Ahh, so you're thinking this is a GPU issue? I *am* using NVENC. Will try w/out.

This is an older I7 PC, with a 4070 GPU

You can add items in your profile, they are then available for all to see as signature, saves repeating it every time, see my 2 posts here.

Voukoder will probably give better quality CPU only renders than MC, well worth installing if u find that you cannot use nvenc for these source files. Bedtime, best of luck.

Is this only an issue with AVI sources? Haven't used any in a while but could check for black frames if that's the cause.

If not using NVENC doesn't help you could try turning off the GPU in preferences/video.

Hopefully we can figure out the cause and get this fixed.

Yeah it's only with AVI video. I have, really, two problems with AVI ...

One is Smart Render; it doesn't recognize differences in format (frame size I suspect) and copies with the No Recompression message. Then it plays back black because the copied frames aren't legal

The option to disable smart render in the File IO tab also doesn't work (it's ignored so you can't turn it off).

Then there's the black frames in renders, in this use case going from AVI source (multiple codecs) rendering to MP4.

I'd thought it was just random files, but tonight I actually caught it rendering black on one clip, then in the middle of the clip, it started working. Very very weird.

Voukoder is definitely worth checking out, will do so.

@_litz Hi, I created a MagicYUV MagicYUV 8-bit RGBA AVI in VP21, a video clip + a moving png that has transparency, I don't know if yours has transparency & if that's why you initially used AVI?

I imported it into VP22, changed the Alpha to Straight so the transparency showed & rendered as Magix AVC (NVENC), the render was fine.

Before render just to give an idea of what I created

So I guess more info about your AVI is needed or a sample shared on Google Drive.. + what render options you used in VP22, 'Encoding to MP4' is a bit vague?

So, I'm getting the same issue with Voukoder when it uses NVENC. So either Vegas isn't parsing AVI correctly, or NVENC is broke.

I also saw the same issue rendering non-NVENC in Vegas.

I've tried using Voukoder in non NVENC mode and it runs .... slow. Like 10fps slow.

Vegas running none NVENC runs faster, but it's half the speed of NVENC.

None of this is acceptable - if there's something causing black frames, there should be an error message. I should not have to practically frame step 4 hours of video looking for dropouts.

Again, this isn't an issue on Vegas 21 and older. Only 22.

Regarding the comment above about transparency, no, no transparency. AVI here is just used as a lossless intermediate transport for a rendered video library. It's just straight video rendered into a library file.

I'm not even doing anything fancy like weird resolutions or anything, this is straight up normal 1080p stuff.

I'd give you a sample AVI, but there's absolutely no way to tell if what I give you will fail. Or when it will fail. You can run the same render, with the same file 10 times, and it'll render perfect, then fail on the 11th.

All I can say, is take a bunch of clips (10-20 of them), render to MagicYUV lossless, then assemble on a timeline, and render that to MP4, and see what happens. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

They don't have to be long, 30-120 seconds each.

If the issue is still happening with Voukoder it's probably before the encoding stage so NVENC is a red herring.

It's either a decoding issue or something with video processing. Do the black frames happen on a fade or transition or in the middle of an event?

RogerS - middle of an event, or start of an event (then it starts working mid-event).

No fades, no transitions. These are straight cuts between segments.

I agree it appears more like something with video processing - when I'm watching the render, I can see the black frames occur in realtime in the preview window.

"Vegas Pro 21 and older did not have this problem."

So perhaps changes in vp22 may mean that it cannot handle this file type (MagicYuv?) any longer without introducing black frames.

Try removing Nvidia gpu in both places if you haven't already done so. .. the File I/O tab + in the Video tab as video acceleration.

That is .. Options/Preferences/File I/O tab and in Options/Preferences/Video tab.

A sample would be useful.

"I'd give you a sample AVI, but there's absolutely no way to tell if what I give you will fail. Or when it will fail. You can run the same render, with the same file 10 times, and it'll render perfect, then fail on the 11th.

Do the black frames also appear in playback as well as render?

When *playing* (e.g. while editing), everything looks as it should in the preview window.

When *rendering*, you can get random black frame areas in the output video. It's not single frames, but it'll be at least part of a clip to an entire clip. This is viewable both in the preview (as it's rendering) and upon playback of the rendered video.

"I also saw the same issue rendering non-NVENC in Vegas.

While doing the above did you also make sure to not have Nvenc in File I/O tab and the Video tab for Video Acceleration . Both places.

File io is NVDEC and it should have no effect on MagicYUV and other AVI formats that aren't GPU decodable.

@_litz

"Vegas Pro 21 and older did not have this problem"

If it turns out to be a VP22 issue a workaround might be to convert the avi files to Prores HQ, then see if it's OK.

Untick "enable direct GPU import path" in preferences>file i/o and see if that does anything. This will revert VEGAS to use the old video engine. You can always re-enable it when working with media that doesn't have this issue, assuming this solves it.

Untick "enable direct GPU import path" in preferences>file i/o and see if that does anything. This will revert VEGAS to use the old video engine. You can always re-enable it when working with media that doesn't have this issue, assuming this solves it.

Sadly, same behavior persists. It's unfortunately still faster to render and roll the dice it comes out ok, then hobble the process to try and stabilize. It shouldn't be this difficult to read an AVI file reliably.

Vegas *knows* from the project index files what frames *should* look like. If they're ALL BLACK, a warning bell needs to go off.

This was an issue many years ago with Cineform encoded .avi files too. Never fixed AFAIK. Maybe it can't be fixed?

Can you transcode into prores .mov file with something like Shutter Encoder ?