ya know people have used After Effects a lot longer than VV. For what it is worth VV is still a 'young upstart' compared to a lot of other programs so why take offense if someone says they would stop using VV before they stoped using a program that they have used longer?

Not to sound like to old man here but I used to sit and cut film, real film - back when a film was shot on film,not video with 'film look' added. The first time I had to co-exist with a 3/4" video with SMPTE TC'd work print while overseeing a mix I was more than a bit upset when the musican's score was off by a few frames, not becuase the film was wrong but because the SMPTE TC was off. So the mixer spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out how a 2 frame film offset translated on the 3/4' video. My thought at that time was "I will loose the 3/4 and the SMPTE before I loose the 35 MM work print and mag strung up back in the booth." I wasn't the only one who felt that way at that time. Jump forward about 10 years and we were approached by an Austrailian company who wanted to prove they could cut 35 neg based on a video workprint. We met with them and they told us how they had worked out this formula and no one esle had it yet and they were trying to get established in 'Hollywood'. So we took a chance and let them cut a film. We handed them an offline edit on 1/2" with a a TC window and feet/frames and it was a 99% accurate cut. It had a few bugs but we felt it was strong enough to give them a few more films. We were Match Cuts first feature films in the US. Now their technology is all all over, even used in NLE's like Avid to do 'match back' for film.

My point is that if I hired a negative cutter who added one extra frame in every negative they cut I would drop them and switch to someone else who didn't. I would not start to call all the other negative cutters wrong. But I also would look into why there was an extra frame being put it. I have seen dailies come back with messed up timecode and unless you looked at it frame by frame you would not see it - but certianly trying to do what Match Cut did when we got back a miscut their first response was "We cut to the timecode" and frame by frame - yes they did. But the time code they cut to was wrong. It turned out to be a transfer error in the time code burn by the lab.

So rather than call VV wrong or all the other video apps wrong maybe look into what the other programs are doing that VV isn't. Like a 3-2 pulldown maybe the other programs, being 'older and wiser', have some sort of 'pull down' of their own written into the code that auto fixes an existing problem. Or maybe VV does have some sort of error that isn't really an error on their part, maybe it is a codec issue and how VV reads that codec? (Much like the way the VidCap module only reads VV rendered 24P and not any other codecs 24P) I don't know, but my experiance tells me there are 'bugs' in every piece of software and if that software is not working for what you want it to do than the simple solution would be don't use it for that.

I sort of miss the days of film when the basic choices were upright or flatbed. Need a dissolve or fade? Mark it with a grease pencil. Didn't have to worry about plug-ins and pulldowns and all the other 'make life easier' stuff. Yeah I could see this discussion with film - "Hey my moviola is duplicating the 89th frame of every daily I am getting!!" "Well my dailies play fine on the flatbed because that does the correct playback, unlike your upright" "Maybe the lab messed up when they made the workprint." "No man don't blame the lab, it was the filmstock I bet." "No it was the camera, it caused the negative to freeze in the gate at the 89th frame." "No no...you don't get it, it the SAME frame as frame 88" "Yeah..it MUST be the moviola than"

:)

Hmmm..there's a movie in there somewhere.

They made a workaround for the faulty Panasonic cams didn't they? Unless SoFo/Sony is going to make an After Effects-killer I don't see the difference here.

But I can understand SoFo aswell... they are right and AE is wrong.

John as always, you're such a class act. (sic) So you work for a major network. Big f****** deal. We are suppose to be impressed? Sorry, my prayer rug is at the cleaners, so you'll excuse me if I don't bow down as kiss your pompous ass. And here I though only Hollywood types has such enormous egos. Or maybe you are in LALA land. And who is the one whinning? That would be YOU John and over something as minor as one 30th of a second. What do you do at the network, info commericals?

ROTFLMAO!

