White font turns black ???!!!???

PeterWright wrote on 6/1/2007, 2:44 AM

I hope I'll solve this soon - but I've never had this before ...

I'm converting a client's power point to DVD, using Camtasia. (Techsmith codec)

A particular still has some white text superimposed - it reveals with a wipe, but it is already embedded in the avi, not added on the Vegas timeline.

When I render in either of 4 ways (Render to new track, Render to DV avi, Selective Prerender or Render to MPEG2) the White text is suddenly BLACK!

On the timeline, it's still white. Ram rendering is White, but rendering any other way, it's Black. Impossible, but true.

I'm going to take the whole project to a different PC via a thumb stick, but has any one had such a crazy experience?

Irony is that the P/Pt is about a miraculous staircase in a chapel in Santa Fe - I reckon this font colour change is even more miraculous!

Comments

ushere wrote on 6/1/2007, 4:35 AM

now what's a nice aussie boy doing editing stories about santa fe?

time to call the exorcist?

good luck ;-)

leslie

baysidebas wrote on 6/1/2007, 7:07 AM

I would suspect that it has something to do with alpha channels and that the text is actually transparent. Try putting a white background under the video track.

PeterWright wrote on 6/1/2007, 7:32 AM

Thanks for the idea, but I already tried that. I even applied black chroma key but that also removed some other parts of the frame.

I'm sure it's something to do with the Camtasia/Techsmith codec screen capture, but the text is clearly white in the Power Point, and is still white in the avi on the Vegas timeline ... yet, when I render it turns black. I'll probably finish up playing the Power Point on my Laptop and shooting it with a camera - can't believe how much time some of these "cheap" jobs finish up taking!

johnmeyer wrote on 6/1/2007, 7:53 AM

In PowerPoint, put the text on top (change the order).

baysidebas wrote on 6/1/2007, 8:19 AM

"applied black chroma key but that also removed some other parts of the frame."
follow up on that idea, in PP change the font color to green, or some other unique color not used in the slides, and then use chromakey in Vegas to replace it with white.

PeterWright wrote on 6/1/2007, 6:53 PM

Thanks for the suggestions, but I only have the power point as a .pps file, - play only, not .ppt, so I cannot change the font colour ...... even though Vegas does!

I wonder if anyone knows how Render can differ from Preview this way?

It's a strange feeling applying black chroma key when the font on the timeline and in preview is white.

PeterWright wrote on 6/2/2007, 3:01 AM

Well, I found a solution, without finding out what was causing the problem.

Before the white font started turning to black when rendering, I had applied Pan Crop and Ctrl / Drag to the Camtasia/Techsmith clip, to change frame size and duration slightly.

I reimported the same clip "untouched" onto the time line and then rendered it immediately to a DV avi before substituting this for the Camtasia avi.

This time, praise be, the white font stayed white after rendering.

On to the next puzzle ....