Green Flashes At My Edit Points?

[Jamie Dull]

Hi,

I am new to using Vegas (7.0), in fact, just edited my first little movie. I rendered it to MPEG2 and when I play it back in WMP some of my edits flash a green frame right at the edit point. Does anyone know what causes this or how to fix it?

Being new to NLE I am bewildered by all of the video formats and codecs and not sure about the best way to get to where I want to go.

I want to edit in the best quality I can and then be able to make regular DVD's that can play in most DVD players and eventually make an HD Disc on Blu-Ray

Here is my situation.

Filmed footage with Sony SR-12 in full HD mode AVCHD 1920 X 1080. Since I can't edit this with my current set up, I converted my footage with the Sony Picture Motion Browser software that came with my SR-12 to MPEG2.

I set up Vegas with the following template.

HDV-60i 1440X1080 at 29.92 fps
Upper Field First
Pixel Aspect 1.3333
Motion Blur: Gaussian
Deinterlacer Method: Blend Fields.

Then I rendered to MainConcept MPEG2
Template DVD NTSC
Aspect 16:9 720X480 29.97 fps
Field Order None (progressive)
VBR 8,000,000 bps

Playback in Windows Media Player 11

Any help is appreciated!

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

By any chance, do you have green selected as a default background color for fades? If you've got gaps, this'll show green. If it's only some of your edits, it would support this possibility

[Jamie Dull]

Douglas,

Thanks for your answer. Where do I check for my default background color for fades?

When I open Vegas now I see green frames in my timeline that weren't there before. If I zoom in on the timeline they turn black and then turn back into the original video frame? I don't think I have any gaps between my edits. The clips are butted up against each other and snap together with a blue line indicating the snap.

PS. I recently bought your Vegas 8 book. Thanks - it is great.

[Jamie Dull]

I have attached a screen capture showing a green block in my timeline. This is actually a normal clip, but for some reason shows up green. It causes a green flash at the edit point.

PS I found where to check my default fade color. It was not green. Track fade top is White and Track Fade bottom is Black.

[Andrew Kufahl]

I sometimes get this too, and I believe it is normal. Most often I get a frame or two at the end of one clip, that is part of the next clip. My "ameteur" explaination of it is that there is a bit of carry-over of images when stopping/starting recording on your camera. The simplest solution (for me) is to do this (I think these are the right steps, as I don't have Vegas right in front of me at the moment):

- Click on the clip in the timeline to select it.
- Press the 9 on the number pad on your keyboard (this will put you into "trim" mode on the right side of the clip).
- Press the 1 on the number pad (this will start trimming the clip [from right-to-left] one frame at a time).
- Continue to press 1 until the bad spot is gone.
- Press 5 on the number pad (this will take you out of "trim" mode).

There are other ways to accomplish this, but this method [to me] is nice because it ensures you only remove 1 frame at a time (i.e. you remove the least amount of footage).

Give it a shot. If it doesn't work, let us know and we'll keep throwing options at you.

Andrew

[Jamie Dull]

Andrew,

Thanks for the advice. I tried trimming a few frames from the beginning of an event, but it didn't help. What it seems to be doing is somehow inserting a frame from farther up in the same event a few frames in from the edit point?

For example if I have an event that shows someone standing up from a chair, at the beginning of the clip when they are seated, it will suddenly have one frame when the person was standing then continues playing from the point where they are sitting. The more I try to fix it, the worse it seems to get.??

[Andrew Kufahl]

I'm not sure if this is feasible or not, but could you do this...

