V8: brand new HDV bug (almost like 'black frame'

john-beale wrote on 12/3/2007, 11:01 AM

Just came across this ugliness on a HDV project in V8a. The video is fine except for one single frame that is partly black, with horizontal tearing. It looks like a video monitor running with incorrect sync rate. Below is a screen capture with the timeline scale zoomed in to show each frame. Note that the "thumbnail" preview for that specific frame (18:54:15) is just fine.

http://www.bealecorner.com/D30/misc/V8-screen-tear.jpg

It's like the revenge of the "black frame" bug. As with that bug, the same frames of the same .m2t file are 100% OK using other software, like Womble MPEG Video Wizard. Has anyone else seen this?

Comments

john-beale wrote on 12/3/2007, 11:16 AM

update: I tried closing Vegas and re-opening. Now it's not just one frame, it's 15 frames that are glitched, it looks like one whole GOP is bad. Again, other software (Womble editor, Nero Showtime player) handles this HDV .m2t file just fine.

Needless to say, this is unacceptable behavior. I did submit a request to Sony support regarding it... we'll see. Unfortunately the .m2t file is about 4 GB so I can't upload that.

UPDATE: ok, this doesn't act the same as the black frame bug. I tried a mp4 render of a segment including the bad frames and the output was clean. After rendering, the timeline was clean too! I did a few more edits and the bad frame was back. Then I rendered out just that segment again- it was clean. Played the timeline- clean there as well. Wierd stuff.

UPDATE2: drat, another bad frame showed up elsewhere (looks just the same as above screen capture) and this one does export as bad. Yuck.

ushere wrote on 12/3/2007, 6:47 PM

interesting....

i've just had a single black frame appear in a hdv file, can't spot it in frame view, but it DID print to new track black. i'm not panic'ing quite yet, but i hope both our occurrences are one off's, and not the start of a trend....

leslie

teaktart wrote on 12/3/2007, 11:11 PM

I got some bad black frames when I first tried to capture with a new laptop. Haven't really tried that again since (been using desktop editing machine)

However,
Same footage on desktop capture with XP pro does fine
Laptop is Vista....with the black frames appearing.

What system(s) are you using for your Vegas captures/edits?

ushere wrote on 12/4/2007, 4:23 AM

xp e6600. in my case it's only been the one occurrence so far. hoping it stays that way...

leslie

Bill Ravens wrote on 12/4/2007, 6:54 AM

I'm getting a lot of black frames, like more than half the video clip, when imported as an m2t. If I convert, first, to CFHD, the problem goes away. It seems that CFHD reads the m2t files just fine.

teaktart wrote on 12/4/2007, 10:08 AM

Bill:
I had the same situation as you describe. With my Vista laptop I captured with Vegas as I only have NEO installed on my video machine where my CFHD capture/convert files are just fine.

I was hoping to just use the m2t files for simple editing and be able to use the 'Smart Render' but the black frames made that impossible with the laptop. This was with the V8.0 and I have not tried capturing into laptop with the 8.a version...

Are you getting the black frames with 8a ?

Wolfgang S. wrote on 12/4/2007, 10:22 AM

Not sure if that is a Vegas bug - maybe the m2t structure is damaged. How such a behavious is handeled by NLEs, may also depend on the specific NLE. Vegas 8a has become here much better, compared with Vegas 7.

But a big disadvantage of HDV is, that dropped frames and other damages can take place. In the end, it is a consumer format.

john-beale wrote on 12/4/2007, 10:52 AM

As a followup- I got lucky this time. When I rendered out the entire project, I did not see any problem (at least at first- I will have to scan through carefully each frame. Of course this is a time and $$ killer for a project that was supposed to be simple).

By the way, my problem clips had been recorded direct to a laptop hard drive, not from tape. I've done this for several years, and it has always worked fine. I was simultaneously recording to tape just as backup. Got a tight schedule, so haven't even had time to check the tape copy. Yes, HDV is a consumer format, but is there any pro format that is completely immune to recording & playback problems? Maybe so, but I haven't heard of it.

jazzmaster wrote on 12/4/2007, 10:57 AM

To add to the mess...I got a lot of black frames when I transferred YouTube clips to Vegas via various converters. This does not happen on regular clips, just the converted clips. Whole chunks of a music clip went black while the audio continued. I think something is obviously wrong here.
Burt Wilson

Bill Ravens wrote on 12/4/2007, 1:07 PM

Eileen...

yep, I have V8a installed.

teaktart wrote on 12/4/2007, 7:34 PM

Bill:
Bummer its still showing up in 8a...
Are you also using Vista and having this happen?

I'm wondering if the fact my laptop is a 5400 rpm vs. 7200 rpm with the desktop has anything to do with black frames happening?

I'm also having a weird error and close issue with my XP desktop with 8a when opening Vegas. It closes then upon re-opening it seems to work fine. Error report mentions "corrupt memory" and a bunch of other jibberish.....
I'm suspecting there is some on-going memory usage problem some of us are having with V8a and perhaps another symptom could be the appearance of the black frames again.....

BTW: I've just done a major overhaul and upgrade of my desktop including new MOBO, memory, Raid controller, power supply, C: drive replaced, and XP re-install and gone over in detail by a tech guy so I sure as hell don't want to blame my computer at this point
( and after over $2000 spent!)

Bill Ravens wrote on 12/5/2007, 6:00 AM

No Vista...over my cold, dead body as Heston would say. ;o)
I imported the m2t files straight from an nNovia DTE hard disk. I have a suspicion that the m2t's are corrupted on the drive. There's some talk that a break in the timecode causes these black frames. May not be a Vegas problem, other than the Vegas engine is sensitive to these breaks. I haven't had the time to really chase this down.

robwood wrote on 12/5/2007, 6:02 AM

yeh i've seen that with different setup:

Corrupted Frames when Importing Still Sequences
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=560014

i had problems with black frames from importing tga-sequences (if i imported a video file there's no problem) and also had corruption that was identical to what you've shown in your jpeg.

if i only trimmed the in/out the clip would render fine in spite of it appearing corrupted on the timeline and preview window BUT, if i applied a transition to the clip, THEN rendered, the "glitchiness" would be preserved in the newly created file.