Random Black Frames when Rendering?

[Nicholas de Kock]

Is anyone experiencing these symptoms? When I render out from Sony Vegas Pro to Cineform I sometimes get randomly rendered black frames that last between 1-5 seconds. I can't watch every single second of the projects I finish and having clients come back with complaints that there are black sections in their production makes me look bad. I've had this problem for a long time and usually re-render the section when I find these black holes, I'm sure the problem is isolated to the Cineform codec as it only happens with my Cineform footage. Any advice?

[David Newman]

We haven't had any reports of this with any tool, so I doubt that it is a codec failure. Please file a support ticket so we can help you track down the cause.

[Nicholas de Kock]

David I did lodge a support ticket some time ago in May and the general suggestion was to make sure all my software was up-to-date which they are but I'm still getting these annoying black frames. I've re-installed my entire system, changed my workflow so that I no longer convert my footage to Cineform & edit nativity then render out my final edit to Cineform, this has improved my odds at reducing these black frames but I still get them now & again when I transcode my Cineform for DVD&BD. Wish I could get to the bottom of this...

[Nicholas de Kock]

Just happened again, a full minutes of video just gone when transcoding, audio still plays but no footage. When I play the Neo Cineform footage the video is there but somewhere when transcoding to DVD MPEG2 it randomly doesn't render footage, transcoding the same footage again solved problem but I'm losing so much time and under a lot of deadline pressure. I need a reliable solution that works every time, if this issue is isolated to me it could be hardware? So frustrated.

[Serena Steuart]

I do get whole clips going black (rather than frames) and have to reload Vegas to restore. This was happening under Vegas 10a and seemed to be helped by one of the Neo upgrades. However happening again under Vegas 10e and with a new system (so wasn't a peculiarity of my previous system). Neither Cineform nor SCS were any help on this (each reckoned the fault lay with the other) and I'll have to restart that frustrating support cycle.

[Nicholas de Kock]

Serena same here, sometimes entire clips like my previous render, I could cry from frustration. Rendered out 3 times already losing so much time. I'm running 10e at the moment with latest Neo, all legal software, restarting Vegas helps on my side too. I'm thinking maybe it's a memory issue, I've got a QuadCore with 6Gb of RAM but running 32bit Vegas, I should give 64bit a try perhaps. I've also had not luck with support from the official channels hence my reason for starting this thread, hoping others might be able to help.

[David Newman]

I believe this must be a Vegas issue, as Vegas uses the same codec components we use internally along with 30 other licensees. Still it worth reporting to our support.

[Serena Steuart]

Both 32bit and 64bit Vegas Pro exhibit the same behaviour and I've got 16GB of RAM. Probably basically a problem in Vegas, but one peculiar to using Cineform intermediates. I've not experienced this with MXF clips and elsewhere (SCS Vegas forum) another user says he sees this only with Cineform coded clips. Probably can't be solved without SCS and Cineform talking; so a bit pessimistic. First thing is to find if it is truly a random occurrence, or whether certain clips are affected. Previously I did think it random but after identifying a pattern the problem was solved by re-converting those clips through HDLink (using an updated Neo). Now that I have the OS on an SSD reloading Vegas is quick and I've been putting up with the problem while editing. However that isn't a solution when rendering, so we must each put in trouble tickets to both Cineform and SCS.

[Nicholas de Kock]

Thanks for the feedback Serena was thinking I should upgrade to 16Gb of RAM, will hold that off a little longer. I've also been living with the problem as there isn't any time to troubleshoot, I'll have a look and see if I can find a pattern however I've completely stopped coding my footage to Cineform & edit my DSLR footage native now because I find Cineform unreliable which is a shame because now I'm missing out on First Light. I only render my final output to Cineform now for archival purposes and then make my DVDs/Blu-ray from the Cineform master and from this master which is perfect with no bugs I get black sections of footage which is hard to explain as it's one long file & not separate clips.

[Serena Steuart]

Several users on SCS Vegas forum are reporting the same problems with Cineform & Vegas so now it is reasonable to suggest this isn't just a peculiarity of Vegas alone. Please put in trouble tickets to both.

[Serena Steuart]

Of course putting in a trouble ticket to Cineform becomes somewhat tricky when you get "not a registered user" against one's formally registered email address. I daresay there's a way through the maze to occupy my time.

[Nicholas de Kock]

Okay I re-opened my previous ticket however I'm sure if Cineform knew what was wrong they would have fixed it so I don't have high hopes for a quick fix. Did another render today & low and behold the last 5minutes is black video, no effects applied or anything, all I'm doing is rendering out from HD to DVD. Update: Jake (support) got back to me within minutes of me submitting a my ticket, they are looking into the matter, holding thumbs.

[David Newman]

Please follow up with Sony support. I emailed the Vegas engineering earlier to see if they had any clues. The more user input the better. If this turns out to be a CineForm issue, we will address it quickly, but the reports are only happening in Vegas, and it the Sony team that implements the file I/O for CineForm compression, so they are first in line to track this down.

[Chris Barcellos]

I have had this happen myself, both in 32bit and 64 bit Vegas. I have a feeling that it occurs on certain drives. I have about 4 drives using esat connection, though two are on pop in external drive bays. Every now and then those drive temporarily go off line... not sure if it is a Windows issue. During renders, I have seen Vegas wait for them to come back up and finish, I am wondering if the dropped frames I have experienced from time to time come from that same issue.

[Nicholas de Kock]

Chris I'm not sure it's the drives, I have drives in a RAID configuration and still getting missing sections in my renders. I tried rendering on a completely different system last night with Vegas 10d installed to see if it's a problem with 10e and same thing happened - the problem is probably with Vegas and how it handles Cineform. I can confirm that both Vegas 32 & 64bit does the same, I've tried them both now.

I'm going to give Adobe Media Encoder a go today to see what that does.

Update: Media Encoder works fine & Vegas nailed it on the 3rd render supporting my random claim. In the first render black section was at end, 2nd render halfway through & 3rd render perfect.