Black frames again

[Paul Fierlinger]

The appearance of those dreaded black clips ceased for me with the introduction of version 12 and I've had a run of flawless, uninterrupted work for many, many months -- but now the black clips are back. Does anyone have any idea where this comes from? I ask because the nature of my work is based on very routine and repetitive processes. I've even been working on the same project going into four years now with no changes or variations in my work flow, using just 3 software: Vegas, TVPaint and Directory Opus.

My first thought was that something must have corrupted Vegas because nothing has been changed with my hardware, which is fairly robust and not old enough to be dieing, and I rarely go on line with this computer and have not introduced new software in ages. So I uninstalled and reinstalled Vegas 12, but that hasn't fixed anything.

Doesn't this then point to the hardware as the culprit? Is there a trick, a workaround? Restoring my computer to an earlier time has not helped either.

[Chris Hewitt]

Paul, just a thought but do you have 'quantize to frames' unchecked in the Options dropdown?
I remember in the distant past getting black frames and I think that enabling that option fixed the problem.
Hope that's what it is.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Chris, I indeed did have it unchecked. Is this the trick I was hoping to hear? I now have it checked and will be back if it didn't help. Thanks for your effort.

[Edward Troxel]

Having that unchecked means you can start a clip when it's not on a frame boundary. That is not a good thing as you could leave a slight gap between it and the previous event. However, you also have to watch events that do not end on a frame boundary as well. Just zoom in on the timeline and verify every event begins and ends on a frame boundary and you don't have any gaps between them.

[Paul Fierlinger]

So Edward, are you saying that this setting indeed does have a connection with events turning black and that keeping an eye on cuts is the price that one has to pay to avoid black events from happening?

[Nicholas de Kock]

Paul the "black frames" never stopped for me I struggle with this weekly. Quantize to frames is checked in my edits, there is no solution that I know of. I sent many support requests, started forum topics - it's a lost cause. I've learned to live with it, really annoying!

[Paul Fierlinger]

But what mystifies me is that the black frames have been absent from my process for many months and I work all day long, every day of the year. What is going on that the malady leaves and returns like the seasonal flu? But from what you say, it looks like the Sony developers are just as perplexed. Right now, I haven't seen any black frames since I activated Quantize to Frames (not that it's been that long.)

[Chris Hewitt]

Paul, have a look on the timeline at the point you see a black frame in your rendered video. Is it at a point where two events meet? If it is then you would assume that those two events have a small gap between them and that is a giveaway when 'quantize to frames' is turned off. To make it easier, make your background color bright green for example and it will make it easier to see those black frames which will now be green proving that the culprit is QTF being off.
You could use VASST Ultimate S to find the black frames automatically and make life a lot easier. Good luck!

[Paul Fierlinger]

Chris, this is good information. I've been wondering why some people use the term"black frames". What I am experiencing is a black clip; from first to last frame; never just random frames. The black never shows on the time line icons or anywhere else but only during playback or after rendering (even while rendering). To fix it, all I have to do is close and reopen Vegas. I doubt that I have any poorly connected edits. I live by individual frames and anytime there's a carelessly connected event I instantly spot it on playback. But I take your suggestion seriously and will do as you say.

[Edward Troxel]

I'm saying it can be *a* cause - not necessarily *the* cause in all situations.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Well, when I said that I've been doing everything the same way for months, it turns out not to be the case. After reading the new thread about codecs on the Sony Vegas forum and how some codecs can cause havoc in Vegas, I checked my TVP software's AVI codec and discovered that TVP had switched, behind my back (a known TVP bug) my usual AVI Direct Show setting to AVI Internal, which picks an entirely different codec than the one I normally use. After correcting this I think everything should be back to normal again because a another small nuisance I've been experiencing in Vegas went away (namely jerky playback in long dissolves). Keeping my fingers crossed.

[Greg Kintz]

I've seen occasional black or distorted frames with certain codecs and Sony Vegas. For example, the previously tried and true Huffy lossless codec is no longer safe in Vegas. Once in awhile, I've even seen a few issues with the far more stable Lagarith lossless codec.

When in doubt, transcode your original video to a true lossless RGB avi (with an external program like Virtual Dub) and see if your occasional black frame issues are still there.

[Paul Fierlinger]

The AVI codec I use is either Uncompressed BGR24 (or 32 when an Alpha channel is present) or Motion-JPEG, which is the one that is maybe causing me the trouble.

[Paul Fierlinger]

I think I've come closer to understanding where my problem generates. First, the black events aren't happening anymore. I believe it's a refresh problem. I can make it happen if I have one project opened in Vegas and without closing I select another project in the drop down file menu and open it on top of the first one. This is guaranteed to open with some events black. Closing Vegas and opening again fixes the black event issue. After that I never see black events anymore, unless I go back to the what has proven to be the wrong AVI codec. So in my case this seems to be an obvious case of finding the codec Vegas likes the best. Thanks all for helping me along.