Those Ghost Images (continued) and FX connections

Richard Jones wrote on 2/21/2014, 5:42 AM

I should like to say a very warm thank you to everyone who helped me with the problem I described under "Ghosted Image on DVD and Nowhere Else" [Link=http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=884896&Replies=36] but as we've narrowed down the problem area I thought it would be sensible to start a new thread.

We know now that the problem is not with DVDA or the rendering but rests on the Timeline where it shows when previewed at Best (Full). It seems to be hidden when looked at in my usual Good (Full) setting and I have zoomed the Timeline but without being able to see it there. I also know that there are no overlaid events on the track and, as I mentioned before, the problem seems to disappear when I copy and paste everything to a new project.

I have now reviewed every event on the Timeline one by one (over 500 of them - tedious and time costly!) and have now found that the ghost (which is always of another event -- but not necessarily the same one -- from earlier in the Timeline) disappears if an FX is removed from the chain applied to the problem event. It is not always the same FX (e.g. Unsharp Mask) that causes the problem as sometimes the removal of any one of the other FX in the chain deals with it.

It's almost as though the FX itself might contain within it a copy of an earlier event to which it has already been applied and carried that copy with it to be downloaded with the FX when it's applied to a later event.

I'm baffled I'm afraid and would welcome your ideas (not merely to resolve the issue so much as to ensure that I don't get it when working on other projects).

Richard

[I'm working with an up-to-date version of Vegas Pro 12 in Standard Definition in PAL 4:3. My FX are mainly the standard Vegas Plug Ins although I do sometimes use Frederic Bauman's as well. GPU is Off]

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paul_w wrote on 2/24/2014, 12:56 PM

Well that's good news, at least outputting your current project as progressive may at least get 'this' project out the door so to speak. Hope so.

However i'm not convinced its a fix-all solution. There is still no explanation as to where these random frames came from. Could be part of the ingest capture process settings - See Canopus settings during capture, particularly interlace settings.

Personally, i always render out to progressive format these days whether its DVD, BluRay or Internet like youtube and vimeo. I have never needed to render to interlaced - not once!. But thats just my experience, others may vary.
So yes, i would suggest always outputting to progressive. CRT TVs are fine, they display progressive nicely. In fact if your primary source is film transfers, i would even guess it looks better in progressive. Because film itself is by its nature progressive.

Really glad i could help Richard. My pleasure. Sorry its not a complete fix. But i hope you're able to get your project to DVD at least.. And not forgetting much effort from the other guys on here, team effort really.

Paul.

paul_w wrote on 2/24/2014, 1:15 PM

Re shimmering on some clips.

That sounds like a different matter. Your interlaced footage coming in still needs to be read in correctly by Vegas. Ie. if your footage is lower field, then the settings for that clip should also be lower field. If not, then you will get shimmering on movement/pans/tilts. So i would suspect this could be the case with those clips. The only progressive setting should be on final render codec.

Paul.

Richard Jones wrote on 2/24/2014, 1:20 PM

Thank you so much Paul. I'll see what happens and report back when I've burnt a DVD - but this may be a while as I.ve decided to do some alterations.

I'll check the Canopus settings tomorrow but am going off watch for now after some 7 hours in front of the PC and I want to see if I can remember what my wife looks like :):):)

Richard

farss wrote on 2/24/2014, 2:18 PM

I've looked at the rendered sample field by field and whatever is going on it is happening as discrete frames which means for some reason Vegas is compositing two pieces of video, very strange.
Some of the errors are only a frame long and appear intermittently however both sources are not static, e.g. the boy with the ice cream; the spoon gets closer to the ice cream.

I have no idea how this is happening however:

Go back and turn Off all the track solo switches and see what happens.
In theory having every track soloed is the same as having none soloed however here you're looking for a bug that you and no one else has seen before. I'd wager good money no one has ever tried or tested Vegas 12 with every track soloed.

Bob.

OldSmoke wrote on 2/24/2014, 5:21 PM

RJ

Which driver are you using for your GT320? Do you have GPU acceleration turned on in Vegas? Which GPU have you selected; GT320 or Intel HD? What is your preview ram setting? In my opinion something is going wrong with the video buffer.

