Problem While Scrubbing

[Biozhang]

Nope. Just took the flower layer brought it into the timeline, set a couple of keyframes and changed the values. No presets. Nothing else in the timeline.

In fact, I just recreated the problem with no animation whatsoever. Just the flower, no motion/effects/presets, nothing. Each time I touch the scrub bar it darkens everything until there’s nothing to look at. Very strange to me.

BIOZHANG

[Darby Edelen]

When you stop scrubbing, is the image still dark? Are you using OpenGL for previews?

This sounds very strange to me, I don’t know what’s causing it but any other information you can give us about your settings would help.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Steve Roberts]

Select the layer and hit U. See any keyframes?

[Biozhang]

Yes it is very strange indeed. Yes the image is still dark when I stop scrubbing. I have figured out though its only with graphics, not footage (if that makes sense). When I import footage (AVIs, QTs,etc) no problems. However the minute I start to add graphics to a comp with footage, then starts the “progressive darkening” (sounds like a political novel).

I tried enabling/disabling the OpenGL preview preferences and nothing changed, good suggestion though.

So, as best I can tell right now, it only starts happening when there are graphics (anything other than footage which in my case would be PS files and layers) in the timeline.

BIOZHANG

[Biozhang]

Yeah just to be sure I did that and there are no keyframes.

BIOZHANG

[Steve Roberts]

Did you try it with different graphics?
A new project?
A new comp?
Trash the preferences?
Move the layer forward or back in time?
Got any shy layers that may be screwing something up? Adjustment layers?

[Biozhang]

Thank you, those are some good suggestions. Seems the most simple, but I didn’t even think of trying the different file formats. I use the PSDs so much. Here’s what I found out.

Formats that cause the problem:
PSDs
EPSs
PNGs

Formats that don’t cause the problem:
TIFFs (with transparency)
GIFs (with transparency)
and any format that does not support preserving transparency (i.e. JPEG)

So it probably has somethihng to do with displaying the transparency on those other formats, but I’m not sure what. Deleting my prefs did nothing to help, makes no difference if its a new project or comp, and neither did moving the layer around the timeline. And there are no hidden layers or adjustment layers.

Is there something I’m missing about “displaying transparency”, some setting or something?

Those are great suggestions, thanks again!

BIOZHANG

[Biozhang]

I must have not been looking at something right while exporting the TIFF and GIF images. Both of those formats work fine if the alpha channel is not preserved. But if you preserve the alpha and then bring it in, the same problem occurs.

So the only images that cause the problem are images with an alpha channel. If it doesn’t have an alpha channel, no problem.

Still perplexed.

BIOZHANG

[Biozhang]

I guess just talking it out helps sometimes. After discovering that it all had to do with showing the images with transparency I went digging at all the possible options that might effect that.

(Insert big smack on the head here) Checked out the color depth settings and they were set at 8bits instead of 16. Set it to 16bits – voila, problem solved.

Sorry to have taken up anyone’s valuable thoughts on something like this. Sometimes you just can’t see the forest for the trees.

Thanks for you help!

BIOZHANG