Ok so I'm mid-level experience at Premiere Pro to start this question. Definitely wouldn't call myself amateur nor pro.

I was "cleaning" up my time line today by moving clips from different video tracks down in to one (except where there might be a transition happening). Well the strangest thing happened: Now I have random clips that render out looking like 50% opacity even though they are listed at 100% in the time-line AND show up fine in the program window. I always save before rendering and don't want to lose about 4-5 hours of editing (didn't save-as this time duh!). I've been working on this project for over a week now and have not had this issue with any of the countless other renders I've done. It just cropped up when I started moving my clips in to one time-line. I've done obvious things like restarted my computer, etc.

What could have possibly caused this? It seems to be clips that I took from a top track and moved down to V1 that have less opacity. I've quadrupled check their opacity levels (all say 100% except where I've started a fade), render options, effects accidentally added, etc. I haven't started grading yet so I don't have any effects on this clips, except for some time changes here and there throughout (doesn't seem to be the culprit) and opacity changes for fades (this doesn't seem to have caused this issue either). I know someone out there is going to come back with something like, "this check-box has been checked" or something as simple as that (I hope).

Any ideas out there Premeire Pro users?

If you look at the video portion of any clip in the timeline you will see a yellow line that runs through the middle of the clip. That yellow line controls the opacity for the entire clip. If you have mistakenly dragged that line downwards you will also have altered the clip opacity. Try clicking in the middle of that yellow line and dragging upwards.

It's all the way up Ben. Thanks for the suggestion. That's my point and why I can't figure this out. The clips are at 100% except when I intentionally start a fade. They look 100% bright in my project monitor in premiere when I play through the timeline. I have no contrast or brightness effects or levels etc. I have no effects on any of the clips. Checked throughly.

But when I render it out, the clips I've moved down in to the V1 track are now about 50% bright. But the clips I've butted them up against that where orginally in V1 are perfectly bright. I tried moving one of the effected clips back up above V1 in to it's orginal position and still only 50% when rendered.

And before someone asks, there are no clips above the affected clips layered. I was just trying to streamline and bring everything down in to one track since I was finalizing my edit. I work with 3+ tracks all the time and understand this concept and how it works and what it does.

It's really strange and makes no sense unless I've some how changed something and don't know about this option in premiere.

This might help you see whats going on.... on the time line... left click one of the video
portions with the opacity issue...

now go up to the effect controls tab and there you will see the video effects and the audio effects...

in the middle of the video effects you will see Opacity... now left click on the small arrow
to the left of the word opacity... the details of opacity will open, now click the small arrow to the left of the word opacity that was opened up...this now shows you all of the parameters for the opacity setting of the video... now click the small icon that looks like a
clock face. this will remove any key frames that may exist... now as a final test you can
click the small icon that looks like a scrolled " F" and the entire effect will be turned off...

Now render and see if this takes care of the issue.. if it does then you can play with the settings on one of the other clips to narrow down the issue...

Thanks for the ideas Ray. I've already went through all that as well.

So after two days of this I finally got to my wits end and uninstalled Premiere and reinstalled and now it's all good. So something was definitely corrupted somehow. I thought it might be the peek files for my clips but having Premiere rebuild them didn't fix it. So I uninstalled and reinstalled.

Thanks for everyone who tried to help. This one was very strange.

Glad you got it fixed.... sounds like the affected video picked up the opacity flags from the
fading transitions... good that you got her fixed up again... good luck with your project.