many thanks laurence, it worked perfectly.

funnily enough i've had mpeg2repair on my pc for about 2 > 3 months (i think you recommended it in another thread), and used it successfully on a minor tape problem - certainly not one that gave me such angst as this one.

strangely there was no errors recorded in the error log, but i'm not going to worry about that....

is there anything i should be aware of when using this file in vegas, such as ptt?

again many thanks for your speedy response,

leslie

I can't stress this enough. Errors like this are introduced during tape capture and often not noticed until they give you problems later on.

The biggest single thing that I do to avoid this is to turn off the background virus protection before I start capturing with HDV Split.

Other things I do are to turn off the HDV Split video preview window, turn off any other background processes I can spot, and capture HDV video after a fresh computer reboot. Turning off the virus protection is the most important one though.

just as passing observations regard my problem....

a. i always capture with sony's app. ingesting via a m15 vtr. so far i've never had any other problems that the occasional splitting of what should have been a continuous capture. on a couple of occasions this 'splitting' has lost me a few frames, which required a recapture. the split never occurs twice in the same place.

b. no virus protect on capture. that said, i run avast, and have occasionally forgotten to turn it off whilst capturing. however, the above 'splits' occurred in both states, ie, virus on and off.

c. the original file i was referring to was an edited version that somehow developed this 'killer' frame after a few weeks of not being played at all. however, i might have defragged the hard drive during that time (my memory isn't what it er....)

all that to one side, your advice worked, and i am very grateful for your prompt response,

many thanks again,

leslie

Isn't this though from a file that was rendered out from Vegas, not captured from tape?
You didn't by any chances update V8 in the interim?

Bob.

Again, the part of the video that crashes could have had an error that was introduced during capture, then smart-rendered into the final piece. If you were running 7d or earlier, you would never even notice this error because of the more robust error correction in those versions. Then if you updated to 7e, 8a or 8b and tried to play or render from this file, the error would suddenly begin crashing your project. This doesn't mean however that that error wasn't there from the beginning.