Whoa Filmy -
First I love you because you can remember the "good old days of film"... me too.
I remember marking a dissolve on a piece of chewed up, scratched and dirty work print, waiting three days for the optical lab to send it back (generally get it wrong the first time... spend 10 intense minutes trying to explain to the client what a dissolve was - terrified if 15 frames was too short or too long - and then, of course, hairs in the gate (of the camera), cold baths (for the negative at the lab), scratches on the negative (Always the Ultimate Best Take) and lots more... and I know you do too... :)
As far as that 88th frame, how many times did "someone" screw up the offset of the optical track against the video track - not much - but it definitely happened.
There it is video rangers - Crap Happens - and you deal with it.
That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it will always be. The main reason, of course is because the most creative people (like everyone on this forum) always "push the envelope" of what can be done.
One of the greatest things (for me, anyway)about Vegas (which I love) is this forum.
Fer instance - what an extraordinary sense to detail, to catch the "88th frame dilema". Thanks John for pointing it out. Personally, like Billy, I don't Think it would matter to me... but hey... you just don't know. And at least, "forewarned is forearmed". I've had way more than my share of well meaning - but unknowledgeable clients (and editors) either waste my time with one frame aggravations... or save my ass.
So hang loose guys - don't forget that we are all pioneers in a birthing process of digital media creation and distribution, that goes way beyond Vegas. You two are among the "elite cadre" (at least to me) of the Vegas forum community. I personally am a fan of you both. So please don't piss each other off, so much, that either one of you stops experimenting, seeking and writing... you're both just too damn much fun.
Thanks...
v.

John:

I'm glad someone pulled out that old link (this one) because it very accurately describes the problem and the solution.

While you feel that Vegas should change to adjust for AE's bug, to just blindly change the rate on incoming video would be wrong. It would not play the correct length, and then you'd be on our case for that instead. We could change our frame look-up math, but it would just drop a frame somewhere else, and would affect how other footage works in Vegas.

You can work around Adobe's bug in one of two easy ways: Either already render a 5-second "header" in front of your AE projects, or slightly "slip" the video a third of a frame or so when you bring in AE video to Vegas.

///d@

Dennis,

Thanks to you and the thread that you referenced, I now have a handle on the problem and will work around it. In all my years of NLE, I had never run into this issue until Vegas. I guess I will use Vegas when the entire project can be produced within Vegas alone. Otherwise, I suppose I will have to continue to use Premiere.

BillyBoy,

Regarding my obsession with 1/30 second, professionals become professionals by sweating the details.

While your previous message verged on a personal attack, the last one qualified as an all-out personal attack. (And a childish one at that.) Thankfully, there is an "Ignore this User" function on the forum. Now, guess which user I will be ignoring from now on.

John

Lets see John... you said: " ... Also, your last message added nothing constructive to this discussion."

You went on to say... "I have read your posts elsewhere on the forum and it is my opinion that you are nothing but a whining troublemaker."

You further said: "Just because you can live with this issue doesn't mean the rest of us can. Kindly go cause trouble in some other thread while we get this sorted out."

Sorry buddy boy, I'll give anybody a free shot, maybe two, but three? I don't think so. I especially ENJOY cutting down self-important a-holes like you when they whine over trivial issues like you did over a 30th of a second "problem" 99.99% of the people in this forum don't give a rat's ass about.

You call yourself a "professional" when you whine over something like that, demand SoFo fix what isn't broken, then in a huff say if they don't you won't use their application and you say I was whining? No, I had some fun with your temper tantrum, and obviously you're not man enough to laugh over what a ass you made of yourself.

Well, I'm laughing my ass off over how juvennile you acted and still are acting. One last thing, if you want to use the 'ignore this user' feature, for sure please do. The question is why did you feel it was necessary to announce it? Did I bruise your inflated ego that much?

I think we know the answer to that. <wink>

Brazilian,

Your SpeedMangler app works as advertised. Thanks!

I haven't had a chance to try it out on a long file to see if the audio drift is acceptable after changing the framerate in the .AVI header. I also need to test all my software and see which "flavor" of 29.97 each produces. However, none of the apps I have will display a file's framerate past 3 decimal places. Did you say you had a command line app that looks at the .AVI header and tells you it's true framerate? If so, what do I have to do to convince you to make it available?

