i've seen black stray frames show up in DVDA MPEG renders from perfectly good Vegas AVI renders...in fact, it happened tonight...AVI render from Vegas was perfect...created a DVD in DVDA and after burning...bammm...black frame in the middle of the DVD. My stray frames, when they happen, in Vegas are often at the very beginning and end of push/iris transitions...again it happened tonight on the timeline. When I trim the transition length or move it in any way, the stray frame disappears. But I haven't discerned a pattern of cause yet, but the push and iris transitions cause it quite often for me. They happen on both my machines...a P4 with great mobo, etc. and an AMD Shuttle...good ram in both. I'll wait to see if anything changes with V6..if not, it may be time to create some experiment and control groups with willing Vegas users. For the time being, I'm going to quantize all audio and video events in my projects with the 'quantize to frames scripts' and keep the 'show unquantized events with red edges' switches set to 'true'. This problem happens so often...the only thing that seems to help is rebooting...but I haven't been vigilant about proving the theory...

One test for this would be this: The next time you see a flash frame in your rendered output, go back to the project (make sure you haven't altered anything in the project, or all bets are off). Then, open the "Edit Details" view in Vegas and select Show: Events. Finally, click on the Length column to sort events by length. If you have any really short events, they should show up there.
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Flash frames are usually one frame. If they can't be found on the timeline it seems unlikely that they would be found in an edit details list.
Moreover, the comment by Musicvid above about hardware seems unlikely since it has happened to so many including DSE, Ed, etc and others who have the latest hardware. It has been persistent for a few years so given the variety of hardware that has come and gone, I can't imagine that it is hardware related.

And again, I can't believe that if Sony REALLY put their minds to it, that they couldn't reproduce the problem.

But that would involve them sitting glued to 2 hours plus of video looking for a single flash frame EACH time they re-render. Which is is the torture we have to go through to check for these dreadful things.

John

In terms of Marquat's suggestion to use "Progressive" instead of "Lower first" for the field order, can anyone tell me why that is or isn't a good idea? I have never used Vegas set to anything but Lower First.

Thanks,
John

Knocking on wood... I've never seen a "flash" frame regardless if lower field first, upper field first or progressive, ripple on/off any other settings combination. Yesterday after skimming this thread, (first time I read it) I tried to download the sample file someone (forgot who) said they put up and only got a "empty folder" message. So I'm a virgin, still no flash frames here. Not that I'm complaining, but I haven't seen any. ;-)

Black frames are a different story. Seen plenty of those. I'd say 99% of the time something dumb I did or a corrupted source file.

Another possibly related action. If I take a series of very short clips then throw in "0" velocity on each one with some pans then on some of them set the switches to "smart resample" and some to "no resampling" when playing them on the timeline at the start of the clip I get a double flash blip. If I stop playing then start playing the same area again it sometimes will blip again then about the third time it will be clean. Also if that area is rendered the render is clean.

JJK

Another possibly related action. If I take a series of very short clips then throw in "0" velocity on each one with some pans then on some of them set the switches to "smart resample" and some to "no resampling" when playing them on the timeline at the start of the clip I get a double flash blip. If I stop playing then start playing the same area again it sometimes will blip again then about the third time it will be clean. Also if that area is rendered the render is clean.
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I don't think that's it JJ because "smart resample" was introduced with Vegas 4.0 and the "flash frame" has been around since Vegas 2.0, but let's keep working at this and thanks to all the participants.

BillyBoy,
I am amazed you have never seen a flash frame. My videos are typically over 2 hrs, but I do recall in the past you mentioned that yours are often pretty long as well. With a longer video, the likelihood of seeing a flash frame is increased simply because there is more video within which it can occur.
I found Farss's post deeply troubling in that a commercial DVD was released with one of these anomalies in it. That's totally unacceptable IMO.

Regards,
John

It does seem strange this bug hasn't jumped up and bite me yet, didn't you first metion this phenomenon well over a year ago?

How long does this flash last, just a single frame, several, varies?

Since I just skimmed this thread I must have missed any detailed description of what you're talking about, not how it happens so much, rather WHAT are you seeing? Can anyone paint a word picture, maybe I have seen one and just chalk it up to something that I've filed away in my mind as something else. I'm getting, older, lots of cowwebs...