- Select the clip you are having a problem with.
- Press Alt+Ctr+Left Arrow, which should move the cursor to the start of that clip. But, be aware that if that clip has a "fade" at the start you will need to press Alt+Ctrl+Left Arrow again in order to get to the actual start of that clip. Based on the colors of the arrows on that clip, it looks like there might be a fade on the start of that clip, but you may not be able to see it because the fade is so short and you are not zoomed in enough. To zoom in closer, press the Up Arrow, which should zoom in right to where the cursor is located. If you do have a fade on that clip, maybe you could temporarily remove it until you get the problem resolved.
- Now press Alt+Right Arrow to move forward frame-by-frame. Do this until you hit the first green frame.
- Press "S" on your keyboard to split that clip.
- Press Alt+Right Arrow to move forward again, this time continue until you find the last green frame.
- Press Alt+Right Arrow one more time to move past that green frame.
- Press "S" on your keyboard to split again.
- Now you should have a small clip that contains only the green frames. Delete that clip, then re-adjust the surrounding clips accordingly.

I don't really have an answer as to why you are getting green frames. I occasionally get something like this, but I shoot to tape, and mine usually appears at the end of a clip. Yours showing up at the beginning is odd.

I don't understand your comment about how "The more I try to fix it, the worse it seems to get"... that shouldn't be the case at all. If you're saying that when you try to trim off the front of the clip that the problem just shifts itself forward within that clip, then it sounds like you might have something wrong with your install. Because that shouldn't happen.

I'd be willing to take a look at that clip on my machine if you would be willing to share it. If it is small enough to email to me, do that. Otherwise, if there is some way for you to post it on a website as a downloadable file that would be cool too.

Andrew

[John Lorince]

I am getting this green clip thing happening to my new video....yikes...what is happening..I turned off the PC and letting it kool down,...hope this is the problem.

[Willard Hill]

I get this all of the time when editing hdv footage (m2t)files. I edit directly from the timeline. In my case the problem area is at the end of the clips. I simply grab the end of the clip with the mouse and drag to the left until the green disappears, or until I reach the out point that I wish to use for that particular scene. I think the reason trimming the clip is not working for you is that according to what you wrote, you are trimming the beginning of the clip instead of the end.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Guys

In both Vegas 7 and 9 I have never had this issue BUT I'm using Panasonic AVCHD files not Sony!!! Even transcoded files to both M2t and AVI never has shown a problem. I wonder if this is more of a Sony AVCHD issue rather than a Vegas one???

I hope someone finds the answer (actually rather the initial cause) as I wonder if every editor would check or notice anything like that???

Just for interest, does the problem disappear if you were to crossfade the clips??? I seldom do "butt up" cuts, but rather do a 0.2 sec crossfade which is for practical purposes a cut and it makes sure that there is no gap between the clips

Chris

[Steven Thorsen]

I also have a persistant problem with these green "flashes" at the end of almost every m2t clip that I've captured with Vegas 8 & 9. 90% of the time it is only the last frame of each clip that is affected but at times it can affect as many as the last 3 frames of a clip. (See Image1.jpg)

I should add that areas of the frame that usually contain solid green can often display a portion of the first frame of the clip that immediately follows in the capture sequence. (See Image2.jpg)

I've never been able to track down the source of the problem. What to do?

MY WORK-AROUND
There's an easier way than going through the labor intensive chore of hand editing out each of the affected frames. Since I have this problem with almost every captured clip I ran across Edward Troxel's free script "TrimFront+Back.js", which I ever so slightly modified. You can download it here:

http://www.jetdv.com/scripts/TrimFront+Back.js

This script removes 1 second of video from the front and back of each selected clip. (DO NOT FORGET to also select the audio track associated with each video track!) Here in PAL land that translates to 50 frames, many more than are necessary. So I edited the script in Windows Notepad and made the following small change to this line just below the import header:

FROM

var trimAmt = new Timecode("00:00:01:00");

TO

var trimAmt = new Timecode("00:00:00:03");

The new line only deletes 3 frames from the front and back of each selected clip.

My workflow is to place all the clips on the timeline, select all the video and audio tracks and then run the script. This will leave a gap on the timeline between of each clip which needs to edited out.

Of course this might not be suitable for everyone, but since virtually every clip I capture has this "green flash", Edward Troxel's script saves me hours of editing. Thanks Edward, my hat goes off to you!!