[BUG] Unable to import my OpenEXR files

Sotaskimmer wrote on 9/11/2023, 1:37 AM

Hi all,

Been having some difficulty importing my OpenEXR files from Blender 3.6 into Vegas Pro 20 (I've also trialed v21 and the problem persists).

I reviewed a similar question on this forum posted a few months ago but the solutions in that thread have not helped.

To make a long story short, I've found that Vegas will import most OpenEXR files except the ones that I need. After hours of research and analyzing the files, the only difference I've been able to find is in the metadata. Blender's Cycles engine passes extra metadata into the EXR file (render time etc, see below) that is not present in other EXR files.

 

Interestingly, Blender's other engine Eevee, does not pass this metadata into the EXR files, and Eevee's files will import into Vegas Pro 20 just fine. My full explanation on the Blender forum.

All the files I've talked about here will import into Davinci Resolve just fine, so I believe it's an issue with Vegas.

I'm trying to find a workaround in the meantime, but I'm wondering if this is a bug in Vegas, or maybe its spec for OpenEXR is out-of-date?

Any help or official response would be appreciated.

**EDIT: Here is a link to a non-working EXR file from Blender Cycles, and a link to the working EXR file from Blender Eevee. The encoded frame is the same, the EXR output settings are the same (see below). There is a little bit of size difference here, but that likely has to do with more image data being present in Cycles (more translucent pixels). I've opened 400MB EXR files in Vegas so I know it can handle large EXR files.

EXR specs for both files:

Format: OpenEXR (not multilayer)
Resolution: 1080x1920
Color: RGB+Alpha (4 channels)
Bit depth: 32-bit color (full float)
Compression: ZIP (lossless)

*Edit for add'l info:

1) @mark-y has also found that the non-working Cycles file will also not open in Photoshop CS2, which is fairly old (deprecated 2013).

2) I've also found that the Cycles file does have one additional difference in the metadata. There is a line for "flags:" and the value is "long names"
In the Eevee file, on the line for "flags:" it just says "(none)"
I think this is a programming language thing to allow longer names for variables and such, but I'm not sure.

Comments

mark-y wrote on 9/11/2023, 6:28 AM

If you will be so kind as to upload a short file that does not work in Vegas to Drive or Dropbox, I'm sure there are some who would like to play with it and perhaps suggest workarounds. Don't upload it to Youtube or the forum, for obvious reasons (it will get reprocessed).

Sotaskimmer wrote on 9/11/2023, 8:23 AM

If you will be so kind as to upload a short file that does not work in Vegas to Drive or Dropbox, I'm sure there are some who would like to play with it and perhaps suggest workarounds. Don't upload it to Youtube or the forum, for obvious reasons (it will get reprocessed).

Thank you for the response, added links to example files in my Google drive.

john_dennis wrote on 9/11/2023, 9:06 AM

I'm way out of my depth, but have you tried opening the problem EXR file in Photoshop? Just opening and saving allowed me to open the file.

Parenthetical Comment

Every time I work on one of these issues, I learn more than anyone else.

Sotaskimmer wrote on 9/11/2023, 10:27 AM

I'm way out of my depth, but have you tried opening the problem EXR file in Photoshop? Just opening and saving allowed me to open the file.

Parenthetical Comment

Every time I work on one of these issues, I learn more than anyone else.

Hi john, I have not as I don't really use photoshop. But I am able to open the EXR file at issue in literally any other program besides Vegas Pro (Davinci, various EXR file viewers, etc).

mark-y wrote on 9/11/2023, 11:39 AM

If you will include the word [BUG] in your thread topic, it will get noticed by the right folks. I can confirm the issue with Vegas. Curiously, the "DoesntWork" file throws an error in older Photoshop CS2, as well. @Sotaskimmer

Here is the header information for both files:

john_dennis wrote on 9/11/2023, 12:33 PM

@Sotaskimmer @mark-y

All export options from Photoshop 2023 will open in Vegas Pro 21-108.

Sotaskimmer wrote on 9/11/2023, 12:36 PM

Thanks mark, I've put that in the title.
Interesting that it won't open in old Photoshop either. This leads me to believe that the OpenEXR standard has changed in some way in the last 10 years, and Magix hasn't updated the Vegas import code to accommodate it.

mark-y wrote on 9/11/2023, 3:28 PM

This leads me to believe that the OpenEXR standard has changed in some way in the last 10 years,

There is plenty of historical evidence with other formats, both image and video, to support that conjecture.

Sotaskimmer wrote on 9/11/2023, 7:26 PM

- Update -

Found a workaround by a generous soul over in Blender StackExchange. It involves tricking Blender into outputting an EXR file without the aforementioned metadata from Cycles, and lo and behold, it imports into Vegas Pro.

The colors and transparency still don't look quite right (or as good as in DaVinci) so I wonder if that also would be fixed if Magix updated their EXR code. I realize it's a color conversion (EXR is in linear color space) so things can always turn out wonky, but still.

Alex_EL wrote on 6/15/2024, 2:20 PM

@Sotaskimmer, do I unmark all Metadata options in "Output"?

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 6/16/2024, 11:43 AM

I've transcoded dpx image sequences from Canon Raw in the past output by Canon's raw to dpx utility which I fed to ffmpeg. Since dpx and exr are both image sequence schemes, I just tried it on Zraw whose utility has an EXR export option. It was as simple as just changing the dpx to exr in the script and adapting to the naming convention of the export:

zRaw_06_16_2024__11_07_43_000000.exr
zRaw_06_16_2024__11_07_43_000001.exr
...
zRaw_06_16_2024__11_07_43_000920.exr

In ffmpeg terms that naming convention translates to: "zRaw_06_16_2024__11_07_43_%06d.exr". Where the %06d specifies the 6-digit decimal sequence number of each exr frame. For ProResHQ output, I used this sctipt:

ffmpeg -y -f image2 -framerate 29.97 -i zRaw_06_16_2024__11_07_43_%06d.exr -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 3 -bits_per_mb 8000 -pix_fmt yuv422p10le .out_ProResHQ.mov

My footage does not have an alpha channel but I think ProResXQ does:

ffmpeg -y -f image2 -framerate 29.97 -i zRaw_06_16_2024__11_07_43_%06d.exr -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 5 -bits_per_mb 8000 -pix_fmt yuva444p10le .out_ProResXQ.mov