Marc, you do have a ticket about this in the support system?

No I have not filed a ticket on this. I'm trying to work out a Cineform levels issue with Sony on another ticket so I have not bothered since so many people have complained about the clips going black and I assume have filed tickets. Guess I should file a ticket but Sony response is very slow and on intermittent bugs like this they tend to go on for years.

Marc

One user with a problem may be just that user's problem, but when many users have that problem then it is Sony's problem. And the same basic bug may be reported differently by one or two users, so never gets fed up to the development team. Presently I'm not suffering the black clip thing, for no clear reason, so I cannot hammer SCS for not fixing it. Part of the reason is I'm spending more time on production instead of post, but nevertheless my solid attempt to now reproduce the problem has failed (so far).

I am getting this problem today with regular PAL DV clips in Vegas Pro 10.0e.

I'm frameserving out with Debugmode Frameserver for external rendering. Occasionally after such operations, one or two clips and their preview go completely black and I have to reopen Vegas to see them again.

I haven't changed from Sony's own DV codec.

Not sure there's any point me filing a bug report as I'm on an unsupported O/S (XP x64) so I know what the answer would be.

I've just renewed my request for the problem to be fixed. Today I've spent several hours trying to render a 3.5 minute short and I haven't been able to achieve a single render in which a random clip doesn't go black. It is the same effect as setting the mute switch on the video, although I presume that isn't what is happening. Audio never affected. If people don't put in requests for support then it is assumed to be an isolated problem of no global importance and is presumed to be some problem outside of Vegas (e.g. virus protection software, which I'm not running on my editing machine).
It was happening during editing and the fix was to close the project and reopen (no need to restart Vegas), and that wasn't much impediment. But in rendering the problem is a killer.

My problem seems to be related to bringing .avi files of a 3rd party codec back onto the Vegas timeline. I'm frameserving from timeline containing DV .avi files to Virtualdub via AviSynth, rendering Ut Video Codec lossless files, and bringing them back onto the Vegas timeline. Haven't established an exact pattern yet though, but there's some .avi conflict going on.

I've been having a similar problem since Vegas Pro 8. I use 5DmkII footage (MOV) and have been experiencing black/green/red thumbnail previews in both the project media window and the timeline for at least two years. SCS told me it was a problem related to Quicktime being 32bit, and although Vegas 10 improved the problem slightly, it didn't solve it.

I tried last year to get a "show of hands" on the forum to see if anyone else had been experiencing the problem but I was promptly reprimanded by a long-time forum member who didn't like what I was saying and so the thread got lost amongst that argument instead of what I intended it for

Since then I had massive issues trying to find and AVI intermediate that didn't change the colour of my Canon footage, and the only two options I've found have been Sony's uncompressed codec (as AVI) and Cineform (as AVI). Though only by converting from the timeline have I been able to maintain the colour with Cineform. If I convert using Cineform's batch converter or with any other batch converter that can see the CF codec then the colour changes. I even tried adjusting it in First Light but couldn't get it to match.

Overall Cineform has been a solution for me though I should add that my computer is not connected to the internet and I always, by default, disable a good number of the background services that were mentioned earlier in this thread.

The only other thing I can add to this from my experience is that the solid colour preview issue seemed to be affected more by the number clips included in the project, than by the size of the files. That is, I could take a huge file and cut it up into a large number of clips and the problem wouldn't occur, but if I introduced a large number of small files into the project it would cause the preview issue.

I hope you get the problem resolved.
Regards,
Daniel

Overcame the immediate problem by taking two Neo renders into a new project (each render having different black spots) and cutting those to give me a project with just 3 clips, then rendering that.
I had observed that the same set of clips were involved in turning black and that obviously at least one of those had been trimmed in the trimmer (which hasn't been functioning as it ought). Because of that malfunction only a few clips had been so processed, so I made a list of them and set about doing renders of the original project to record whether those were the clips involved in the problem.
Rather remarkably the problem has vanished --- all renders were fine. This may be the action of Murphy's Law, since I had got the render I needed, but I think not. Yes, the bad renders were happening yesterday and my machine was turned off overnight, so an obvious conclusion is that the problem is in the machine. However the "black clip" problem had been experienced frequently during several editing sessions, so it wasn't a simple matter of the computer needing a reboot to clear its mind.
Puzzling.

I have had clips go black on the timeline and during rendering when using Motion-JPEG video on the timeline. This has forced me to waste time double-checking all rendered footage for black areas.

Just to be certain it wasn't something I loaded after Vegas 10e, I went back to a bare minimal OS image that just has Windows 7 64 and Vegas. Still does it without any other programs or Virus software running in the background...

One solution has been to cut the problem area into smaller chunks & re-save the new VEG file (since it would be a pain to re-edit all of those smaller chunks if needed...) Although I still render-out the full video, Vegas seems to handle the smaller chunks fine. Also, I have moved the source video to another hard drive & told the VEG files to search for them in the new directory. This has also helped but it is a pain.

I am really hoping Vegas 11 fixes this. Haven't had the courage to start using 11 yet, but will try it when I have some less critical work on the plate...

Oh, another problem is that when I cut the problem section into smaller chunks, occassionally the smaller chunks all start at the beginning of the original clip instead of maintaining continuous video of the original clip. If I go-back to an earlier save and re-do the cuts, everything works out ok. Again, it's a pain because I loses confidence that my renders will not have any black scenes....

Rhino, are those problematic Motion-JPEG files avi files?

My occasional black frame problem is with photo jpeg .mov clips, at least that's where I've noticed it. Haven't tried these clips with Vegas Pro 11 yet.

I get the occasional black frame issue on Cineform files, in fact, it's not just a black frame, it's usually an entire clip that goes black for no apparent reason. This happened in v10 and now v11.

John, yes, the entire clip going black is the problem. Somehow comforting that you have experienced this because it allays the fear that it's all in my imagination.

I just ran a test render. Black frame bug is still there with Vegas 11 unfortunately.

Black frames with Vegas 9 as well. The only way around it with Photo Jpeg mov clips is to use HDLink with Cineform I'm afraid.

Yep, mine is the whole clip, not just frames. I'm seeing the problem with Ut Video Codec .avi files.

I think we can all agree that it isn't any one specific codec that has the problem, it's potentially all of them. I've even had JPG and PNG stills go black. This certainly seems to point the finger squarely at Vegas.

this is a very serious bug.

I too can report this as a bug, its so frustrating rendering a large project overnight to then realise that you have lost 5 seconds of footage because its just black.
It happens at random points with no warning. very frustrating and has cost me hours of work. I have very little confidence in large renders anymore.
I hoped vegas 11 would perhaps solve this but I see a report that it hasnt....
vegas 10E 64 bit windows 7 64 bit..

One rather pathetic workaround to save yourself a wasted render is to zoom into the timeline a bit and scan along the timeline for "empty" events. In my case it's obvious if an event is going to be black or not because the thumbnails disappear and I just see a white event. Before doing it, turn on all thumbnails (options > preferences > video > thumbnails to show in video events > all).

Restarting Vegas fixes it for me, so it's probably a good idea to restart Vegas right before a big render.

thanks, good advice..but I wish sony would fix it.