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Missing pictures
I have a problem that I have been trying to figure out for a couple of days now. First, I am new to Sony Vegas 9, but I have had experience with NLE’s. I have been using another video editor for years, but due to hardware problems, I have now turned to Vegas as I have heard good things about it. I created my project using video clips from my SD camcorder, along with clips from an HD camcorder. As well, my project includes still images — some with alpha channels.
My project contains 4 segments which present photographs as slideshows. I have edited the photos with Photoshop, but was unsure of the resolution to use. I read a recommendation to use 1440 pixel wide images. My SD project would mean that my images should be 1440 x 1080 to maintain the proper aspect ratio. For whatever reason, Vegas didn’t like this size, and I discovered that by reducing the size to 1440 x 1060, everything would work. Ok, I’ll use that. All of my pictures were saved in .png format with a resolution of 1440 x 1060.
My project looks fine when I play it out on the timeline. The video preview window will properly display what I am trying to do for my project. The problem happens when I attempt to render. I want to render my project as an MPEG-2 file (to create files for my DVD project). I am discovering that when the render happens, certain pictures which I have imported will not appear in the final rendered project. Instead, I am getting a black screen.
My slideshow segments are basically the .png images laid out on two video tracks. I include a fade transition between the pictures. For example, I may have 10 photos laid out on two alternating video tracks (5 on each track). Photo #1 and photo #2 come out black and the rest are ok. In the next slideshow segment, it could be photo #6 of that segment. There doesn’t seem to be any particular pattern.
I have inspected my timeline very closely to see if there is anything that might be causing a problem in those locations. I cannot find anything. I have made adjustments to my clips to lengthen and shorten them to see if it would make any difference. No dice. By moving things around, and rendering again, I find that either the same pictures are black, or maybe different pictures go black. There doesn’t seem to be a fixed pattern.
I have tried the following:
* re-edit the problematic pictures and re-imported them into my project
* re-edit the problematic pictures and save them in a different format (.jpg, .tga)No difference. I tried to Google a solution and read that you should set switches to ‘Disable resample’ for all my video media. I tried that but it made no difference. I attempted to render smaller clips of the problematic areas, and for whatever reason, that seems to work! It is only when I attempt to render my entire project do I see these strange problems.
I will render the project again, and sit and watch my preview window. Sure enough, when the slideshow segment appears, I get a black screen in my preview window now. So I hit ‘Cancel’ and try again.
I don’t believe that it is a resource issue, as I have a workstation with an Intel i7 950 processor, 12 Gb RAM, with a fast 2 Tb hard drive. My entire project is about 1h 16 min long. I am hoping that it is a simple tweak to get this to work, but I haven’t found a solution yet. I would appreciate any insight as to how to configure Vegas.
I find it very disconcerting that I can play a project out on my timeline, and everything looks fine there. However, the rendered project may not be the same as what I saw when I previewed my project. This was never a problem with my old NLE. I don’t think I should be watching the entire preview window as it is being rendered.
Fred
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4 Replies
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Make sure that you are using Vegas Pro 9.0e. Earlier versions had a bug which caused black frames when rendering images. If you are already using 9.0e, I would download the trial of Vegas Pro 10a and see if it fixes the problem. If it does, that would be the fix as Sony is not fixing bugs 9.0 anymore.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks for the tip. After going through some of the older threads, I decided to resize all of my images to 720 x 540. Guess what? Things seem to work now. I can’t understand it, as all of my images were the same size (1440 x 1060), and only a few of them had problems. I was under the impression that the image size was ok. So, I guess the big question is, “What is the recommended image size to import pictures into Vegas?”
I will try the upgrade route at a later date. Thanks again.
Fred
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[Fred Yee] “So, I guess the big question is, “What is the recommended image size to import pictures into Vegas?””
I always use 2x the project size for SD because I usually zoom into the photos a bit. I’m not sure why this didn’t work for you.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
>>>I decided to resize all of my images to 720 x 540. Guess what? Things seem to work now. I can’t understand it,
I’m also having similar troubles like missing video events in Vegas 9e while working with ‘large’ projects. As the memory allocated by Vegas gets larger with added media, the strange things start to happen.
It sounds like a memory issue. No matter if the video is mp4, mpeg2, huffyuv or ffv1, it just randomly drops frames or replace frames with garbage memory blitter images just like the Commodore 64s used to display just after loading a program from tape.I just exit and rerun Vegas when I encounter such problems.
(I don’t just reload the project because usually it does not work. I think Vegas needs to be shut down to fix its memory allocation issues.) After a fresh restart, it starts working fine for some time until it gets messed up again.What frustrates me most is that the application does not notify you with a warning when it can’t handle a large image or decode a video properly. It just shows it as garbage or renders it as a blank like it’s all normal. I don’t know what other Vegas users think but I agree that Vegas is getting more “flaky” and unstable with each new version since the times of Sonic Foundry.
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