Black Frames
 

For a while now I have been quite sure that my latest system has solved the black frames while editing *.m2t files. And in a way it has.

But, recently I temporarily went from 'Good Auto' to 'Preview Auto' and there they were again. Also, there were red frames when I zoomed out.

I went back to 'Good Auto', closed Vegas and then re-opened the project and the black and red frames were gone. And I haven't seen them since.

On my oldest and slowest system the black frames were always there with 'Good Auto' and occassionaly there with 'Preview Auto'.

So, not only is this problem system specific but it also depends on the settings.

This may explain why some people see the black frames and others don't. I suspect that some like to keep either the 'Good Auto' or the 'Preview Auto' on most of the time.

On my oldest system with a Pentium 4 if I used 'Best Auto' or 'Best Full' I would get a ton of black frames.

Vegas 7 and up uses the ram to help speed-up the preview of *.m2t files. The type and power of ones system as well as the Vegas settings seems to have quite a bit of an affect on how likely one is to get the black frames and even the red frames. Make sense?

I think when people say that they have either eliminated or reduced the number of black frame by tweaking the ram preview settings that varifies that Vegas use of ram to speed up the preview of *.m2t files is where the problem is.

It is hard to duplicate because of the variations from system to system and settings to settings.

I temporarily had an intermediate system with dual core that had significantly reduced the black frames but did not eliminate them. That system did not have good ram or ram timings. Changing the timings did help.

My current system with quad core has good ram and good ram timings so that seems to help at least with the 'Good Auto' setting.

So I guess one either tweaks away with everything, uses an intermediate file or hope Sony fixes this problem.

I sincerely hope this helps!

Danny Fye
www.vidmus.com/scolvs

I render everything to Cineform now (lossless before I got Cineform) before I cut. No problems, and editing goes much faster. I've never seen the black frames you speak of. What causes them?

I have seen black frames on Vegas, but only after exporting PF24 footage from the HV20 (without having removed pulldown) to 30p.