computer. My backup has Windows Pro 10 version 21H1 OS build 19043.1348.

Here are the results:

1. Vegas Pro 20 is now stable again

2. I had absolutely no black screens

3. I watched the entire interview rendering in the display window inside of Vegas Pro 20 and I could not believe how fast it was rendering!!

4. This video interview is 1 hour and 44 minutes long. With Windows Pro 10 22H2, it took 1 hour and 48 minutes to render. However, with 21H1, the whole thing was rendered in 32 minutes!! AMAZING!

I do believe that there is a problem with Windows 22H2. As I was doing my searches on google, I came to find out that others had regretted updating to 22H2. I suspected that this was my problem to begin with because I did not have any problems until after the Windows 22H2 update.

It would be nice if the people at Vegas Creative Software would inform Microsoft about this. Others were having the same black screen glitches with 22H2 that I was having. And now I have a great reservation about even updating Windows again. I have to now update 22 programs that I have on my system.

Needless to say, I’m a happy camper!

I so appreciate all of you willing to help me with this. It certainly was a process of elimination that culminated in a good solution for me. So, for all those who helped, I thought you would like to know.

Thank you so much for your help!! It was greatly appreciated!!

P.S. I’m going to go ahead and unlink the ZIP file I previously uploaded to DropBox for review. The ordeal is now over! Thanks again!!

Grazie wrote on 1/10/2023, 1:18 AM

@Debbie-Whitmer - Wow! Just wow! Thanks for reporting this Windows issue here on the Forum. KUDOS to you AND your tenacity. 😉

walter-i. wrote on 1/10/2023, 2:31 AM

@Debbie-Whitmer
👍👍👍

RogerS wrote on 1/10/2023, 2:57 AM

Glad that worked! Must be some interference with the GPU. I checked and my Windows 10 system is 22H1 which perhaps is why I hadn't seen this recently.

I wonder if there are also issues with Windows 11. My ability to access QSV is coming and going on my Windows 11 system.

MH7 wrote on 1/10/2023, 3:54 AM

@Debbie-Whitmer | I have an RX 580 as well and VEGAS Pro 20 rendering your entire 1 hour and 44 video in 32 minutes is pretty darn quick. I am, of course, not doubting this result, but I am curious as to what your render settings were for the final result? You may have already posted them but I’d just be interested to know (my PC specs are in my signature).

Debbie-Whitmer wrote on 1/10/2023, 3:54 AM

Glad that worked! Must be some interference with the GPU. I checked and my Windows 10 system is 22H1 which perhaps is why I hadn't seen this recently.

I wonder if there are also issues with Windows 11. My ability to access QSV is coming and going on my Windows 11 system.

@RogerS - Yes, it makes me wonder too about Windows 11. It's always nice to have the latest and the greatest but sometimes I think, "If everything is working perfectly okay, then why "fix it" with a new update! Because look what can happen!" It takes a long time to update 21 other programs that I'm doing right now. But in the process, everything is going smoothly. Thank you so much for your suggestions which helped me in the process of elimination.

Debbie-Whitmer wrote on 1/10/2023, 4:38 AM

@Debbie-Whitmer | I have an RX 580 as well and VEGAS Pro 20 rendering your entire 1 hour and 44 video in 32 minutes is pretty darn quick. I am, of course, not doubting this result, but I am curious as to what your render settings were for the final result? You may have already posted them but I’d just be interested to know (my PC specs are in my signature).

@MH7 - Hi there. It's pretty remarkable because I have NEVER seen Vegas render so quickly before. Everything was moving so fast. And my eyes got really big!! And I'm saying, "What?!?!?" Anyway:

Under the EDIT menu, I choose "Select" and then "Select all" first thing to select all the tracks and I make sure the playhead is all the way to the left.
Then File>Render As"
Under Formats I choose: MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4 on the left hand of the screen
Under Templates on the right-hand side of the screen I choose Internet HD 720p 29.97 fps (AMD VCE)

And that's it. I'm glad you asked that question because I just noticed something else that doesn't have to do with your question, however, what I discovered actually does.

Vegas Pro 20 has a tendency to drag a a little bit while editing on the tracks. So to loosen that up a bit and make things easier to edit and slide around, I go into OPTIONS>PREFERENCES>File/I/O and where it says, "Hardware Decoder to Use:" I open up the drop down window and I turn that OFF.
THEN I go to the top of the timeline on top of the tracks and right click my mouse and a drop down menu shows up. I choose "Quantize to Frames" and uncheck it to disable it.
On top of the display window where it says "Preview, Draft, Good, Best" I choose "Preview>HALF. This really loosens up that dragging feeling and it's so much easier to edit.
However, when I get ready to Render, I go to OPTIONS/PREFERENCES>File I/O and choose the "Hardware Decoder to Use" again and choose the "Auto (UVD/VCN on Radeon RX 580 Series)" to turn it back on again.
Above the display window, I select BEST/FULL and lastly, I enable Quantize to Frames back on again by checking the box.

And then I RENDER with the settings previously discussed. HOWEVER, when I checked File/IO settings just now, I left it on the OFF selection and forgot to put "Auto (UVD/VCN on Radeon RX 580 Series)" back on again! So, I guess I rendered it in the OFF position. However, just now, I tested both ways, and both ways go really fast and there is no black screens!! And I'm very happy with that!

P.S. I really like your signature especially the first line!!

RogerS wrote on 1/10/2023, 5:43 AM

"THEN I go to the top of the timeline on top of the tracks and right click my mouse and a drop down menu shows up. I choose "Quantize to Frames" and uncheck it to disable it."

That's dangerous for edits with video and can lead to black frames or other errors. You have to edit to frame boundaries for video to work properly. Just audio isn't an issue as samples are much smaller than frames.

Debbie-Whitmer wrote on 1/10/2023, 6:04 AM

"THEN I go to the top of the timeline on top of the tracks and right click my mouse and a drop down menu shows up. I choose "Quantize to Frames" and uncheck it to disable it."

That's dangerous for edits with video and can lead to black frames or other errors. You have to edit to frame boundaries for video to work properly. Just audio isn't an issue as samples are much smaller than frames.

@RogerS Thank you for responding. Interesting. I've never had any problems with unchecking Quantize to Frames while I'm editing and have been doing this for a long time. It makes things much easier for me to edit. Before I render, I always enable it back on again. I've never had any black screens ever until now and the real issue here was Windows Pro 10 22H2 which was just recently installed on my computer. That's when I started getting the black screens. Once I installed my backup which is an earlier version of Windows 10 Pro, everything is wonderful again!

I never did quite understand what "Quantize to Frames" was all about.

RogerS wrote on 1/10/2023, 6:24 AM

I think the problem with GPU decoding and broken/black frames may be connected to disabling quantize to frames.

Check "show unquantize frame boundaries" so you can see if there are any misaligned frames. I recommend fixing them before attempting a render. This won't have any particular effect on preview speed or performance.

Grazie wrote on 1/10/2023, 7:01 AM

I've never had any problems with unchecking Quantize to Frames while I'm editing and have been doing this for a long time.

@Debbie-Whitmer - Yup, at some time we all get "pinched" with that one. I use the extension: Edward Troxel's Project Inspector. Running my Projects through that highlights the unquantized and other issues to be rectified prior to editing and then rendering. You can set it up to make amends or you can scrutinize just what is going on! - It will save you a lot of time and frustration.

walter-i. wrote on 1/10/2023, 8:38 AM

I think now we are on the right track where the dead dog is buried.