I use the Excalibur for close the gaps. Works fine.

The question is: are those gaps supposed to be there in the first place? An the problem is you can hear the gap so it DOES affect the final output.

Just checking in to say that the problem is still there in 4.0d, extremely annoying. Imagine moving by hand every event in a 1 hr movie (30-40 events). I don't care if Excalibur or any other tool can do it, it's a bug and it should be fixed.

I'm interested to know the answer to this as well. I just pulled up a set of clips from a recent project (captured with vidcap), inserted them simultaneously, and indeed small gaps exist between the video portions of the clips. The gap is very small, less than 10 samples at 48kHz (~0.2 ms), and is present because the audio portion is about 5 samples longer than the video.

I don't think the gaps produce artifacts; I have done many projects with dropping large number of clips into the timeline simultaneosuly and the final product has always been fine. Interestingly, if you drop these events in side by side, snapping to each event, one by one, Vegas automatically inserts a tiny (again < 10 sample) crossfade. SoFo, is there an advantage to this? Do all clips typically have a small difference in audio and video length when captured?

Kevin.

I was going to post this because I just noticed it today. Exact same thing - I am going to be doing a PTT so I took 8 files and dropped them into the timeline - now I have to fix 2 sections so I zoom all the way in to get a frame I can cut on - what do I see? The audio ends about 1 frame before the picture!!! So I go to each edit/end of secequence and all but one event is like this. All audio is short!

Now as for the the picture side of things - for one part everything pre-rendered fine except for the last 30 seconds. The audio was there, but no picture - this is on the render, not the edit. So I re-render out that 30 seconds. Now one would think that the run time would be the same...same source right? Well guess what? I go to the last frame and cut it and drop in the new/good rendered 30 seconds. I line it up and hit play - I see a flash of black! I zoom all the way in and sure enought there is a gap where there shouldn't be. Not only that I find out that about the first 2 frames of the newly rendered 30 seconds are black!! So for some reason VV is skipping the first few frames of this one 30 second sequence...and only that sequence. (To be clear - I cut out the bad 30 seconds and put in the good 30 seconds. If I sync to the start I get gap at end, if I sync to the end I get gap at start - either way I have about 2 black frames at head for no reason, these frames were added by VV during render + the gap) All the rest thus far seems to be fine however. I have to re-render a title paortion that runs about 2 minutes, so it will be interesting to see how that goes time wise/gap wise.

So yeah - these gaps with both audio and picture - where are they coming from? This was just an 8 part deal - it is a total run time of about 70 minutes. Thank god this isn't on the other project I am working on, also a feature but one that does not have to be pre-rendered, nor is it all just dropped in/on the timeline in 'sequence'. That seems to be the issue - dropping things onto the timeline in a numbered sequence and letting VV 'auto assemble.'

Oh - I need to add on that this is a 24p project and I know there is an audio difference from 30i > 24p however this gap thing is weird.

filmy: I'm glad someone else is seeing it too, I thought I was the only one. You described better than I did (english not being my language) what I am seing. And I first came across this after seeing small flashes of black, which came from those tiny gaps among events. I suppose this issue must be addressed by SoFo.

My only thought is this could be related to the differences in sampling rates. as you mentioned, the video portion is generally 30i or 24p, so the video is sampled either 60 Fields or 24 Frames every second. Meanwhile, the audio is sampled at either 44.1KHz or 48KHz, depending on audio source, though the final result for DVD A/V is 48k, giving-

asps - fps - Samples / Field or Frame
44.1k 60 735
48k 60 800
44.1k 24 1837.5
48k 24 2000

Vegas prefers to follow the video framerate, and performs cuts at the frame, not the audio sample. Vegas 4.0 does support "Super Sampling", though I have not played with that yet. My only thought is there must be something keeping the audio capture from stopping on time, or making it stop too soon. Check the Options dialogue. Also, try the "Quantize to Frames" option; this forces events to operate at the project framerate, regardless of source. This can be enabled with "ALT+F8" or "Options- Quantize to Frames". For more information about QtF, check out the help file and/ or the manual.

Other possibilities include audio offsets options within VidCap.

Good luck; please let us know if you solve this and what method works.