John

Billy Boy,

You are generally a helpful, if fiesty member of this forum.
Why you chose to make an issue of the fact that John didn't like a one frame glitch is strange.

Sure, I have some clients with whom I would probably be able to get away with this, but that doesn't mean I don't respect those who work at a very high quality level, and naturally want everything to be spot on.
Without people who cared about quality to this degree there would be no Vegas.

Here in Australia most of us wear thongs because we're too stupid to tie shoelaces :)
Reading through this thread I'm sooo glad we use PAL!
All that maths you guys in NTSC land have to do makes me glad I don't have to deal too much with NTSC.

But seriously, I ran this past a few mates who work in television, if you think VV got it "wrong" and AE got it "right" what do you think is going to happen if you try putting AEs "right" frame rate through a transmitter?

I'd rather have VV duplicate a frame before the trnasmision system did possibly something much wierder to it.

I simply pointed out John was acting like a bull moose in a china shop flying into rage over what most would consider a trivial issue, then him attacking me for my pointing out he was acting that way. Yes, I'm feisty I guess, and I find it amusing when a few get all bent out of shape and need to say stuff like they won't use the application unless they fix it, rant, rant, rant, funny indeed, when it isn't Vegas that's broke. From a purely technical point as I understand it Vegas is one of few editors that DOES use the right forumla, and for someone to suggest they should "fix" it to comply with other applications that don't do it as accurately is hard not to get amused over.

Sorry... I have little patience or respect for self-important types that have temper tantrums over trivial issues in a public forum... its so unprofessional. <Wink>

Billy Boy:

After reading your responses on this thread, do you think you helped the man with His problem or the rest of us trying to understand the problem and its solution?

Seems like this is at least the second instance where the SoFo programmers actually did their homework and math and came up with the right result while everyone else was copying the village dunce's homework. The other instance I can think of is aspect ratio corrections (654.5x480 or 640x480? SoFo is right here to)

The problem is that everyone else is consistant, and their users trust them, even though their programmers were just copying each other's mistakes.

SoFo/Sony probably should build in tools to correct for the problem. They should label it "correct sloppy math" or "Add standard fudge factor" or something.

There's a problem though. Sony buids some of the sloppy math into their cameras. For instance, when a PD150 capture a still image it makes it 640x480. It's just slightly distorted and ought to be 654x480. So will sony insist that Vegas fudge it's math?

Oh we'll. No good deed goes unpunished, Dennis.

Rob Mack

My take is John wasn't really looking for a solution, he was mad as hell and was looking for someone to yell at. I did suggest he post a few seconds of his "major" problem so collectively we as a group could offer a solution or work-a-around. You'll notice he didn't take us up on that offer. My guess is he blew the problem totally out of all proportion to what it really was. Unless you think what happens in the time span of 1/30th of a second (about the blink of an eye) is such an earth shaking event. Remember we're talking about the duplication of ONE frame.

What I find interesting was it was John who scoulded me for being critical of ADA-A in that forum for shortcoming most people now agree are problems and effect nearly everyone. Curious when the 'problem' only effected John and I'm sure even he would admit its a very minor problem, he thought is was alright to rant and yell like crazy and threatened he wouldn't use Vegas until they "broke" Vegas, to fix his problem. Now that is a bit much. You can't see the humor?

I guess it depends on what you do. If you're just filming an interview a duplicated frame won't matter much. But if you're an animator doing fast animation then one frame will certainly make a big difference.

I don't want to put more oil into fire, but I doubt the guy verified each and every frame from his project from the start just to be able to come in the forum and yell: "look! there's a bug!". So it's obvious that this "culprit frame" was evident to him. And it's the kind of thing I can understand; this little itchy detail that play with your nerves 'cause from the moment you spot it, you only see this... And like you say, Roger, it sure is more evident in animation simply because using this technique, you can spend hours and hours working at *frame* levels...
So let's just hope everybody's happpy in the end and that some solution is brought...

And let's just hope that THIS kind of live support is still available for us in one year from now...