Grazie wrote on 2/25/2014, 1:36 AM

This is essential.

Richard, please give a list of your FXs. What had you used as a Colour Correction tool? NewBlue? SONY? Fred's?

Richard: "I have now reviewed every event on the Timeline one by one (over 500 of them - tedious and time costly!) and have now found that the ghost (which is always of another event -- but not necessarily the same one -- from earlier in the Timeline) "

Cheers

Grazie

Richard Jones wrote on 2/25/2014, 4:41 AM

Old Smoke

I have the latest nVidea driver installed (I think - would one of the test programmes help me to be certain & if so any recommendation?0

GPU is Off.

Grazie

I've used Unsharp Mask, Sharpen, Convolution Kernel, Colour Curves, FBmn Exposure, Levels, New Blue FX (but this one only a couple of times in the whole project) and Gamma Adjustment from CC2 along with ProDad Mercalli at various points - but never all on one event as some events might have only one or two FX with many having perhaps 4 four or five and one or two rather more. Using this many FX has never been an issue before though.

Richard

Richard Jones wrote on 2/25/2014, 5:22 AM

Just to let you know that I have now burnt a DVD of the 2/3 minute chapter which contained the events I sent to Dropbox. To do this, I selected Progressive in both Properties and Rendering within the Vegas project (following Paul's suggestion above), When the project was transferred to DVDA and the disc burnt from there, there was no longer any ghosting to be seen (by default the DVDA burn was at 25 with no option to enable Progressive).although the two or three events with movement that were from a train showed a lot of shimmering but I may be able to correct this separately.

This seems to be a solution to the problem but doesn't explain what had happened or why. Most importantly, it doesn't tell me whether the problem is likely to recur nor how I might avoid it in future --- although I suppose I could follow Paul's suggestion and work only in Progressive for the future,

It is also interesting that the problem tended to disappear from an event when I disabled one or perhaps any one of two of the FX applied to it . This seems to suggest that there is some sort of bug attached to the FX --- but, then, why should this disappear when the Progressive route is followed?

All very mysterious!

Richard

paul_w wrote on 2/25/2014, 5:36 AM

"To do this, I selected Progressive in both Properties and Rendering within the Vegas project "
The Vegas Properties should be set to whatever source material you have, which in your case is 'lower field'. If its set otherwise, it could explain the shimmering you see on certain clips like a moving train, as i mentioned earlier it should match the media format.
The only progressive setting should be in the final render setting. You also need a de-interlacing method set for the deinterlace process, i tend to go for ' interpolate' in Vegas Properties.

Hope that helps!
Paul.

Grazie wrote on 2/25/2014, 5:38 AM

You'll need to view the Event and by elimination remove each one separately OR add one at a time until you've shown which it is.

I've had Frame Recall and it is a swine to determine which Plug. You'll get there. I did.

Honestly? I think you're doing too many things at once. If it has worked before USING THE EXACT SAME configuration, then you were blessed! Personally, I'd be deciding which NEEDED plugs to do first; render and then work forward. You got several plugs possibly conspiring against each other to bring this frame/event recall.

Grazie

paul_w wrote on 2/25/2014, 5:56 AM

I do not believe this is plugin related at all. Its a side effect from a bigger issue. Its not the same plugin every time that causes the error, even just moving his project layout around caused problems. Changing the interlacing method / preview resolution has an effect too. No, its something much deeper than that.
My suspicion is this; Vegas is failing to handle the media presented to it. Something may be wrong with file headers not being interpreted correctly and so video memory allocation is screwing up internally in Vegas. Many different things are having an effect on the error and that leads me to believe this is not just a faulty plugin or other single Vegas error. Its a real mess, and it indicates external forces at work because non of us have seen anything like this before.
Its why i suggested to Richard checking his Canopus settings during capture. Possibly even its driver versions.
Vegas is not handling the media it seems, frames are being randomly inserted in-between interlaced frames. Rendering out as progressive is removing the interlacing error frames. But as we all know, its not a full fix, just a work around to get this job finally done.

