Repeatable Bug in 6.0

Jim H wrote on 6/1/2006, 8:44 PM
Here's one that I just discovered. When going from "Best (auto)" preview to "Preview (auto)" the selected video track goes black and for just the frame you were on at the time it stays black until you exit vegas and reopen the veg. It's just as though vegas blacked out that one frame. I can render to ram and the black blip is still there. Very strange and repeatable. It happens while working with an HDV 1080 60i project, never noticed it on SD. Have not tried to render to see if the black frame shows up.

Anyone else discover this?

Comments

Serena wrote on 6/1/2006, 9:26 PM
Not here, Jim. This is 1080/50i however.
Marco. wrote on 6/2/2006, 2:40 AM
Neither here on my systems. Works fine. I also used 1080/50i cause it's PAL here.

Marco
DavidSinger wrote on 8/28/2006, 7:44 AM
Yeah, that exact thing just happened to me about 10 minutes ago (which is why I'm here searching for a "whothappened"), except the preview screen went RED for me. Vegas hung. I'm editing with all m2t files on the timeline, render to NTSC 720x480 widescreen avi.
I have about 40 active tracks holding about 100 clips in a 4 min veg, and all I was doing was scrubbing over to the end of a clip I had just expanded a bit.

I don't have a clue what went on specifically, but it definitely stopped working!

Oh, and the previous action I took before opening Vegas was to defrag. This computer is dedicated to Vegas 6.0d (no internet link), DVDA3, and DVRack. Absolutely nothing else. XPsp2, AMD64 4000+, 2gb ram, C-drive=WD250, D-drive=dual Seagate 250s RAID0.

Computer is not overclocked, CPU runs at about 50dCen when rendering.

David
farss wrote on 8/28/2006, 7:54 AM
You have 40 tracks of native HDV with 100 clips and it worked at all, wow.
DavidSinger wrote on 8/28/2006, 8:41 AM
Uh, this is not good?
Am I asking too much of my equipment (or Vegas)?
Is this the time to make some sort of intermediate file set?

I've lurked for years following your suggestions, and I value your comments. Apparently I'm seriously cutting the bleeding edge.
I'm open for recommendations.
David
farss wrote on 8/28/2006, 2:44 PM
I'd be seriously thinking CF DI!
Even 40 tracks of SD DV is getting pretty full on.

I mean it should work but that implies an aweful lot of calcs to render each frame and perhaps a lot of data being buffered in RAM. I'd imagine also that all the calcs are done at HD res first before scaling to your SD projects template.

Bob.
DavidSinger wrote on 8/28/2006, 3:33 PM
"I'd be seriously thinking CF DI!"

...my brain's not making the connection...
You are suggesting a *particular* intermediate file format?

I've never made an intermediate, so I'm a total neophyte in this discussion. I'd appreciate a road map into the territory.

Is making an intermediate a function in Vegas 6 (such as create an intermediate file that references the original m2t file)?

I was hoping that by dropping the m2t files on the timeline I could edit and render to SD for all the preliminaries (the footage still looks great on a room-sized screen and lets the kibitzers critique so I can go back to re-edit a more satisfying job). Then I'd render the final to HD 1080i (target market is cable anyway). All in one edit level.

I'm working in 2 and 3 minute sub-project chunks, with the final movie about 40 chunks woven together. Now I'm seeing that throwing the whole lot onto one timeline would be a killer, what with the hugh amount of data I already work with in those smaller chunks.

Sigh. To think I tease my wife about the boulders she hauls around in the back of our SUV (think massive rock garden). Once I caught her unloading about half a ton (almost enough to lift the front end off the ground!). But considering that this current movie's backup drive is 300gb and is already half-full of nothing but m2t files for this one project, maybe I should give my wife a break, eh?

David
Jay-Hancock wrote on 8/28/2006, 3:45 PM
CFDI is referring to Cineform Digital Intermediate. You can render to this codec (in Vegas 6) in the "Render As" dialog by selecting AVI / Video for Wndows and then go from there (it'll say intermediate or something like that - I don't have Vegas in front of me).

You can learn more about this code here.
DavidSinger wrote on 8/29/2006, 3:23 AM
I'm getting more and more confused here.
Let me start from the top with a single clip:

1. Z1U to disk via Firewire thru DV Rack which yields a 28.5mb m2t file.

2. Place the m2t file on the Vegas 6.0d timeline; leave cam sound stereo.

3. Set the project properties to "HDV 1080-60i".

4. Render just the *selected region* of this clip, chosing render options as follows:
(a) pick AVI
(b) pick HDV 1080-60i intermediate, verifying the CineForm codec is part of this selection.
(c) set render quality to "best"
(d) leave audio 48x16xstereo (default)
(e) render a selected loop region only (I don't need the entire clip anyway).

