White Screen of Agony

[John Fishback]

I’m not familiar with FRAPS. What codec did you convert to with Perian? Can you open and play the Perian-converted file in QT player and/or FCP? Have you tried to encode to a codec other than AIC. What about ProRes?

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
24″ TV-Logic Monitor
Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Kevin Reiner]

Has this workflow worked for you in the past, or is this the first time you’re going this route? The reason I ask is because you’re using the very latest version of Quicktime. I always give a new version of QT a couple of weeks/months before upgrading to make sure there aren’t any bugs. This might not be your problem at all, but I’ve ran into similar issues in the past.

System Setup (for a more detailed list, see my profile)

HARDWARE
Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
9GB Memory
Two 16x SuperDrives
Dual-channel 2Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Apple Cinema HD Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon X1900 XT Graphics Card
AJA Kona LHe SD/HD capture card
Apple Xserve Raid 5.6TB

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.4.11
Final Cut Pro Studio 2
After Effects CS3
Photoshop CS3
Illustrator CS3
Boris Continuum 5
Sapphire Plug Ins
Roxio Toast
Digital Anarchy Anarchist Suite
ParticleIllusion 3.0
Trapcode
Zaxwerks

[Glenn Perreira]

I am suddenly encountering the same exact problem, so if I can horn in here and give my situation and info, maybe it would shed some light.

I too have recorded FRAPS on a PC, which uses its own codec (FPS1), to create AVI files, although the mac indeed says “Perian” in parenthesis when you look at the file. These are only slightly compressed, so they do recommend compressing after the fact.

(Fraps is typically used for recording PC game footage but can be used to record many programs running on your PC.)

Anyway, I have previously been able to take these file to work and import them in final cut pro without any conversion or compression and with no problem.

Now, however, these clips, when pulled into FCP, display with a completely blank (white) screen, but with perfect audio.

However, they play in Quicktime just fine, ALTHOUGH, when I try to export them, in some formats they turn white, like Divx. They convert fine to Mpeg4.

What is ODD is that:

A) I did this last month with a clip with NO problem which still plays fine in FCP.

B) I HAD converted some of these problem files using Divx Conversion which fixed it, but NOW some of the files I convert still have the white screen issue. Some worked, others didn’t?

I thought perhaps the issue was that I recorded the new batch @ 25fps a second, but recording at 30 and 29.97fps did not help either.

The only thing else that is different from last month and this is that

1) The “good” clip was recorded @ 1024×768 and all the “bad” clips were recorded @ 512×384

2) Just before I did the new batch, the drivers for my PC’s graphics card were suddenly declared invalid by Windows XP (Thanks, Microsoft!), and I had to install new drives for my Nvidia GTX 7800 just to get my graphics back up to speed.

3) The good clip had a data rate over 12mb, but the white ones have data rate of 7-8mb, and at least 1 had a rate of 18kbs…

I plan to do some more experimentation when I get the time, and in the end, I guess I can convert all these clips using another program, but the sudden change is mystifying and certainly adds to the workload.

Apple System
System – Mac Pro
OS – OS X Version 10.5.7
FCP – 6.0.6
DivX – 6.0

[Glenn Perreira]

One additional point…

These white clips also show up as white when loaded into Mpeg streamclip.

Glenn

[Glenn Perreira]

Don’t know if this is the issue, but the thread below suggests an update of Perian may be the culprit…

https://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=16525

[Rafael Amador]

I agree with John and would try with other codec or even a Still Sequence.
If the files play in QT Player, is because Perian/QT are working.
IMO the problem is on exporting.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Emanuel Ach]

I know the last post was in 2009, but did you find a solution to this?

I got white screen with perfect audio after compressing with compressor 3.5.4

I would like to figure out why