What do red and black frames mean.

farss wrote on 7/16/2008, 11:19 PM

I opened an Artbeats clip I downloaded some time ago in V70.d and much to my horror it's almost entirely red frames. As it turns out though most of the clip is missing as it's only 112KB long even though it should be 2:15 which is correct according to Artbeats and is what Vegas thinks it is as well. Clearly my network problems at the time caused the download to stop before the whole file was downloaded. Just for the record this is a 4:3 25fps mov file, Artbeats clip RE129.mov

What's interesting about this is it would seem that Vegas has a mechanism for handling missing frames, it flags the thumbnails as red on the T/L, although they're decoded as black, not transparent.

It would have been nice to be told this, might have saved many a lot of head scratching trying to workout what's going on. I have to admit it's been many versions of Vegas since I read the manual from cover to cover so maybe it is in there?

Oh and the black frames, well before this clip turns into red frames there's several black frames, maybe they indicate a corrupted undecodeable frame?

Comments

rmack350 wrote on 7/16/2008, 11:43 PM

My only experience with red frames was in making progressively larger stills to see what would choke Vegas. When they got to be too large they'd be displayed as red frames.

Rob Mack

Grazie wrote on 7/16/2008, 11:48 PM

Are we therefore to surmise that large files produce red frames? That there is an upper limit to file sizes for Vegas? Interesting.

Grazie

farss wrote on 7/17/2008, 12:57 AM

I can't answer that one, although from what Rob has seen it's the frame size, so the file could be relatively small and still bring on the red frames.
From what I've just seen though combined with Rob's test it would seem that there's no simple logic behind what a red frame means. I would have thought a too large frame size would cause a black frame as the frame would actually be there but couldn't be decoded.

However to further complicate the issue Quicktime files and AVI files work somewhat differently in how metadata is stored.

What I think we can say though is that the red / black frame issue is not limited to just HDV files. They might for certain reasons be the ones most likely to have an issue that causes Vegas to display red / black frames.

Bob.

megabit wrote on 7/17/2008, 1:02 AM

Back in the times when I was using tapes (especially with the Canon A1, almost never with the Sony V1E), I often encountered red frames in the timeline - it wasn't a surprise to me, as I remembered the dropped frames messages during tape capture (as I never liked the auto scene separation into multiple files, I had this option off and captured into a single file; also had the switch to stop capture at dropping frames off).

Now with the EX1, with file-based tapeless workflow, I never had a red or black frame even once. But interestingly, I do remember some instances when using HDV with the DR60 drive - not just tape... Go figure.

rmack350 wrote on 7/17/2008, 8:13 AM

Yes, it was pixel dimensions that was the red frame factor with stills. I was interpreting it pretty simply as a sign that Vegas couldn't display the media. I'm not convinced it means any more than that. So:

red frame means Vegas knows it can't display the media
black frame means Vegas doesn't know it can't display the media

Am I oversimplifying it?

Rob

Harold Brown wrote on 7/17/2008, 5:43 PM

I have sometimes seen red frames at the end of a clip and when I chop the end off they go away. I have also had them pop up in the middle of a clip after having done something (cannot remember as it has been 2 versions back that did this). I could delete the clip and bring it back in and solve the problem. I just worked with some clips captured from Adobe OnLocation and it had the red frames at the end on several clips. They didn't cause me a problem because I didn't use the footage at the end of the clip. That is the first red frames I have seen in a long time.