OT: Boris exports weird (stripes/quarters) ?

fausseplanete wrote on 10/31/2009, 3:30 AM
Trying to use Boris RED to pre-process footage for use in Vegas-based project, but unable to reliably Boris-export a usable result. Might be my system config but does the same on two vastly different machines (desktop & laptop). Any ideas?

Maybe it's just my two systems, main (8-core intel Mac pro) & laptop (1-core Athlon), but I'm getting multiple problems rendering anything other than "virtual graphics" from Boris RED. Their (helpful) support can't reproduce these problems, so out of desperation, after a week or so of (unaffordable time) trying to pin it down, I ask here (despite being way-off-topic) if anyone else has experienced anything like this or can suggest the cause or a workaround.

The problem: For a simple Boris project consisting of just a standard movie clip (AVI etc), when I export/render (from Boris), the result, unlike the (good) preview, contains weird aberrations such as black-screen, white-screen, screen divided into quarters or vertical colour-strips looking like travelling along close-up of Saturn's rings, or else the render aborts. In some cases GSpot reports the rendered AVI file to be corrupt or having extra unneeded data at the end (e.g. 2GB of such data after 200MB or real video). What happens depends on setting used etc. Not just one but many failure modes, and for any of a number of different clips I've tried from different cameras etc. Anyone ever come across this kind of thing?

I don't imagine this exporting issue is endemic to Boris as that product is so widely used. But I guess it may be sensitive in some way to my system configuration, something common to both my systems.

If only I could find out what it might be. On both machines I have the latest Boris RED (4.3.3) and QuickTime (7.6.4). One machine is XP updated to the hilt while the other is back at XP-SP2. Both have antivirus (different makes) and recent scans OK. No "mega codec packs" installed.

The problems only occur for movie file based (as opposed to generated media based) projects. Also, the problems seem more guaranteed to happen for HD or HDV media than DV. What happens each time depends on what export settings etc. were used and whether Boris has just previously had a problem (need to restart Boris to avoid latter). Exporting via VfW gives vertical stripes (they look like averages over each vertical column of pixels) whle exporting via DIrectShow does not. Same for various AVI codecs (Cineform, Uncompressed,..). Also tried QT-Animation and the result looks OK but appears to overstretch the QT player (freezes it) and unbelievably slow playback in Vegas. As I write this I just discovered that Vegas can render-on from the QT-Anim Boris render to whatever else but really want Boris to export directly to AVI (Cineform) for practical use in Vegas, because QT-Anim is so overwhelmingly huge that its use for long clips is impractical.

Any ideas?

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 10/31/2009, 7:40 PM
Try rendering from within Vegas. Add an Empty Event to your project for the duration you need. Then add Boris RED as an FX and make the Boris project the same duration. Add any media and tracks that you want in Boris, then render in Vegas. (just an idea)

~jr
fausseplanete wrote on 10/31/2009, 10:08 PM
Johnny,

You did it, it works! At least on my first (of my 8, so far) clips.

Been doing and writing up experiments all week (at times) and today to find out what Boris RED can and can't successfuly render to on my systems. Doesn't seem to like HDV 1440x1080, at least not on my system, and interestingly has no template for it. I guess your workaround sidesteps that issue by frameserving to Vegas which renders more reliably.

Hadn't thought of that, thanks a bundle,
David
fausseplanete wrote on 10/31/2009, 10:13 PM
Possibly the problems I experienced are unique to my setup, as opposed to Boris RED in general, since Boris support have so far been unable to replicate them.
Coursedesign wrote on 10/31/2009, 10:27 PM
Many programs have problems with 1440x1080 because of the extreme PAR.

Best is to transcode the footage to 1920x1080 (square pixels) before doing anything with it, that will also give you better picture quality in the end result.
fausseplanete wrote on 11/1/2009, 12:58 AM
The FX-in Vegas workaround was OK till I gave it a 26 second clip, then Vegas-Boris got an exception error (unable to read memory), while doing the Analysis phase of its Optical Stabilizer (in Smooth mode). Tried it (and got it) three times.
fausseplanete wrote on 11/1/2009, 4:37 AM
Current workaround is Boris export to QT-Animation then Vegas transcode to Cineform. Slow on CPU but reliable hence faster in overall physical process time.

Will experiment with using HD instead of HDV, as an extension to all the other experiments I have been doing. On my system at least, my experiments consistently produce weird render results for HDV-based projects fed by HDV media, so maybe HDV format is worth avoiding. But I don't like rescaling up and down any more than I have to because it can introduce blur. I'll see what happens in practice.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 11/1/2009, 10:10 AM
I'm glad that at least that got you further.

~jr
fausseplanete wrote on 11/16/2009, 2:48 PM
Much better way to derive AVI-Cineform from standalone Boris:
Export as QT-Cineform then (if needed) use Cineform's HDLink to simply re-wrap it from QT to AVI. Reason for exporting to QuickTime (QT): Boris is based on it.

I had wrongly assumed that Cineform was AVI-only under windows, but how presumptuous of me!.

Also I looked into what the QT-Animation codec actually was, and discovered that it's not a total no-brainer lossless (or virtually lossless) format, so in future if I use it it will be with more care and a wary eye. Details below.

The QT-Animation coding format (http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=Apple_QuickTime_RLE) is based on Run Length Encoding (e.g. "The following nine consecutive pixels are all RGB=131,97,2") hence it would hardly compress at all on any real-world scenes. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation_codec It is only lossless when used at 100% quality setting, and furtermore, for complex 3D rendered scenes or digitized film of real-world footage, it can add visible noise. The latter is confusing - either it's lossless or it's not! (at 100% quality setting). Anyhow, lots of people use it, I imagine the main thing is that 100% setting. But I'll be more wary of it in future, just in case.