[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.

[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]

Tried both, no (positive) effect. In fact, it kinda felt like the problem increased (more doubled frames) when the frame purge was set.

[Greenlighted]

“Here’s some pref info from Mark Harvey:
[Pref info deleted]

Interesting. Tried it, no difference.

You wrote “where in the source the clip starts”, yes? Do you mean “where in the comp”? If not, could you please clarify? It does sound like a clue.

Where the in point in the source clip is affects where the frame problem occurs. While verifying/testing the problem the clip was placed at the beginning of the comp. When we moved the in point, and relocated the clip to start at the beginning of the comp, the affected source frame(s) changed. (Also, see more updated test results below.)

And the source clip really is 25 fps? Is it telecine’ed film? And is it source from a camera, or from somewhere else?

Should be 25 fps: taken from a PAL camera (Canon XM-2, DV), recorded directly to hard drive.

More testing, more clues:

New project, imported footage, interpreted footage, created comp from footage, RAM previewed: 3 doubled frames in a 5 second workspace.

Without altering anything in comp, did Edit->Purge->All and RAM previewed: 2 doubled frames in different positions!

(An additional full render through the render queue resulted in yet another variation in doubled frames.)

Almost seems like it ignores rendering certain frames and instead uses the previously rendered one. Does that make any sense? Futhermore, it uses OpenGL (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200) where it can, could that perhaps affect anything?

Sigh. Just guessing wildly here (due to desperation)…

Again, thanks for helping.

[Greenlighted]

[Steve Roberts] “Hmph. That looks right. (sorry, I meant timecode base)

No worries. Sorry for asking a nitpicky question, but this problem is really beginning to get to us so we were actually hoping that there was some kind of setting we didn’t know about…

It seems as if you’ve tested properly, by creating the comp from the footage.

Something we’ve noticed is that the doubled/overwritten frames’ positions (as well as the amount of them) change depending on where in the source the clip starts. That’s probably a clue to what’s going on, but we’ve been unable to make something out of it.

Have you tried interpreting the footage with no field separation?

Yeah, same behaviour. (But, of course, with the “interlace lines” visible.)

What is the codec of the footage?

DV AVI. (Think it’s type 2, if that can make any difference.)

Have you tried trashing your preferences?

Probably not. I’m not even sure what you mean by this. (We have however created a completely new project and just done this test, but still with the same results.)

Thanks for trying to help out. Really appreciate it.

[Greenlighted]

Err, do you mean the project’s timecode base (for Display Style) or are we missing something here? In any case, here’s how it looks:

Project – Timecode Base: 25 fps
Composition – Frame Rate: 25
Source – Frame Rate: Use frame rate from file (25,000 fps)