Please Check : Blue/black screen on External Preview

[Gilles Pialat]

Hi,

I’m a french user of Vegas 7 and have many difficulty to find English peoples to make this little test with Vegas (7.0d):

-In a DV project, enable external preview monitoring (OHCI).
-Open in TRIMMER a WMV, PNG, Uncompressed AVI, HDV file or Generated media (anything else DV or Mpeg SD file).
-Start Playback in Trimmer.

The playback start in Trimmer & internal Preview window, BUT on External monitor I get a blue screen during 2 seconds (or a black screen when using Canopus ADVC110 converter). Generally, I get this issue with media needed to be recompressed.
Playback from Time Line work fine.

I sent those movies to Sony to illustrate this problem:
http://sony.vegas.1.free.fr/External...reen%20V7d.wmv (OHCI)
http://sony.vegas.1.free.fr/V7_Preview_test_2.wmv (Secondary Windows Display)

Unfortunately, Sony is not able to reproduce it.

However, I’m the moderator of a French forum and absolutely all guys of my forum are able to reproduce this issue.
In addition, I made this test on many computers and had this issue on all of them.
This occur with Vegas 5, 6 & 7.
Vegas 4 work fine.

If this issue is not annoying when working exclusively with DV sources in a DV project, it becomes extremely annoying when working with HDV file in a DV project (or with multimedia project in generally).

Please, can you make this test and tell me if you get or not the same issue.

Thank in advance.

Gilles.

[Gilles Pialat]

Does nobody use an external monitor here ?

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

I use one for hours on end, every day. Both CRT and LCD.
The issue you present does not occur on any of our systems. I'd suspect you've got resources sharing with your 1394 card.
My monitors do both PAL and NTSC, no issues on either format.

[Gilles Pialat]

Many thx Douglas.

Unfortunately, there is not shared resources with my 1394 card (and on same system, Vegas 4 work fine).
I tried many & many things to solve this issue with no result.
A very strange thing is that all guys of my forum are able to repro it ( and I found 2 others guys at a Deutsch forum an another one at DVXuser).
It is maybe a local issue ?? but to determine that, it would be necessary that many English users make this test… and it is very hard to me to find them.

I have a Sony technical support ticket open since the 10/03/06 for the external mpeg preview crash and this issue. The external crash was solved in 7.0d but this issue is still here.

I have no news from Sony since the 02/26/07 in spite of many update ticket.
I feel completely abandoned by their technical support.

[Graham Bernard]

Giles? London here!

No issues when "re-compressed" for PNG, WMV MPEG1/2 all playing from within Trimmer. All being recompressed - it says it is being recompressed.

Now if I select NOT recpmpress in Prefs, for either 2nd Monitor OR External Monitor THEN I DO get a black Screen. But this is ONLY for non-AVI files, AVI files do not require recompressing to be "ON" to get playback. MPEG do need this function "ON".

As far as I can see, recompressing is User-selectable for "edited" frames content. The reason for this must be to reduce CPU requirements. But here, all my tests are from a previously rendered MPG file - meaning no edited frames. All I did was to plop a MPG file onto timeline and access through Trimmer. I do have to ask the question though, why does Vegas regard my rendered MPEG file as being an "edited" file that it SHOULD require "recompress edited frames" ON? And thus needing it FOR previewing to Preview? Maybe that is where we are getting "hung-up"?

Reading Douglas's post implies a resource issue. Maybe not the one here, but Vegas is attempting to allow you/us to access files for preview. And in doing so offers enabling CPU power when we feel we need it?

Bottom line here for me is that I HAVE too have recompress ON to achieve Preview even for a completed Edited MPG file.

Interesting.

[Gilles Pialat]

Thank you Graham.

Now if I select NOT recpmpress in Prefs, for either 2nd Monitor OR External Monitor THEN I DO get a black Screen.

Me too. But we get a black/blue screen and nothing else (and only for media needed to be recompressed of course). This is the normal way how Vegas must work. So I don’t think my issue is related to this option.

Since most of English users don’t have this issue BUT since I see this issue on absolutely all system where I installed Vegas, I’m looking on the difference between French PC & English PC.

OS ?
I made a test with and English version of WinXP… with same result.

Converter ?
Mine are a Sony TRV900E Camcorder & a Canopus ADVC110.
Is there some setting to do with this type of converter ?
I don’t think so and same converter work fine with Vegas4 on same system.

Great enigma...


.

[Seth Bloombaum]

What 1394 chipset is in use? Back in ancient times we were advised to avoid Via motherboard chipsets, and Via chips on 1394 adapter cards.

After experiencing some problems, I had to remove a Via-chipped PCI firewire card because of issues I don't remember too clearly - but if I recall, it didn't seem to work, period. This was probably with Vegas 3 or 4.

TI-equipped adapters were recommended. I've been using Intel-chipped motherboards and many people I know have no problems with nVidia.

Haven't heard too much about this issue more recently, but, is it possible that all of the French Vegas forum reporting this problem are on Via-equipped motherboards?

Then there is the issue of other devices on the firewire bus. Some people have good experience with camera/canopus devices on the same firewire adapter as external hard drives. Some experience problems. I had problems with this, and now usually run my external drives on USB (soon to be SATA), but also have a firewire PCI adapter in addition to motherboard firewire.

[Gilles Pialat]

Thx for your suggestions Seth,

My OHCI card have a VIA chipset indeed.
BUT I tried many others cards with same result. I have a laptop with a TI chipset and same issue occur on it.
If it was a hardware problem this issue should certainly occur with Vegas4 too... but V4 work fine.