Black dots in highligths
 

Hi,

I hope someone here can help me. I've been working on a project in Vegas Pro 9.0e for a while and now I have a strange problem. All the areas where the highlights are clipping, I get some strange black dots showing up all over the place. Very similar to zebra bars in a video camera. Unfortunately, those dots will render in the final video. They appeared suddenly. Individual clips play correctly if watched outside Vegas.

Anyone has an idea what it could be?

Thanks,

Benoit

Do you have any kind of FX or corrections made to those clips?

Nope. I haven't done anything to any of the clips because I'm not done editing yet. If it may give an additional piece of information, I imported my clips from my Canon XHA1 with Cineform Neo Scene couple months ago. The only thing that changed since then are the version of Neo Scene that I keep up-to-date. I remember working on this project about 3 weeks ago and all was fine. Now I have this problem.

If the problem is with the Cineform codec, I guess I would see the same problem when I play the clips outside Vegas (Windows Media Player) but I don't so I don't think I can blame the codec.

Thanks,

Benoit

It happen to me to. I have never had this tiny black dots before. It so bad that I have to close vegas and try import another clip and than it was fine. Then I try to re-import the previous video that has black dots and it was fine. It is strange.


PS. best to do is restart the computer and run Vegas with the same clip again. My seem to work fine. NO more black dots.

Hmmm very strange thing here. Sometimes though the REBOOT filter works the best. Try the suggestion in the post above and see how that works out.

Update regarding video appear a lot of black dots. I have never have this problem before. I am running Vegas pro 9e 64 bit and Pro 10a. My master file are Cineform AVI, Neoscens version 5.07 very clean video and play beautiful. After I hear all the great thing about the lastest version of Neoscene, so I jump on to update to 5.2

Here is my problem start with Neoscene version 5.2, with NO audio on converted video. Although I edit all my videos on Native files anyway. I used neoscene mainly for lossles Master archival and smooth scrubbing and smooth playback on the timeline. I have submitted ticket to Cineform support but don't seem to be able to resolve the no audio issue yet. Just last few days I import a few master cineform file (lossless AVI) onto the Vegas pro 9e timeline and play back the video clip and a porttion of the video clip have serious black dots dots..... unbearable. I say to my self, what the hack is that craps come from. But when I play that same video clip outside of Vegas, it plays very clean, no dots what so ever. So, I reimport that very same clip onto Vegas Pro 10a and seem to play fine with no black dots. BUT Vegas pro 10a don't allowed Cineform codec because it greyed out under config. So more often or not I am still using Vegas Pro 9e as my prefer software because of the cineform software that I have. I am trying to get rid of that black dots by uninstall Vegas 9 and reinstall it but did not cut it. Today I decide to play around and went back to Neoscene version 5.07 and play that same video clip that saved as lossles avi cineform version 5.07 on Vegas Pro 9e timeline and I got no more black dots. And I tested a converted video that have audio. The conclusion, I am happy to go back to 5.07 for now.

bruce, i replied to your ticket last week and haven't heard back. i'm still available to help you resolve the audio issue if you want.

in regards to the black dots in vegas, i've had a couple of people send me sample files that have these black dots on them, but unfortunately when played back in vegas on my system, i'm not seeing anything wrong. from what i'm told, the dots appear (like zebras) in very bright areas. before we can address this issue, i need to be able to reproduce it. If anyone has more samples that are showing these dots, please send them to support and we'll keep trying to reproduce it.

thanks.

... and when i say 'send samples to support', i mean cineform support. thanks!

Jake,

I closed out the ticket because I have rolled back to 5.07. I'll stay with that for now.

is there any update on this, I've caught the black spot disease too.
Im going to try rendering out to Lagarith and see if they are visible after that render .

If it can help a little bit in the diagnostic process, yesterday I installed the trial version of Sony Vegas Pro 10 and the black dots in the highlights have dissapeared from the exact same clips. If I open the same project with Vegas Pro 9.0e, the problem comes back. Looks like the problem is related to Sony Vegas Pro 9.0. Do any of you with the same problem can confirm the version of Vegas you are using.

By the way, I tried to install Cineform 5.07 like another poster did and unfortunately, it didn't work for me. Worst part is: even if I adjust the levels, the black dots remains... So, in a nutshell, if I render my project with the blackdots, there's no way to get rid of them.

Any help would be appreciated.

This may be completely off the wall, but I've seen something like this before in an unrelated application (a RIP used to drive an inkjet printer). It was a brand new software release. I found that if I had an area to print that contained pixels of solid white (that is, 255, 255, 255) I'd get a solid black pixel (that is, 0,0,0) instead. Turned out to be a math error in the RIP software, where anything above 254, 254, 254 was rounded to zero.

Does this have anything to do with the problem at hand? I have no idea. I'm just tossing the idea out there in case it does.

the plot thickens,
I really didnt want to upgrade to 10 yet, but the black spots were killing me and i'm on a deadline.
Upgraded, spots are gone!!!!
same files, same project settings.
crazy.

Problem Fixed!
 

I don't know if it's related but the problem I had initally described in this discussion is now gone. What did I do? Well, I installed the latest version of Cineform NeoScene (v5.22 Build 283) and when I fired up Sony Vegas Pro 9, the problem was gone.

I'm pretty sure the problem was related to the Cineform codec that allows Vegas to display HDV clips. Maybe someone in the know at Cineform can confirm. If it has nothing to do with Cineform, then I'll hurry up to finish this project asap!

Hope this helps anyone else who had this problem.

Benoit