CS4 / AME - Green Flickering lines at bottom of frames when exporting to MPEG2-DVD
 

I'm getting little green lines that flicker at the bottom of files when selecting the "MPEG2-DVD" option in Adobe Media Encoder?

It's a small flickering green line, that is only about 4 pixels high by 100 wide. The lines randomly appear and flash at the bottom of my mpeg encoded m2v video files.

Field order, cropping, scaling, doesn't help...nor does exporting from different file types to the MPEG2-DVD setting. I'm running CS4, and AME is exporting to DVD using MainConcept. It does the same thing in AE, Encore.

Any help is much appreciate! (I've spent HOURS trying to figure this out :(

Isaac... I had a similar problem years ago (probably with CS2), and it seems to me it was somehow hardware related.

Any chance your RAM is faulty or not seated properly?

Do you have the latest update for Media Encoder?... maybe updating or reinstalling could help.

TMPGenc is available as a trial: TMPGEnc - Products: TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress Product Information

If nothing else, you can see if it's an encoding/software problem or not.

I've tried it on two systems, one with CS4 and the other with CS3, and both are doing the same thing, which makes me think it's a problem within AME with MainConcepts MPEG2-DVD encoding. It's just a very small green'ish line that flickers on the bottom edge of the frame...so it's not too noticable.

And no problems with TMPGenc...other than some color shifting...

Your troubleshooting does seem to be indicating AME/Main Concept as you say, and it could be something that's tripping it up in your project. If AME outputs a clean M2V of say, a still or color bars, then you could start a process of elimination in your timeline.

The glitch may not be noticeable, but it would be nice to know with certainty, what is causing it.

Just one of the reasons I avoid AME whenever possible... and now that DeBug Frameserver is updated for CS4 there are more options for sidestepping the many quirks and performance woes of AME.

Many times this green glitch shows up only during the preview in Encore. Have you tried burning the disc and playing it back on a set top dvd player?

You could also create an image, mount it, and play it back with dvd software if you have it.

Here is what I have discovered...

The glitch does show in preview (as Jon suggested) but not once I output it to DVD (cutting the larger mpg files into smaller vob wrapped files via encore).

Yet, if I take the mpg file, with the green glitch, and transcode it into an AVI, the green glitch is now baked into the AVI file, and once again visible no matter what player I'm using (not that I would often use this workflow) but this does show me that this artifact is a bit more poblimatic than one that just shows up in select viewers, such as it does in encore and premiere...but is one that can be burned into the file, if it is transcoded, rather than rewrapped into a VOB or similar.

(It's like a virus, that doesn't kill the host, but kills those that it spreads to :)

Thanks Jon and Marty for your repsonses...

Marty, thanks for that reference to DeBug Frameserver. Could you give any more details as to what you use it with--i.e. what do you use to do the encoding?

Hi Jon.... I've not utilized Frameserver before, but my plan is to learn how to implement it with TMPGenc.

I've heard that the Frameserver function is a bit slow, but I'm not overly concerned about speed. As it is, I typically output an intermediate master (in my case, a Cineform HD file), then run that through TMPGenc to achieve any scaling or deinterlacing or output to MPEG2.

Frameserver would allow a TMPGenc encode from AME's interface.