-gran

Granmadave, on top of that, while audio may be sampled at those frequencies, it is captured in interleave chunks which may or may not line up with the last frame captured. It's very rare that the video stream and audio stream will end at exactly the same point. For an NTSC DV stream of 29.97 once every 33 1/3 seconds there will be 999 video frames and 1,600,000 audio samples. However, interleaving typically occurs on 1/4 second boundries, so it won't be until 100 seconds, 2997 frames, and 4,800,000 samples that they will line up both in time and fill the last chunk. For that matter, it's actually more complex than this because NTSC is actually 29.9700299700... fps, not 29.97. No, i'm not going to do the math on that one! It probably comes out to lining up at a full chunk every couple of years.

So, if you end a clip anywhere but where one of the rare spots where the frame rate, the sample rate, and the interleave chunk all line up, then you will have different lengths for the audio and video streams.

If you make sure your captures are slightly longer than the scene you want to use and then trim them back, you shouldn't see this gap problem.

Chien: It's probably a vidcap bug. All the clips I've mentioned were captured via the vidcap app and dragged to the timeline from the media pool. Another strage thig that happens is that the little blue traingles at the top corner of every event disappear. If you save the project and open it again, then they will show. Not having the blue triangles makes it even more difficult to see if events are jutting together or not.
As I said before if you grab the audio event's right edge and just move the mouse a couple of pixels around, the audio part will "magically" become the same size as the video part, or the video part will adjust to the length of the audio part, it varies. The result will be a gap several ms long between the adjusted and the next (right) event. If you don't turn off Quantize to frames at his moment there is no way you will be able to join the two events together.
I'll do some more testing and post more info/pics.
Thanks for the tips.

Are you running 4.0d? I think we need to examine if this a new issue with 4.0d

I am running 4.0d but I first noticed it on 4.0c

Just wondering is anyone had any updates on the issue? Response from SoFo would be great - they have been quiet lately around here in reguards to SonicDennis or SonicEPM posting.

Gaps in video events: Can anybody post exact 1-2-3-4 repro steps? The simplest possible repro is what I'm after- thanks.

I can't reproduce it reliably, but I too have had this problem. I'll keep an eye out for it and post back here if I can reproduce it.

cacher, what's probably happening when you resize them is that Vegas uses it's looping function to add to the end of the clip from the beginning. As soon as you change either length, Vegas loops or trims both the audio and video to the cursor position. This makes it look like they both become the same length.

>>>Can anybody post exact 1-2-3-4 repro steps? The simplest possible repro is what I'm after- thanks<<<

In may case it can't be any more simple than this, because this is what I did:

1> Create a new project. In my case a 24p project with the temlplates default settings.

2> Import 8 pieces of media. All of them 24p.

3> Highlight all media in media pool and drag and drop onto the timeline.

4> All appears normal but zoom in and in between all, or almost all, events there will be a gap. In some case you also see audio coming up shorter than video.

Filmy- where did the 24p media come from?

Was is captured? (if so, from what camera, with what app...)

If it was rendered, what app was used?

Thanks

Chien: No that's not happening, if that were the case, I would see the notch indicating its being looped, it isn't there.
In my case I use the same technique that Filmy describes:
- Capture from Sony TRV-120 Digital 8, LP mode, 16 bit audio, via firewire.
- Select all media from media pool.
- Drop into the timeline (auto crossfade=off, quantize to frames=on).
- Almost all events will show this gaps. In my case, the gaps are in the video part, since audio is longer by a few milliseconds. You will have to zoom ALL the way in to see them, but the result will show in the renderd file (flashes of black).

This was a problem in VV3 as well. I use VV3 and many times I have to zoom in to the timeline and adjust the end of an event so it lands on a frame. I keep Quantize to frames on, but the problem persists. It usually is evident on the end of an event. Apparently, the Quantize only affects the beginning of an event.

Sometimes this does not cause a problem and sometimes I get weird flash frames.

Dave T2

>>> Filmy- where did the 24p media come from?<<<
>>>If it was rendered, what app was used?<<<

30i > 24p using VV. (As a side note read my post about 'weird ptt issue')

keep in mind I am only speaking about my project and I do no know if everyone else finding the gaps are also doing 24p projects or not.

I too have this in a current project. I've captured and then put the video on the timeline. Some of the clips have audio that is minutely longer than the video (you have to zoom all the way in to see it) and this does create a black frame on playback.

VV3 does this too. A long time ago I stopped messing with it and just do small crossfades to cover for it. A lot easier than zooming in to remove a frame or two. I use to think it was me creating the gaps buy moving things around, but then I noticed it on stuff I had not edited yet. I could see it being a bigger issue for professionals.