Sony Levels, Posterize effect, anyone else?

paul_w wrote on 1/19/2012, 2:33 PM

So using the Sony Levels plug in, add any media generator event like a solid colour or even a video clip to the TL, fade in the beginning of the event a few seconds. Play on the time line and its god damn awful! What on earth is going on with this plugin now? This used to work, used it all the time.
I was trying to do a simple Computer RGB -> Studio RGB to keep the output within levels and not 0-255, you know the deal. But this is a mess. Seems to totally screw up no matter what clips or events you have. I applied the Levels fx to the main video out chain, not sure if the effect shows on just an event by itself. Didnt even try.
yuk!

PS, it seems to happen at the start of the clip, not the whole duration of the fade.

Paul.

Comments

amendegw wrote on 1/19/2012, 3:10 PM

Paul, It's working fine for me Vegas 11/521 Did you try a reboot?

...Jerry

WillemT wrote on 1/19/2012, 3:21 PM

I can confirm the problem with a generated media event and the Levels FX applied to the main video out chain. It does seem to behave when applied to the event itself.

My problem is with applying the Event FX to a generated text event - for the same reasons mentioned in the OP. The transparency still gets messed. For a quick check could you try the following:

Place the Sony Titles and Text on first track - any Text Generator would do. Enable the shadow. No other changes needed.
Place a Solid Color on the track below and set some light color - even gray will do. This is just to see the shadow.
Now add the Leves FX to the Text event - no changes required.
Total chaos.

Edit: Jerry, I must confess to not having rebooted. I just did and the problems are the same. Levels for a generated color event works fine if added to the event. The problem is when placed in the Video Output Fx.

Edit2: Sorry for constant changes. If I disable the GPU all the above works fine.

Willem.

paul_w wrote on 1/19/2012, 3:38 PM

yes Jerry, tried a reboot. Same.

Can confirm it only seems to be an issue when the fx is applied to the main video out bus ie, drop the effect onto the preview screen to insert it.
Seems ok if just applied to a clip.

I am seeing about the first 10 frames at the start of an event (fade) getting really messed up. Posterizing and banding. Looking at the Waveform monitor, its really messing up, looks like a maths error during calculations. I tried single stepping one frame at a time, then you see the error.

Edit: Thanks Willem, will test with GPU off next.

Paul.

amendegw wrote on 1/19/2012, 3:52 PM

Maybe my Laptop is "blessed"? Using the WilliamT procedure and throwing in a little Paul_W at the end.

...Jerry

Edit: Sorry about the crappy sound - done with my laptop's internal mic,
Edit2: My laptop does not have GPU acceleration.

bakerja wrote on 1/19/2012, 3:55 PM

I've seen this as well when levels applied at the track level. took the edl to a different machine and it worked fine. Second machine had no GPU accelleration.

jab

paul_w wrote on 1/19/2012, 4:11 PM

That was fast Jerry, up on youtube already!
Thanks for the quick test but i think we have determined this only shows up on GPU enabled systems. So yours is clear, and thats a reposnse to JAB also.
The other thing is i am only seeing this issue when its applied to the main video chain and not the event itself.

Paul.

WillemT wrote on 1/19/2012, 4:28 PM

Jerry, I looked at your video and yes, that works fine. I get the same when I disable the GPU. It seems to be a GPU only problem.

I was just trying keyframes in the Color Curves Fx on a generated media event. It works when scanning the animation timeline. However when playing back the event the keyframes has no effect. That was with and without GPU acceleration. (The same keyframes in Color Curves works fine on a video media event).

I am downloading the latest driver for NVidia and will install and check all again. My driver is quite old but seemed to work.

Edit: Paul already replied as well.

Willem.

paul_w wrote on 1/19/2012, 4:36 PM

Ok, just submitted a bug report...
Im getting rather fed up of these now... My last one re: "multicam limit is 8 cams only" actually just got set to "Solved" when i hadnt even responded to the last question they sent me - whats that all about? its NOT solved, its THERE...

anyway, off my high box and down to normallity! what ever that is!