Paul.
Paul.

Richard Jones wrote on 2/25/2014, 6:00 AM

Thanks Paul and Grazie. I'll try the LFF in Properties and Progressive in Render etc. tips shortly and come back to you.

Yes Grazie, I do use that approach in selecting the FX although I always leave Mercalli to last as I've found that some FX applied after it can undo it. The problem here is that it's not always the same FX that needs to be disabled. When you say render and work forward are you suggesting rendering to another track? This would be heavy on time if I had to do it with so many events in the project.

Richard

farss wrote on 2/25/2014, 6:52 AM

I just spent some more time analysing the sample video.
It is a mess.

The first few seconds contains two clips (two dogs plus landscape) superimposed (mixed) and the problem is consistent over the two fields. Later on the lad with the ice cream sundae appears for a whole two frames and then only for a single field.

Trying to carefully analyse the problem could also be compounded by what the mpeg-2 encoder would have made of such a mess as well, single field and single frame edits don't fare well with a temporal encoder.

There seems to me to be more than one thing going wrong here and it's very hard to see how it's anything external to Vegas. I'd be very suspicious of anything as simple as changing field order or rendering to progressive as being a real fix. Because of this being such a mess I can make the problem appear quite differently by changing preview settings etc. You could possibly think you've fixed the problem, render it out and it give it to someone else on DVD thinking it's OK only to have them see a problem.

Take a look at these two field grabs, they were from the same field in the video, something very, very strange is going on. One was at Best/Full and the other at Preview/Auto:

Bob.

Richard Jones wrote on 2/25/2014, 7:20 AM

Paul

When I revert to LFF in Properties the ghosts reappear but go away again when I select Progressive. I had been on Blend Fields and switching to Interpolate seems to make little obvious difference.

Bob

You really have gone to a lot of trouble and I'm very grateful. It seems to become more confusing.

Richard

paul_w wrote on 2/25/2014, 7:22 AM

"I'd be very suspicious of anything as simple as changing field order or rendering to progressive as being a real fix".. +1 and no one is suggesting otherwise.

However, deinterlacing the project seems to be working in this case.

I suggested this as an external problem based on two points:
a) no one using Vegas has seen anything like this before, which suggests its not a Vegas problem. Or unlikely to be.
b) His Canopus unit has its own set of variables which have not yet been explored.

PS. +1 re: its a mess.

Paul.

Richard Jones wrote on 2/25/2014, 7:27 AM

Paul

None of the Canopus settings have been touched and I can confirm they are all as per the original settings.

AQs an interesting aside, although the ghosting disappears when I select Progressive the shimmering that shows on the odd event disappears if I revert to LFF in Properties! I'm not sure I can have different Properties for different events - or can I?

Richard

paul_w wrote on 2/25/2014, 7:28 AM

Ok Richard, good test. Now that is a puzzle. And again points to Vegas not reading in the media correctly. Its not handling the interlacing data from the files. (suspect header info).
Here's a test, try checking one of your source clips into Media Info and see what data that gives. May give a clue?.

Paul.

paul_w wrote on 2/25/2014, 7:35 AM

Yes the shimmering should indeed disappear when LFF is selected. That was the goal. You can right hand click clips to select the interlace format of individual clips. This may help. Try changing the offending clips to LFF while keeping the project to progressive.
Never had to do that before, so its anyones guess if this will work.

Paul.

paul_w wrote on 2/25/2014, 7:49 AM

Gents, i am going to have to leave the conversation there as i have a job just come in which needs attention. Its also my girlfriends birthday today and she's feeling neglected! So i had better get away and tend to other matters.
Good luck Richard, hope this leads to a resolution in one shape or another!!

Best,
Paul.