5. Resulting output is a 69mb avi (from a *portion*of the original 28.5mb m2t)!

Please explain to me why a 69mb avi is a better file to put on the timeline than a 28mb m2t.

Please explain to me why the intermediate file is not "compressed" the way CineForm's web page implies would be a Very Good Thing.

David
busterkeaton wrote on 8/29/2006, 4:07 AM
David,

the way HDV is able to get HD resolutions down to a DV transport stream is through heavy, heavy compression. In particular, HDV is interframe compression using a long GOP (group of pictures) of 15 frames. That means the compression is done across frames, comparing one frame to the next. DV compression is intraframe compression that is the compression is done within each frame. So if you had a close shot of an American flag, DV would sense that there would be redundant pixels of red, white and blue and it would achieve the compression that way. HDV does this spatial compression, but then it also does compression across time, so it's efficient two ways. HDV would look at it and see this group of pixels red for the next ten frames and it would achieve compression that way. So HDV does not have to represent every frame. It has a series of keyframes and then mathematically represents the differences between those two keyframes.

What this means when you edit is that your computer has to do heavy work to decode the keyframes. It also means that any edit you make, even a bunch of straight cuts is going to result in a recompression when you render. This will mean a quality loss. So Cineform intermediates allow you to edit without recompression and are quicker on the timeline. That's why a lot of folks consider them a very good thing. You can see how much compression HDV is doing by the fact that an m2t file is less than half the size of the CFDI file
DavidSinger wrote on 8/29/2006, 4:51 AM
I do appreciate the dialog here, but I'm not connected yet to a real-world solution as to what work flow I'm supposed to convert to (from editing HDV files directly on the timeline) and why.

I've been happily throwing m2t files on the timeline and getting great results. Well, until this recent effort where in a 4min seqment I've got 40 tracks and about 100 files represented (it's a scene of two women running from start to finish over 5 miles and 3 hours, depicted in 2-second events that cross-fade one to another, while a skateboarder is likewise treated in reverse fashion over the same route, but converging on the women). So I have 100+ 15->30 second m2t files from which I want about 2 seconds each from nearly random spots within each event.

I admit, the computer and Vegas 6 are finally choking on this m2t data stream.

But now I'm faced with unravelling several weeks of editing, pulling all those events off the timeline, and converting the m2t files to intermediates, then putting the intermediates back on the timeline at the same exact locations with the same trimmings and track motion and FX....

And I'm getting from this forum the word that the 3x-larger-than-m2t intermediate files will actually *improve* the response from Vegas...

It's not a question of picture quality, right now, it's a question of just being able to process the datastream, and do that in a manner in which I can initially output 720x480 widescreen, then *without any re-editing* output 1440x1080 for [HD-DVD/BluRay] cable.

Let's see if I have a handle on *why* the picture quality issue is repeatedly being raised here:

I'm asking too much of Vegas to render all those events in one fell swoop, so I need to render a few of them into one intermediate event, then more of them into another intermediate event, etc until I have rendered the hundreds of events into dozens of intermediate events. Then I place the intermediate events into a new project on a clean timeline and render those to a "final" intermediate event (which will be likewise rendered with a bunch of other "final" intermediate events into what one would call a "90min movie").

I'm now wondering if I made a mistake downloading the source files from the Z1U's into native m2t files (I have been using HDV Rack for that task, a very convenient tool). (a) Should I instead have downloaded using CineForm's product (and never ever see an m2t source on my computer)? (b) Should I have gone from Component out of the Z1U into the hard disk?

Frankly, I dread going back to months-worth of HDV tapes from 3 Z1U cams and doing the downloads again. Folks, we've been shooting since July 2005, and just staring at the rows of HDV tapes and considering re-reading them is mind-boggling!

Currently I have the project as m2t event files properly broken up and segregated by scripted shot, the shot events stored in well-organized folders and sub-folders within the entire project. If these m2t files now on the disk (about 150gb of footage) have to be converted, well, at least I'd be converting "in place" and not have to fret about extracting (not-in-timeline) shots from poorly-marked tapes.

This discussion has raised a temptation to take a well-deserved month-long vacation after which I'd upgrade to V7 and keep on truckin' - heck, even throw my credit card at the problem and pony up for the fastest beast Vegas will make use of, and render on that.

So, as you can see, I've missed an important piece in this puzzle. I understand how multiple renders using m2t files can degrade product quality. No need to thrash that horse any more. My question is back to the very original "Repeatable Bug in 6.0" - Vegas hangs in this particular veg file. Is this veg file simply too big? Is this a problem with Vegas 6 editing too many m2t files in this veg? Is it karma coming back to roost because I teased my wife about lugging boulders in her SUV?

David