Paul.

NicolSD wrote on 1/19/2012, 4:53 PM

When I try it on my machine (gpu accelerated), the entire shadow becomes this solid black thing attached all the way to the text giving it a 3D look. If I disable the GPU, I don't get that weird thing.

paul_w wrote on 1/19/2012, 4:57 PM

Sounds like two different yet related issues with GPU accelerated effects here. Both go clear when GPU is off. Weirdness indeed.

Paul.

WillemT wrote on 1/19/2012, 5:02 PM

NicolSD, exactly. It seems that any pixel not 100% transparent gets set to non-tranparent. That kills any feathered shadow as well as the anti aliasing of the rounded or slanted edges of the text. Just look closely at the text with the preview window enlarged.

Thanks for checking.

Willem.

paul_w wrote on 1/19/2012, 5:05 PM

Willem, have you filed a bug report to support?

Paul.

NicolSD wrote on 1/19/2012, 5:36 PM

This is what it looks like on my machine.

WillemT wrote on 1/20/2012, 3:20 AM

@Paul. Yes I have submitted a report with reference to this thread.

@Nicol. What your video shows is exactly what I see.

Willem.

megabit wrote on 1/20/2012, 5:58 AM

Paul,

You got me intrigued, so I tried but cannot repro your prob here.

This is amazing, how differently can Vegas work on each individual system!

As to our MC limit of 8 issue, my case has not been closed as resolved - nor has it been solved either :(

Piotr

paul_w wrote on 1/20/2012, 7:42 AM

Piotr, you have GPU set to ON and you apply the levels FX to the video output bus not just the clip event? Should happen, i can reproduce this at will at any time. Its just the first few 10 frames of the fade, not the whole fade that messes up. Looks really funky. Pretty sure this is GPU calculation error, code that works in CPU mode is not working in GPU mode.

MC 8 limit, yes they closed the case! I must have waited too long to reply with the sys info data. Did not know there was a time limit. (a week or so).

Paul.

megabit wrote on 1/20/2012, 7:53 AM

Paul - yes, GPU ON and all steps followed. All is OK here, on both my systems.

Piotr

NicolSD wrote on 1/20/2012, 9:06 AM

Willem wrote:
@Nicol. What your video shows is exactly what I see.

I hope my video can be used to illustrate the problem to the Sony folks.

paul_w wrote on 1/23/2012, 8:35 AM

In case anyone is interested, i made a demo video of the issue and will be sending this to the SCS team. Its 7 minutes, wanted to cover a few points.

http://vimeo.com/35505862Video[/link]

Paul.

gripp wrote on 1/23/2012, 11:27 AM

Nicol,

I can reproduce your problem exactly

Win7-64, VP11.521

megabit wrote on 1/24/2012, 6:14 AM

Paul,

Interesting - following your steps and using the same clouds media, I'm now getting the same error! So it definitely IS broken, SCS...

Piotr

paul_w wrote on 1/24/2012, 7:01 AM

Thanks for the confirmation Piotr. I have submitted it as a bug along with the video link.

Paul.

david-ruby wrote on 1/24/2012, 1:17 PM

Yep. Same here still.

aversis wrote on 1/26/2012, 6:35 AM

I have the exact same problem! I updated to the latest version, and immediatly saw this problem.

You don't even need to edit any settings in the levels filter, even without touching any button it messes up your fades. Turning off GPU changes the issue. There is still something wrong, but it is different and less apparant.

I knew that before upgrading, I didn't have the problem. So I went back a few versions and now it's ok again. Version vegaspro11.0.424_32bit is a good one :-)

I didn't try that old version in 64bit (I am on a 64 bit system but for some reason had the 32bit version installed). Would like to try the older 64 bit version, but I'm afraid that I am running out of allowed registrations because of all the different installs I did this morning.