.PNG still image sequences (which you can generate and load in both Vegas 4 and AE) will transfer very well. The framerate can be easily adjusted after import, but in Vegas at least the sequence, when imported, will pick up the project framerate...so it should be perfectly accurate. You can also carry the alpha around in a png if you need that.

Or just delete one of the duplicated frames...seems like an easy fix to me.

BB,

You now, you can be right as rain and still have a problem. To their credit, the SoFo guys didn't start at conclusions and then write the code to yield the expected result (of 29.97fps)

However, When you have clients who expect perfection, you have to give it to them. If your final render has a flaw and the client sees it then that's ALL they're going to see forever more.

Furthermore, any time you shake the confidence of people who might use vegas for paying work you risk losing them. They'll go back to what they're confident of. (I have this problem all the time with 1394 playback freezes. I can't recommend Vegas OR 1394 disk drives because of it. I only try to show off Vegas if my media is on an internal drive)

It's not that SoFo should break Vegas but that SoF0 needs to provide a tool to fix the problem-probably a way to rewrite the header of the offending file so that it works without flaw in Vegas.

The scenario would be: Vegas detects the problem, Vegas offers to fix the problem, Vegas offers a quick explanation of why it's a problem so that the user knows exactly what's going on.

Seems to me that media needs to be validated as it goes into the pool-or if that takes too long then Vegas should offer to validate new media added to the pool.

Part of the battle here is to make the interfaces very clear as to what the problem is, offering a link to "More Info" that explains the issue in detail.

Rob Mack

If you CAREFULLY read what I've said, the issue I raised was John's attitude, not the problem he raised. I don't want to keep going over the same ground, but it is annoying to me and I'm sure others when anyone makes a fuss over what is clearly a very minor problem at best, then they blow it out of all proportion by labeling it a "major bug" when it impacts a very narrow segement of those following the forum if anyone other than the original poster. Besides, how hard is it to snip a single frame?

Not only did John insult SoFo and demand they fix what isn't really broken, because that's what John made clear he expected or he suggested he'd stop using Vegas, like if we or Sofo would really care. THe went beyond that demanding SoFo fix a problem caused by another application which is over the top. Worse John needed to take a shot at many in forum with his comment:

"I'm not making DVDs of home movies for Grandma to see, my clients include one of the three major TV networks here in the U.S."

Big $%@%^ deal. That suggests John fancies himself "better" and therefore more important and entitled to special treament. Anyone pulls that stunt in any forum or newsgroup, I take them to task for being that self-important. Of course his attacking me calling me a troublemaker and saying I have no right to comment in the thread didn't exactly endear John to me either nor did his previous attacking me in another forum.

To put it another way, I just said in print what others were thinking. That's just how I am, and I don't apologize for it. Sure, everyone's problem is important to them... but for some to think THEIR problem is paramount, and verbally kick and scream thinking they are entitled special attention usually results in me having some fun with them at their expense.

"Or just delete one of the duplicated frames...seems like an easy fix to me. "

kinda like I said ~ 20 posts ago...

I was gonna say I can't believe that this has gone on so long, but naw, I can understand it.

The issue was that there is a slight incompatibility that John kindly pointed out, and SonicEPM kindly explained. Good to know so that others, myself included can watch for it, not that I don't review anything that I do because s___ happens. I like to watch movies on cable, DVD etc. & I can attest to the fact that stuff slips by. That said, story over folks.

If you've worked at Customer Service, you've found out at least one truism - basic psychology really: if/when a customer feels wronged, they often come up with a statement or perception really of the problem, and at least in person to person, physical meetings, will rehearse their complaint over and over to themselves. Generally the outrage (and statement) remains until the customer feels that they have been heard - in a person to person situation, simply repeating the complaint back to the customer showing that your understand and appreciate the problem often flips the magic switch so-to-speak. [If this is new to you, might want to remember it as it will help with your own customers sooner or later.]

It seems to me that John reached this point, calmed, and was at worst only behaving as many of us are hardwired to do. If John was upset, I don't know the circumstances, how long it took him to get this tracked down and fixed, and the deadlines faced. If a few had fun at his expense, that's the nature of being on-line... I've fallen prey to anger in response to trolling myself, not that anyone was trolling here, just trying to say a lot of us get ticked from time to time.

