Problem: Doubled/overwritten frames in composition

[Greenlighted]

[Steve Roberts] “Now for the hard solution: have you tried pulling out RAM chips?”

No. It’s not my computer so I’m a bit hesitant to doing actions like that. Will see if I can get a hold of someone who’s more inclined to do it, but it’ll probably not be easy. :o( Meanwhile I’ll have to continue trying to find another solution.

[Greenlighted]

[Roman Flute] How did you record it straight to hard disk?

They used DV Rack. At least that’s what I’ve been told. Will try and get it verified tomorrow. (In the middle of the night here.)

Have you tried to open the footage in another package – maybe an editing package?

Yeah, and the footage looks fine. In fact, it looks fine in AE as well, as long as we view the source (layer). It’s when we preview or render a composition that we get the doubled/overwritten frames.

I think your cam is the GL2 (NTSC version) – which I have – so I usually come in firewire off of tape. But was wondering about the aquisition…

The camera was a Canon XM2 (PAL) and they used firewire to get it to the hard drive.

I have experienced exactly what you are describing with MPEG2 files. Mainly – because true MPEG2 streams are not individual frames- but averages. I have found that AE sometimes flakes out on those. It gets worse if you start mid stream – more errors. So I just want to make sure you actually got a DV stream rather than an MPEG2 stream.

We’ve been told that it’s DV AVI (type 2) files. Also, AE identifies the footage as Microsoft DV. Of course, I don’t know whether any of those facts are any guarantee that it actually is a DV stream.

For instance – one work around – my Final Cut box does not have the issue with those files. So I run it through there and then move it over to my PC for use in AE. Haven’t ever tried Premiere ( if this is your issue… ) – but you might look there – and see if another app has the issue. If not – re-render out from that app and test… It might solve your problem for the time being even if it is a DV file.

Hm, interesting idea. I’ll try and re-render the source footage through Premiere and see if that helps.

Hope you find the solution…

Thanks. And thanks for helping.

[Rene Amador]

I’m having the exact same problem. Frames seem to randomly double when previewing and rendering. When I double click on the clip in the bin and step through, there are no double frames, but every instance of the clip in a composition or render results in some frames being “sticky” (ie – 3 regular frames, then the same frame again, then 7 new frames, then a frame repeated. The result is like this, each frame being a number:

1 2 3 4 4 6 7 8 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 20 22

Please note the omission of frames 5, 9, and 21. Those frames, in preview and render, are simply not there, the previous frame is in its place.

I’ve disabled OpenGL, I’ve changed the secret cache settings, everything I can think of.