Bill,
It is a single frame from somewhere else in the video that flashes on the screen. It can occur anywhere in the video and the flash frame can come from anywhere in the video as well. It is long enough to recognize where it came from but if you go to the spot it came from nothing will be telltale about why it came from there. No transitions, generated media, etc. just a single video frame.
It is easy to overlook when checking your videos unless you are watching it intently as a customer would be watching it for the first time. That is what takes so long when checking over the videos if you want them glitch free (as I do).
It can be anywhere on the timeline with no rhyme nor reason in terms of where it occurs. If you pinpoint the exact spot and stretch the timeline out as far as it will go to look for it, it won't be there. It will sometimes show up when you play the timeline or show up when you render, or both. It will sometimes go away if you re-render or recapture all the clips again then re-render or a new one will appear in a different place.
That is why we are having so much trouble trying to figure this out for the people who developed this software. It has been present for many of us in versions 2, 3, 4, and 5 and will no doubt be present in version 6 as well. Sony should be doing this, not us.

John

John,
your description is pretty accurate. As it's happening in PAL projects it isn't a DF/NDF issue and similar looking problems can arise if you're not careful with QTF and mixing media at different frame rates etc.
Buth they're separate issues and in general well understood problems. The problem will become far more noticeable as more user encode to mpeg-2 which might explain why this thing has been a bit dormat. A single frame that's totally different to the two adjoining frames is a nightmare for the encoder and I'd bet it isn't being notified that this a cut so it could create a new I frame. Results in the impact of this one frame probably upsets the whole GOP to some extent. This doesn't happen with DV or VHS, that's why dropouts from your camera weren't so noticeable before. I've seen very minor tape glitches end up as horrid smack in the face artifacts after they're encoded to mpeg-2.
When we all start rendering out to HDV with it's much longer GOP / higher compression the impact of this is going to be even more pronounced I'm betting.

So we know this isn't related to anything going wrong on the T/L. We could summarise the problem very simply.
"Sometimes when Vegas calculates what the current frame should be it gets the wrong answer."
The word "Sometimes" is important. There is NO correlation between when that happens and anything that Vegas's code is doing. Therefore you'd need to start suspecting something outside of Vegas. It's all too easy to forget that in a modern OS the code isn't just merrily running along by itself. The OS is switching tasks, that task switching requires the current state of the app being interrupted to be saved and then restored when it's run again. I'm betting pounds to pennies this issue is somehow related to this. It stands up to good scientific methodology, it fits the known facts and it's a simple explaination. Pity is if the theories right it's not any easy one to track down.

Bob,

Bob,
I didn't start encoding to Mpeg 2 until DVDA came along with Vegas Video version 4 and then not right away either. I first noticed the problem in Vegas 2.0 when creating a DV Master tape using the PTT function. It wasn't until I had made 70 VHS copies from it that I watched one of them and saw it. Then I watched the DV master and it was on there as well.
After I re-rendered and created a new master I had to record all the VHS copies over again, and guess what? I had popped all the tabs on the tapes and had to put Scotch tape over the holes so I could record them all over again. I feel fortunate that I didn't distribute them and discover it later. It would have embarrassed me to death.

John

The only thing I've seen that's similar is always viewable on the timeline if you zoom in and cured by snipping out the frame or frames. For your problem, have no idea what it is, Reading some more of this thread I don't see any end user cure either. If you haven't already, next time it happens, maybe burn a DVD with it on and send it along with the VEG file to Sony. Ever get any response from Dr. Dropout or Dennis from Sony?

When I started with Vegas 3 I had these single frames regularly. Since then I haven't had one. All I changed was how I cut the events, just made sure that I kept all events in their own space on the timeline and comleted all actions on these events before I put transitions or composited or connected them in any way. No answer I know, but it worked for me.
I split events by the s key and delete the unwanted video and audio and then rejoin the kept pieces.

This isn't an option for me as I frequently have to edit a three night performance into a single video. I need to be able to juggle multiple tracks (one of the selling features of the software).
But,
I can't say that the flash frames have only occurred when juggling multiple tracks. The first episode I described just above Bill's post was one night with just an audio/video single track set.

