Why Do Clips Occasionally Go Black?

shovel wrote on 5/20/2022, 5:27 PM

Windows 10 64bit Pro
NVIDIA GTX 970
i7-5820K - 3.30GHz
Vegas Pro 19.0 (Build 550)

I use Vegas Pro almost every day and it happens quite frequently that a video clip on the timeline will just start appearing as black. The only way I've been able to fix this is to restart Vegas Pro. The clip will be back to normal.
It is not opacity, or any other settings or fx.

The clips themselves that I tend to work with are AVI files. When I right click and check properties of the clip in Vegas is says Sony Motion JPEG.

Does anyone else deal with this issue? It has happened as long as I've used Vegas Pro.

Comments

Musicvid wrote on 5/20/2022, 5:59 PM

As a test, go to Options->Preferences->Video and turn off GPU Processing of Video Preview and restart Vegas. Does the problem go away?

We don't know about a "Sony Motion JPEG Codec." For further help with your question, please start by providing the information here requested here. Welcome to the forum.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-to-post-mediainfo-and-vegas-pro-file-properties--104561/

 

shovel wrote on 5/21/2022, 1:28 PM

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it but the issue is still happening.

Here is what it looks like on the timeline. The one that says "CarSlam"


The file seems fine in the media browser and if I double click it the video preview will work like normal. (also adds another copy to timeline)



But as soon as I click in the timeline again the preview goes black on the clip.



If I close and re-open Vegas it works as expected again. It just seems to choose clips at random making them completely blank until restart.

I just did this again (Save and Quit, then restart Vegas). The clip is back and working normal again.


Its an inconvenience and happens every day that I use Vegas pretty consistently.

Former user wrote on 5/21/2022, 1:45 PM

@shovel Hi, the MediaInfo @Musicvid asked for is important,

MediaInfo, download it, it's free https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo
After downloading, right click on the media in your Windows folder, open MediaInfo, choose Text from the View option, select all, copy & paste in a comment here,

also check that your GPU (graphics card) drivers are up to date

Geforce Experience would prob help with that, https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/geforce-experience/

after downloading you'll get a n App with a Drivers tab, you want Studio Driver,

& can you add the amount of RAM you have to your PC specs, thanks

shovel wrote on 5/21/2022, 2:30 PM

General
Complete name                            : filepath---redacted😀
Format                                   : AVI
Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave
File size                                : 2.22 MiB
Duration                                 : 1 s 42 ms
Overall bit rate                         : 17.9 Mb/s

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : JPEG
Codec ID                                 : MJPG
Duration                                 : 1 s 42 ms
Bit rate                                 : 17.3 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 24.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:2
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan order                               : Top Field First
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.348
Stream size                              : 2.15 MiB (97%)

 

shovel wrote on 5/21/2022, 2:31 PM

I could def probably use a driver update so ill get that sorted in a bit

I won't be using GForce Experience though as that software interferes with animation software I use.
Thankfully that is not necessary for the drivers to work properly.

Former user wrote on 5/21/2022, 4:45 PM

@shovel Ok, you can do it on Vegas - Help - Check for Driver Updates - Studio Driver - Download

 

 

Musicvid wrote on 5/21/2022, 6:58 PM

You don't have an AVI MJPEG codec on your computer. Rather than jumping through hoops to find one, simply convert your file in Handbrake. Done and best of luck!

shovel wrote on 5/21/2022, 10:21 PM

You don't have an AVI MJPEG codec on your computer. Rather than jumping through hoops to find one, simply convert your file in Handbrake. Done and best of luck!

That's interesting. I'm using animation software for the renders that may be a bit too oldschool on their render settings. I'm a beta tester so i'll bring this up and see if they can update. The rest of my animation team uses Blender and I'm the only one who seems to run into this Vegas issue. Thanks for looking at this. idk if its solved, but at least have some clues now.

shovel wrote on 5/24/2022, 5:33 PM

Really sounds like its Vegas's inability to handle this file type. Premiere was able to handle it fine. Handbrake is a good suggestion, but a bit too time consuming in my situation (previs work/constantly updating the files to timeline)

Former user wrote on 5/24/2022, 6:33 PM

@shovel Hi would you be willing to share one of those files to Google Drive ?

shovel wrote on 5/24/2022, 8:48 PM

@shovel Hi would you be willing to share one of those files to Google Drive ?

Yea. Here is one
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f9fVg0Ecv3OSXF3c_h4qHQYN3UINCmQJ/view?usp=sharing

shovel wrote on 5/24/2022, 8:56 PM

Something else comes to mind too. In Premiere I could press Enter and it would render fx (this seemed to include clips w no fx too unless they were navive to the timeline settings) for every clip on the timeline helping to ensure they play back nicely for preview. Under the Tools menu Vegas seems to have something similar but entirely not sure it works for every clip. Selectively Pre Render starts rendering about 6 mp4 files. I have to look at the documentation but it does not seem to be pre-rendering every clip.

It hard to tell since there is no indication as to what those are or where they are used on the timeline. Premiere showed Red or Green over the clips to indicate pre-rendered or not. Would be nice if they did that here.

Former user wrote on 5/24/2022, 9:57 PM

@shovel Hi, thanks for sharing that clip, so far i've struggled to recreate your issue, I've duplicated it, added Colorization fx (which destroys playback quite often) but that's only one clip & our pc's are different 🤷‍♂️

I've been playing with PinP but that's for another thread,

Render to a new track Ctrl+M & Selectively Prerender Video Shift+M only does the area selected, in my pic it's the area in blue, there's also Build Dynamic Ram preview Shift+B, same again that works on the selected area & how much will depend on how much you assign in Preferences - Video, , Vegas cache system needs to be Automated like you say it is in Adobe, it is in many other programs,

PS can you go to your icon at the top of this page, My profile & fill your Signature with your Vegas & window version, also pc specs, full name of GPU,CPU & amount of RAM, this will then show at the bottom of your comments,

Did you update the Studio GPU driver?

john_dennis wrote on 5/24/2022, 10:19 PM

@shovel

Point of Order

Why would

Frame rate                               : 24.000 FPS


be


Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan order                               : Top Field First

?

"I'm using animation software for the renders that may be a bit too oldschool on their render settings."

If you are creating these files, perhaps you should revisit your render settings in the software that created the file.

Vegas 19-550 identified the file properly and played it without incident on my machine. See signature.

Musicvid wrote on 5/24/2022, 10:44 PM

Really sounds like its Vegas's inability to handle this file type. Premiere was able to handle it fine. Handbrake is a good suggestion, but a bit too time consuming in my situation (previs work/constantly updating the files to timeline)

Given your impression, I strongly urge you try to find a download for one of the obsolete VFW AVI MJPEG codecs that will work on your current version of Windows. To help you in your search, there were versions produced by Mainconcept, Pic Video, and Morgan; they were all paid solutions in their day, and that's also why they weren't available in Vegas, which was right about two decades ago. The last time I was faced with this footage, I was successful with the Mainconcept trial version, which decodes OK but encodes with a watermark. That said, you are entirely on your own in 2022.

The rest of us lazy types tend to prefer the Handbrake solution. As you may be able to tell, this isn't my first rodeo, having started with the Zoran/Philips hardware AVI MJPEG codec on a DC10+ pci card in Pinnacle Studio on Win98SE fully 22 years ago. Best of luck!