Richard Jones wrote on 2/25/2014, 8:27 AM

Paul

I've used both GSpot and MediaInfo to look at the source material and the results can be seen here:-

[Link=https://www.dropbox.com/home?select=Capture%2BMediaInfo.PNG]
and at:-
[Link=https://www.dropbox.com/lightbox/home?select=Capture%2BMediaInfo.PNG]

You suggested earlier that you guessed that the Canopus might be at fault somehow and I'm now wondering what would happen if I disconnected this and used an HDMI connection between the PC and the Monitor (Can I have both connected at the same time and chose which I want from Preferences?). If so, I can pop out tomorrow and ger5 an HDMI lead and try it.

Richard

OldSmoke wrote on 2/25/2014, 9:50 AM

RJ

I doubt that your Canopus card is causing all this but maybe the driver for it; which card do you have in your system?
I had a look at your timeline image again and when I look at the 6sec sample clip I noticed that things started to go wrong at the point where you used a pan/crop on the dog clip and fading it over the same dog clip in front. Can you try and delete either one of them and see if the problem is still there? I also noticed there is a Mute Envelope in the video track. Another thing you can try is to expand the track layers and see if there is anything underneath that shouldn't be there.

BTW... the dropbox links don't work.

Richard Jones wrote on 2/25/2014, 10:11 AM

Old Smoke

I'm using a nVideaGT320 as my card and the Canopus connects to the PC only by FireWire.

Sorry about the links - I'll have another go when I get back to my PC tomorrow' I'll also have a look at the. Pan/Crop point at the same time.

Any ideas about the HDMI connection between the Monitor and the PC and whether this and the Firewire connections can be left in place at the same time? Presumably the HDMI connection will then appear as a new option in Preferences > Preview?

Richard

OldSmoke wrote on 2/25/2014, 10:15 AM

RJ

Which Canopus product are you using? I couldn't find it in the thread.

johnmeyer wrote on 2/25/2014, 10:19 AM

Sorry I didn't chime in sooner, but until I had a video to play with, I thought this was some bug in Vegas 12, which is a version I don't have.

Instead, the problem is likely much simpler.

First of all, no one apparently ever looked at the video outside of Vegas. You are all being fooled by the way in which Vegas resamples video in order to display it. You can change all the preview settings, and turn GPU on & off, but all you are doing is changing the way in which Vegas takes pixels from each from of the original video and then sub-samples this in order to display it [note: Vegas does NOT display every pixel from the original video when previewing].

The reason so many people are getting different results is that the problem will manifest itself differently depending on how you do the scaling: if you increase (or decrease) the size of the preview window even a little, or change the preview resolution, the video will start to ghost in a different way.

To understand what's really going on, you must deconstruct the video into its component fields outside of Vegas. If you do, the problem is easy to see:

Every other field is from a different portion of the video. Put another way, the top field is one video and the bottom field is from other video.

Once I knew this, I was able to deconstruct the video into its component parts using this simple AVISynth script:

AVISource("E:\fs.avi")

bob()

selectodd()

Here are the results from the script, and also the same script using selecteven():

Video_01

Video_01

So, there is no random ghost frame that only appears once in awhile. Every single frame has video from two different sources, with the top field of each frame having the video from one video source and the bottom field having the video from another source.

If I had Vegas 12, and I had the VEG, I could probably tell you what error had been made. I am 99% certain that this is a cockpit error, not a Vegas error. I'd also be interested in knowing more about how the film capture was done, and what format the original film video files (from the transfer) are in.

Things to look at:

1. The original video files that resulted from the Vegas capture. Are these two videos already interleaved together in that video? What does MediaInfo say about this file?
2. The Render As settings used to make this sample MPEG-2 video.
3. The Vegas project settings, paying particular attention to frame rate.

I am suspecting that there is something odd about the frame rate of the original captured video compared to the Vegas project settings. I would not be surprised to find that one is set at 50 fps and the other at 25 fps. That may not be exactly right, but I think it is somewhere in that neck of the woods.

[edit]P.S. I just re-read some of the above posts about the Canopus card. That is a possibility, but before going down that road, it would be useful to have a few seconds of cut, but not re-rendered, original video. I hope you have some application that can do a "smart render" (i.e., lossless cut) of the original video and you can post 1-5 seconds of unaltered original video.

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