John

Next time it happens, look at the Edit Details view, as I suggested before. I'm betting that you will find some super-short, sub-frame video events. Because they are less than one frame long, they don't get played on the timeline, but they may get picked up by the renderer. When I was doing a lot of scripting, I found out that you can create events of almost any duration. I've also seen single sub-frame events on my timeline. They show up as incredibly thin lines, the same thickness or less than the cursor. Because shorter events always are put on top of longer events, you can often see them as you scan across your project.

I used to get these when editing with ripple turned on. Now that I don't use ripple editing, I seldom get them.

maybe burn a DVD with it on and send it along with the VEG file to Sony. Ever get any response from Dr. Dropout or Dennis from Sony?
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This is an old issue that has happened to lots of people as you may have gathered from the responses. Apparently it even made it's way onto a DVD DSE released according to what Bob posted above. I just brought it up again because they are about to release yet another version of Vegas without a solution to this problem. Whether they have addressed some of the other big problems mentioned remains to be seen. If Vegas 5 is any indication, they will not have addressed them in Vegas 6 either. I stopped buying after Vegas 4 because they aren't fixing the basic editing functions of the software that need fixing. I am tired of bells and whistles. Give me a credit roll generator that makes me gasp for air when I marvel at it's sleekness and useability. Let me be able to go over my videos ONCE to check for glitches I CAUSED, not the software. ETC.

John

John,
the problem happens WITHOUT EDITING ANYTHING!
Like I said before, put a clip on the T/L, all I did was trim the head and tail and encode it. The Vegas EDL is clean, if it's not you could just save the EDL and creat the problem at will, but than it's not really a problem, well it's a minor one.
And no I'm NOT saying this problem is related to making a DVD, I'm saying that'll make the problem more noticeable WHEN it happens.

And to answer BBs suggestion, I believe it crept into a VASST training DVD, maybe that wasn't the same issue as we're talking about. If they opened the original project and they couldn't find anything then it's this problem. This is what we all need to get our heads around, you'd prbably need to re-render the same project maybe one million times to get it to happen again.
If you can go look at your project or EDL and see something wrong then that isn't THIS problem!
Bob.

John,
AutoRipple and the whole Ripple Editing function in Vegas is one of the many things I want fixed by Sony instead of adding new features. I never use it.

"I seldom get them" to me is unacceptable. You should never get them.

John

I am happy to see that this topic is about to break 100 replies.....even though I posted a lot of them myself.

Unfortunately, I have to add a response to this thread after being bitten by this bug for the first time today.

The media I'm using has the following workflow -- 3d animated object from 3DSMax coming in to Vegas rendered by 3DSM as 30fps progressive HuffYUV footage. The frame is visible on the timeline as blank, and I can even give it a marker and cycle over the frame -- sometimes it appears, other times not at all. Some times it looks like the lower, upper or middle third of the frame only is what's being affected. So odd that other times it goes away completely. Attempting to remedy the issue by isolating, splitting, then rejoining the footage "around" the frame provides no consistent answer -- it sometimes re-appears in the new media attached to the split on either side.

Incidentally, the media in question has no audio and is only about ten seconds long -- the flash (blank) frame comes in at frame number 256 of 309 total.

The errant blank frame does not appear when the media is played back by WMP 10.

I would offer all my materials and project up for evaluation but I cannot as it is a product logo and I'm bound to an NDA. I will work on generating some test media with similar properties to see if I can repro the effect and make the media available.

- jim

What has been the consensus with regards to this problem and whether or not you should have Quantize to Frames turned on? I've never touched that option until reading of this issue -- what's everyone's advice?

- jim

What has been the consensus with regards to this problem and whether or not you should have Quantize to Frames turned on? I've never touched that option until reading of this issue -- what's everyone's advice?

Wow, this thread is so long, that to answer your question, I'm actually going to refer back to my first post, where I quote Sony's own advice:

Quantize Frame or Not?

jlafferty,

Essentially you leave it on for video editing and off for audio editing.
But the problem you have described is the "Blank frame" issue not the "Flash frame" issue. Flash frames DO NOT appear on the timeline. They cannot be physically found.

John

But the problem you have described is the "Blank frame" issue not the "Flash frame" issue. Flash frames DO NOT appear on the timeline. They cannot be physically found.

Well, hell, how can I fix my problem then? :D