RE: Vegas... I have yet to encounter software without idiosynchracies, or a standard that really is 100%. I'll try and make filmy feel good about his age: I learned Basic when it first came out - on mainframes! If you watch old sci fi stuff, the old teletypes, I've used 'em. Heck, I used to read keypunch!

We buy packaged stuff at the grocery, and more often then not, the labeling as the decription is a little off. Get an oil change on your car or truck, and chances are it takes however many quarts, plus one half a quart - that never made sense to me. (if you want some fun, check it out and insist on paying for the 1/2 quart instead a full quart). Ever hung a standard sized door that didn't fit? How come all 17" monitors (or 19" etc.) don't have the same screen size?

Point is, standards are guidelines 99% of the time. Image files (tif, tga etc.) are treated and created differently by different software, & they've been around a lot longer then avi files. Open a .doc file in wordperfect, or vice versa. Take a cruise into the world of 3D.

Vegas just happens to adhere to the specs - if they knew of this thread, engineers at Adobe probably hoisted a few because they didn't, their conscience finally cleared. The SOFO folks would probably be at the table in the rear, muttering into their beers, wondering how doing right was doing wrong.

Rob - that was what I was trying to say as well with the post I made before. I do agree with you and the client side is very important as well and certianly if you are doing animation of any sort it becomes even more so.

Lots of talk here about who does it 'right' but I haven't seen any mention of the fact that 24fps wasn't 'right' it just became 'accepted' as the norm even though others tried different frame rates that looked 'better'. And what's up with NTSC? The rest of the world is mainly PAL, a few are Secam but Japan and the US are NTSC. Maybe other countries all feel that Japan and the US are 'wrong' because we not only use NTSC but, in the case of the US, we have put off digital and hi-def for years even though it is 'better' and perhaps more 'right' than what we have been using.

There are things that are 'standard' just because they are - not because they are correct. (This rule even applies to actual editing systems - Look at how many people believe now that to be a great editor you 'have' to be Avid trained and many feel you can not cut something professional with Premiere or VV. Call me old school but I feel that if you edit you edit - if you know what you are doing and have a feel for it than it is right. A poorly edited project cut with an Avid system by a trained Avid editor is still a poorly edited piece.) I suspect a lot, if not all, of the other NLE's accept the 29.76 factor and haved used it because it is 'accepted'. But because VV is now gaining some footing with editors things like this are being noticed. How many people walk out of an IMAX show and state "Now this is the right way to show a film and to make a film - all these other theatres and film-makers are wrong!"?

(Sort of a PS here because as I wrote this and posted I saw BB had posted)
I have to disagee with BB a bit because it does make a difference if you are doing something for grandma and if you doing somehting for, in this case, a network. The attitude that BB has is that no one on this board, or at SoFo, cares because 'adding one frame is not a big deal'.

I just try to look at a few other sides here - if there is some sort of header issue with frame rates than it does need to be looked at because the best things are compatable even if they are not from the same company. I have some projects I am working on that I would love to bring into VV and finish but right now VV does not import a premiere EDL very well. I am not calling it a bug, but certianly I would think it is an issue just to 'play nice' so to speak. Same goes for using After Effects. After Effects is pretty standard stuff so to ignore people who do effects and/or animations with that program because Adobe 'does it wrong' is shutting out a hell of a lot of potential customers.

So BB and others don't care if there is an extra frame added, likewise one would deduct these people also don't care if one frame is dropped either. But some of us do because it is important and for some of us it is more important than others. Adding one frame *is* a "huge bug" and important in another way as well. Say you are doing on offline edit and want to output a TC'd copy for a client to look at. Obviously an added frame would have it's own TC even if it was a 'duplicated' frame. (Same goes for any droped frames) Now say you want to go to an online edit. Export an EDL and go do your cut. Suddenly you are one frame off perhaps...either plus or minus. So For that this is a 'huge' issue for many people.