single frame gaps appear between clips?

john-beale wrote on 1/12/2004, 6:25 PM
I'm using Vegas 4.0c on WinNT. I've captured two MiniDV tapes through Vegas, and imported all the resulting clips into a meda bin and put them all on the time line. Now I'm working my way through and deleting some clips and shortening some of them, with the mode selected that automatically shifts material over when you delete or trim a clip to fill the gap.

My problem: sometimes, perhaps once in 20 clips, when I playback I find that there is a single-frame gap (black frame) between clips. I did not insert this gap myself. How does this occur? Have other people noticed it? You don't see it on the timeline unless you zoom way, way in. You can fix it by manually shoving the clips together but why does this happen? My last project got burned to several DVDs before I saw one of these gaps (blink and you miss it). It is tiresome to stare at every frame of a long video after doing any editing to see if Vegas has thrown in an extra blank frame for free. Any suggestions?

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 1/12/2004, 6:47 PM
1. Turn on Quantize to Frames
2. Turn on Snapping
This will fix the problem, or should. If you see this happening a lot, there is also Gap Wizrd from Excalibur. (or is it Tsunami, I can't remember)

This can come from split fields, which Quantize to Frames prevents. Snapping will snap the event to the next event. For me, these never get turned off whether I'm using trim/insert, or just dropping events on the timeline.
The only time these should be turned off is if you are doing an audio-only project, and for very specific video functions. They were on by default...
johnmeyer wrote on 1/12/2004, 9:36 PM
Also, turn OFF snap to grid.
rmack350 wrote on 1/12/2004, 11:07 PM
I'm finding that if I set the ruler to absolute frames and then ctrl+alt+arrow through the project that the video events always end off of a frameline. I have one here at 238,274.067, for instance. They're all off and the effect is cumilative. The audio and video of the same clip show on the timeline as being slightly different length as well. Perhaps vegas is snapping to the audiostream sometimes and the video streams others? Definitely seems like "Quantize to frames" doesn't "Quantize to frames".

Even stranger, I can take all of that media and drop it into a new fresh project, drag it all to the timeline, and the video all ends dead on the frames.

It's confusing. I don't know what's going on here.

Rob MAck
craftech wrote on 1/13/2004, 5:18 AM
Search "black frames". Old issue....no definitive answer.

John
rmack350 wrote on 1/13/2004, 10:36 AM
Yeah, I know it's an old issue. I think it was written off.

Rob
craftech wrote on 5/25/2004, 6:41 AM
So what does one do since this is an old issue?
I still have to manually move clips around every time I find a gap.
If I have multiple tracks (video and audio) I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to close them.
Rippling doesn't work to close them (That would be nice). You can hit post edit ripple and nothing happens that you can actually see despite the fact that Undo indicates "something" Rippled. I end up Undoing the ripple because I don't know what moved and where.
Moving them manually sometimes creates an overlap instead of a gap so one gets to choose between the two defects. I usually settle for the overlap (causes less problems later).
I have never tried Excalibur because I don't feel that I should have to buy 3rd party software to fix a problem that has permeated three versions of Vegas to date.
So what is the best way to close all gaps without spending hours going through the timeline section by section? John Meyer's script is helpful in locating some of them, but what is the quickest way to close them?

John
cacher wrote on 5/25/2004, 7:41 AM
John:
Try searching for a script called "Audit_for_short_blank_gaps.js". I grew really tired dealing with black frames but this little script will place marker every time it finds one, you can even define how many frames make a non-standard gap for you. Hope it helps.
Cacher.
BrianStanding wrote on 5/25/2004, 7:44 AM
My issues with this disappeared once I enabled snapping, set "Snap to Grid" to OFF, and enabled "Quanitze to Frames."

Also, make sure your project is set to the appropriate template for the media files you are working with (NTSC DV, 29.97 fps, PAL DV 25 fps, etc.)
johnmeyer wrote on 5/25/2004, 9:18 AM
I wrote the script you guys are talking about (there is just one script, the one labeled "Audit ..."). I use the Vegas 5 icon capability to put it on the toolbar, next to the audio button to look for track levels that were "nudged" (another way to accidentally kill an other wise perfect piece of work).

As for avoiding the gaps in the first place, the suggestions given collectively earlier in this thread usually do it for me: Quanitze frames, in particular, is important to turn on.

If this problem persists, you might want to reset all your settings to default (kind of a pain, but I sometimes resort to this when things have gotten squirrely). Press Ctrl-Shift when starting and all preferences are reset.