Clips turn Black & System hangs

paullogue wrote on 4/4/2017, 10:13 AM

Hi Everyone

I'm a noob here and needing your help 😁

I've been using VP11 and 12 for a while and at the weekend I purchased VP14.

On editing my first video (approx. 10 mins) I started to encounter several usability issues ...

1. Suddenly lots of my clips went WHITE on the timeline and BLACK on the preview screen.

I have researched a lot of similar problems on Google - people point towards the "Media Offline" check box in Properties which I have ticked / unticked / ticked to no avail. The clips I shot were all from my iPhone 6 plus and are .MOV files.

2. Then I started getting Media Offline appearing a lot.

I was running the video from an external USB drive and wondered whether that was the issue. So, I transferred the project file and all the clips to me C: drive. I went into every clip and clicked on replace and pointed it to the version on the C: drive. Still no joy.

3. Finally, I am now facing the project file plays, cuts out the soundtrack after 5 seconds and generally hangs causing me to either kill it via Task Manager or reboot my system.

My machine specs seem MORE than capable (see below) but I do wonder?
A lot I also read pointed towards iTunes/Quicktime updates on both can cause issues too. I experienced this with VP12 and had to roll back a version of QT to get clips showing. One of my reasons for upgrading to VP14 was that I thought it would deal comfortably with issues like this.

Can anyone help? I have this shiny new software that I can't wait to get to grips with and a mountain of work and simply put I am getting nowhere fast!

System Specs
Operating system: Microsoft® Windows 7 (64-bit)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.4Ghz 3.40 Ghz
RAM: 16 GB)
Hard drive space: 2TB
Graphics card: NVIDIA® GTX 580
iTunes: 12.6.0.100
Quicktime: 7.7.9

Regards
Paul

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Comments

NickHope wrote on 4/15/2017, 1:49 AM

I'm loosing around 50% of my video quality going to MP4 and that's not acceptable too me.

When you convert using Xmedia Recode as GJeffrey suggested there is no quality loss in terms of resolution, bitrate, pixellation etc.. However there is a large shift in luminance caused by an inherent correction in the way that the file decodes. Quicktime gets it wrong, with too much contrast for subsequent delivery to the web, but Vegas' native decoder (used for the mp4 version) gets it right. It puts the level of those cabin lights and window right on RGB 234-235, where is should be for later web delivery.

However the clip you shared is overexposed, with no deep shadows, and the lower contrast after the conversion to mp4 exaggerates this. You may be seeing that as a loss of quality.

To improve the look of that clip after conversion to mp4 you can use a VEGAS Levels FX with settings like this. There are many other FX you can use to do this, with more control (e.g. Curves FX), but the Levels FX is simple.

Of course your other iPhone clips might not be overexposed in the same way. The only sure way to get the levels right for each clip is to learn how to use the video scopes in Vegas and refer to them while adjusting (if you have to).