Weird problem with titles
 

When I add Vegas' media generated text on top of captured video in the timeline and then render to an avi file, the quality of the image is changed for the duration of the titles. This is only really noticeable when the titles go on top of bright video, and I first saw it when I added a title to some interview footage with a lot of blown out background. What happens is that the video under the title changes to become slightly darker and sharper, almost like as if the gamma's been tweaked or a white diffusion filter has been removed. This effect cuts in as soon as you hit the first title frame, even if the title itself isnt yet visible (because of being faded in) and it switches back off again immediately after the last frame of the title. Ive also noticed that it happens for the duration of a crossfade when I automatically crossfade two separate clips of this same source video.

There is a workaround of sorts: I just put a completely transparent image on top of all the affected footage, so that the whole thing is darkened and sharpened (the effect is not cumulative, fortunately). This prevents the rendered footage from switching from light to dark and back again, but I'd still like to have the rendered footage not be affected at all!

This only shows up on rendered avi files -- mpgs and wmv all work fine as far as I can tell. Also there's no indication of any problem in the Vegas preview window even at Best(full). Lastly I should mention that a friend of mine who runs a very similar setup has tried to replicate this phenomenon on the exact same interview footage and he cant reproduce the problem at all!

So.... I dunno. Is it a bug? Do I just have some obscure switch set wrong somewhere?? It's not a *huge* problem, but I'd sure like to get it fixed!



I'm running Vegas 5.0a on a 1.83 GB AMD Sempron 2600, XP Pro service pack 2 machine with an ASUS A9250 video card.

I suspect that you have nudged your title background to a bit less than fully transparent. Check the background alpha control.

Gary

If only it were that simple! But nope, the title background is at full transparency. Also the exact same thing is happening with crossfades and also when I use fully transparent images (psd files) to do the workaround.

OK, I'll throw out the easy solution (that may or may not work).

You know 5.0d (build 194) is available for update, right?

You're right, I should do the update. Except of course I basically have a nice stable machine right now... but sure, what could possibly go wrong, right?

Meanwhile I did some more testing, and the problem goes away if I render to an *uncompressed* avi file. By default, Ive been rendering to an 'NTSC DV' avi. So, I guess this suggests it must be a codec-related problem, right? Or hmm, Im also wondering if Directx might be involved here? Im already running the latest version (DirectX 9.0c) though...

Also a correction: it turns out my buddy with the very similar setup ran his tests using a *different* blown out video file to the one I was using, so I can't quite rule out the possibility that the problem might in fact still show up on his machine after all.

Doh! Ive just found out the hard way that rendering to an uncompressed avi file apparently disables all the magic bullet effects! So I still dont even have a satisfactory workaround!

It's amazing how one piffling little problem can snowball into such a tangle....

Sheesh I dunno. When I have a spare couple hours I guess Im gonna have to try that update....

OK, I did the update and Im now running 5.0d build 194. The exact same problem is still there.

It's not the background transparency button, but are there any other obvious(?) settings that I may have overlooked? Also, would it help if a posted a couple frame grabs here to illustrate what Im talking about?

Any help v much appreciated! Thanks!

There is no reason that rendering to uncompressed would turn off any effects. Also, I have not seen your particular issues when using titles. There has to be something else going on.

You're quite right Edward: there was something else going on - and Ive finally figured out what it was!

Somehow -- probably while I was trying to get some legacy canopus avi files to play -- Id unchecked the 'Ignore third party codecs' option. I rechecked it again and all the problems immediately went away.

Case solved. But it's probably something for people to watch out for in the future!

Yes, it's definitely best to stick with the Sony codec. That could definitely account for a slight shift in colors.

<<<-- Originally posted by Edward Troxel : Yes, it's definitely best to stick with the Sony codec. -->>>

Amen to that! In fact it was the superiority of the MainConcept codec that persuaded me to switch to Vegas in the first place. (I used to run Canopus DV Rex with an old version of Premiere(5.1c) on a 98 machine, and it was truly horrible for compositing.)

The Sony DV codec is not the MainConcept DV codec. Sonic Foundry developed their codec all in-house.

Vegas uses Main Concept for their MPEG encoding but NOT for DV.

Oh, wow! I didnt know that! (obviously!) Thanks for pointing that out. In any case, it's a damn fine codec, whoever made it! :-)